This story has five parts, so I decided to divide it up that way.

Part One: The Background

Last August for my birthday, Susan bought me a skateboard. It was a Steve Caballaro reproduction from the 1980s. I haven’t ridden it as much as I thought I would. And by that I mean, I thought I would have ridden it at least twice by now, and I haven’t.

Fast forward to the skate competition I took Mason to last month. I promised Mason that if he would dump his Ripstick and start skateboarding, I would give him a good quality skateboard (intending, of course, to give him the one I haven’t been riding). As I figured he did take a liking to skateboarding … just not to my old skateboard, which he described as, well, old. Turns out the kids like those skateboards where you can’t tell which end is the front and which is the back. In our day, skateboards had a definite nose and a tail. I guess they don’t anymore. Now they’re all shaped like band-aids.

Call me a softy, but even though it’s been twenty-five years or so, I remember learning how to skate on a sucky skateboard, and it sucked. I know first hand the pain of cheap Walmart skateboards that are too heavy to do tricks on and don’t roll worth a damn. I told Mason that if he wanted a skateboard and would promise me that he would ride it, I would get him a good one. So that’s how we ended up at the skate shop Saturday afternoon.

Part Two: The Skate Shop

I found the name and address of a local skate shop via Google. I actually found several, but picked one over the others because it’s near a place that makes good shakes. That’s me, always thinkin’.

When we arrived at the skate shop we found a large crowd of people that did not look they belonged in a skate shop. Turns out, this particular skate shop also sells NBA Thunder T-Shirts — an increasingly hard to find commodity at the moment, as our team is currently playing in the NBA Western Finals. Mason and I found our way to the back and talked with an employee who helped Mason pick out all the individual parts of his new skateboard. Mason picked the deck with the graphics he wanted on the bottom, the trucks, the wheels, and even the grip tape (checkerboard print).

Susan and Mason had a date to go down and try to score Thunder tickets to Saturday night’s game, so he didn’t have much time to try out the board. “We’ll do that Sunday morning,” I said. So mote it be.

Part Three: The Skate Park

Sunday morning, around 10am or so, Mason and I headed over to the Route 66 Skate Park (the one seen here). Mason rolled around a little bit to get used to the new board, and then headed over to one of the ramps. As he rolled down the ramp, he wiped out and slid down. After dusting himself off, he carried his new skateboard over to me and showed me something. The skateboard now only had three wheels.

It only took us a few moments to find the missing wheel, but finding the rest of the parts that went with the wheel turned out to be more difficult. We scoured the skate park for fifteen minutes before finding the bearings, a nut and a spacer. We never did find two of the washers. I checked the board and found that the nut on one of the other wheels was so loose that I could twist it by hand.

With all the parts we could find in hand we made a quick trip to Dad’s house. I was going to try and reassemble the wheel myself, but without all the parts I decided that a trip back up to the skate shop was in order.

Part Four: Back to the Skate Shop

I delayed our return trip to the skate park as late in the day as possible, hoping that we would miss the resurgence of t-shirt hungry Thunder fans. My plan worked, and when Mason, my Dad and myself walked in the only people in the shop were employees. Both guys took one look at Mason’s skateboard and immediately took it back to the repair/build area. Apologies were issued and accepted, and the board was restored to like-new condition.

The Dude.

Part Five: Skate Park, Round Two

On the way from from the skate shop, Mason, Dad and I stopped back by the skate park for a quick test. I’m happy to report that the skateboard held up to all the punishment Mason was able to dish out. Mason repeatedly rolled up and down ramps and took several spills. Both the board and Mason held together famously.