seven miles a day. Personally I wouldn’t go on a trip like this just to skate for an hour or so, but for other people the goal is relaxation, sightseeing and camaraderie. And there’s always that one impressive guy who’s ready to go 70 miles in a single day, as someone did on my Quebec trip. (We gave him a round of applause.) The longest stretch in the Idaho jaunt is 38 miles, which means I can’t beat my own personal best, a little over 40 miles. It’s probably just as well. The day I roll 38 miles—including a section from the decidedly un-scenic Smelterville Wal-Mart to Osburn to Wallace, after a giant chicken-fried steak lunch at the Snakepit in Enaville—is unbearable. Months after the trip, I’m still minus several toenails, despite my carefully jerry-rigged combination of a sock liner with the top cut off and blister-preventive ankle socks. “That’s skating,” Colleen says on the second-to-last day, looking at my taped up, Band-Aided toes, which of course she snaps a picture of. By the time I get home, I’m exhausted. But that’s the beauty of skating. Yes, people make fun of it, but it’s not an easy sport. You can get hurt, you can go fast, there’s arcane equipment. It’s a good workout for building the same muscles you care about for skiing, hiking and climbing. It’s a weight-bearing exercise, unlike biking (research shows that cycling alone doesn’t do enough to boost bone density). And it won’t make you sterile. Plus, the people are impressive: tough, but nice. Even outsiders who rib us about being dorky are quick to say that. Anyway, the skating community can’t really be bothered to take offense at the jokes. Our love of the sport is such a genuine thing, such a strong thing. Skaters don’t care what other people think of them. We really don’t. Obviously we don’t. In this world of constant searching for the new thing, the different thing, the more unusual thing, if not the more extreme thing, why not skating? Oh, all right: It’s the knee pads, isn’t it?
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Montana Headwall
Page 47 Summer 2011