(Update written 5/10/2012)

So, as you can see, I wrote this about three weeks ago and have been hesitant to post it. I was close to getting my message across but I didn’t like the fact that it seemed to end on a note of nostalgia mixed with apprehension about the future. I don’t mind nostalgia, and I do have concerns about the future, but that wasn’t what I was hoping for this to become.

I spent this past weekend with 14 Chicago bladers in a cabin in northern Wisconsin to celebrate Andrew Kaz’s bachelor party (edit to follow soon). Most of these guys I have known for a decade at least. On the way up Eddie Dombrowski and I picked up a 15-year-old bottle of scotch to share and it hit us that the bottle wasn’t even as old as our friendship. We had started skating together two years before that bottle existed. Coming out of the weekend (and sobering up from the scotch) I was thinking about what I had written and what it was missing.

My goal was to celebrate who we are, who we have been over the last decade spent on the fringe, and most importantly, who we will continue to be. Or more precisely, what rollerblading will continue to be even if only for “us,” the few who have stuck it out over the long-haul regardless of our status in the (very mainstream) world of counter-cultures.

There will come a day where I won’t be able to skate anymore. Maybe at that time Vibralux will be available at the mall. Maybe seeing someone on Valos cruising down the street won’t evoke a feeling of brotherhood from another kid rocking a USD hoodie. Or, on the other end of possibilities that aren’t really likely at all, maybe I will be the last of a dying breed — the final guy to consider the possibilities of a pair of skates and a box of Gulf Wax. It doesn’t matter. Even if the general idea of “rollerblading” is fleeting or trivial, its meaning for us and the friendships it has led us to are relatively absolute. This tiny industry, with little money and no exposure to the outside world, has been, and continues to be, an absolute gift.