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I found this on Quartersnacks today, and I don’t have a clue where they found it, or if they’ve actually been so blessed as to have seen this floating castle with their own eyes. One imagines it might have similar effect as looking upon the face of god — only blindness and abject fear can come of it. Nonetheless, I was morally compelled to post it as I have spent considerable time in the past decade participating in a widely-regarded juvenile past time which is currently systematically destroying the inner workings of my Skeletomuscular system and will surely never land me a well-paying job, like, anywhere.

Come with me where you’ll never, never have to worry about grown up things again…

Indeed, a full-blown case of skateboard-obsession is a disease, as obviously only a mental condition of the most severe order could result in somebody actually building a half pipe tree house. Don’t get me wrong, I understand this mental illness, because I share it. In fact, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that this is the coolest thing I have ever seen. Cooler than anything I’ve ever posted on this blog and considered cool before. Cooler than the Ninja Turtles when I was five years old. Yes, that cool. The only way this could possibly be cooler, is if it was a fully-featured bowl complex, but I don’t even want to know what kind of complex it would take for somebody to actually try to accomplish such a thing.

Danny Way, mid descent - photo by Grant Brittain

Whenever my mom asks me why I’m still skateboarding at my age, as if it’s equivalent to picking your nose (which I haven’t grown out of either), I wish I could transport this picture into her mind.

A wise (and perhaps autistic) guy I used to skate with once told me, “Skateboarding is the closest we can come to flying.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that airplanes have been around for over 100 years, plus I liked the point he was making anyway. It only makes sense in a way that somebody who’s really experienced skateboarding could know. The speed and danger and freedom and shit… fuck, it is a little bit like flying, isn’t it?

And I guess, just like anything that goes up in the air… at some point, you must come back down.