All these years later and I still remember it as clear as if it was yesterday.  I think my love for longboarding started when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I accompanied my mom to one of my favorite childhood places to visit, the airport. A relative was flying abroad and we were going to wish him well. While at the departure lounge, I noticed a girl, about my age, who in my mind was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my short life. There were three things about her I distinctively, her boyish haircut, the fact that she was wearing shorts, and that she was riding around the lounge on a skateboard. I also noticed that she too had accompanied her family to say goodbye to a friend or relative.

I had an instant crush on her but clearly I was not in any position to go introduce myself to her. It took a while to get over my instant crush but I have always wondered who she was, what happened to her and where is she now. Besides having a crush on her, her biggest impact on me was the desire to have my very own skateboard.

It was not till about 3 or so years after this that my family moved into a new neighborhood and I discovered that one of the neighbor kids had a skateboard. It was a penny board style skateboard, after all, this was early 80s. We only lived in that place for a few months but during that time I was able to borrow his board and learn to ride. It was also the time I did a number of super steep downhill runs and almost killed myself when I fell of the board going about 40 miles an hour, no pads, no helmet.,I literally had to crawl home as I was bruised up and inso much pain. Thank goodness I did no break anything.

Fast forward many many years later and I finally did get my own skateboard and eventually a couple of longboards.