We went downhilling last night, which, for the uninitiated, amounts to lying on a skateboard and rolling down a paved hill really fast.  I reckon other skaters have other names for it – luge, perhaps, if I spelled that right, or longboarding maybe.  We have always called it downhilling.

(WARNING! Graphic image ahead…)

And now that we are Old and Infirm, we confine our downhilling to this hill on the south side of Camelback Mountain.  All our hills get named.  They get christened after the first person to have a major bail (or whatever the cool kids call it these days).  I, for instance, have a hill on the north side of Camelback named after me: Get-A-Grip.   That’s where I got the rock in my finger.  My all time favorite hill name is Faceplant.  Because that one is true to its name.  Happily, Bishop is still alive and well despite that inauspicious hill name.  Phantom Hill got its name because to date, no one ever really crashed on it.  Crashed bad enough to draw blood, anyway.  That’s one of the requirements I think.

Lately we go whenever A) someone is getting married, or B) we’ve got friends from out of town here to visit (see “A”).  This time around, though, we went strictly for Reason B.  And one of the reasons he was here was to see me at a book signing.  Nor was he the first or only to fly across country in support of PARTY and me.  You can’t fake that s***.  You ask me what motivates me, what my inspiration is, I tell you it’s the guys I’ve known for anywhere from 13 to 23 years now.  (It’s also my wife and their wives, because somehow, our ladies didn’t get the memo that we were a bunch of dumb hoods.  Or maybe they did, and that’s why we love them so much.)

Apart from whistling down a mountain road at 40 mph with your skull about three inches from the blacktop, the best part of downhilling is the chill out time before the next run, sitting on our boards at the top of the hill, seeing the city spread out before us.  We talk about all sorts of stuff in those moments; we argue about who said what to who 20 years ago, that sort of thing.  Even after all these years, there’s something about sitting in the dark, sipping Super Big Gulps, and staring down that dark, curved road ahead wondering if tonight’s the night Phantom gets re-named in your honor. 

“I have good friends there,” our visiting brother says.  He pauses.  “But I wouldn’t sit on a skateboard at the top of a hill with any of them.”

“I never had this in high school,” says our youngest.

“Thirteen years,” another tells him.  “Know how many people we hung out with for that long after we graduated?  Uh, you.”

It was a good night (despite the Large McBigHuge OUCH I got, which I wish I could say happened doing something cool.  Alas, it was stupidity.  But it was worth it).  We’ll go again in November  just before the next man walks down the aisle.  We’ll all be there for that, too.  We got it good, to put it simply.  We made it. 

There’ve been casualties.  Fallouts. Catastrophes and tragedies.  Sure there were.  You know how it goes.

But we still climb that hill with our boards and skate that sucker every so often.  Till one of us breaks a hip or something, anyway.  (And in fairness…we do get driven to the top now by our understanding wives…)

So, I need to get going and clean the living room up a bit for our gathering tonight.  It’ll be a blast.  It always is.  For your viewing pleasure, here’s a look at the only injury of note last night.  It hurts worse than it looks.  Or maybe the other way around.  You be the judge.

See ya!