Why Heaven Isn't A Half Pipe

I've had the day off work today and have spent around three hours wondering around carrying out various tasks. And now my knee hurts.

Now, I'm not going to waste blog space by bemoaning the state of pavements or the potentially leg breaking movements required to avoid the marauding terror represented by twin pushchairs, overloaded with children and massive bags of Christmas shopping.

Instead, in a cheap attempt to provide my readership with a few laughs, I will explain how it came to be that I'm now wincing in pain after some relatively straightforward exercise.

In June 2005 I made my first venture into a skate park. Thankfully, this was not some kind of mid-twenties crisis-I was one of the adults accompanying some of the young people from my church and some of those who attend Fusion.

Looking back now, I realise that had I kept this clear divide, reminding myself that I was an adult with a job to go to and many bills to pay and that these were young people I served and who would heal a lot faster than me, things would probably be different today.

Throughout the course of the evening, I began to develop the foolish notion that this skateboarding lark couldn't be that difficult. After all, I go surfing and I'm not a great swimmer, so if I could conquer those issues and develop the necessary skills to surf, surely skatebaording and blading would be no different?

I managed to keep such ideas to myself for the majority of the evening, until the point in the evening was reached where the young people began to dare the leaders to tackle a variety of hazardous challenges.

Hannah was dared first, to go down the half pipe on her blades. To set this in context, the half pipe is about seven feet high of curved wood with a mattress of concrete at the bottom.

Hannah understandably had a variety of reservations about completing this challenge but the young people had already decided that they weren't going home without seeing one of their youth leaders make a public fool of themselves. Seeing as that comes particularly easily to me, and in light of self talk earlier declaring that "It can't be that hard", I stepped up.

Squeezing into a borrowed pair of blades that were two sizes too small for me, I approached the edge of the half pipe. Little did I know, doubts over my ability to do this were also at the edge of the half pipe. But I couldn't possibly back down now. That would make me look stupid.

Although, not as stupid as I would look a few seconds later.

With a deep breath, I stepped forward and began to roll down the half pipe.

And I fell.

To describe me as falling with style would have been a generous overstatement. An ungainly mess of wheels, flailing limbs and panic stricken expressions would be more accurate.

And now I was in the really dangerous place. It surely could not be that difficult to do. So, I hauled myself up back to the top of the half pipe for my second attempt.

Second attempt, same result.

The second attempt was when I began to feel the pain in my right knee and lower back, but the laughter had somehow knocked into my pride during the second fall.

So I tried a third time.

Dragging myself up the slope again, resembling the moment in Revenge of The Sith when Anakin Skywalker, minus arms and legs tries, to pull himself up a hill, I was certain I could complete the challenge this time.

No chance. As I crashed down this time, the laughter was tempered with a few sympathetic murmurs as the pathetic spectacle clattered into the ground again.

The protest from inside me meant that this was definitely my last attempt. As I got back to the top of the ramp and took the blades off, Hannah completed her descent of the half pipe on the first attempt.

In time, people who were there began to say encouraging things, like I had deliberately put myself in that position to relate to our young people. Maybe. But realistically, as soon as that first attempt had failed, it was stupid male pride that had driven me to throw myself down the ramp on two further occasions.

Stupid male pride that probably explains why my knee hurts today.