Clear cloudless blue skies of Europe shrug off the ache of a long plane ride. An agricultural tomato-like smell hits me; all my senses are being attacked. I cursed the Atlantic and I scoffed at clam chowder and thirty five degree weather of home. On the shore of the Mediterranean Sea I gripped my passport in Barcelona Airport. Once Miles Davis came here and created an album, Francisco Franco sought to create a fascist government here, and Picasso painted it several times, but I was here to skateboard.
A Popsicle shaped piece of wood, two metal axles, and four urethane doughnut holes will soon take me about the metropolitan grid. Girls, twelve of them, from my high school follow behind as I get into the hotel-bound bus.
“Could you move that thing?” snaps one of them, in a new denim skirt, furry boots, and Northface Jacket.
Lifting my board up, I set it down between my legs and the bus shoves off.
“Hi, did you bring your board just to skate?” she asks, “Because that seems really dumb, you can do that back home!” she says, answering her own question.
The dull hues of ‘back home,’ and the United States, have faded away, replaced with the refreshing new place to skateboard. Awaking the first day, I head out the door and put my board down. The side walks, made up of tiny cracker-sized tiles, cause the board’s wheels stutter up to my feet telling them to get off. After my long plane ride, I am again rapt in the essence of skateboarding, movement. At the end of the street the sixty five degree day and strange architecture are more than someone like me could ask for. Full of excitement, I begin seeking out a place to skate. Turning the corner, I am outside the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. Like most of the city, this place seems built for skateboarding. Skaters from all over the world have come here to skate out front the museum, and I finally made it. The destroyed granite ledges caked in candle wax means more to me than still-lifes and watercolors on the inside.
“We like your board,” said a fellow skater, in a thick French accent, “Boston?”
“No, close to Boston, in the same state actually,” I responded, nearly in shock. He and his friends stood there, gawking at my board. Just a logo, a witty saying, and a pro skater’s name connect us, but what really thrills them is the English writing on my board. I learn how well they can do 360 flips and where the train station benches are, before I learn their names. We are connected by this universal language, like music. Turning away from the plaza, filled with boarders in ripped shoes, I said by to my newfound friends and headed back to the hotel.
Skating back, I pass ledges, banks, benches, curbs, and many other inanimates are overlooked by ordinary people frequently. I stop, I think, and I create at each and everyone; not sport, but art. Jump up to the ledge, grind for a bit, jump out, and land. At this very spot, countless others like me have been here, left there marks. The driving notion to land a trick and inexplicable ecstasy of accomplishment abounds my trip more than Gaudi Architecture or post-siesta rave culture. Skateboarding isn’t pressuring me to grow up, setting a deadline, or assigning homework, it is giving back everything I put into it: I love it because it keeps me young. A Catalonian bystander’s puzzled stare at this juvenile, American art form is the same from back home. Does he think I am a typical American? Am I being a gluttonous tourist from a gaudy, oversea land? I wonder if he understands that I am exploring the country the only way I know how. Rolling by two blocks from the hotel, I myself ponder back to the day before:
“Well I love to skateboard, what are you excited to do?” I asked the girl on the bus.
“Go shopping.” She says.
