Earlybird Skating

     It's so unorthodox, but I love skating before noon. Now 10 years ago, you couldn't pay me to go skate before midday (mostly because I was still sleeping), but now I consider this to be the prime time for enjoying a nice session at the skatepark. Here are just a few of the benefits of skating in the morning: weather, space, and good company. The first is pretty obvious, or atleast it should be. Georgia in the summer can seem pretty unbearable, especially when you are around lots of highly conductive metal. So skating before noon offers the best weather that you're going to get all day with the possible exception of skating after dusk. Which brings me to my next point, space. If you go to the skatepark between 4 p.m. and closing time, the place is likely to be packed. However, there is a wonderful period between 9 (ante-meridian) and noon in which the park is either deadly quiet (which can be nice) or occupied by only a handful of others. Generally speaking, the denizens of the park during this time are older, more relaxed, and less obnoxious. It's sort of like an "adult swim" I suppose. This is of course the "good company" I mentioned earlier.
     Recently, I was able to enjoy each of the above mentioned qualities of an early morning session. I arrived at the skatepark around 9a.m. to find it utterly barren. This was wonderful except that the flow bowl and pool still had several puddles from the previous night's thunderstorm. Fortunately, I brought a towel and an assiduous work ethic with me. Even though I felt like a juvenile delinquent serving community service, pushing the water into the drains with my towel turned out to be quite an investment. Soon I was skating the flow bowl in peace. The day turned out to be quite enjoyable even though some kid asked me how I could be at the skatepark on a Monday (his assumption being that I was too old to not be working on Mondays, of course maybe he was right). In conclusion, I highly recomend early morning skate sessions for anyone who is more of a hermetic skateboarder.