Here, at last, is my Scottish skate slam.
As you will see, it's all going well enough on lovely road near Strathy until I get a little speed wobble on a frontside turn. I then inexplicably entered a strange netherworld of mental stasis. In other words, my brain froze. Instead of continuing to carve the board - the only way to survive skating downhill at roughly 25mph and demonstrated very nicely here by Matt Smith - I went straight. Why? Don't ask me. But once I went straight, I went faster. And faster. At this juncture, I had what seemed an age to contemplate my options. I was going too fast to carve to my right and knew that the board would wobble me off and into oblivion if I continued skating in a straight line downhill. Jumping off would have been certain to break my ankle. So what could I do? There was only one thing for it: deliberately angle the board to the left and eat it in the nice, alluring and marginally-less-painful-than-concrete mud by the side of the road.
The rest is history. But what makes this footage truly excellent is the instantaneous care and concern shown by the lads - Stef Harkon and John Navin - in the van. Thank God they were there. Check it out and enjoy.
