Two longboarders skated by Taos final week on their means from El Paso close to the Mexican border to Colorado, overlaying a distance of 470 miles and a differential in elevation of 5,944 ft. The journey took them three weeks to finish.
When most individuals would hear the story of the 2 longboarders — one named Justin Shiny and the opposite David Roop, however who prefers the monicker Moondog — they’d joke that they need to have began the journey from Colorado as an alternative.
Shiny began skating when he was 12 and have become expert sufficient to get sponsored by Unique Skateboards. Then he began making skate movies and used his digicam expertise to make cash. He went to journalism faculty on the College of Florida and wrote for native papers such because the Gainesville Solar.
He’s been lined by the native Tampa Bay information for combining his ardour for safeguarding the atmosphere and longboarding nation roads to boost cash to avoid wasting land in Florida and spotlight the necessity for a Florida Wildlife Hall. In these efforts, he has labored alongside Conservation Florida, a nonprofit based mostly out of Orlando.
For that fundraiser, he skated about one thousand miles, from Alabama to Key West.
“I might at all times been skating, like avenue skating and stuff. And you do not actually understand it, however like, earlier than I had a automobile, I used to be skating to the skate spot, skating to my pal’s place. And you do not understand it, however you’re skating 10 miles at a time or no matter. I used to be like ‘I type of like this.’”
Moondog, alternatively, left his job as a listening to help specialist after the pandemic, work that tasked him with testing individuals’s listening to after which becoming them with the appropriate tools to assist them hear correctly once more. He not too long ago bought a van and is into the nomad, “van life,” life-style that has exploded in recognition within the final 10 years.
Shiny drove from Florida to Texas after assembly up with Moondog on the Florida Path by coincidence. Moondog was mountaineering the path whereas Shiny was doing his personal journey skating throughout Florida, they usually immediately hit it off. They determined that they’d skate throughout New Mexico and adopted by on that call. Shiny drove to El Paso, whereas Moondog flew.
After reaching Texas, the plan was fairly easy. The duo would comply with the lengthy, winding, generally treacherous highways that parallel the Rio Grande, so they’d at all times be inside attain of a supply of water. This led them to Albuquerque. From there, they took a route just like the one Walter White describes in Breaking Unhealthy, “head as much as Turquoise Path and cease at Tinkertown, perhaps seize some lunch in Madrid.”
They principally subsisted on a food regimen of gasoline station meals, extremely caloric and conveyable. They slept in caves and campgrounds. The one time they spent cash on lodging was early on, once they have been close to the Mexican border.
For lengthy distance longboarding, Shiny recommends double-drop longboards, which have a “decrease platform, decrease to the bottom, so the leg doesn’t must bend as far, so over time it saves in your thigh and calf and the whole lot. So these decrease boards are the best way to go.”
Alongside the best way, they’d skate into serendipitous happenings.
They reached Taos on Tuesday (April 12). Days earlier than, the duo made a cease within the city of Madrid on Wednesday (April 6). In that small city — the place the inhabitants is lower than 200 and the place all the companies are packed right into a block that’s a couple of third-of-a-mile lengthy — the duo bumped into members of the Native American rap group Po.10.Cee, Neight Larcen and Liphe The Emcee, for a reside hip-hop and dance get together referred to as Rhyme Craft on the Mine Shaft Tavern and Cantina. The promotional poster for the occasion encompasses a miner with a pickaxe in a single hand and a boombox within the different.
Identified for rocking the microphone, and spitting intricate lyrical bars, Neight Larcen and Liphe The Emcee’s efficiency impressed Shiny and Moondog to pay a go to to ArrowSoul Buying and selling Put up, a Native-owned hip hop collective, as soon as they reached Taos.
After they bought there, they related with Natalie Oaks, proprietor of the Misplaced Ones upcycle skate model, which is supposed to assist girls really feel empowered to step into male-dominated areas. The model transitioned from Misplaced Women to Misplaced Ones to step exterior the gender binary norm. The skating duo left with Misplaced Ones stickers pasted onto their helmets.
The final stretch for Shiny and Moondog was between Arroyo Hondo and the Colorado border. First, they needed to soak within the Black Rock Sizzling Springs, like that they had executed again in Reality or Penalties, to get some respite from the longboard pilgrimage.
After finishing the skate-through of New Mexico, Shiny took a Greyhound again to Texas to get again to his car and, in the end, again to Florida. Moondog stayed in Colorado, the place he lives, however the two plan to hyperlink up once more sooner or later for an additional longboard journey on the street.