Day 30

Today is a big day! Because it marks the first month of my summer mission! I am horribly behind schedule but I am catching up (kinda) with my whole quarts of tea sort of thing. I think I just need to prepare them all at the same time and have them sitting around so I'll just drink them when I see them. I started the day by making 2 quarts of green tea. I learned yesterday that it's dragon well. Because my aunt read it and said it was "leung jiang" (please excuse my romanization) and well, it literally means dragon well. So yay now I know what I'm drinking haha.

Today my baby cousin had a doctor's appointment in the morning. I'm told he behaved well. Good kid.

My cousin kept asking me to play Gamecube with her, but I told her I wanted to skate with her instead. She said she didn't want to skate.  Eventually we agreed to skate. Since her trucks suck, I've been researching better trucks for her. I asked her if I should buy it because I said I wanted her to put them to good use and commit to the sport. She said not to buy them because she wouldn't. I got upset and told her to just play her games. She said it was because she wouldn't have anybody to skate with. Her mom eventually convinced her and said she would go out with the baby while my cousin skated. My cousin seemed more amenable to skating.

We went to the park and did 2 laps together. I gave her a couple "skate challenges" along the way (skate down the slope and then avoid the manhole, get some good starting pushes and then go up the sidewalk hump, get some good starting pushes and then roll over the cracks but bend your knees so you don't get caught, etc). I told her I wanted her to get one good lap without jumping off her board for some reason (she doesn't stay inside the bolts so the board flips a lot), and I let her take half a lap with my board, and she did it perfectly. She said it felt a lot better and she seems a lot more interested now. I explained a lot of longboarding stuff to her to get her more stoked and she seems to be really stoked.

As we were leaving, an older woman with an older man sitting at a picnic table yelled, "you can't skateboard here".
I looked stunned. I asked "where are the signs?", since I didn't see any. If you can't skate a place there's usually a good sized sign somewhere. I thought I missed it.
She says, "they aren't up yet. they'll be here next week"
"When was this decision made?" It obviously had to be recent.
"A long time ago, they just haven't put up the signs"
"..." Well this made me skeptical. I'm not a local here, so I'm not aware of this ordinance, and my cousin lives here (though she's not a skater) and doesn't know about it either. I'm not calling their bluff or anything, but I just think it's fuckin fishy.
"There's a skate park at Bass River but the kids don't use it. She looks at my board "That one's okay" she looks over at my cousin's board "but that one can jump".
"Right, but these are different. Even though they're still skateboards, these are longboards, and they're mainly used for crui----"
"Yeah we know a guy and his family with boards even longer than yours" She cut me off, that bitch. I hate it when people do that, but when you try to interject, they just keep going. So I just changed the subject. She obviously doesn't want to hear what I have to say.
"There's a skate park? Where?"
"Yeah, over at Bass River...."
"Sports", the guy says.
"Bass River Sports. They don't use it because they don't want to pay $10 and wear all the pads." I think it's weird for the town to charge $10 (per year? or per person per time??). I think free, maybe a waiver and a helmet should be all they need. I wonder what this "skate park" looks like if they're charging people.
"Okay, thanks" I start to walk towards her "What's your name?"
"Debbie"
I shake her hand and smile "Em." My cousin does the same.
"Yeah it's just other kids that skate and tear up the benches" she motions around her
"Right, the grinding."
"Yeah the grinding", The man says.
"What's your name?"
"Jim." I shake his hand too.
"You can skate at the golf course, and on the path, it's really nice" she motions behind her. I think I've been there on a bike before, not too sure.
"Well, thanks for letting me know. It was nice to meet you." I wave and we get going.
The guy calls after us "You can still skate now, but just remember, for next time." We were planning on skating every day for the rest of the week, maybe we should.

I wonder who they were. They were thoroughly surprised that I was courteous. I'm sure she thought I would flip her off and bring the rest of my skate friends to tear the place up. I hope I changed her attitude about skateboarding, even if just a little. I thought it was really rude she didn't let me finish my sentence. That's just something I really HATE about people. Their body language seemed to show that they really thought they were powerful, but I wonder if they were just bluffing. The curbs and benches looked fine, and if the town decided the park wasn't for skating then they should have put signs up a LOOOOONG time ago.

So we skate over to CVS to pick up photos of my cousins for their passport photos and then skate home. We look at decks while we eat lunch and my cousin really likes the Landyachtz Bamboo Stout. We have to go to the post office so my cousins can get their passport paperwork in, and I go to Boarding House, a store that's into board culture. I go in, I ask this ginger kid, "Hey, do you carry longboards??"
"Yeah."
"Do you guys have Landy Stout?"
He's got a baseball cap on and a lisp, "What's that?"
"It's a longboard"
"Oh. What's it look like?" We start walking towards the back of the store.
"It's got a spoon nose, kicktail, pintail shape..." I'm actually wrong, it's flat and doesn't have any of those qualities haha. Except maybe pintail.
"Oh... What brand is it?"
"Landy.... Landyachtz."
"Oh, we don't carry that."
"So what brands do you carry, Sector 9?"
"Yeah, and some Loaded..."
"Do you guys have Rayne?"
"What?"
"Rayne, they make downhills."
He points to like 3 racks, mostly empty "and Palisades".
"Oh, okay."
"Yeah, so take a look and see what you like, if anything is right."
"Okay."
"We used to carry two Landyachts, but they didn't sell, so now we don't."
Yeah dude, I can see why. What the hell is Palisades? They look like Never Summer knockoffs. Maybe they're one of those "cruisers" street board companies are coming out with. Ugh. There was actually a sign that said DO NOT RIDE LONGBOARDS. I wonder if this is why people buy longboards and hate it. Because they can't even try it in the store, and staff is like, never knowledgeable. I looked at their bushing selection, they only had Lucky and Bones. I asked some other guy at the desk if they had other bushings. He asked what I was looking for, I said lower duros, like 80. He asked if I tried Indy's and I said yeah, I also have Bones softs. Then I just left. What a disappointment.

I walked back to the post office and my family was still there. My uncle rips the paperwork out of the postal worker's hands and just says he's leaving and apologies to the guys behind him for taking so long. We walk out of the post office and he's mad. I ask my aunt what the deal is. She starts explaining to me, but then my uncle starts to get rude and tells her to shut up and says how dumb she is in Chinese. My aunt has never sent in for a passport, so she made a copy of the birth certificates because she was afraid they would get lost. My uncle was all furious because the post office didn't take them and that the documents are mailed back along with the passport blah blah blah. He was saying how he didn't want to play this damn game anymore, he was done, but then he told my cousin to go home and fill out the forms all over again (there was nothing even wrong with the forms) and to just do it and not to ask why. My aunt wanted to ask why since he said he didn't want to do it anymore, but since he was being stupid, she just asked "And then what?" and he didn't say anything.

Came home and threw the order in. My cousin called her friend and immediately went over to her house. Seriously. It was that easy. It took ALL of 3 days worth of prodding before she just CALLED her friend, and her friend, THAT DAY, invites her over. She came home an hour and a half later, said she had fun. That's good. She said she hadn't seen her friends in a YEAR. I made 2 more quarts of green tea while she was out.

I hope she keeps hanging out with her friends and skating. Sorry for the long post, guys! It was a lot of dialogue I know haha.

I drank 2 and a half quarts so far today. I HAVE PEED SO MUCH. But it feels pretty good.

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