Morph's Hill Bombing Carnage by Ligga

If you live in Dunedin someone sooner or later is going to enforce you on a night time hill bombing caper. Generally with bombing down hills the best advice anyone could give you is to stay on the board. No matter how bad you speed wobble just hold tight, tense up your legs and get low, do your war face if it helps but DON’T jump off. I sometimes see people with those grazes on their chins or have part of an eyebrow missing and this is from jumping off the board and trying to run only you are going way too fast for your legs so it’s like a high speed tread-mill effect where the asphalt rug is yanked from beneath you and like the well known Irish prayer the ground rises up to meet you. Ouch! Please never do this to yourself, it’s not necessary and face grazes don’t make you look gnarly they make you look like a sucker. Never buckle! I recommend you ride that board like a wild bronco on crack, keep low and if thrown forward go into a roll onto your back (a sturdy backpack comes in handy about then, Macpacks are super tough) and flip straight to your feet, look for cars and get off the road, try locate your board and continue on. If you fall backward, keep low and sit down, slide on your jeans and hands, disperse your weight evenly and all grazes should be small or you may get asphalt burn, hot shiny hands are better then weeping wounds any day.

The other bad thing to do is be half hearted and decide you want to ‘take it easy’. The trouble with taking it easy is you are on the back foot to a degree. The best advice is to take the bull by the horns, push full speed into that biggest hill, don't roll in trembling, do some slides, carve it up, you are in control, tell yourself that, project it!

One thing that is harder to account for is psycho asshole pin dick drivers that try and scare you by getting up your ass and beeping or just pretending you don’t exist and forcing you into parked cars, lamp posts or footpaths. People in cars should respect anypone who is on the road unprotected by a metal shell, bikes, skateboards, even rollerblades (I could have made the joke about it being okay to run down bladers but that shit is passé these days.) We are the warriors of the road so bow down, running down a skater is like shooting a mighty samurai with a gun, no honour.

This one night just after I had moved to Dunedin I was hyped to hit some hills so Morph and myself hit it. Did a few nice runs and were starting vibe hard until we were going down York Place and some asshole driver charged up behind Morph so he moved to the shoulder out of the way to let him pass, but instead of passing him the driver hung next to him as they were heading into a corner at high speed and basically steered him into the footpath. I saw the whole thing looking back up the hill and it was so heavy, morph has a completely different bail technique to me where he jumps forward and slides on his front calf, so he gets up screaming obscenity, locates his board and comes down the hill looking at his wounds in disgust. At least nothing was broken, it’s that old motorcycle saying ‘It’s not how fast you go, it’s what you hit!’ Lucky he didn’t hit anything.

The next important thing is to have some sort of background or education in first aid, make sure you have a decent first aid kit with sanitary bandages and antiseptic cream.

But. If you don’t, there are alternatives. The following is a small photographic documentary on how to use Black builders tape, toilet paper and special Chinese herbal potion, which to me just seemed like a little bottle of spicy Chinese Jagermeister that burns like hell and makes your wounds look like some toxic avenger shit. Happy bombing peoples! Disclaimer: Liggas Lemonaids takes no responsibility for any injuries sustained or infections from the first techniques shown below. :D LL