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A leisurely blade to the ‘Shack

A leisurely blade to the 'Shack

How does an athlete, loving brother and, above all, journalist follow up a column as profound and challenging as his last one, which documented the trying feat of biking to Chipotle during lunch? To answer this question, I did what any pro would do: ask Oli.

Oliver Rowles knows what to do in tough situations. He once advised me against investing in some company called Alibaba or something. Good thing I trusted him — I don’t trust that rigged stock market. Oliver graciously offered me advice and challenged me to accompany him on a rollerblade journey to RadioShack.

“That sounds crazy, Owen,” you may be thinking. “Where is the nearest RadioShack?” 1.6 miles away. Yup.

Most of the legwork went into preparing for this journey. For such a long journey, we needed plenty of sustenance. We both dusted off our CamelBak bags and each filled our sacks up with Juicy Juice 100% Berry Juice boxes. Our CamelBaks hold 100 fluid ounces which translates to 23.64 Juice Boxes. To be safe Oli and I stuck to 20. We also each bought a total of 14 ft of Fruit by the Foot so we could wrap them around our fingers and not have to stop to scavenge food.

Our next challenge was figuring out our wardrobe. We were worried about the amount of perspiration that would result from our approximately 2 mile journey. To combat this, we got matching headbands and cut-off breathable Under Armour shirts. We donned jean shorts, commonly referred to as “jorts”, to preemptively negate any range of motion issues.

At approximately 2:30 in the afternoon, we strapped up our roller-boots and set off on our journey. Immediately, the envious stares were apparent. Everyone knows roller-bladers have the right of way so we got plenty of encouraging honks as we cruised through the stop signs — yield signs as far as we were concerned.

We considered traveling through the California Ave. underpass but decided against it for obvious reasons — too much speed, not enough headroom to jump the gates halfway through the tunnel. So, we went down Churchill Ave. Train tracks are not designed to be easily crossed by blades. After some precarious stepping, we surmounted the devilish obstacles and cruised by our beloved school.

As we approached the destination we were almost tempted by the devil-incarnate: Panda Express. The Orange Chicken could be whiffed from .6 miles away and we knew the real challenge of blading past a p-spress without stopping was upon us.

Somehow we overcame our Homo sapien instincts and crossed The Camino into the ‘Shack. Some readers may have been wondering what this whole journey was for. Besides the college-application-filling life experience, Olibuh needed a higher-powered AUX cord to replace his current one, which couldn’t handle the fire being broadcasted over it.

If you have any requests for future challenges, please email [email protected].

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