Skateboarder Ground Hog Day

I so much want to know what that guy was thinking.

The background details escape me, but I remember that, for some reason, my folks' car was parked a couple of miles from their home, they were away on a trip, and I wanted to get their car to their home. I had my own car. And in my car, I had my skateboard. I figured that I could drive my car part way, skateboard to their car, and drive then drive their partway, and repeat until I got both cars home.

I have my limitations with skateboarding. One leg is my standing/squatting leg, and the other is the kicking/propelling leg. I'm good for about 15 kicks before my standing leg thigh is burning from the series of one-legged squats while my kicking leg smacks the road over and over. With this in mind, I drove my car within what I figured was a reasonable distance of my folks' car. It basically worked out right: I'd propel myself to a point of weariness, arrive just in time at my folks' car to collapse in it and regain some leg strength (and reduce my heart rate) as I drove the next portion.

For you to understand the rest of the story, you have to be able to picture how the cars were doing a sort of leap frog in the direction of the house and my skateboarding would take me back the opposite direction. Let's say my folks' car was now furthest from home. I would drive it beyond my car and then park. I would hop out, ride my skateboard back up the street to my car. I'd drive my car to a point beyond my parents' car and park it. I'd ride my skateboard back to my parents' car, and repeat this until both cars were home.

There was this guy walking along the same road on which I was doing this leap frog thing with the cars. He was walking the same direction that I was moving the cars. Think about it: when would he see me? He would not see me as I drove past him. He could only see me as I rode my skateboard in the opposite direction of his travel, on the other side of street.

It just so happened that the pace of this whole cycle of drive, park, skate, resulted in my skateboarding past him at four times. I would park far ahead of him, out of his view (blocked by other cars, trees, etc) and then propel myself on my skateboard back the long distance to the car in the distance.

Consider that this guy is making decent progress down the road. He is steadily arriving at new block after block. And every few minutes, I keep reappearing ahead of him and and skating off into the distance behind him. That must have caught his attention that I would reappear on the same road, travelling the same direction, yet having a starting point further back from where he'd last seen me start. (I'm reminded of that goofy scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the knight keeps re-galloping from the same starting point.) I remember that the guy's stare was extended on my fourth pass by.

Eventually, I got both cars to my folks' house. I think of that event and that guy nearly every time I have driven down that road in the 20 years hence. I wonder what he was thinking.