When my parents first announced that my family was moving to Beijing, I dreaded the idea of having to leave behind my friends and the country I called home. However, the time I spent in Beijing during my sophomore and junior years of high school became a life-changing experience. I met my best friend Sam and together we made the extravagant Beijing city our "concrete playground." We were each other's personal mentors and motivators when it came to pursuing our passion for skateboarding. Skateboarding instilled the values of commitment, working hard and never giving up in the face of failure. It is that close-to-addicting, gratifying feeling of accomplishment when a goal is reached after long, tedious failures that we fight for. One especially inspiring day started as a casual day of skating with friends and quickly transpired to a day of full of scraped knees, ripped t-shirts and rolled ankles. Despite the pain, I was able to push past my limits by not doubting my abilities and never giving up.
I had conflicting feelings of confidence and doubt about ollieing, or jumping JinRongJie's demanding fifteen stair, but I still felt it was achievable. Even though I've never tried anything as big as JinRongJie, the fact that I have successfully ollied a twelve stair many times before gave me the reason to try this stair set. Sam went first, he started furiously pushing towards the set and, pop! As he launched over the staircase, he landed with a roll to break the impact of the fall. Sam assured me he was okay and signaled me to go. "It's only three more steps," I repeated to myself over and over. I pushed towards the set and, pop! That familiar burst of adrenaline shot all throughout my body while I was mid-air, then an unexplainable feeling of doubt forced me to kick the board out from beneath my feet at the last second, and I hit the ground with a forceful thud. After I recovered, Sam had another go.