Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25127
Our off-road skate adventure to the rooftop of Africa began inauspiciously enough in Amsterdam . With in-line skates on my feet , I pedaled out to the airport on a chopped-out Dutch bicycle and surrendered it to my Mount Kilimanjaro skate expedition partner Dave Cooper. "Just for the record , I want you to know that this is the stupidest thing we've ever done," said Dave. "Speak for yourself," I replied, a little surprised by my tone of conviction. "Nothing of significance has ever been accomplished without stupidity." You may consider me out of my cotton-pickin' mind for wanting to skate up and down a 19,344-foot-tal l mountain deep in Africa. But look at it for a second from my perspective: I've spent so much of the last ten years in skates that I'm more likely to hurt myself with shoes on. Why, then, should I risk injury and dare to be different without skates? "What's the motivation here?" people would frequently ask. "Are you really going to do the whole thing on skates?" No one could believe that I wanted to go up Kilima njaro on in-lines for the view alone. In fact, it was difficult convincing people that this was neither a publicity stunt nor a Guinness Book of World Records attempt. The simple need to skate Kilimanjaro began on a peak in my own backyard in 1990. Baseline for public land surveys in most of California and Nevada, Mount Diablo is a mere 3,849 feet ta ll . But since it's an isolated peak, more square mileage is visible from the top of Diablo than from any other mountain in the world-except Kilimanjaro. This fact never escaped me. In 1990, I frequently skated up Diablo illegally, sneaking past the rangers and frying myself in the anaerobic skillet of the vertical world before sitting on the summit like a pooped-out marmot contentedly surveying his territory. In my mind's eye, I'd multiply Diablo's elevation by five, divide the amount of oxygen by half, subtract the paved road, add some tropical savanna and I'd get an idea just how breathtaking the view could be. January and February normally offer the best chances for reaching Kilimanjaro's summit in clear weather, but when we touched down three degrees south of the equator in Nairobi, Kenya, on January 8, 1998, the sky was falling. No mountain was visible. Tourism was literally stuck in the mud because impassable roads meant all the major safari parks were closed down, and hordes heading for the beaches in Dar es Salaam were only met with more rain. EI Nino was the buzzword on the street, blamed for the wettest dry season of the century. At least the landscape was giving thanks by bursting forth. Our bus to Kilimanjaro's base in Moshi, Tanzania, took us through classic savanna, an expansive landscape ornamented by flat-topped acacia trees and Tower of Babel term ite mounds. This scenery wasn't the gold of my imagination of Africa it was green beyond belief. Along the national highway-really just a lonely road cutting a swath through the boondocks-spear-carrying Masai wrapped in red 40