Thank you, Rodney Mullen

By chance I have stumbled upon quite an interesting article posing the question whether a skateboarding legend - Rodney Mullen can bring Silicon Valley back on right tracks. The article itself was published on WIRED. If you ever wondered what an almost 50 years old professional skateboarder might be doing now Mr. Koerner’s article is an excellent choice. Not only will it answer this question but will shed some light on how Mullen himself started dabbling in Linux and why he draws parallels between the communities of hackers and skateboarders (who are often seen, as Koerner aptly described - “human vermin”).

I, however, will not be rambling on the same topic.

I would like to make this post a simple thank you. Thanks for inspiring me to take up skateboarding. The relative ease with which I played your character in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 made me feel like I could do that in real life as well. What an utter fool was I! But it was thanks to those countless hours spend on the street that I met my best friends. It was thanks to the countless hours and many sleepless nights spent pondering on those “minute variables” of yours (not that I would call them such back then) that I learned the importance of perseverance and passion. It was thanks to those outbursts of anger (“How the flying fuck is he able to make this wooden piece of crap fly around like that!?”) that I finally figured out that most of the time I am the biggest obstacle between me and my goals (it appears that I am terribly late to the party). Who would have known that many years later, when I was studying CS, the mindset that came from doing the same trick but with minor adjustments each time so that you don’t meet the concrete face-first would come in very handy. I find it absolutely mind-boggling that the same guy, many years later, with one talk has managed to rekindle my passion for the “rolling slab of wood”. Even when I, myself, thought it’s pointless because I’d never get very good at it. With a talk where you were comparing hackers to skateboarders. Today, when I went out skateboarding for the first time in like 6 years I was like: “Whoa, I suck at this”. In fact I’m even worse that I used to be. I can’t land kick flips consistently and my balance is so bad that I can’t help but laugh at myself. But it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter because I realized where the fun in skateboarding lies and for this I would like to thank you.

You probably won’t see this. But once again, thank you!