As the protests ramped down in Indy, Covid 19 once again became the main focus of every corporate news entity in town. Fear and finger pointing grew worse as masks became mandated and districts wrestled with what to do about the quickly approaching start of the school year.
Home from a two week vacation in the Tennessee mountains and the beaches of Florida, I turned on my camera on my way into the office from the parking garage and caught the first 10 minutes of this video.
As soon as I began videoing, Martin came riding by on his old-timey hybrid and got mask shamed by an older woman while we were talking outside of Whole Foods.
Then I came across yet another homeless skateboarder, Malachi. He said a bad divorce had led him to the streets. That’s the case for a lot of homeless people out there. Didn’t get a whole lot of back story. He did share, however, that he wanted to get together with a few other guys and travel to skate parks as to witness and testify about the lord and savoir, Jesus Christ, under the name SWAT (Skaters With A Testimony).
Later in the afternoon, I ran into Kyle (from the last video), who I talked to on and off camera about his experiences with homelessness. I really like Kyle and don’t want to see him spend so much time on the streets that it becomes difficult for him to escape them.
I topped off my day by running into a gentleman who I surely crossed paths with in the 80’s while skateboarding a 1/2 pipe in Brownsburg. It was great to talk to someone who skateboarded way back in the day. We reminisced about spots and the scene in Indy, which I was never really a part of.
All in all, it was good to be back in town, despite Covid being allegedly on the rise.
After turning off my camera and heading back to my Jeep, I reminded myself to be grateful to the universe just for being alive in the moment. My emotions were under my control and could not be hijacked by a news narrative, a social media post, or the unknown. I was alive and riding down the street without fear. That was simply good enough.
