2023, animals, News, Uncategorized

Goats In the News

29 Comments

I saw this notice on our city police FB page.

We have had a proliferation of these rental electric scooters around town, and the police wanted to remind the public that there are certain ordinances to be followed when operating them. You have to be at least 14 to drive one. If under 18 you need to wear a helmet. You can’t drive on the sidewalk, and you have to ride on only 2-lane streets. DUI laws are applicable, and you have to ride as close to the curb as possible.

I never got into skateboards. I had roller skates that you attached to your shoes with a crank key. My main mode of transportation was my bicycle until I was old enough to drive. Husband rode a bicycle longer than I did, since he didn’t get his drivers license until he was 21.

What are your experiences on skate boards, roller skates, electric scooters, or electric bicycles? What was it like for you to get your first drivers license?

29 thoughts on “Goats In the News”

  1. I’m old enough to remember my elder brother taking apart an old roller skate (the kind with the key) and nailing the halves onto a 2 x4. He had a good time until he fell and broke his leg. Our father’s response was to ban skateboarding. A couple years later, the same brother got another skate and tried it again. This time he broke his arm. As a result, I didn’t dare even try a skateboard. Now, at 71, I still can’t skateboard. I don’t know whether to blame my brother or my father. Maybe it means I’m a beneficiary of good sense, or grace.

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

    2. I had one of those homemade skateboards as well, made the same way – by cobbling together an old pair of rollerskates and a board from the garage. I didn’t do a lot with it because nobody else I knew had a skateboard so it was a solitary sport and not as enjoyable.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. Pipestone, MN, just 25 miles from where I grew up had a venerable roller rink that my mother spent time at as a teen, and that was still in operation when I was in high school. Our current town had a roller rink we brought our son to skate at when he was small. It closed years ago. It also had a pizza parlor. Now it is a Bible Church.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    2. I don’t know if the roller rink is still open in St., Louis Park but we went there a fair number of times when YA was little. She even went to a birthday party there once. Before I was a single parent, I really enjoyed rollerblading at the dome downtown. There were two levels open most of the time and kids were not allowed on the second level. That made it a lot more enjoyable because you didn’t have to worry about running anybody down if they careened out in front of you!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. I haven’t gotten around to roller blading in the Metrodome yet.

        Bur back in the first decade of the 2000s, my older daughter skated in Roller Derby. That was fun to watch and it proved surprisingly life-changing for her.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

  4. I had those clamp on skates, and I loved going to the roller rink, but it wasn’t often. I didn’t even know skateboards existed until Joel had one in the 80s… When did they come on the scene?

    I got my license on my 16th birthday, first try. I’ll never forget that feeling of freedom, to be able to drive myself places. My dad had wisely gotten a 1950 Plymouth for our 2nd car, the only one I was allowed to drive. First year I rear-ended someone (very slowly) at a stoplight while looking in a store window…

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Skate Boards got their start with boys like Aboksu’s brother. Usually a neighborhood father would help a son hammer/screw the wheels onto a piece of plywood, then every speed oriented kid would try it. I tried one, but it was way too wobbly for wobbly me.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  5. MSUM campus had last year the rental motorized skate boards. Students would leave them wherever they ran out of power. Always on the sidewalks, often blocks away from campus. I had trouble seeing profit in them. Did not see them this summer. In a couple weeks I will know if they are back this year. Had to be a nuisance for walking folk.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. I mean powered version of what we called scooters when we were kids. A skateboard with a handle coming up on front. All the state colleges start next week. I will avoid driving through campus starting Wednesday, instead through downtown.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

  6. I always wanted a skateboard, mom and dad Reminded me we live on a gravel road, they don’t work here. I remember trying to justify it, but I never had a skateboard.
    Couple years ago I rode one of those lime scooters. You’d have to be crazy to ride one of those in traffic. It was kind of fun, but it also hurt my foot and knee.

    There was a rollerskating rink in Rochester when I was growing up and we used to go there fairly often with the 4-H club. After I hurt my leg and I couldn’t control my left foot, I couldn’t control myself skating any more, I could only make small circles to the right. So it wasn’t much fun after that.

    I remember this song

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  7. Rise and Speed Off, Baboons,

    I had the clamp on skates with a key. I nearly wore out the sidewalk with those. We spent a lot of time seeking out level patches of sidewalks, streets, and driveways so we could increase our speed, then travel without falling.

    I got my driver’s license at age 16years and two days. My mother was desperate for another driver in the family to assist in delivering children to activities. So the pressure was on. I passed the first time out. Later that same week I then got the family car, a 1966 Plymouth, stuck at Tony’s Drive-In between a post and a tree and had to maneuver my way out of that spot with a carful of friends. They have never reminded me of that.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  8. I had the clamp on roller skates and used them a lot. Our tiny town didn’t have much traffic and hardly any sidewalks so we skated on the (uneven) paved roads most of the time. I tried inline skating when it first became popular but never liked it very much.

    I turned 16 in December and didn’t want to take my test on snowy roads so I waited until the snow was gone in the late Spring. I did pass on the first try though by the skin of my teeth. I learned in a car with no power steering. During my senior year I was allowed to take mom’s car to school so I could go to an appointment. Her car car had power steering. When returning from the appointment, I turned the wheel too hard when parking between 2 cars and managed to put a big dent in the passenger door. No damage to the car I hit, fortunately. Thank goodness I got much better at using power steering!

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  9. I always thought it would be cool to rollerblade around the lake with my dog. The first time I tried it was with Scarlet, my Irish setter. I had on the blades. I opened the car to let her out and as many dogs do, she leapt out of the car quickly and pulled a little. I went down, scraping up my leg in the gravel. Because I didn’t own rollerblades of my own yet and I didn’t want to waste the rental fee, Scarlet and I went ahead around Lake Harriet, all the while the blood was dripping down my leg.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. I didn’t learn a lesson that day – a couple of years later I’ve decided to take Sorcha Dog rollerblading with me down along in Minnehaha Creek. We were doing fine and then I hit a small stick on the parkway; the roller blade stopped very suddenly, and I did not. I didn’t break anything or scrape anything badly but I had the wind knocked out of me and laid on the ground for quite a bit while Sorcha Dog licked my face.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  10. I have no experience with small wheels. I don’t think skateboards were invented yet when I was young and I have never roller skated.

    Instead of skateboards, we used to build ourselves go-carts (non motorized), using scrap lumber and wheels salvaged from wherever. Usually these were steered by one’s feet on a 2×4 that extended from the chassis and to which the front wheels were attached or by a loop of rope affixed to screw eyes on the top of that same 2×4.

    There were two hills nearby—Tanker Hill, so called because there once was a water tank at its summit and was so steep as to be suicidal in a conveyance without brakes and McNair Hill, which afforded a long and less hair-raising slope. The neighborhood held an annual soap box derby on McNair Hill in which we all competed. Some of our home-made vehicles would come apart on the way down the hill. None of us ever won, that honor going annually to a pair of boys whose father had built them a sleek two-seater with pneumatic tires and inboard cable steering.

    Until I was able to drive, the accomplishment of which was unexceptional, my only forms of transportation were my green Schwinn Spitfire bicycle and my feet.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Those soap box boys sound like the neighbor kid who always won the shop project in 4H. I don’t know, but his dad must have have had a full blown shop in the basement while the rest of us were taking things we made in Jr. high wood shop class.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  11. Just now watching old TV Mission: Impossible. Jim Phelps receives his mission in a roller skating rink. Some of the signs read:
    Collegiate
    Couples Only
    Ladies Only
    All Skate
    Skates Off
    Reverse
    If Your Toe Gets Caught and You’re Killed, the Manager Will Disavow Your Action

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  12. I had a pair of those clamp-on steel skates with a key but I didn’t have much opportunity to use them because, like Ben, we lived on gravel roads. We used our bicycles constantly and when I was 13 or 14, after my horses were sold, my parents bought me a unicycle. It took me awhile to learn to ride it. There is a balance point that you need to find and get really familiar with before you can actually take off and go anywhere. That took me awhile but once I got the hang of it, I rode it a lot. It was fun but nobody else did it, so it was another solo sport. It was also slower than a bicycle and I couldn’t carry anything at all.

    It took me an extra year to get my driver’s license. My dad took me out on country roads with an old 4-wheel drive Chevy farm truck and tried to teach me out there. “Clutch-clutch-CLUTCH!” It was a frustrating experience for both of us – actually a bit traumatizing for me but really frustrating for my dad. He wasn’t a patient man. My mom took over and taught me in our Saab, which also had a manual transmission but was a lot easier to learn. She was a little more patient. So it took some time for me. Once I learned to drive the Saab, I was told to use the big Pontiac station wagon for my drivers test. It felt like a trick. I failed on parallel parking until I took that big thing out and practiced. I still hate parallel parking.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  13. I got into the rollerblading. What was i 30 ? after my divorce took a date bladingvaround harriet
    first for both of us pretty funny
    got into blading with the boys after that
    we skated disney world before they knew enough to make it illegal
    brother was a skateboard guy
    electric bike made by a friend blew me away
    deluxe model $4000 but when you pedal just a little it cranked up to legal speed limit of 27 mph
    what a blast
    ahhh 16 years old driving the oldsmobile f85 with a clutch
    i had a major blowout of mt left upper leg the week of my test and it was unbelievable lu difficult to shift but i passed and drove all weekend
    i loved driving
    still do

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  14. I had rollerblades. I think they are still in the garage. I used to like to go to Lilydale Regional Park – the walks there were smooth and it was never crowded. I managed to not injure myself.

    As a kid, the clamp-on skates, of course. I accidentally skated into a post once in the dark, and have a scar on my eyebrow to show for it.

    Got my drivers license when I was 20 – passed on the first try.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment