Fleming continues longboarding through severe accidents
Junior Jack Fleming slides to a stop.
As junior Jack Fleming rounds a turn in the the University Park bus loop, he kicks out the tail end of his longboard and comes to a screeching stop, leaving four white wheel trails rubbed into the pavement. Fleming has been longboarding for over five years consistently and although he is able to throw down stunts like this now, his career had humble beginnings in a dumpster.
“I was hanging out with my friends one day and we saw a banana board in a dumpster. It was obviously being thrown away and neglected, so I decided to recycle it. I put it to a better use,” Fleming said.
At this time during Fleming’s sixth grade summer, he had recently competed in a national competition for inline speed skating and had now outgrown his skates. He broke down his outgrown skates and started assembling his recycled cruiser board.
“I threw on some of the old race bearings from my skates which made it go really fast…. Starting out going that fast definitely helped me learn quicker,” Fleming said.
Being in only sixth grade, Fleming used his refurbished board to get around everywhere.
“This was the board I traveled around town with. It was my means of transportation and I rode it everywhere. After a while riding around, I got bored and more aggressive and started taking it down bigger hills,” Fleming said.
Hills litter the landscape of Harrisonburg, leaving Fleming with several options to choose from. This day, he was boarding on a residential road.
“I was with my friend, [junior] Isaiah Vaughn, and we were riding down one of his hills where his mom used to live. We had been boarding down these massive hills all day and I was ready to go back because I was in dire need of going to the bathroom,” Fleming said.
Despite this, Fleming decided to hit the hill one last time.
“I’m just hauling… down this hill. I didn’t have my glasses on so I didn’t see the water drain in the middle of the road. I went over it and my wheel got stuck and my board just stopped. I was going fairly fast so I went flying when I hit the drain,” Fleming said.
Longboards are ideal for roads that are recently paved and smooth because the slightest rock can knock the rider off. With a faulty storm drain, Fleming wasn’t knocked off; he was thrown.
“I kind of had this third person perspective of all of this happening. I felt my center of gravity shift and then I hit the ground hard and just completely ate [it]. I slid across the pavement for 30 feet. I had so much speed that after sliding for that long, I still ran into the curb headfirst. My helmet split and cracked and I was unconscious. Of course this whole time I was in dire need of going to the bathroom so my body decided to take the time I was out to let loose,” Fleming said.
Fleming woke up to the baffled face of Vaughn and some unusually wet pants. The crash left Fleming with severe road rash, a possible concussion and a broken banana board.
Instead of giving up after the severe crash, Fleming bought a new, better longboard and got back onto the hills.
“It was an unlucky event. It’s going to happen. You’ve got to accept that. It’s like driving a car; you’re going to get into those fender benders but is that going to stop you from driving? People get so scared. You just take that [accident] as a learning experience, get back up and try again,” Fleming said.
Fleming longboards at least twice a week during the school year, especially now that his car exploded due to an engine malfunction.
“I longboarded less the last couple of years because I got a new bike and more recently a car, but I don’t have a car anymore so I’m going hard with longboarding,” Fleming said.
Fleming is focusing on learning different and more advanced types of sliding methods. Sliding is a technique used to slow down a longboarder in which the rider forces the board to be perpendicular to the hill.
“The more you commit, the harder it is to mess up. For example, with sliding, if you don’t put all of your effort into turning hard, you might run into the curb. You’ve just got to send it,” Fleming said.
Fleming’s choice longboarding locations are long, smooth hills, especially those found on the JMU campus, parking decks and residential communities.
Fleming finds so much more in longboarding than purely transportation.
“It’s addicting,” Fleming said. “The adrenaline rush is addicting. It’s a release of serotonin, dopamine, endorphins and adrenaline in your brain. Most of those things are naturally addicting but without getting into the specifics, that addicting rush mixed with high speeds and the gliding on the road is what I love.”
