When I woke up this morning, I had a dull pain in the small of my back. This was odd as I couldn’t recall performing my usual party piece of standing on a flat surface and tripping over nothing. Give me a rock strewn mountain or put me on the edge of a dangerous precipice and I can take on the qualities of a mountain goat. Remove all possible traces of danger and injury is but an uncontrolled lunge away. What else could be causing the pain? I hadn’t been sitting in an unusual position and I don’t normally get back ache. Odd pains inevitably start making you think the worst. Maybe it was a spinal anomaly, a crushed rib vertex or a bone wasting affliction (I don’t profess to have any actual medical knowledge; I was just thinking the worst). What ever it was I couldn’t think of any good reason it should be hurting.

Saturday in Brisbane had been most memorable for its miserable weather. It had rained on and off for most of the day and the chances of fine weather for Sundays Mooloolaba tour didn’t look good. The forecast was predicting more of the same. Working on the principle that weather forecasting has a similar level of accuracy to fortune telling, I began the planning process for a trip up the Sunshine Coast. How long would it take to get to Mooloolaba? I have only been a couple of times and I have never timed it so I had no real idea. Time to consult the electric internet. Type a few location details into whereis.com.au and violas, a detailed route map and an estimated time. Great, apart from the fact it reckoned on a travel time of two hours and three minutes. This seemed overly cautious in the extreme. I know for a fact it only takes two hours to get to Noosa and that’s quite a bit further up the coast. Whereis.com.au obviously bases its timings on trivial details like sticking to the speed limit and following the route suggested. I decided an hour and a half would be plenty and tucked the printout into the back of the UBD (just in case).

Sunday morning and the sun was streaming through the blinds. So much for the forecast! The tour started at 2:30pm, but for the keen, there was a morning skate park session starting at 11:30am followed by lunch before the main days skating.

After an uneventful drive up, the skate park was quickly located. By 11:45, a total of no one had shown up. I was on the verge of heading off when Russell wandered by. He was obviously dying to ‘have a go’, but in the absence of anyone else giving it a try, he was reluctant to be shown up by the swarms of small children flying gracefully through the air with an apparent total disregard for there own safety. There was maybe one helmet and one set of knee pads between two dozen of them.

I left Russell still contemplating a quick session of death defying feats and headed off to find some lunch. A quick drive up the road found the tour meeting point, the Blue Bar. A row of cafes, restaurants and delis proved ample lunch opportunities and I settled down with a drink and watched the world go by. After a few minutes Russell, in a blur of skates and wildly waving arms, shot past skating furiously up the middle of the road and disappeared over the horizon. With the best part of an hour to go before the skate proper started you had to think he would be a bit worn out later on. Ten minutes passed and again Russell appeared out of a side road, leapt the central reservation in a single bound and shot off down another road. This pattern continued as I ate a sandwich, went off to put my skates on and met up with the other skaters as they started to arrive.

The tour was hosted by Julie and Vaughan with Pat and Amber assisting. As introductions were made and we prepared for the off, Russell was still zooming up and down the car park with a seemingly boundless supply of energy. We set off more or less on time and headed for our first port of call, the ‘race track’.

The race track is a small concrete oval about twenty five to thirty meters all the way round set in the grass just off the sea front. The concrete has obviously seen better days with some rather alarmingly large chunks missing in places. The proximity to the beach also means it is dusted with a fine coating of sand just to make cornering that little bit more interesting. A relay race was organised and two teams of four were arranged. Amber, recovering from a cold, declined to participate which immediately meant that the result was no longer a foregone conclusion. The two teams lined up and battle commenced. Completing two laps each the race was close but in the end the other team stole victory and took the champagne honours. After a brief rest, we continued on to the second highlight of the day, the paddle boats.

The paddle boats are located on a short stretch of water by a shopping centre in the middle of town. The participants are normally required to part with $5 each for the pleasure of manually propelling the yellow two seater craft around the rather green coloured waterway. Thanks to a deft negotiating session by Julie, the price was reduced to an even dollar and after forming up into orderly pairs, we made our way down the gang plank to board our aquatic mounts. Performance was obviously going to be limited by the amount of peddle power you could apply, however to hinder any over exuberance, the peddles were set on very short cranks. This made forward momentum very hard work. On top of this, the boats had been designed with an average height person in mind. This meant that on my side of the boat, the peddles were too close. On the other side of the boat, Suzy (the boats captain), was stretching for all she was worth to make solid contact with her peddles. Monte, who had appeared as if by magic, was now conducting affairs from the overhead walkway that surrounded the water. His first idea was a race. Lined up along the farthest point allowed in the boatman’s run down of the rules, we all set off in a furious flurry of swampy water and manic peddling. Considering the amount of energy expended, progress was leisurely to say the least. Even Russell, with his inexhaustible energy supply, couldn’t get his boat moving at much more than a snails pace. In a desperate bid to gain more speed and to try and catch Ann who had crawled into the lead we assumed a laid back position to get more leverage on the peddles. This necessitated forcing the small of your back into the extremely uncomfortable plastic seats! Kerrrrrching, (that’s the sound of a penny dropping), the pain now being felt in the lower part of my back suddenly and rather obviously had an explanation. I wasn’t suffering some terrible affliction after all; it was merely over exertion in a small yellow plastic boat. No amount of extra hard peddling was going to allow us to catch Ann and her boat claimed a well deserved victory.

Monte’s next idea was a contest to find the wettest and driest person on the water. As an incentive, he offered ice cream to the two lucky winners. Thus the next five minutes were spent equally trying to dodge the tidal wave of splashing being generated by everyone else while at the same time sending small tsunamis in the direction of all the other boats. The end result was half a dozen very soggy skaters disembarking from water logged peddle boats ready to be judged on their sodden appearance by Monte and Julie. Winners were declared and we trudged into the shopping centre, leaving a trail of water behind us, to buy ice creams and dry off in the afternoon sun.

Before long we were once again heading off (or in some cases squelching off) towards ‘the point’. The point is a small lighthouse at the end of a path set on top of a rocky outcrop. It's a popular spot for fishermen and as some where to walk just for the hell of it. We picked our way along the busy path, carefully avoiding pedestrians (and the odd bout of verbal abuse) until we reached our destination. With the setting sun, we took a few group photos and then turned and began the skate back to the Blue Bar and dinner.

After a quick wash and brush up, we assembled around an outside table (already prearranged so no need for any furniture shuffling this time) and were quickly ordering food and drinks. Dinner arrived and was quickly demolished after such an active day.

Put a group of skaters together and after dinner conversation quickly turns to ‘who has had the most spectacular stack’ / ‘who has suffered the most grievous injury’. Battle scars and tales of near death experiences were exuberantly exchanged, with varying levels of bravado and daring-do appended depending on which side of the story you were on.

Pleasantly full (and glad to be still alive after taking part in such a dangerous extreme sport), we all headed for home after another good afternoons sk8ing.