Elissa - Part 2

The Team from Humans of Christchurch Ōtautahi

“A lot of adults don't play."

"I was in the city for whatever, I think I was with a colleague. We had just been to the convention centre and we walked back to where we parked. There were some puddles, and instead of walking around, I jumped onto one of the blocks, and ‘boink, boink’ jumped over. She was like, ‘you jump on things and play on things, but most people don't do that’. I think it's why a lot of people get bored - forgetting how to play.

I started skating mid 2010-ish, right before the September quake. Because I'd been doing Aikido for so long, stopping Aikido and gravitating towards skating instead, that was quite a big thing for me. And then I started getting more into downhill.

My first skate trip was to Auckland. I linked up with some of the Auckland crew, and joined them on a trip to the Coromandel. There's also Longboard Girls Crew which has created a worldwide community of female skaters, so I linked up with one of the Aussie girls, Gemma, and joined her crew for my first overseas trip in 2014.

Since I started doing the Asia Pacific tour and all those races I would be away for roughly about a month every year, because I’d do a race in Australia for a week, and then maybe another event in a different place, the Philippines, occasionally China or Korea, or whatever. I've been to the Philippines heaps. It's cool because a lot of the guys there know me now, so I get treated as one of them, like part of the fam. I linked up more recently with the Malaysian skate crew, it's been really cool going back and experiencing Malaysia as an adult.

The female skate community is like that as well. If you do downhill skating or even longboard dancing, it's cool that when you find other people that do the same thing, you just instantly have this connection with them.

I decided to join the Euro Tour in 2019. God, I'm so glad I did that, who knew that COVID was gonna happen, right? The European Circuit is seen as the pinnacle, it has some of the most prestigious races worldwide and a well-established downhill skate scene. I remember when we camped off the side of the road in the Dolomites to skate. You skate at sunset, then you set up your camp as it gets dark. You wake up at dawn, skate, then when traffic starts to get too heavy, you pack up and you chill for the rest of the day.

As I've become a better skater I've become more confident, I feel it's helped me to really grow as a person. I think it's such a good thing for other people. I like teaching adults, because A) adults have a greater understanding and awareness of body movement, and B) It is that growth in confidence thing that I really love. When you unlock that and you see that spark, that's the most rewarding thing.

I feel like I'm in a really good place now. The older I get, the more I learn that I have to prioritize what I want to do, because there's so many things that interest me. It's boring to just be stationary.”

Elissa
part 2 of 2