Thirty Years of Pete

Peter Raffin taught me how to walk.  Not literally of course, my parents are to take credit for that.  More specifically, Peter showed me how take walk as a means of taking in every bit of the world around me.
As skaters, and Peter being one of the best I know, we almost always choose to travel by four urethane wheels rather than two legs.  The skateboard is clearly a faster and more enjoyable form of transportation.  But Peter would rather walk.  He traverses the urban landscape of downtown San Jose with speed and decisiveness equal to that of cold sap rolling down a tree trunk.  And just as the sap gathers little pieces of bark and other debris along its way, Peter absorbs the city of San Jose.   
He is that chipped piece of tile at the base of those stairs.  He is the hidden patch of graffiti behind that dumpster.  Peter is not a resident of San Jose, but an organic life form melded to the infrastructure of the city.
I leave my skateboard at home and take my steps a little slower sometimes because of Pete, listen to the voices of the pavement.