Friday 24 April 2009

Technical Edinburgh

I've been known to say that sitting down with my primary school-age son to watch a mountain bike video creates a kind of father-son bonding that most don't get to experience until the son is a teenager and they sit down to watch dad's pornography video collection. The middle-aged dad gets to reminisce about things they've done in the past but never as dramatically, while the boy gets unrealistic expectations about what is possible.

This statement is even more poignant when looking at this absolutely incredible video of Danny MacAskill doing trick riding through Edinburgh.

As a resident of the city while in my late teens, I have actually had both successful and unsuccessful sexual encounters in some of the buildings in the background of the video. The student's union and some halls of residence crop up, the Marchmont party-district and the George Square summer-drinking area all crop up, all places where I recall having my attempts at getting to know various girls better being rejected. The park with trees that appears a lot is The Meadows, where an acquaintance of mine once woke up after a night on the town wearing nothing but another man's underpants. That has never been explained.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This sort of thing is truly amazing.

But I still think they look silly when they ride down the road normally on their stunt bikes and hit their chins with their knees ...

Chris Hutt said...

How can one have sexual encounters that are both successful and unsuccessful?

Oh, do you mean successful for you but unsuccessful for the girls?

Quercus said...

Fantastic!

Where would we be without gravity?

Just sent one of my children to the park on a BMX... with strict instructions regarding appropriate encounters.

(Do you know Liz, who lives in Edinburgh, but works in Glasgow? She was a right old tease - and probably able to explain the underpants).

SteveL said...

@chris -Different encounters.

Forest Pines said...

Being a former student there, I have happy memories of that part of Edinburgh.

I recall taking a shortcut with some friends one night, going home from the pub, and taking a direct route across the middle of the Meadows rather than one of the paths. Half way across, the chap leading the way suddenly took a detour ten yards to the right - because if we'd kept straight on, we'd have tripped right across a rather passionate couple on the grass.

It is, according to traditional Edinburgh lore, illegal to row a boat across the Meadows.