A sappy history:
Buena Vista was the town I learned to longboard in. Don\'t feel bad if you\'ve never heard of it, I think that the population is around 10 or 20 thousand. Decker, an all around good person, had a longboard sitting in his room (we were college students at the same school). I saw it and he said I could take it out any time I want. Anyways, that was a couple years ago and that board has since been snapped by the wheel of a car (sorry Decker).

Some good hills:
Being from Florida, you\'ll have to excuse my terminology as I describe hilly areas, there are none there. Buena Vista is situated between some mountains and all the roads run downhill towards the center of the town. Most of the runs are pretty gradual, but there are some really nice, fast runs around.

The Skating:
The Cemetery is a mile long run that starts at a cemetery and ends at a park. It\'s a great hill to skate, but watch out, the cops confiscated my board last time I skated it. After you get kicked off the cemetery, go to Racy Acres, the one nice neighborhood in Buena Vista with a mile long curvy road right down the middle. It\'s still under construction in part so there are rarely any cars around at all. This run is faster than the cemetery, at times it\'s almost too fast and visitors have been known to eat pavement on their first (and often last) runs. There is one fairly sharp turn, but it\'s very possible. Finally there is a run on the outside of town that just goes straight down for about a mile. The roads there are perfect, smooth and wide, you just have to watch out for the occasional road construction. Oh, and there is this really nice looking drainage ditch that I\'ve yet to skate because it always has about 3 inches of water in it, also about a mile long...someday.

The Scene:
There are (to my knowledge) a grand total of two longboarders in Buena Vista. Steven was here, now he\'s not. Decker\'s board is still broken that was over a year ago so even he\'s not here. It\'s a pretty backwards town and you get made fun of a lot when you are skating, but that\'s all part of the job.

Lexington:
Lexington has a very nice historic district that looks like it would be fun to skate. I have yet to try as the roads are very narrow and busy and the sidewalks are about the same. There is a little skate park there (helmets required -- the cops look for them too, as I found out...) with a half pipe that\'s actually pretty fun on a longboard, not too steep with a lot of space between the sides (not that I can really skate it, but it\'s fun to mess around on.)

Lexington is a college town, both Washington and Lee University and the Virginia Military institute are there. I\'m sure that there are other longboarders around, I just don\'t skate enough to find them.

The Perfect Run:
I can\'t give away this secret just yet. Have you seen Endless Summer? Remember when they go to Africa, San Lorenzo I think it was? They found this perfect wave that just seemed to go on and on for miles. Right before my buddy Steven left for the West coast we found the San Lorenzo of longboarding. It\'s so long we haven\'t even skated half of it yet. This is one run that I don\'t want to advertise too much quite yet, but soon there will be much more written about it.

UPDATE:
Lexington is not a good place to skate--at least not in the downtown/historic district. Found that out the hard way. There are just too many cops with too little to do.