I Shredded So Hard I Ripped Through The Fabric Of Spacetime
It was a pow day that began like any other — with me and my buddy Trav hammering tallboys of session IPA on the gondie and crushing our empties on the backs of each other’s helmets. The mountains were looking tight as fuck and the sky was like a giant upside-down half-pipe, and suddenly I remembered I was just one guy, hanging out on a phat spinning rock. I wondered if anyone else ever had these thoughts, or if it was just me.
As Trav and I strapped in at the peak, the sun emerged from behind the top of the eastern range and my morning’s microdose of shrooms kicked in. After I’d taken a moment to honor the psilocybin gods and Trav switched on his backpack speaker to hit shuffle on Ye, we were off.
I’d waxed my rig the night prior in preparation for the day’s mint condies, so my girl was on some rude shit, slicing through three-foot gnar like a machete through margarine. The lines I was carving were deep enough to house allied soldiers, lowkey. But after a few turns, the sound of Ye’s clean flow disappeared — I could only hear my heart beating against my chest and the sweet music of my edges disemboweling cherry pow. Maybe it was the shrooms, but suddenly I felt like I was levitating, slicing not through gnar but through something… deeper. I closed my eyes, and when I reopened them everything was dark, which was lowkey hella trippy. Points of light converged around me and I suddenly found myself hurtling towards pavement. I instinctively frontside one-eightied and stomped the landing, skidding to a stop in the archway of some kind of grand-ass hotel.
I’d ridden every inch of the mountain but had never come across this place before. I could only assume I shredded my rig so hard I’d sliced through the fabric of spacetime, hurtled through the fourth dimension, and popped out in a parallel universe.
“Shiiii,” I said, with a nod of respect to astrophysics.
My phone buzzed in my pocket — it was a text from Trav.
“yo dawg where u at”
“yoooo dude crazy shit,” I typed back. “i think i ripped it so hard out there i opened up some kind of interdimensional portal?” When I hit send, though, my phone shone a trippy shade of radioactive and powered down. The mondo space waves were too powerful for iMessage, I guess, so I had to leave him on read.
That’s when I noticed a young homie leaning against the wall of the hotel, reading a book.
“Yo,” I said, picking up my board.
Homie frowned and closed his book. “You should leave,” he said.
“Relax, bro,” I said. “I’m just tryna sus the vibe.”
The dude stared at me. The expression on his face made me feel lowkey not sick.
“What’s up, bro?” I said. “Not gonna lie, you’re lookin’ kinda sus. You good?”
“I am,” he replied. “Everything will soon be as it should.”
Suddenly, the guy shot up and looked at something behind me. I spun around, and that’s when I saw him: that long-haired dude from the Beatles, the one that wears those Harry Potter specs. I couldn’t remember his name, but at least now I knew exactly where I was — sometime in the seventies, or maybe the eighties, which was pretty tight. Real experimental time for snowboarding.
“Yoooo,” I said. “You’re that guy!”
Just then, I heard a click behind me that stopped my heart cold. I turned around to see the book nerd leveling a gun at the Beatles dude.
“If you don’t move,” said the man, “I’ll kill you, too.”
It was then that I remembered: that long-haired Beatles guy was dead. Like, not then, in that moment, but in the present day, where Trav was currently shredding. Suddenly, I understood the reason I’d gotten so sick at snowboarding: it wasn’t just to rip the park every weekend with the boys — it was to rip open the fabric of spacetime, travel back several decades, and save Mr. Beatle from being shot so he could keep releasing tight music and inspiring the world.
“Nah, bro,” I said firmly. “I’m not moving.”
“Fine,” he replied, and pulled the trigger.
I instinctively shot my snowboard out to deflect the bullet. The shooter roared with anger and fired shot after shot. I deflected all of them. It was like my rig had a mind of its own, whizzing through the air with effortless steeze. Eventually, there was this lame-ass clicking noise — homie’s gun had run out of ammo. I ran towards him and bonked him clean on the head with my rig. He crumpled to the ground.
There was a flurry of activity as the hotel security guard and several passersby rushed out to make sure Mr. Beatle was okay. For a moment we locked eyes, and he whispered: “Thanks, mate.”
“Ay, no sweat, Mr. B,” I replied, wishing I could remember his name. “Keep it real out there.”
That’s when I saw some cops run over. I wasn’t bouta get questioned by some mustachioed 1970s power boys, so I ran to a nearby subway entrance, strapped into my rig, and full sent it down the railing, because probably the way out of this joint was by shredding open another radical wormhole. Just as I was nearing the end of the rail, a burst of sweet Colorado mountain breeze hit me right in the dome. I dove headfirst through the portal and everything went dark.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying belly-up in snow. Trav was leaning over me.
“Yo!” he said. “Glad you’re back, homie. Wasn’t sure you’d make it. Where’d you go?”
“I was with that dude from The Beatles,” I said.
Trav nodded. “Tight. Paul McCartney?”
“Nah. The other one.”
“Ringo Starr?”
“The other one.”
“George Harrison?”
“The other one.”
“Oh, sick.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Saved his life. With this thing.” I rapped the surface of my board.
“Dope,” Trav said, pulling out his phone. “That probably means he’s released new music.” He scrolled for a few seconds, then continued: “Yeah. He’s released six studio albums since 1980, including one called ‘The Snowrider That Saved Me.’ Damn, bro. That’s sick.”
I nodded. “Pretty tight,” I said. “But honestly, I would’ve rather ripped the park today. You tryna hit another lap?”
And with that, Trav and I rode the lift back up the mountain to do what we came here to do: shred. Because if there’s one thing that’s doper than saving Mr. Beatle’s life, it’s a pow day.
More from Molly Henderson:
