I think as tense and anxiety-inducing as things have seemed lately, one needs to take solace wherever they can.

The other day, the sun briefly emerged after hiding behind rain for a few days. I emerged blinking into the sunlight, R.E.M.’s gorgeous tune “Wendell Gee” on my headphones and stood for three or four minutes just letting the precious sky bulb radiate on my closed eyes while I just took some deep breaths.

In my writing cave, I put on “Magic” by Pilot after which Spotify played recommended tunes based on it. A parade of other good songs came on. It’s the little things.

That’s about as close to capable self-care as I get, although my old friend skateboarding has really helped me keep anxiety in check the past few years. Maybe part of the appeal is that skating predates anxiety, stretching back into my teens, when I had nary a care relative to now.

Skating is pretty much my time machine, and this time of year, getting in a skate sesh more often than very occasionally, thanks to weather’s whimsy, entails a little more effort — usually extra driving. My skate crew and I all have jobs, and we have to go where there are skate spots that are lighted and/or indoors after work or on weekends.

When I’m really desperate, I practice flat-ground ollies in my garage. When I start trying kickflips, you know it’s really been bad weather.

Need for indoor space

Put bluntly: If you’re a Central Oregonian, good luck skating year-round if you don’t know someone with an indoor ramp or similar space.

Ask anyone from parents of skaters to teens to adults who still skate: Central Oregon needs lighted, covered and, preferably, indoors skateparks.

Madras skatepark is the only one in the region with lights. Consider Redmond or Prineville and how dry they can stay when Sisters and Bend are under snow.

Bend’s skateparks, too, could use some roofing or lights. Crowds fluctuate with the school and workdays, but skateparks are rarely empty, and whether you consider it a sport or lifestyle or something else, it is absolutely growing in popularity, which means more users fighting for their fair share of concrete. When a gaggle of teens arrived while I partook of Ponderosa Skatepark (Pondy, in the parlance of local skaters) after dropping off my ballot on a recent lunch break, a gaggle of teens began arriving — more on that next week — but it drove home the point that more than a few skaters at either of Bend’s skateparks, the other being Rockridge in Northeast Bend, their designs render them crowded quite quickly. And the less familiar a rider is with the design and flow and etiquette of a park, the more chaotic and crowded it feels.

A new hope

With Board House Society working to open an indoor park in Bend, hope is just down Highway 20 to the north: As some readers may have seen on boarding-related social media recently, Bend skateboarder and skateboard instructor Gabe Triplette of Bearings Skate Academy, a skate school, is up to something. A little over four years ago, Gabe had to shut down the physical home of Bearings Academy in the first month or so of the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s continued to teach privately and take groups of students on the road through his so-called Booger Tour, but he like other skaters has been in want of an indoor space.

When we talked Friday, Gabe told me that he has a lead on a new space, and an investor who is waiting to see several hundred people fill out a form at bearings-skateboard-academy.com before they pull the trigger on a 6,500-square-foot building in Tumalo. The new Bearings Skate Academy site would possibly have a vert ramp of some sort, given the interest in the vertical skateboarding — think X-Games and Tony Hawk’s indoor ramp — among his students.

Gabe told me does not see Bearings and Board House in Bend as competing entities, “because I’m going to be in another town,” he said. Of course, that other town is only about 10 minutes from many points in Bend. A big obstacle to building in Bend, Gabe said, is there are no landlords in Bend who want to rent to skateboarders.

“It is virtually impossible to get anyone to rent you a warehouse in Bend, Oregon, if the owner’s not down (with skating), and they’re not down,” Gabe said.

The building becomes available Jan. 1, so he has plenty of time to plan and design his vision for the buildout. It could probably begin hosting lessons as early as February, he said.

“We’re super fast,” Gabe said, “we” being himself and longtime collaborator Ben Mohr, Portland contractor and experienced ramp and park builder. I recently mentioned Mohr in an article about the ongoing Board House Society effort.

More Coverage

Board House indoor skatepark effort keeps rolling

The space would also function as a skatepark, with sessions for skateboarders, naturally, but also separate sessions for BMX bikes and scooters — two activities that also could use year-round access but don’t always mesh well with skateboarding in tight quarters.

Gabe seemed confident that this indoor park will happen if enough people show interest.

Regarding the short interest form at Bearings’ website, Gabe said they had only 20 percent of the number he and his investor are looking for — so if you’re a skater, BMXer or scooter rider who sorely wants to ride year-round, it could be in your interest to fill out the form at bearings-skateboard-academy.com/skatepark.

Otherwise, skating may be on hold until things thaw out in the spring.