People would ask me why I was doing what I was doing - but I always told them that I just loved to skate. There was no other explanation.
I trip walking down the stairs, but I can skate them probably.
If you skate too slow, it's not feeling comfortable at all.
The skating community is very fickle. And with me, they're especially fickle for whatever reason. Maybe I bring it on myself, but if you don't prove yourself and you don't skate consistently, then they can very easily write you off and bring somebody from behind you and put them in your place.
If you skate with an Olympic level skater, they make you so much better because you're skating behind them, and you're trying to imitate their stride and their stance. It's like having the world's greatest training wheels.
As a kid, I grew up on a farm in Florida, and I did what most little kids do. I played a little baseball, did a few other things like that, but I always had the sense of being an outsider, and it wasn't until I saw pictures in the magazines that a couple other guys skate, I thought, 'Wow, that's for me,' you know?
Being surrounded by hockey, I got forced into it as a kid. I started skating when I was 4 and had a rink only 10 minutes from my home. In my town, we had one outdoor rink and one indoor rink, so you could skate all year long. I lived by a lake, too, so we did a lot of skating on the lake.
When I know I'm not doing any auditions, I go to the skate park on my scooter or my bike.
Hey, I'm like the Wayne Gretsky of the entertainment biz - I have other people do my dirty work while I skate around and get to be a nice guy. What can I say? I'm a coward.
There is no age, height, or weight requirement to skate. It is good exercise no matter what your age is. If you want to be competitive, most start young. But, I practice with many adult competitors.