Ryan Sheckler

I am a skateboarder, and to stay fit for skating I have to stay away from a lot of things. I go to parties and that's fun for me, but between skating and lifting and everything, I know what I have to do the next day, so I'm very conscious about my schedule and keeping it.

'Thrasher' magazine's Skater of the Year is clearly my No. 1 goal. The only way I get that is skating. Other than that, I haven't set that many outrageous goals. If I got Skater of the Year, that would just really add to it all and make me feel really good. Whether it's this year, next year or five years from now, that is my goal.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.