Jesse Clayton back smith Laurel, Maryland

By the time the cops finally caught up with us by the banks of the Shenandoah River, the trip had already been steadily spiraling downward. Luckily for us our story sounded so absurd that the Front Royal police department had no choice but to believe us.

We explained that the Skateswords tour had went awry from the beginning. With rain in the forecast we had to completely reroute our trip. After a brief stop in Lancaster to skate the warehouse we made it to Front Royal, only to encounter a steady, unending rain.

With our hopes of skating dashed we had no choice but to find other means of entertaining ourselves. After a disastorous open-mic performance the night before, we had explored the local pool hall on our second night in town.

That was where we met Will. The officer at first had doubts about the existence of Will, since he had hidden himself deep in the woods when the police showed up.

While we didn’t doubt Will’s existence, we certainly doubted his credibility. He claimed he was a former Marine and a vet of the Afghan war. Of course he also told us that he was stationed in Afghanistan from 1999-2001 (obviously before the war even started), and also that he was now 26 years old (meaning he would have been 14 years old at the time).

And yet this wasn’t the end of Will’s stories. Earlier that day we had encountered what we thought was a park ranger while skating during a brief dry spell in Shenandoah National Park. The “ranger” who threatened to kick us out, coincidentally named Will, ended up being a maintenance guy who was messing with us.

Of course when we met the other Will that evening, he claimed that “ranger” Will was his brother. He also told us that he has eight Wills in his family, and that he and his brother were growing a large marijuana crop in the park.

Naturally, we left this out when talking to the police.

After filling in the cop on the essential background of the story, we got to why we had ended up at the Shenandoah River at two o’clock in the morning on a Thursday. We were going noodling.

Dan Hetrich ollie north Laurel, Maryland

According to Will it was the only thing to do once the bars closed, and we were wholeheartedly intrigued by the possibility of catching catfish with our bare hands. Luckily for us, fishing was the only legal reason we could have for being down there at that time of night, and the officer had no choice but to let us go.

Before he left, we made one request to the police officer, for a photo of him with the team to accompany this article. He sadly declined and regaled us with a story of a recent controversy with the local police department. Apparantly some pictures had gotten out of a trio of strippers perched atop multiple police cars during a recent cop-only party. Understandbly, the already-blighted department would only have encountered more trouble had they associated themselves with the likes of us.

The cop eventually let us go and we met back up with Will. The five of us marched into the forest; in the dark, in the rain, in search of catfish.

The next morning we awoke to find Will, still drenched from falling into the river fully clothed, still sleeping on our hotel floor. As we packed he still lingered around, smoking in our non-smoking room and drawing the ire of the hotel staff.

Finally we had the car packed and were ready to head to Laurel, MD in hopes that things would be dry there. Will asked for a ride, but sadly our car was full, and we had had quite enough of our new friend. So we pulled out, searching for sunny skies and dry ground. As we left we saw Will, still soaked to the bone, walking along the highway in the dreary, rainy morning, hoping for sunny skies of his own.