Nic Hart is a well-spoken 25-year-old civil servant with a partner and a two-month-old son who is thinking about getting a mortgage and buying a house.
And, oh, by the way, he "hill-bombs" Dunedin streets at night at speeds of 50kmh or more - without a helmet, without protective clothing, without brakes and without lights or reflectors.
Mr Hart admits some people have trouble understanding why somebody his age "that's got a bloody son at home" would be doing something "they consider to be reckless and the act of a bloody drugged-out delinquent".
So, why has he spent 13 years living this skatey dream?
"It's fun. That's all that it comes down to. It's fun.
"It was fun when I started and it's still fun now.
"Why does anybody do anything? Because they enjoy doing it.
"Why are 40-year-old men putting their bodies on the line playing [social] rugby still? Because they enjoy doing it.
"They might barely be able to sit down for the next week at work but those few hours in the weekend, that's what gets them through. It's what they like doing."
• Elaine Kelly also has a baby -15-month-old daughter Ella, who tends to drop off to sleep when taken for a drive in the car.
A sleep-inducing Sunday drive is what brought Mrs Kelly, Ella and husband Rob to Opoho Rd one Sunday afternoon last month.
A 16-year-old hill-bomber wearing an "Evel Knievel" leather suit and bicycle helmet was heading down the hill.
When they met on a corner, the hill-bomber was on the wrong side of the road.
According to Mrs Kelly, "the one sane decision" the hill-bomber made that day was to jump off his skateboard.
"He went right under our car and out the back, but his legs got caught under the back wheel. We ran over them, basically.
"If he hadn't made the decision to come off the skateboard, he would have ended up straight on the front bumper ... or through the windscreen, which would have been even more scary because we had the wee baby in the car."
The consequences for this runaway hill-bomber were bruised shins and an instant infringement notice for "using a skateboard carelessly".
The penalty for such offences is usually a $150-$400 fine.
And motorists are obliged to treat hill-bombers in the same way they treat other road users.
But, Mr Hart says, motorists "out to get you" are one of the biggest dangers hill-bombers face.
"You wouldn't believe some of the stuff that's happened.
"You're going along a road, there is a car coming behind you ... the driver's coming around and just turning and stopping straight in front of you."
Motorists opening doors are another hazard, he says, and there are those who cross the centre line "heading straight for you".
"These are people who are consciously going out of their way to try and either hurt you or interfere with what you are doing.
"You get a lot more that just sit on the horn and hurl abuse at you, which obviously is distracting."
Mr Hart says errant motorists are from "right across the board - young to old, men and women, it doesn't make a difference."
And, he says, motorists who endanger skateboarders tend to "run away pretty quickly" after a close call.
"There have been a few silly buggers who have come back for seconds who have got a little bit more than they bargained for. There've been a few skateboards thrown around."
• As Mrs Kelly stepped out of her car to help the injured hill-bomber in Opoho Rd, some of his friends arrived on skateboards and one turned up in a car.
One "particularly lippy one", expressed the view the crash was "no big deal".
"He was like, 'look it's a waste of police resources, ma'am, if you phone the police and ambulance'."
Some soon "skedaddled" but Mrs Kelly would not let the injured hill-bomber leave.
"He was ready to up and away. You know kids like that. They think they're sort of bulletproof.
"But once the adrenaline stopped running through his veins, he did get a bit shaky.
"I said to him 'you will have to sit down, because you will fall down in a minute'.
"He was a wee bit shocked."
The injured hill-bomber went off in an ambulance and Mrs Kelly gave a statement to police who attended.
"It just strikes me as really crazy that if you are a cyclist on the main road you're required to wear a safety helmet, you are required to have lights etc etc and take due care, and none of that seems to apply to skateboarders."
• Mr Hart says some hill-bombers wear a leather jacket and, in the winter, gloves to keep warm.
"I used to take an empty backpack, because in the event of falling off that sort of slides a little bit nicer than straight skin."
He admits not having lights or reflectors at night is where hill-bombers "can be seen to be flouting the law".
But he tried using a headlight and reflectorised clothing "a few years back" only to find good reasons to stop.
"It drew attention to [me] and, being a skateboarder, most attention is bad attention from the general public.
"When people can see you, there's more chance they are going to go out of their way to hurt you.
"If you go under the radar, they just keep going about their day.
"You just have to worry about where they are and they don't have to worry about you."
Mr Hart says he tries to "stay off the radar" of police and agrees it is not easy for police to catch hill-bombers "flouting" the law.
"I'm sure there have been a few times where they would have liked to have had a word but we've been out of sight before they got the chance."
Mr Hart prefers to hill-bomb at night because the streets are quieter.
"There are less cars on the road. There are less hazards for us. And obviously at night-time you can go under the radar a little bit more."
Mr Hart lives in Roslyn and, in summer, goes to work on his skateboard, though not via Stuart St, which is "a little bit too steep and just straight down.
"But it has been done."
He says skateboards are "pretty nimble" and it is "pretty easy" to evade problems such as "silly drivers".
One of the risks of hill-bombing is getting "speed wobbles.
"It's when you are going a bit too fast; your board just starts shaking and you need to know what to do in that situation or you very quickly find yourself rolling along the road."
Mr Hart says having been a skateboarder for more than half his life, he has "learned a thing or two", including how to brake "fairly quickly" even though skateboards have no brakes.
"One of the more advanced ways of sort of braking is called 'drifties', which is when you sort of throw the board sideways.
"Obviously, the wheels then start dragging and that slows you down, and that's something I can quite comfortably do at 50kmh."
Mr Hart says he did hit a car, years ago - "when I was a bit younger and maybe a bit sillier" - and he once hit a bus, in the Exchange.
"I was just being a little bit too reckless ..."
He has sprained ankles and wrists and lost plenty of skin over the years and recently, at the Thomas Burns St skatepark, sprained his wrist, "ripped up both elbows, bruised my knee and my lower back".
"That was on a particularly bad day."
While he argues hill-bombers have a considerable amount of control over their skateboards, roadworks, traffic-counter cables and grates are all things that "can take you by surprise".
"Sometimes you do lose control and things go sour, but that's true for anything.
"I'm sure most people who drive cars at one point or another have hit a patch of ice they didn't know was there and found themselves momentarily out of control."
• Lex Pearce (78), of Aramoana, was annoyed enough about one skateboarder recently to ring the ODT to report a "near miss".
Mr Pearce says he was driving "quite slowly" north on George St when a skateboarder coming down Warrender St went "straight through" a red light.
"I had a green and I just missed him by inches."
He rang the police but says no action was taken.
"Something has got to be done ... someone's going to get killed."
Mr Hart says he has "been known to slip through" red lights "but never recklessly with no regard for what vehicles might be coming the other way".
"Obviously I'm the one that's going to lose something if I get hit.
"But it is one of the joys of skateboards that you can sort of slip in and out and get from A to B a bit quicker.
"You can often beat a car from one point to another, especially on the main street."
Mr Hart does not disagree with those who think someone will eventually be killed hill-bombing in Dunedin.
"There've been a few incidents up north. There've been a couple of bad ones down here over the years. At some point, something bad always happens ..."
He reckons hill-bombing is on the rise, evidenced by an increase in the number of "long boards" favoured by younger hill-bombers.
He believes they are the ones more "at risk of causing trouble to either themselves or someone else" through a lack of experience.
But, Mr Hart says, like himself they will gradually learn "every little bump" of Dunedin's hills.
"You always sort of try and figure things out. You don't just throw yourself down a hill without knowing what's around the corner.
"We're not complete idiots."
Hill bombing - the facts
• Skateboard crashes on roads are only recorded in crash statistics when a motor vehicle is involved.
• From 2006 to 2010, 13 such crashes were recorded in Dunedin, including five considered serious.
• Accident Compensation Corporation senior communications adviser Daniel Glover told the ODT it classifies "skateboarding" in its data but not "hill-bombing".
• In the year to June last year, New Zealand had 567 claims for an injury involving a skateboard - ranging from children injured at skateboard parks to "mothers at home tripping over their child's skateboard".
• This was a decrease on the 659 of the previous year.
• The total cost of skateboard injuries for the year was $3.8 million, including doctor and hospital visits and rehabilitation services and compensation for those injured in previous years.
• Mr Glover says people should always wear helmets, wrist-guards, and knee and elbow pads when skateboarding.
