night skating tour - 31. 8. 2001

It was a bad start: First our meeting place was blocked by trucks because they were preparing for a party happening on the next day. And then it began to rain half an hour before the Friday Night Skating Vienna 2001 tour should start.

So the tour on august 31th 2001 was canceled. The police [G] was already sent away, the speaker were removed from the car and the stand of the Grüne [G] was taken down and wrapped up. But a lot of skater were still standing around because it had stopped raining and they didn't know that the police car was already gone.

So we decided to skate a little tour. But we couldn't use the planned route (which was equal with the route from the tour on july 27th [E]) without police escort because we aren't allowed to use skates on the streets.
So we used sidewalks and cycleways to skate one hour (starting at 10 p.m.) along this route:
Heldenplatz - Burgring - Dr.-Karl-Renner-Ring - Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring - Schottenring - Franz-Josefs-Kai - Salztorbrücke - down to the way beside the Donaukanal - along the way which is beside this streets:
Franz-Josefs-Kai - Roßauer Lände - Spittelauer Lände - Heiligenstädter Lände - Nußdorfer Lände - J.-v.-Schemerl-Gasse
and retour, up to the Salztorbrücke - Salztorgasse - Vorlaufstraße - Marc-Aurel-Straße - Tuchlauben - Kohlmarkt - Michaelerplatz - Heldenplatz
This route is about 15 km long (measured on a plan) and we were about 120 people.

We had no police escort and we didn't need the fire brigade. We had a lot of fun even when it started to rain on the way back. It were no problem to skate on the small ways even with so many people and no ordner. The wet street was slippery but noone got hurt (and we had to skate uphill a short part). And at the end of the tour a police car appeared. But at this time the crowd had already arrived at the Heldenplatz.

It was a nice tour. But I still prefer no rain.

I made some photos [E]. (I had to drop a few so there are 76 out of 95 left.) More pictures [G] are taken by Rathi [G] .