More crazy aspects to their plan: They refuse to have a car follow them because that'd
be "cheating," and they don't plan to wear helmets or knee pads.
"I'll definitely consider (a helmet) when I'm going 30 miles per hour on a skateboard
down the Appalachian mountains," Swidzinski said, laughing.
At one point, they considered trying to live on nothing but tortillas and beans for their
whole trip, partly because Kosciesza is a vegetarian and they're on a budget. But they
decided against it. "We'll just live on fast food. I'll eat salad and fries," Kosciesza said.
"I think we're going to live like bums, mostly." Not surprisingly, their parents aren't thrilled
with this skateboard-to-New York idea. Maria Swidzinski, Arthur's mother and a
kindergarten teacher at Apollo School in Des Plaines, says the boys are smart,
responsible young men but she worries about their safety. "I'm not excited about this at all," she said.
Maria asked if she could follow behind them in her car, but her son said no.
"He said he won't be himself if his mom is following behind him," Maria Swidzinski said. "I'm just going to be calling them all the time, then. I hope something good will come of it … because there's no stopping them now."
Their trip won't be one for the record books. A Brit named Dave Cornthwaite holds the world record for distance skateboarding, having rolled 3,618 miles across Australia in 2006, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
New Zealand's Rob Thomson is currently skateboarding (and bicycling and boating) around the world and blogging about it
(www.14degrees.org/en). More than 6,200 miles of his trip will be on his four-wheeled board.
Swidzinski wouldn't even be the first one in his family to take a crazy adventure. Last summer, his cousin rode an electric scooter,
which maxed out at 29 mph, from California to Chicago and made the trip into a YouTube blog.
However, the Chicago-to-New York skateboard trip will be unique. "No one's ever done anything like this on video,"
Kosciesza says. "This is the opportunity of a lifetime." *
