Is There Life After Youth?

Is There Life After Youth? 35
Pedro
Melo
_
Pedro Melo, 30 years
old, born and raised
at Praia da Luz, in
the sunny and pretty
south of Portugal.
Pedro started to
ride in the summer
of 1994, when he was
10, on an old BMX,
because he loved
Motocross. Due to
heart surgery, he
couldn’t practice
team sports; so
he decided to give
it a go learning
how to ride bikes.
His proving ground
was the rough and
slightly downhill
square in front
of the local Luz
church, where he
learned how to
blast all his
flatland moves and
it soon became
his second home.
Pedro rode every
single day, finding
strategies to escape
the hot summer sun by riding very early
in the morning and late in the afternoon.
Motivation was found in the unrest state
of mind to learn new skills on his bike
and share them with friends. He followed
what was going on in the scene by reading
magazines and going to skateparks.
Twenty years have passed since the summer
of 1994 and Pedro is now a tourist guide
showing the visitors of Algarve the wonders
of his own little corner of the world.
He still rides his bike everyday, and the
square in front of the church is still his
second home, knowing it better than his own
hands. When asked why he still rides, Pedro
says “without a doubt rowing against the
good old “calçada portuguesa” and all the
“velhos do Restelo” that are there to pull
you down...and motivation can be found in
this long lasting search for the unknown and
struggle against ones own fears”. Nowadays
he doesn’t follow what is happening in the
BMX scene and he confessed that he never
identified with it, claiming that it was
very hardcore orientated back then and very
fashion orientated nowadays. Pedro and his
friends had their own scene and it was where
that they were happy.
Being very interested about his homeland
when Pedro isn’t riding you can find him
reading and learning about the nature and
culture of Algarve, surfing at his secret
spot or taking care of mint smelling garden.
If there was no bike, Pedro would most
probably skate and surf more or be involved
with culture preservation projects at Praia
da Luz.
Pedro at the church, Praia da Luz, 2014.