In 2006 a heartbroken Kevin Erba sat staring at a map of his country.
He had been in love with a girl for 15 years and she had just rejected him. He was distraught, so to escape, or to cope, or to just get moving, he plotted a journey around Iran that would take him two years on foot.
He approached the Iranian tourist bureau for support, but they said they needed something more. They asked him what his equipment was, and for whatever reason Erba told them it was skates.
鈥淚 didn鈥檛 know anything about skating,鈥� he remembers with a laugh, 鈥渂ut I needed to tell them something.鈥�
He signed a contract that would see him set off across Iran within a week, raising money for Multiple Sclerosis along the way. For the next five days, two of his friends frantically taught him how to rollerblade.
Erba said for the first week he was so terrible he could barely stay on his feet. But skating up to 100 kilometres a day helped him improve quickly. Before long he was an expert, and Skateman was born.
Since that original journey across Iran, skating has essentially taken over Erba鈥檚 life. He鈥檚 skated across Turkey, Iran and Canada, raising money for MS research, Japanese tsunami victims and cancer research.
Right now he鈥檚 in the middle of his sixth journey: a 6,800 kilometre trip from Ontario to Vancouver, raising money for Childhood Cancer Canada along the way.
Supported by a team of three friends, Erba stops in communities along the way, meeting community members and trying to drum up donations. If everything goes according to plan, Erba will also set a Guinness World Record for the longest journey completed on inline skates.
While in Jasper last week, he explained he chose to raise money to help save children because saving kids means 鈥測ou can give them their whole life.鈥�
Chatting with him over lunch, he seemed like your average friendly dude. But when he straps on a pair of blades, he takes on a different energy: he sets his jaw a little firmer and dips and twirls around the asphalt with confidence.
Posing for pictures, he crouches expertly, staring confidently into the camera.
He estimates he鈥檚 raised about $15,000 so far on this trip. That鈥檚 a ways off from the $200,000 goal he set for himself, but Erba doesn鈥檛 seem fazed.
This is the first time he鈥檚 even taken cash donations on a trip; usually he just puts a link to a charity on his website and has nothing to do with the actual money.
Simply being on skates seems to be Erba鈥檚 primary drive. He鈥檚 essentially gone non-stop since his heartbreak set him in motion seven years ago, and Skateman has no intention of stopping.
He said he will continue to rollerblade for the rest of his life. He already has big plans for next year: one journey from Vancouver to Toronto, and a five-month, 8,000 kilometre trip across the United States.
Trevor Nichols
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