Video of Regina man skating in the streets goes viral

Regan Quayle had no idea the video of him skating on the road would go viral.

The 42-year-old Regina resident said since the video was posted to Twitter, his phone has been ringing off the hook.

“It’s been crazy! I’ve (had)  to charge my phone in the middle of the day for the last couple of days,” said Quayle. “I had no idea it would get this much attention.”

He explained he didn’t plan on going for a skate but wound up with a free night after the freezing rain on Tuesday put a damper on his son’s hockey game.

“My initial thought process was ‘how am I going to get my older son to his game?’ they were playing an out of town team and then the out of town team cancelled,” he said. “It was a strange night for us — we have two boys in hockey — and then we had a free night… So my wife and I took advantage of it and hit the couch and just kinda laid around for a while and enjoyed our evening.”

Later in the evening, a group chat among other families in the neighbourhood gave him the idea of lacing up the skates.

According to Quayle, one person texted “we should play some shinny,” and then another typed, “well, I think we can only play with our skates on”. Quayle decided to go for it.

“I put my skates on and went out but then none of the other guys came out … I think they were worried about getting hurt,” he said.

Although it was fairly smooth sailing around the block in the Wascana View neighbourhood, Quayle admitted he did have a good wipeout after he hit a manhole.

Since the video has been posted to social media by his neighbour, it’s been viewed more than 198,000 as of Thursday afternoon.

“My wife came out and filmed it and Kip (my neighbour) is way more of a social media guy than I am, he’s the one with the Twitter account and stuff and he put it on there and then things just exploded from there,” Quayle said.

He added family members, Facebook friends and even old friends from his hometown of Birch Hills, near Prince Albert have all contacted him about the viral video.

“The neat thing about it was that I did this about 30 years ago in the small town that I grew up in and we literally did play hockey on the street for hours and then skated around the small town,” he said. “It’s kinda neat to be this much older and still be able to say I did it again.”

—With files from 980 CJME Morning Show