When Dan Albright moved to Bellevue in 2003, he had no idea that he’d establish a longstanding community organization with Greenway Surfers.
Albright loved skateboarding as a kid and when he saw some people riding longboards at the park one day, he decided to give his long-lost hobby another try and bought one himself. The rekindling of this passion fortuitously coincided with the timing of the opening of the Bellevue section of the Metro Nashville Greenway.
He and his daughters Mary and Anna, who were 13 and 15 at the time, all bought skateboards and regularly visited the greenway to practice, and their love of skateboarding grew from there. Albright, who homeschooled his daughters from the time their family moved to town until they graduated high school, started bringing their friends to board with them after attending their weekly homeschool group.
This eventually led to the founding of Greenway Surfers, a weekly meet-up for anyone wanting to take to Bellevue’s section of the greenway on some form of wheels. They’ve been meeting for a weekly 12-mile ride every Monday evening from March through October since 2013. While the group is mainly comprised of longboarders, they also invite people who rollerblade or bike. Their current group of regulars ranges from 20-somethings to 60-year-olds, but all ages are welcome. The group has recently even had appearances by Albright’s 3-year-old grandson, who is following in the family "footsteps" and currently learning to skateboard.
For Albright, he says that having easy access to the greenway is one of the things he loves most about living in Bellevue. “It's the best greenway in all of Nashville,” he says. “I've ridden every single greenway, every foot of every greenway, and I can say for sure: we got the best one right here. It’s just been a great community for us.”
In addition to the weekly longboarding meetups, Albright also leads a distance skate each year called the Nashville Skate Tour, a tradition now in its 13th year that was inspired by his eldest daughter. “My oldest daughter Anna, she for some reason, got it in her head that she wanted to walk across Tennessee,” he says. “So, at the end of that 2013-2014 school year, my wife drove us to Memphis, dropped us off at the Mississippi River, and we spent 35 days walking across Tennessee. So that's when I came up with the idea for the Nashville Skate Tour, which is our big event we do now. It ranges anywhere from 42 miles up to 45 miles and we always, we start in Bellevue at the Harpeth River Greenway, and we always end at the dam at Percy Priest.”
When asked about his goals for the group, the 51-year-old has longevity in mind for both himself and for Greenway Surfers. In addition to wanting to keep the weekly meetups and annual distance skate going for as long as possible, he has some lofty personal goals. “I always try and be able to at least skate my age in miles,” he says. “I can still do 51 miles at this point.”
Albright has personally completed a 188-mile skateboarding race in Atlanta four times. “You race from Atlanta to Anniston, Alabama and back over the course of three days,” he says. “The longest day being 94 miles.”
For those interested in trying out a ride with Greenway Surfers, message Albright on the group’s Instagram @greenway_surfers for more details.
In 2018, Anna Elizabeth Albright (now Anna Hammond) published 542 Miles: A Journey Across Tennessee, a memoir that chronicled her 35-day walk with her father, Dan Albright, across Tennessee from the Mississippi River in Memphis to the North Carolina state line. The book is available for purchase on Amazon.com.