Progress

Got the following email from Sacha today:

OMG, you quit!
You dirty, dirty quitter you.

Please pull your quitting ass back on to your deck and proceed with whatever you were trying to master.
I turned 32 a couple of weeks ago, and gave my last deck away when I moved in with my manipulating ex-girlfriend (“Yes baby, I really am too old for that stuff…”). This was about seven years ago.

I’ve moved on to other funsports since, but finding your blog let me relive some of the memories. And it also made me realise I didn’t suck at skating back then.

Either way. You really should get back into the whole thing. And try to get hurt a little more please…

Kind regards,
Sacha

Thanks for the mail, Sacha! I have indeed slowed down in my skating (my excuse is that it’s now winter here in Canada) and definitely want to get back into it. I am looking forward to really committing to more and more skating in the coming year.

Thanks for the words of encouragement and I’ll keep you posted!

The park

Near my house is a skate park part of an Optimist complex. Last Wednesday when my son and I went to the pool for a swim, we noticed that there was no one at the park. Until school’s out, I might be able to get in a little practice skating.

Truth be told, I haven’t been skating much in the past couple of weeks. Whenever I think to get out there and skate, it’s usually after 10pm and I’m exhausted.

Hopefully, this’ll be rectified soon enough. In the meantime, please enjoy this shot of me making out with my skateboard that I took am currently sharing on Moustache May.

Spring has pop

First, I picked up a new Canadian quarterly magazine called Color. So far, so good. It seems to be a skateboard lifestyle magazine and shows skating in the snow in this issue. I haven’t had much time beyond thumbing through it to give a good review, but I’ll do so in the coming weeks.

Second: the snow as almost all gone now. The only bits left are tiny hangers-on desperate to fight the inevitable change. Skaters have been spotted in Victoria park in the bandshell and in front of the bandshell where the ice rink used to be.

Every day I go to work and come home from work, I wish I was skating there and back. I don’t think my skills are good enough yet to take that long of a trip - either that or I’m just a chicken. 

Gadzooks!

I think I’ve figured out my turning dilemma!

I turns out (haha) that the best way to go in a straight line is to explicitly ignore the image I created in a past post about my foot stance and instead of looking down, look up.

I spent a while today trying to get the absolute basics down. Those basics being:

1. Moving without falling off the skateboard
2. Stopping a moving skateboard without killing myself

The first one was easy to do. Once I realized that the best way to not lose my balance was to look up and find a target point at the end of the run (there is a loose paint flake on my garage door that I used) and go towards it, I ended up going in a much straighter line. This is likely because I wasn’t worried about losing my balance or turning, but getting to that point. Not looking down also stopped me from being as jittery as I’d been earlier.

The second one wasn’t too difficult either. I’d seen a video online of a kid stopping his skateboard by rocking backwards onto the tail of it to skid to a stop. I tried that a few times and it wasn’t working for me. Instead of stopping like a pro, I was stopping and either launching my deck into a snowbank, or I was causing one of my feet to pass over the other one and making me unbalanced.

Instead, I figured out the answer to my problem. The best way that I can see to stop a moving skateboard is to step off of it. Very easy. I even tried this on the hill that is at the end of our laneway and even on that hill, while moving pretty quickly, stepping off the board is the fastest, most sure way I’ve found to maintain control of it. It’s easy enough to quickly step on the top of it again to get it to stop of the sugar hits the fan.

I may move on to other methods of braking, but for now, the step-off is the best.

(Not) Skating in high school

When I was in high school, I had a locker that was three doors down from a girl who I thought was the hottest girl in the school. Her name was Irene and it was the typical nerd and cute girl scenario - she was super friendly and polite and not interested in me at all, and I was drooly and stuttery and trying to get into all of her classes (not really).

She hung out with a completely different crowd than me, a group of kids from town who were into skateboarding. All the boys wore their hair the same way, in what my friends called “half-dos.” One half of their heads were shaved and the other half was long. Eventually, one fellow got cancer and everyone shaved their heads to support him.

Anyway, Irene was so only into skateboard dudes that she proclaimed it via a killer t-shirt that depressed me every time I saw it. Like a grave marker on my grade ten love life, It featured a black and white comic book drawing (she had me at comic book), a woman holding her cheeks with her mouth open, and exclaiming,

“Oh my god, my boyfriend can’t skate!”

Because of the cruel nature of the universe, our lockers stayed the same distance apart for the rest of our high school careers and we became fairly good friends. I watched her and her pals hang out and wished I could be part of that gaggle of gawkers.

Instead, I was a yammering weirdo who was interested in skating and Irene, who because of my nervous nature and lack of paved or concrete surfaces, could have neither.

First feet

Last night was my first skate session. It took place in 2° Celsius temperatures, around 8pm after the boy went to bed. The driveway was a bit wet, and there was a pile of snow off to one side of the drive. The only light was coming from my kitchen window.

I set the board down and worked at the bushings a bit to get rid of that new deck squeak.

Then, I decided to do what every newbie does - actually try to get on the deck without falling down. And I did that, no problem. I stepped onto it and pushed off, getting about five feet before losing my balance a bit and stepping off.

And that’s how the rest of the brief session went, pushing off, riding for about 5 to 25 feet, then stopping short. Any way you look at it, I didn’t fall, so that’s a good thing.

It certainly is an advantage to skate in Canada in early Spring: you can keep your water bottle in the snowbank to keep it super cold.

My only difficulty on my first time out was, aside from looking like an idiot with arms all-a-jittery, my inability to move in a straight line. Instead, I tended to curve to the right. My untrained balance kept me from being able to really curve back left without having to step off the board. I surmise that my curving had something to do with my stance:

My feet both point in the same direction, both toward the right side of my board. I think that means I ride “Regular” style and not “Goofy” - even though I’m left-handed.

Having my back foot across the back truck area helps me control and steer while my front foot isn’t really sure where to go. So far if it’s in the middle, it’s easier to have balance and not fall overboard. I actually tend to ride with my back foot even further down the tail of the board, almost over the curve, which gives me even more lateral control, but sometimes causes me to lose it when I lose my balance.

Not having anyone to ask for help, I’m not really sure if I’m doing anything wrong here. I assume that the natural motion of a deck will curve in whatever direction your feet are facing.

Eventually, what I’d like to be doing is skating in a straighter line. For now, just being able to stay up is a treat, but in the future, I’d like to look at more of the mechanics of how to control the board while I move.

Speaking of feet, we went to the mall tonight after supper to a shoe store. The Airwalks on display at Payless and Zellers were terribly ugly so I’ve pretty much decided to stay far away from them.

At another shoe store, I saw some lovely green-ish Adidas skate shoes that I liked very much. Before I sunk the cash, I’ve decided (with the help of the lovely Jammer) to visit Legacy again and see what their discounts kicks look like. Of course, I’ll post pictures when I get something to shoot.

First deck

I have to say that I was nervous buying my first deck. I rolled over to Legacy and talked to Ryan(?) about my circumstance:

I’m 30+ years old and I haven’t really ever skateboarded. I want to start so that I can skate to work and cut down my commute time, stay green, and get some exercise. Right now, I just want something that’ll get me around. Ollies will come later.

The owner was really nice. He suggested that I go with one of their $90 decks, a middle-of-the-road model that would be perfect for someone just starting out. That way, I’m not wasting money on a $30 Wal*Mart neck-breaker, and not blowing $200 on a setup that I don’t like.

So I ended up not buying the Garcia deck, but I’m okay with that. It was great to go to a shop and have someone talk to you like you’re a real person and be interested in your story. The setup I bought is a Speed Demon kit. The deck, wheels, and even trucks are all branded with Speed Demon. Means nothing to me, but for my first deck, it’s great!

I was sold, and so was the board. He loosened the axel nuts with a neat-looking tool to make the wheels roll more smoothly and told me to loosen the bushings on it by standing on it and rocking back and forth. He said the most annoying thing about a new deck is the creaking sound that new bushings make.

Once things die down around here and the boy goes to bed, I’m going to take it outside and give things a whirl and hopefully not break anything - including myself.

Thanks to Jeff Smith for the tip on my new whip:

Nice looking board. Those look like pretty hard wheels, careful if you’re rolling on ‘crete or new asphalt as they’ll be pretty slick.  

Shoes

In the back of my head, I keep telling myself that I need to get some new shoes - something light and flat-bottomed, as opposed to my current CAT walking kicks. The only thing close to an athletic shoe that I own is a sweet pair of sweet Nike Free.

If I do buy something new, I’m not looking to spend much money - about $40. Come to think of it, I think I’ve seen Airwalk shoes around that hover at that price at Wal*Mart or Zellers or Payless.

I remember a time when Airwalk shoes were the greatest things known to humankind - around the same time as Vision Streetwear t-shirts where in (they seem to be coming back into style via Rob Dyrdek’s Rogue Status clothing line). Same goes with the 1/2 head shaved, other half long look. Nowadays, you can find a pair of them for $30 at Wal*Mart and none of them at my local skate shops or any West49 that I can remember. They seem to be intended more for a mass-audience than the “limited” skate market.

Reading the be-all-end-all info source, Wikipedia, they say of Airwalk:

“…the decision was made to “go mainstream” and focus on a more general audience rather than just creating shoes for sport enthusiasts. There was a brief rise in sales, but some people loyal to the brand found the mainstream designs questionable. Currently, new shoes are being sold at various discount shoe stores like Payless Shoes and Modells around the country.” 

What a bummer. Personally, I owned a pair of Airwalk Blammos when I was in high school. They were the greatest shoe I have ever owned. TRUTH: whenever I go to buy new shoes nowadays, I always compare what I’m looking at to my old Blammos. The design was all-black, including the sides of the sole, with a black logo on the black shoe - I’m such a sucker for brandless-clothing. And not just that - I love that timeless Airwalk logo design.

Having said all that bad news and bashing of Airwalk kicks, I just saw some pretty radical shoes on the Airwalk website - the Andy Mac Signature Shoe (pictured above) that I like an awful lot. According to their website it says that you can find the shoes anywhere, like Zellers, The Bay, and other Canadian retailers. Of course, the “not all styles available everywhere” message is included - don’t blame me if you go and they aren’t there!