Skate Reanimate

A few extra shots taken by my mother who came out to check out her 30+ sons reliving some glory days at the Logan Skatepark:

When I was a kid I could get away with more spills and less repurcussions. Now a small spill can put an ankle or wrist or elbow out of commission for days. So while I’ve worn a wrist guard for a long time (I’m on the computer for 10hrs a day for work etc), I decided to pick up elbow and knee pads as well. I plan to wear the elbow guard on my bad right elbow whenever I choose to hit the skate parks, but don’t expect I’ll need the knee pads regularly–still, they’re nice to have.

And because I hope my 5-year-old son will want to pick up skating sometime in the future I got a helmet for the good example. I’ll wear it at parks any time he comes with me.

My other primary hobby is writing fiction and poetry. Inspired by a good session, I’ve written my first poem about skateboarding tonight, and it’s available at my writing blog: Poem: Cool Night.

I’ve been out skating three times this month, as the weather has fluctuated from freezing cold to mild, and it’s been a touchstone for me. Though I have a lot of catching up to do after the winter, and though I still can’t land the fabled kick-flip or heel-flip at full speed (I’m really close on the heel-flip), my ollies are strong, and my manuals are stronger.

Plus my parking lot has been swept and is begging for more attention.

So a while ago I was riding an Almost Mullen “Uber” deck, which cracked at the nose about 30 days into use. After a couple of weeks I noticed the deck lost a significant amount of pop. I’m not being whiny, but my ollies were terrible unless I aimed and precisely snapped the tail at just the right position and angle.

After practicing ollie to manual off a little platform (no more than 12 inches) the nose just cracked and was suddenly useless. So I sent the deck back to Almost, and voila! They sent me a brand new one about 7 days later.

Because I hadn’t really expected them to replace it, I had immediately ordered a deck from Black Hole Boards as a replacement. But the shipment was delayed, and as the summer days sped past I found myself itching to skate. Our local shop was having a sale on decks that week, so on an impulse I picked up a Vallely Element deck for under 30 bucks with grippy. I mounted it up, thinking I would skate it for a couple months and have the extra BHB Element in case I needed it.

Surprise, surprise, the Vallely deck lasted all through the autumn, and though the BHB Element came, and the replacement Mullen came I saw no reason to change out.

So, yeah, I have 2 brand spankin’ new decks to dig into when the snow thaws. If it ever does. It feels really weird to have more decks than I need; in fact, it feels a bit constrictive, as I don’t have the anticipation or excitement of choosing a new one when the current wears out.

Oh well, at least I’ll be well-stocked and free from deck expenditures for 2008.

You can see me here on my new Vew-Do Balance Board. My kind parents bought this for me for Christmas. My folks have always been supportive of skating, going back to my offsetting the cost of my first board at age 11, through to letting my brother build a mini half-pipe in their back yard when he was 16. And though my mother was somewhat concerned that I would hurt myself when I announced I was getting back into skating at 31, both mom and dad thought taking it on would do me good.

But I guessed I might lose whatever skating edge I’d been re-sharpening over the summer if I just atrophied over the winter, and so when I heard about the Vew-Do I was intriguiged.

The Vew-Do apparently came out in 1990–right before I quit skating, it seems, and was marketed to both skaters and general sports-playing-jock-types. I think I remember seeing it way back when, but it looked dopey, and of course the price is akin to a complete board, so that, to a 15-year-old, was itself prohibitive. But not so now. The folks were looking to buy me something different for Christmas, and this fit the bill.

So here it is, the Vew-Do SK8 model in all it’s indoor fun-ness. As you can see from the photos, the board is just like a normal skate deck except instead of trucks/wheels it’s got a heavy-duty plastic beam on the bottom that fits into a groove on the “rock”–a large, wooden mono-wheel support. One balances one’s self by centering one’s weight above the “rock”, and then shifting weight from foot to foot to change the position of the board.

It’s both more challenging and enlivening than I thought it would be, and I find myself hopping on it two or three times a day just to give it another go. Each time I do I find that my balance is a little more sure, and the experience of riding the Vew-Do is yet more enjoyable.

Next up: tricks on the Vew-Do. Apparently one can do ollies, kickflips, shuvits, and more. Best thing about it is now I can rationalize making a post here during the winter months (one that’s not along the lines of, “It sucks that I can’t skate.”)

I had a really good session the other night in the shadow of a cold evening that became a cool refreshment as I warmed up. Not much happening in terms of tricks, but good ollies, manuals, on and off of short platforms, all in my favorite parking lot.

And now it is snowing; not necessarily too cold, but certainly too wet and slick for any skating, which leaves me in the unenviable position of waiting for the Spring.

P.S. For those of you snowboarders who are instead rejoicing, yeah, I snowboarded for about 15 years, but it’s just too much money and time for me. In a year or two when my son is older, then winters might seem a little riper and brighter…

My new deck finally arrived yesterday (I swear UPS is slower than USPS) and I laid on the grippy, changed out my bearings, replaced my trucks’ kingpins, and put it all together.

Before

After

I took it out skating last night, and was immediately impressed by how high this thing pops. It’s like spaceman ollies!

The concave feels very deep, which I’m not quite used to. In fact, I fell a couple of times because my feet were so “glued” in place by it.

As advertised, it does seem to flip faster, and though I’m still having a hard time with kickflips in general, heelflips seem to be easier to initiate (though harder to control, as the board flips at least another half-flip from the same amount of effort).

Alright, I was taking a break at Borders today, cooling off with a tasty beverage in the shade with a few magazines on my lap. Partly out of curiosity and partly out of nostalgia, I picked up a copy of each of the latest skate mags from the periodicals rack.

I have to say I was a little disappointed in the mags as a whole. As a kid I was probably far more fascinated with photos of skaters mid-trick, but now I find you have to read the captions to try to appreciate the combos. Also, skateboarding is so ubiquitously part of our culture that its no longer a treat to see someone on a skateboard–this simple occurence was a treasure back in the 80s.

More significantly, I was reading some interviews with pros in Thrasher and Skateboarding, and was stunned at how pervasive cursing, alcohol, drugs, and sex are in their normal conversation. To me its not a big deal how adults talk or act as part of their own private lives–so long as they’re not hurting anyone else. But this lifestyle certainly doesn’t represent what skating means to me. If this is indicative of what skating has become I can’t say that I would support my own son’s immersion in this new wave of skate culture.

This is not to say that when I was a kid skateboarding was squeaky clean. No way. Sure, we cursed. We listened to punk. We were generally rebellious and a bit obnoxious. But that was about it. When I think about how we poured over the pages of Thrasher and Transworld for pics, interviews, and news, I really don’t recall it being offensive or startling. Most of the pros featured were there to help the sport grow and progress–not to be self-indulgent, self-important white-trash or ghetto punks sucking smoke and soaking booze, spewing out smack-talk and curses.

These pros setting a bad example for all the kids who will grow up idolizing and wanting to emulate them. You might say its not the pros fault–they didn’t ask to be idolized; they aren’t supposed to be a role model. Well guess what: they _did_ sign up. When they went pro they acknowledged that, yeah, people will watch me, kids will look up to me, skaters will look at me as the new “cool”. The private life they once had is now made public, and by doing so it affects people.

At the very least I say the editors of these skate mags owe it to the kids to keep things a little cleaner. Thrasher’s always been a little edgier than the other skate mag(s), but never R-rated like it is now. The whole encounter really bothered me, not because the content offended me per se, but because I thought, What can I show my son that’s positive and encouraging in this sport? Do I have to be the filter for everything? Or does a parent just accept that modern life is becoming increasingly debased and amoral, and there’s not much that can be done to protect the kids?

I’ve been a little discouraged by a bad pattern of minor injuries (e.g. both of my ankles are just a little bit sprained due to 2 successive nights of trying grinds and slides, and my bad knee is acting up simply from all the crouching/jumping) but its probably less the worry of long-term pain or injury (at my age!) than it is that I don’t seem to be making significant progress as a result. After what felt like a very steady and positive progression, I suddenly feel like I can’t quite make the next step, can’t quite land or pull into the tricks that are still basic.

If I become more aggressive in my sessions I do tend to make progress a little faster, but at the cost of more spills.

So this week I’m balancing recovery with practice. I’ll probably go out tonight, but will either shorten my session or restrict myself to practicing stuff I’m already really capable of.

Alternately, I could just lift some weights or do some strengthening exercises that won’t put my ankles and knee at risk. bo-ring