Spring has brought beautiful, cool, breezy afternoons–and pleasant lunchtime sessions at the Sandy skatepark. I worked on a general flow for the park and weak sauce smiths on one of the quarters.
Later that day I took another short skate at Springville with the kids.
At Springville tonight (1 hour session) I worked on a fs disaster that was never better than sketchy.
I had a quick, 45 min session at Fairmont with Chad between work and a sales team dinner. I worked on simply rising up to 50-50 in the pawn bowl, and a smoother, faster line in the large bowl.
David and I skated Heber for the first time in 2012, and it was just about the best session of the year. I made some fairly weak grinds in the shallow bowl and hit some slash grinds in the pool, feeling out the speed. I even managed an ollie up the 2 step + bank, but tool a severe
elbow slam transferring the spine. Ow.
David and I skated Springville for a good hour plus, where I managed to pull a couple tiny boardslides to fakie in the mini.
On a whim, and because I had my board, I found out RampRiders in St Louis, a large, bike-centric indoor park on the third floor of an old warehouse/factory. Lots of terrain, some of it crazy, even unskatable. It had a great 5′ min spinei ramp, steep-ish, fat coping, not slick with generally clean masonite surface. I met a guy named Andy White, right about my age, and we skated and talked gear in the middle-aged skater kind of way. Looking forward to skating with him more when he hits Utah later this year.
To do: longer 5-0s
Tail stall reverts
Last morning in the Bay Area for a while, so I rose early to ride the Pacifica park before leaving for a meeting in San Jose. I hoped that the park might be open early, otherwise I’d be out of luck. At exactly 8:30 am I found the doors open, which made me regret not coming earlier yesterday.
So I rode the shallow park area, working on roll-ins (freaky with these transitions) and speed on corners. I think this morning proved the theory that bowl riding is all about feeling the curves and letting them take you. Not fighting them, not pushing against them, but rolling with them, adapting to them, or, rather, letting the curves change your body. A very zen approach. “Be like water.”
I also rode the shallow bowl, you know, that awesome little bowl with pool coping. I thought I’d record myself trying to early grab the hip, and though I caught some footage it was pretty embarrassing: I grab probably half way up the hip, instead of really launching off of it like I know I can once I get some speed down:
Finally, I watched myself carve grinding the shallow end, and though it doesn’t look bad, I’m not really on top of it. I’d like to work on stalls on the pool coping so I can lock in those grinds however I want them.
To do: early grabs over the hip
My first meeting wasn’t until 10am, and it was a webinar, so I took advantage and skated a quick session at the Pacifica park, just like old times. I worked the whole park as well as I could, finding myself pretty out of practice, and my feet clumsy. I lacked mastery of speed to really take advantage of the park side coping, so I should work on that.
I returned to the park on my lunch break and spent a good hour working the shallow bowl, feeling out some early grabs on (but not over) the hip, grabbing the nose during my kick turns on the deep end in the hopes of making BS airs an inevitability sooner or later. Still pretty freaked out by true 50-50s on the pool coping, though carved 5-0s are feeling pretty decent, if short.
I felt pretty good ollieing on the new board, and managed stepping up the levels on the far west side of the park.
To do: Speed and control
I landed in San Jose for a couple days of business meetings in the Bay Area, but unfortunately I didn’t land early enough to hit Lake Cunningham, so I settled for Roosevelt skatepark, which is a bit closer to the airport.
This park is pretty sick. It was a perfect mini-ramp end of the bowl, and the bowl itself is a perfect mix of vert 8′ and pocketed 6′ walls with a big hump in the middle. I learned a lot watching the locals cruise around, and was able to make a few runs of it myself. I spent most of my time on the mini-ramp end with some of the locals, just working my very small and humble repertoire. Still need to get comfortable with more speed. I did find I can launch out of transitions better just by being a bit more aggressive and even just jumping as if the board were glued.
To do: Pick up speed on grinds, launch out of transitions
David and I skated Springville. I worked the mini-ramp most of the time, working on fakie to BS 50-50s (a 270 turn?) without much luck, and board slides. The board slide thing I think I’m getting: keep your weight on the back foot, stay over the board, and you are glued to the grip as you come back in.
To do: boardslides on the mini-ramp
