My friend Chris has started a new blog on which to explore his journey as a skateboarder now over 50 years of age.
I’m very much looking forward to reading his thoughts on this matter. As I will turn 60 this year, such things are very much on my mind, and maybe his writings and thinkings will inspire some new personal insight for me.
It’s still hard to beat a board like this for just riding around.
Before going to Pandemic Parking Lot to skate yesterday I went over to the Glenville ditch, which has been a spot I’ve enjoyed since I was about 14 years old. A few years ago they rebuilt the alleys on either side of the ditch. They really messed up the wall on one side. It is all still rideable, but one wall just isn’t as good, and they added a support wire for the telephone pole nearby on the other side. While the wire isn’t too much in the way, it still makes me feel like I’m going to hit it.
I’ll go back of course. The spot is still one of the better spots in town, and I’m glad they left it as good as they did.
A short line I filmed for a little online video sharing thing that Waltz skateboards is doing – any combination of a couple of heel-side end-overs, a couple of monster walks, and a rolling forward 360 spin. I went into it with a walk-around and then a little end-over/360 spin combo. Board is my 8.8 Cockfight blunt-pops shape, Ace 55s, 92a 54mm OJs.
Comparison of truck/wheel combos.
Top: Ace 55 trucks (original version) with OJ 54mm 92a wheels - typical center-set newschool wheels. Bottom: Indy 159s, 54mm 93a Powell-Peralta Nano Cubics - side-set wheels with more coverage of the axle nut.
Essentially the same footprint from outside edges of wheels. Fits this 8.8" popsicle deck, and would work on a 9" deck as well. Probably too wide for a narrower board, even just a bit narrower. Both fit this board perfectly.
Other pic - comparison of outside wheel profile. The Nano Cubics, while they do offer some offset and protection of the axle and axle nut, don’t offer nearly as much as the many dedicated freestyle wheels on the market.
It will be interesting to see how different the Nano Cubics feel. Wider contact patch, which will get significantly wider as the wheel wears down. Much more so than a typical street wheel. Close to the same hardness on both sets of wheels, but the Powell urethane will feel a lot different. Also expecting to feel the lip of the Nano Cubics deforming as I skate, but not too bad.
I really have no need for an offset wheel for this sort of setup, but I wanted to try the 93a Powell-Peralta formula.
Well, I’m still considering a trip to skate the Paderborn contest this summer. It will be happening in August, so even in Germany it will be hot, but not Texas hot. I’m hesitant just because it’s a long way to go for a contest, but that is where I like to see my friends from England and the rest of Europe. It has been nearly four years. I miss them.
I know I’m not really up for another road trip from England to Germany. I’ve done that twice. It is just too much after flying across the Atlantic and dealing with jet lag.
Here’s the thing. The years are going by. I need to do these things.
A few years ago my friend Dale took this pic (from my About page) at the Budda Bank (misspelling intentional), riding the board from two posts ago. I’ve always dug it. We were playing with wide angle attachments for our phones. I kinda like the lens flare. As previously noted, this is a crusty little bank spot. The kind I love.
Years after I bought it, this 8.8" wide 15" wheelbase Cockfight pops still gets the job done. Obviously I have not used it constantly for the last seven years, but I always come back to it. The Ace 55 trucks fit it perfectly. It always feels super stable and while it’s a fairly large board it feels light when you pick it up and when you ride it. I put these 54mm 92a OJ wheels on it today.
This is a pretty good all-around board. It feels right in ditches and at skateparks, I can ride it for parking-lot-style freestyle. If I’m feeling particularly energetic I can do kickflips and 360 shove-its on it. The long wheelbase gives it a real nice flow. It has some inertia. I’m tall enough it frankly looks pretty good when doing footwork.
There is just something nice about being able to grab ONE BOARD when doing skating and feeling like I can do a little bit of everything on it, and feel nice and solid when going a little faster or when at a skatepark.
Related to the previous podcast post…
In addition to letting the board roll, I have come to appreciate letting it go where it wants to some extent. If you are moving in a nice way and the board is going there naturally, I think it often looks better and feels better if you let the board do a little more of the thinking and influence it rather than dictate. There is a balance between commanding it and letting it do its thing.
A line I’ve been working on. Yes, I’m fat.
Most skaters skate what’s available. In my early teen years that meant a school parking lot and nearby ditch during the week, or the end of our alley where the curb cuts and sidewalks formed little skateable spots, or the alleys behind our houses where the driveways were banked and formed dirtbag snake runs. On the weekend I’d get one trip to the nearby skatepark. $5 for a 2-hour session. $5 was worth a lot more in those days.
In my late 30s and early 40s I thought having skateparks again would be the ultimate. For me, however, it is not. For many skaters a skatepark, no matter the quality, is what they have to ride. If you live in a place like Dublin, Ireland, it was my observation during my trip there last fall that you’d better have an indoor skatepark, as I didn’t find a single place that looked remotely skateable, and the weather is a bastard.
I still prefer naturally occurring skate spots. I’ve been lucky to live in places where there are good ditches for skating. That may be the only good thing about Texas, but to me it’s important.
Here’s another poorly shot image of my friend Dale at such a spot. Even on a bright day, skateboarding is best in the shadows.
Dale doing a sweeper at Buda Bank.
My friend Dale found this little bank a few years back. We call it the Buda Bank, as it is near some sorta Buddhist establishment. It is just the kind of crusty little spot I love. We moved that parking block into place. We can came back a year later and it was still there. I mean, who but skateboarders would move a parking block.
I want to shoot some footage here this year for the Neverwas 8 video.
Today at aikido practice I essentially had a private lesson with my teacher, as the weather was horrible and I guess no one else felt like venturing out.
We spent a lot of time using the jo staff – a wooden staff about 50" long. I talked last week about how important using the power of your hips in things like skateboarding and aikido. I had somewhat of a breakthrough today with the jo, finally really engaging the hips to generate power to manipulate both the stick and the opponent. It was one of the moments when everything syncs up and an “a-ha!” experience happens.
Everything I do in aikido seems to relate to skateboarding, and in practice I often find analogies from skateboarding that fit into aikido. Maybe not really analogies, as they are really the same thing.
Anyway, it is rainy and shitty this weekend, but I think what I felt and started to understand today in aikido is going to really help me generate the flow I’m looking for in a complex flowing set of turns and pivots I’ve been working on for a while on my board.
Backside 180 slide to Fakie 720. I love this kind of skating.
In this episode, I go on and on about using your hips to generate power doing physical activities like skateboarding. I also blabber about some other stuff.
In this short episode, I talk about the anxiety I feel every year about getting back on my board after months of inactivity.
My “project” in skateboarding the last few years has been - how far can I go without flipping the board or doing a shove-it. How much can I do with carving, end-overs, pivots, spins, walk-the-dogs, 180 slides, wheelies and other “simple” stuff.
It turns out I can go a long way with that stuff. Every session generates new ideas.
Over the last 4 years my freestyle skateboarding has been done mostly on big boards, and concentrated on spins, footwork, wheelies, and carving. I know a lot of people might not consider it freestyle, to which I can only reply that I don’t really care. It’s what has been interesting to me.
Tonight I was looking through my Vimeo library just to get ideas of things I want to work on. I’ve come up with so many ideas the last 4 years that it’s easy to forget what I’ve worked on. So having videos of sessions is really helpful.
This line was done in an 8.8" wide blunt-ended pops deck, Ace 55s, and 54mm Bones STF. I was just flowing around. I filmed this right at the start of the pandemic - early 2020. Looking at it now, I see a lot of great possibilities for blending other footwork and sequences into this - stuff I came up with later in the pandemic.
In this episode, I talk about how stupid it is to base skateboarding sponsorships on someone’s social media following. It’s just wrong. And it’s stupid. I talk about some other stuff like upcoming freestyle contest and what not too.
Just a note.
As I have returned to Aikido after a long pandemic absence I am feeling like myself again. The depression I think I’ve felt is receding. So I am converting this back to my “skateboarding journal.” I know many of you (2) enjoy seeing pictures of my dog and cat, but that will just be for Facebook and Instagram now.
In this episode, I say a few words about this very important Facebook group that I’m part of.
In this episode, I talk about some of the results, and the set up at the Tucson contest, and have a few comments looking forward to the world championships in Brandenburg, Germany, and the contest it’s coming up this summer in Ithaca New York, as well, as a contest is supposed to happen in Los Angeles.
Just a few quick words about stuff that going on in the freestyle skateboarding community.
In this episode, I discuss my canceled trip to the skateboard contest in Tucson, Arizona.