After a full decade of neglect and misfortune, I was able to reunite and skate with one of my two best skate friends from childhood. His name is Gary and he suffered from a traumatic head injury several years back. This injury combined with my exodus from the area (in Idaho) kept us from hanging out or skating for nearly an entire decade. So with all that back story, I can honestly say that the reunion was quite inspiring.
The best part about the entire reunion was not just being able to reconnect with an old friend, but seeing someone who has struggled with a major head injury to take the risky, yet courageous step toward getting back on four wheels and enjoying his beloved hobby.
I was really taken back by just how impressive Gary was on a board. Given the situation, I didn't realize how much of his balance and agility he was able to rekindle. I made a quick video of some of the tricks he was able to execute in the few hours we skated.
Even with all the exciting skate trips that I was able to take this year to places like Kona and SPOT, this was undoubtedly the highlight of the year for me. While leaving the park, I felt not only nostalgic for the great experiences that I have had with Gary in the past, but with a sense of inspiration for the resilient human character embodied by my friend.
Lately I have found myself wanting to try some new tricks that I used to think too difficult or risky to try. In particular, after seeing how smooth smith grinds look, I decided it is time for me to step it up and learn them. The process has been slow and I still haven't quite got them yet, but I am slowly getting closer. One of my biggest setbacks was the rails situation. I don't like grinding rails very much. I used to 50-50 them, but ever since one really crazy incident (dislocated my traffic finger), just the sound of metal trucks on a metal rail kind of freaks me out. Ironically, I went back and 50-50'ed the rail that I got hurt on the next day wearing my stylish finger splint. Anyhow, what I really wanted was a box to try to learn smith's on, that way the falls are a bit more predictable and controlled. Since Tallahassee doesn't have any low or flat boxes to learn tricks on, I was pleased to skate my hometown skate park which does. It was also while I was there that I realized there were many box tricks that I have never filmed. I took the time to make a short video of these.
To my own surprise, I was able to pull off a few pseudo Smith grinds on the box. They certainly aren't pretty, but I am starting to get the motion and feel for the trick. I was super happy about this.
Now that I'm back in Tallahassee, I knew I just needed to conquer the fear of rails, so that I can start trying the Smith on the one here. After over a month of looking and rolling up to the rail without popping, I finally committed to 5050'ing it. It seems such a small step, but I am finally starting to get more comfortable with grinds on it. The door is now open, so the next step is obviously the smith. Hopefully, I will have more to report back on this soon. Nevertheless, I am super happy about the progression, even if it is at a snails pace.
This video is pretty much the same run that I posted a while back but with a couple more tricks. I am pretty happy with this run. It's pretty much impossible to see since I filmed it by setting my camera on a post in the parking lot. But it is just a half cab boardslide on the flatbar (fakie boardslide?, I'm never sure what its called), backside boardslide on the yellow rail, frontside boardslide on the flatbar, and finally a 50-50 on the bench. Four tricks gets me pretty winded, so it was nice that it didn't take me too long to get it done.
My ankle is finally starting to become bearable to skate on again. It was a long 38 days to have to wait and I am glad it is finally over. During the last month or so, all I could really think about was how stupid of a fall it was that messed my ankle up to begin with. I blogged about it here already. Well, fortunately, I was able to get back out to the park and start getting back to business. It felt very nice to be able to ride again with not much pain. There are of course some tricks that I have avoided, particularly anything like 50-50s or 5-0s where if I miss my ankle will inevitably overstretch. Other wise though things have been great.
Here is a short compilation that I made. It was really nice to get back into transition. Learning some lip tricks was certainly one of the best investments I've made in skating, since they can be done with relative ease and low risk in times like such.
Even with all this fun to be had though, the stupid rail that messed me up to begin with was what I really wanted to get back to. So finally I dedicated a couple of quiet weekend hours to getting the rail back and taking some vengeance on it for its transgressions. Well, I'm sad to report that it got the best of me. I didn't re-injure anything fortunately, but I soon learned that I need more rail. Then after computing the fun/risk/accomplishment assessment, I decided to hang it up and focus on something else (yet to be determined.) I basically decided that I wasn't going to have the ninja skills necessary to get on and off this rail in the amount of time required. Further, it wasn't fun to skate anymore, I was putting my ankles at risk again since I wasn't pulling back out in time to land, and even if I did land the rail it really isn't impressive at all. So yeah, I didn't get my vengeance, but I'd like to think that I still have my dignity. I'm now on the hunt for another rail. I've got a few in mind, so I will just have to see how things play out.
Really at the end of the day, it is just really nice to be back. Even if I had to admit defeat.
Go Skate Day was a bust this year in comparison to my last two spent in Atlanta. Tallahassee has a nice skatepark and everything, but between my bum ankle and the rain it was a bit anticlimactic this year. Now that I've gotten all that negativity out to the way, here were some of the highlights.
There were lots of 360 flips over the cones.
This is a nice shot of Garbin making an attempt while another guy models.
Here are a couple of backside 180 kickflips (maybe)
And this was definitely the highlight of the day to see this kid back lip the rail. Very impressive.
So, yeah I would say overall the day was not a loss. Besides, what better Go Skate Day to get rained out than one where I was out of commission anyway?
Well, injuries always amaze me. On the one hand, you can bail from a 15 stair, land on your head, and after sustaining a slight concussion be able to skate in a day or two. On the other hand, you can barely twist a joint and be out for weeks or even months. Back in December, fresh out of school and having just finished a long semester, I rolled my left ankle only to find myself limping around for a few weeks and unable to seriously skate for about 2 months. I still have to be careful on it because it remains weakened from the roll. It was a stupid fall, I was on a tail stall and tried to bail. My left foot landed halfway on my board, just enough to roll my ankle over and cause an enormous amount of pain.
This is what it looked like within a few days.
You can see the swelling here.
The bruising set in a couple of days later
It even bruised in weird places, like between my toes.
Well, after barely getting over the last injury, I unsuspectingly rolled my right ankle this week. Once again, street skating is to blame. Something about that grippy concrete I guess. I went out to my new favorite street spot in Tallahassee and worked myself up to trying the little rail again. Well, I made a lot of progress in one sense, first off I came prepared with a broom for clean up this time. It's funny how a community can neglect such a nice place for so long, only to care about it when people start using it for something. I tend to think this is the case with both skateboarding and graffiti. Many of these places go unnoticed for years. Then when someone starts getting creative with them, people instantly start to concern themselves with the location. In any case, even though I know several people who have gotten trespassing at this location, I decided to risk it and take the time to sweep up all the leaves and trash left at this gem of a spot. Once I was finished I decided to try the rail. Well, right when I started to get close to landing a back board on it, I came off the rail just the wrong way and landed on my right foot toe, flipping my ankle forward just long enough to sprain it.
Here is the video.
Ironically, the injury hurt much more and looks much worse than the one in December. Nevertheless, it seems to be healing much quicker. After only a few days, I can already walk on it much better than the last time.
Here are some pics, brace yourself.
This one was taken literally within two minutes of the twist. My ankle has never swollen so quickly. It was really strange.
Here are some more of the more recent bruising that resulted from the injury.
So yeah, as much as I hate to admit it, It looks like I will be on haitus for the next several weeks if not longer, but that is the price you pay I suppose, and as far as my calculations go, it still seems worth it.
When kids at the park ask me what I am trying to learn, I always half joke that I am not trying to learn anything, I am just working on keeping old tricks. Sadly, this has more truthful than humorous. Truth be told, I say good riddance to some of my old tricks. For example, the heelflip. I could pop a pretty decent heelflip a few years back, but I don't even miss them. I mean, if you have to exhale when you pop, then that is too much effort in my book. Besides, I definitely don't miss all the primos that come along with flip tricks. Don't get me wrong, I love watching people do 360 flips Yeah, that's right I don't call them 3flips or tre-flips, that's the grumpy old guy in me who doesn't want to see skateboarding make the irredeemable turn into rollerblading lingo. The last thing I want to hear when I see someone pop their board onto a rail is "wow, that was a nice 'ice cream sandwich with a dragon harp out.'" I guess I'm just traditional or something. That tre-flip jargon is a slippery slope straight to fishbrains though.
Nevertheless, this week I actually pushed myself to work on a new trick. After declaring the pool/bowl at the park here dead on arrival, I have been reconsidering its vitality lately. Although I still find myself getting lost in "pocket of despair" as I like to call it, I am starting to find some lines in it.
That has also made me realize that the deep end is perfect for skating like a vert ramp since its so open. So I've started working on early grabs and ollies in the transition. To my surprise, early grabs aren't that bad. Even more impressive, I am finally starting to get comfortable enough in the transition to pop small ollie to fakies.
On a side note, this kid knocked himself out cold for several minutes. He also chipped one of his bicuspids.
I broke my skateboard trying to ollie over the stolen brown bench.
In some Karma like way, my new board and I broke the bench the next time I skated it.
My new Ishod board is awesome, super mellow and a way to show support for one of my favorite young skaters.
There is no real reason for the title other than that I have been listening to lost of Wu Tang lately. The other thing I've been doing a lot of lately is ollieing. Wow, that is a word that doesn't conjugate well. So yeah, as part of my summer project, I have been trying to get my ollie back up to par. I started out with the traditional way of doing things. In other words, I just picked random things from around my house and tried to ollie over them first. It worked out ok until the milk basket took me out a couple of good times. The two things that hold back my ollie are distance and getting my back truck up. The two are also related of course. So after I got the milk basket, I decided I wanted to try something a bit more safe and comfortable. So, after googling around a bit I decided to make a basic ollie bar. I costs less than 15 bucks and it seems to work quite well. When I bonk it, the bar just falls down so that I don't end up having to run out or trip over something (like a plastic slippery milk crate). So with the bar, I but in screws so that it could reach up to 20 inches. To my own surprise, I was able to get a few ollies over it. I'm still working on consistency, but overall I think I've made some great progress.
So lately I've been trying to get back in to street skating and it has not been an easy task. After spending most of my time at parks over the last several years, I have forgotten a lot of the pros and cons. These came back to my memory pretty quickly though. The cons came first. To begin with, I forgot how paranoid you have to be when you are starting to feel a spot out. The first time you skate somewhere you have no clue how vigilantly it will be patrolled or enforced, so its really hard not to feel like somebody is watching you. The place I went to had a lot of no trespassing signs and so it felt like the message was clear, if you get caught here it is better to run away. Then comes the calm of when you realize that either no one cares or there is simply no one around to notice. Once that settles in, you loose a bit of the adrenaline though. The second negative I had forgotten about was how much real concrete hurts. Sure, I am used to falling at parks, but regular concrete just cheese shreds your skin. I've apparently gotten soft, because I'm used to getting more of a carpet burn than road rash these days. So finally, I decided to just try to ollie this little four stair. Well, that didn't turn out to well, but I did eventually get a small little ollie off of it.
After finally getting eaten up on a stupid ollie, I tried to hit the little rail but that didn't work out either.
Nice and Juicy
So yeah, after bonking the rail like a million times it became pretty clear that I need to work on my flatland ollie. It's rough, I can barely ollie up on a bench now. It made me miss the days when I could get up on picnic tables without too much trouble. So yeah, I really miss me ole ollie (as shown below.)
So that is my new goal for the year, to be able to get my ollie to at least a respectable height again.
In March:
I was able to get down to the Skatepark of Tampa. This is the first time I have been there since the late 1990s. They celebrated 20 years this year, so it was cool to see all the changes and expansions since last time over ten years ago.
This is new since my last visit. It's in an adjacent warehouse and is for beginners. I think it was added around 2000.
Got to sport my new board and shirt.
The Masonite here is super smooth.
Classic guitar-board pose.
Jamie always takes good pics.
The park set up for the upcoming Tampa Pro a couple of weeks later.
A nice throwback to the Souls of Mischief song/album. Apparently, Lance Mountain painted some of these "doughboys."
Picked up a doughboy shirt/hat. Happy 20 Spot!
The infamous moat, used for moat races and wrecked cars.
Had to make the trip complete by visiting the bar/grill run by the Spot. The food was amazing.
The Tampa Pro was just a week or two after my visit.
In February:
I turned 30 and wanted to hit a handrail since it was a goal of mine for a while. Here is the proof if you don't believe me. I mentioned it in my first post for the blog. So I went to Hazard in Atlanta and hit my favorite rail (RIP, it was just replaced with a Hubba), but not before warming up in Griffin on twigs. It was an awesome birthday. I bought a new board and one of the Real Skateboards local shirts. It was pretty cool because the video has some of GSU in it.
My homie Doug getting into a nice 5-0 on the new coping.
This is definitely the best picture of the day. Again, props to Jamie for this one.
Ok, so it's been a while again. This blatant neglect of my blog made much more sense when I lived in GA because there was a season for skating. Since moving to FL though, I have been able to skate all year basically, not to mention having an awesome park here in Tallyho. So here is my way of making amends, here a massive update.
In January:
I went to Kona in Jacksonville, the oldest running skatepark in the US.
The pool was very nice. Peanut shaped, nice blue tile, and much smaller than the one in Atlanta I learned on.
Jamie was awesome and not only came to Kona with me, but took this awesome picture.
Talking to the young bloods is always nice. I gave this kid props for trying the a-frame rail, I wouldn't do it.
This is the spot used for the ender in the new Girl video (Pretty Sweet) trailer.
Again, Jamie was a trooper.
This is definitely my favorite picture. I'm still not sure how Jamie got my head perfectly inside the A like that.
Bert sliding the Kona was almost as fun as the snake run.
The famous snake run. This was my first time skating a snake run and the 2 and a half hour trip would have been worth it even if this were the only thing there.
Kona sign.
The older part of the park. This concrete is pretty rough and nasty.
1979! This is definitely the only park I have skated that is older than me.
