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.
