Annie's Song.

John Denver was one of my favourite musicians. He wrote a lot of great songs and seemed to be able to capture the simple joys in life so eloquently and so beautifully.

We have a few things in common. Unfortunately, one of them is that he died on my 21st birthday.
I remember it vividly, having had a very good and extremely drunken night at my joint birthday/grandparents anniversary party (their wedding anniversary is the same day as my birthday) in Aberdeen, somebody told me that John Denver had died in a plane crash.

The effect this event had on me was profound. I couldn't say that I was a huge fan at the time, but I remember this great sense of loss. This was the first person that I cared about that had died.

Perhaps it was the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas Album that my mum had, how it was always there throughout my childhood and now, in a sense it was gone. I don't know, but something was different...

The John Denver and the muppets Christmas album.

A few years later I purchased an acoustic guitar, I've always been more of an electric guitar guy, but I gave it a shot and while learning a few songs on it I decided to buy a John Denver  songbook and some of his albums.

Annie's Song was a beautiful song and quickly became one of my favourites to play, the chord progression was challenging and it sounded great. The depth of emotion in the lyrics really struck a chord with me.

Here's what I found on the internet about the song:

"Denver wrote this for his then-wife Ann Martell after their first separation and near break up of their marriage in 1974. He said that it was one of the fastest songs he ever wrote, composing it in about 10 minutes while he was riding on a ski lift in Aspen, Colorado. Denver was reflecting on all the joy he found in his marriage and his relief that they were back together. Wrote Denver: "Suddenly, I'm hypersensitive to how beautiful everything is. All of these things filled up my senses, and when I said this to myself unbidden images came one after the other. All of the pictures merged and I was left with Annie. That song was the embodiment of the love I felt at that time.""

That's all very well, but what does this have to do with skateboarding? I hear you ask...

Well, there's been an "Annie" in my life for quite some time too. Old Skool Annie.
In 2005 when I still had the shop, we decided to celebrate the second anniversary of Black Mark Skateboards by hosting an "Old Skool Jam" at Dunfermline skatepark.

It was "International Go Skateboarding Day" and we decided to do something a bit different.
We had genuine relics of skateboarding's past as prizes on the day and we hosted such events as the high jump (highest "hippy jump" over a bar) and, among other things; highest air. Using this ramp as the basis.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer size and the steep transition, very few people actually managed to even get over the ramp on the day.  I recently rediscovered this ramp at the back of my shed and I thought it was about time that she was cut down to size so that she could be used by the next generation.

Kyle's skating is really coming on and I remember how great it was the first time that I managed over a launch ramp, so I decided to give "Annie" a new lease of life and turn her into something we could both use to further our skating in the future.

Although we didn't actually film any skating on the ramp, this video is my version of a tribute to John Denver, I hope you like it...

Best foot forward. Kickflips part 1.

Relationships are something you have to work on.  They must be continually nurtured to get the most out of them. If you neglect them, they are not as satisfying as they could be.

My relationship with skateboarding has been the longest one that I have had. Its been there for me through thick and thin, in sickness and in health. At this stage it's looking likely that it'll also take death for us to part!

My latest board, Consolidated Karma Tsocheff, Indy stage 10s, NOS Santa Cruz OJ teamriders and Bones Swiss.

It's not always been an easy journey though. In the last 27 years, we've had our fallouts and our trial separations. We've even split up several times.  There have been good days and bad, but for the most part, it has been worthwhile.

One thing I've learned over the years is that the secret to a good relationship is mutual understanding and compromise. Like you would expect from a 27 year relationship, we've both grown familiar with each other over the years and learned to live with each other's eccentricities.

But most of all, we understand each other, we know why we're together and we're in it for the long haul...

My old Lakai Koston's just aren't up to the job any more.

 I noticed at the weekend that I couldn't get Caspers to work at all, foot kept slipping off the end of the tail. The problem is basically that my shoes are worn out and need to be replaced with something a bit more grippy.

Seeing as the local skater-owned shop closed down years ago (I tried my best!), I broke with tradition somewhat and bought a new pair of sneaks from a local sports shop.

There are numerous reasons why I should have perhaps went to a skateshop, but with a lot of skateshops catering more for fashionistas and sneaker collectors than skaters now, I don't have that big a problem with the idea of going for the best deal when it comes to footwear. 

I remembered back in the day we all used to wear Puma Clydes. I couldn 't find a pair, but these were pretty close, with a vulcanised rubber sole and a waffle grip I figured they would do the job.
I'm happy to say that I was right.

My new shoes. Puma SE Vulc. Effectively a skate shoe you can buy in any shop.

So with my new shoes strapped on, it was time to rekindle the spark we once had and kickflips.
It became apparent that this relationship had soured a little and there were to be no kickflips or pop-shuvs until such time as I gave my "lady" a bit more attention.

However a bit of Casper action was a nice compromise...

Out With The Old...

Today was one of those days where I was constantly reminded that, as much as I fancy myself as a professional skateboarder (I wish!), I am in fact a husband and a father and have to prioritise that before everything else.

I work shifts which usually involve a four day week. These four days can be any of the seven, but I always have at least one day off mid-week. This suits me as the kids are in school and the adults are in work which makes for empty skateparks and empty streets.

After getting up early, I had spent a good deal of time in the house because I was expecting a few important deliveries that I had ordered over the weekend. In that time it was only fair that I did my bit around the house, so four loads of washing were despatched and the mountain of dishes I'd left from the night before were taken care of along with some miscellaneous other household chores.
That was the husband part of the deal taken care of for the day...

There was a knock at the door around 11am and I received a small package containing some new bearings, followed a couple of hours afterwards by another knock and the delivery of a larger box containing a deck, some independent stage 10's and some bolts.

The skate fairy had paid me a visit, more details on this to follow in the next blog...

Having waited in the house until half past one in the afternoon, there was no chance that I was going to travel any real distance and as I had not yet received the wheels to accompany my new set-up, the best option for a skate today was to take the Vallely out.

Slight problem. After returning from Edinburgh in the car the day before, I had left said skateboard in it's boot and the vehicle in question was parked at my wife's place of work!

As I don't currently own a file I walked into town anyway to get one in order to grip my new deck.
In the meantime, I agreed to meet my wife and my son Kyle at the skatepark after he had come out of school. She went off to pick up his BMX and we rendezvoused a while later at the park.

My son Kyle attempting skateboarding for the first time.

Once Kyle and my trusty Vallely board arrived, I was anxious to get some filming done, so I took ten minutes out to get it done while Kyle rolled about on his bike. Once I had captured "the magic", I sat down and had a rest while Kyle surprised me by taking an interest in my board and trying it out for himself.

I had originally bought him a small set-up a few years back, he went through the obligatory sitting-down-and-messing-about phase, but soon lost interest. But, today was different. He tried to push himself standing up from the outset, and after a bit of coaching, he was rolling around and taking his first tentative steps to becoming a skateboarder.

He took to it very quickly and after figuring out how to roll around, he was keen to take it up a gear and hit the little street section behind the quarterpipe. I didn't get to skate again today, once he had the board, he was keeping it. "Good on him" I thought as I watched him skate.

He then surprised me by saying that he wanted a board of his own for his birthday which is coming up next month. So, after a long walk home we started looking on the internet for potential shredding machines for the wee guy.

I'm overwhelmed by all of this. It means we'll get to spend much more time together and it feels like I'm now leaving my mark on the world, a legacy of sorts.

For today's video I thought I should really take the time to get gnarly (well as gnarly as I can get anyway!), I thought I owed it to my board as it's going to be taking a back seat for a while. Frontside 50-50s and Bertlemans were the order of the day, with a bit of Kyle's first attempts at skateboarding thrown in...

Technical difficulties.

One of my favourite video parts of all time is Natas Kaupas' part in Streets On Fire.
Aside from the obvious first outing of the "Natas Spin", some wild tricks and the cool hi-tops, one thing that always sticks with me is the big ollie into axle stall that he does (0:47 in the video below).



Natas could make almost anything look good. I've got a long way to go before I get anywhere near that level, but there was no harm in trying.

Sunday was a difficult day for me in terms of logistics and technology.
First of all, I had been invited to dinner at my parents at 4pm. It wouldn't have been very polite of me to let them down, so much of the day was spent trying to figure out how to get there in time on public transport, whilst also getting to skate for a while.

This was proving difficult. The normally frequent trains from Dunfermline to Edinburgh are greatly reduced on a Sunday and as I was already on course to miss the first train. The next one would leave me with no chance of getting a skate in.

So, my options were quickly dwindling, what was I going to do? I decided that I had to skate something. Two days of being on call and stuck in the house had given me a hunger for it.

Time was of the essence and I could see any chance of skating quickly slipping out of my grasp, so I decided the best thing to do was to just head into Edinburgh and skate the first thing I found...

Beggars can't be choosers, some gnarly tarmac. But with a kerb nonetheless.

I don't know why I need to listen to music when I skate. Perhaps it is a mild agarophobia, But without my trusty MP3 player, I find it difficult to leave the house. No sooner than I had left to get the bus (which seemed to be the best option to facilitate a bit of skateboarding before dinner time), I noticed that the sound coming from my MP3 player was intermittent.

I've owned a number of sets of earphones in my time and I get through a set every few weeks. I know when there's a problem and it was quickly becoming apparent that I had a loose connection in the cable  of my earphones at the jack plug. I tried in vain to overcome the problem, but it was too far gone. No amount of cable wiggling was going to result in an uninterrupted musical experience.

Crappy spot to skate, nice scenery.

As if that wasn't enough, shortly into the hour-long bus journey, the music stopped once and for all. The battery was dead and that was that. Disappointed, I rifled through my bag to check my gear, only to find that not only was my camera almost out of batteries too, but I had left my SD at home. In my laptop!

So all there was left was my board. The last thing I could rely on.
Fortunately, I wasn't disappointed and after a quick detour for batteries and an cheap SD card, we were back in business, albeit without some inspiring music.

Once in Edinburgh, I spent a while looking for a kerb low enough and local enough that I could guarantee to get the trick and get it in time. Next time, check, check and check again before heading out...

Some graffiti, yesterday.

In the space of twenty minutes I had found two spots within spitting distance of my mum's house which fitted the bill for some Natas-inspired axle stalls and got them down after several attempts.

The beauty of having 66mm wheels is that you can pretty much skate anything and it's just as well as opportunites were certainly limited this day...

Confidence building with Captain Caveman...

Today was a funny day, I was so overwhelmed that BOTH Mike Vallely and Alan Gelfand had replied to my emails that I didn't really know what I was going to do today (interviews from both coming to a future blog, I'm so excited!).

I had a bit of a mental block over the past few days as to where I would end up going and what I'd do when I got there. In previous blogs I've always had a vague idea of what I ultimately wanted to achieve for the blog, the tricks, the town I was going to...

I suppose it was because I was back at work for a while and I'm not really in the zone.
Nevertheless, I achieved something today, so it's all good.

The gates of Pittencrieff Park (aka The Glen) in Dunfermline.

Today's weather was at best murky. Dry, but murky. I considered heading way out west to the opposite coast, but I didn't want to take the risk of spending the whole time travelling when I could end up going somewhere where the weather was even worse and then not getting to skate at all.

After finding a sheet of MDF in the garden, I considered constructing something and just staying here, but ultimately I had to get out and do something.

 I settled for Pittencrieff Park in the city where I live, Dunfermline. It's a large public area (76 acres) with wide tarmac footpaths, gardens, playparks and lots of grassy areas. Good place to go cruising, but no real discernible spots unless you're creative.

Andrew Carnegie, born in Dunfermline, was the second richest man of all time and a great philanthropist. He originally bought the park from it's private owners and gifted it to the people of Dunfermline. Nice one, Andrew.

On the way down I thought that I'd try the caveman as a trick today.

The idea felt kind of half-assed at first. A caveman looks kinda cool, granted, but there's not a great deal of skill required. At least that's what I thought!

I also quickly realised that I've not really properly concentrated on this trick since I was a teenager, so this wasn't going quite as simple as I thought it was!

Pittencrieff Museum, which features in the video.

What I thought was going to be the skateboarding blogger's equivalent of, literally, a walk in the park, turned out to be much more than I expected. Firstly it was difficult! More difficult than I remembered it being certainly.

However, this made it very challenging and worked wonders for my confidence. By the end of the short sesh I was going bigger and faster, starting to trust my abilities and realise that perhaps I'm not as bad as I think I am.

There's some definite "finesse" required in my technique, but it was improving towards the end of the afternoon. Nonetheless it was hella fun making this vid!

Enjoy...

Work. Life. Balance.

So, I had three days off work and put them to very good use travelling to a few spots and rediscovering skateboarding. These first steps have been very satisfying so far and I've achieved what I've set out to do on each occasion.

Going back to work means no skateboarding however, and I have to return to being a gas engineer until Thursday. A few rest days are always needed in both work and skateboarding though and they sit beside each other quite comfortably.

An attempt at a Saran Wrap, Cramond, 2008. Not landed on this occasion, but I could pull it off at times.

 Work is an essential part of my life and as much as noone is entirely happy at their job, it brings opportunities, either financially or otherwise. My work allows me to travel far a fair bit and with every destination I now see new possibilities, new places I could travel to on my days off. With my board. 

The trip to St. Andrews reminded me of how much fun it is to do freestyle (now widely referred to as flatland). It can't be denied that the street skating of today has it's roots firmly planted in freestyle, but at the time it seemed that it was just a quirky sideline to the "proper" skateboarding that the guys on the big boards did.

What was it about these little boards with no discernable shape and their tiny little trucks?
 

 Primo Desiderio invented the "primo slide" which involves sliding one edge of the board along the ground whilst standing on the other.


While there was undeniably a lot of skill involved in freestyle skateboarding, it was only a small minority that entertained it. I wasn't one of them. For starters, you needed a special board. The massive "pigs" and fish-tails that we rode at the the time just weren't suitable, they were far too heavy and bulky.

But, if nothing else, the main reason was that having a second board, just wasn't financially viable when it was your parents that bought them!

Nowadays I buy my own boards and I've had my eye on a freestyle deck. As I already have freestyle trucks (indy 101s)  in the shed, so it would be an easy way to get a new arrow in the quiver.

I've never owned a freestyle setup but it's probably best to go for a nu-skool complete setup first as I can already sense that the Vallely board has it's limitations. We'll see what happens on payday...

Powell Peralta Kevin Harris "Mountie" freestyle reissue deck.. WANT!

When I produced the last video I forgot to include this, an attempt at a stationary frontside 360. Was fun trying it, but it will take a lifetime to master freestyle I think...

A good time, not a long time.

 Leaving Dunfermline was a struggle in itself today. I woke up feeling a bit rough after a few beers in Edinburgh at a pub quiz with my brother Sean.

Nonetheless I'd promised myself that I'd go to St. Andrews today and was anxious to get up and out in good time to make what was so far the longest trip I've done.

Unfortunately there was a great deal of housework to be done before I left. I thought it only fair that I took care of some of the laundry and despatched a couple of loads of it. I'd somewhat shirked my household duties over the past couple of days, so i thought it best to get it done.

The bus was really straight forward, just over an hour, didn't even really notice it.

I edited the footage and cobbled together my last blog entry while the drum was spinning and cooked a hearty breakfast in preparation for some "shredding" today, what actually prevailed was a bit different.

No sooner had I zipped up my rucksack, it started chucking it down in Dunfermline. I don't mind rain, but you can't (or shouldn't) skate in it.
A colleague of mine once told me "we're here for a good time, not a long time", very wise I thought.
With this in mind I walked to the bus station anyway not knowing whether I'd actually get to skate at the other end of the journey, because, well, you never know, you might not get another chance!

There's loads of great architecture in St Andrews, not just churches!

Being a skateboarder seems to give you some kind of sixth sense when it comes to predicting the short-term weather. We know, for example, that the kerb dries quicker than the pavement and that slabs dry quicker than tarmac. I dunno if it's an acute sense for atmospheric pressure, but we also seem to know if the clouds above are actually going to produce rain or are merely threatening to do so.

The bus took me from Dunfermline (raining and wet), through Glenrothes (raining and wet), Kettlebridge, Cupar, Dairsie and Guardbridge (unsurprisingly all also: raining and wet).
On the approach to St Andrews however, my spidey sense detected that, although it wasn't raining, it was still wet and I should seek out some concrete. It seemed to work and although most of the time I was walking over soggy tarmac, I eventually found a spot of hard, smooth slabs right on the beach (you'll see it on the video) and did a bit of flatland...

There were reminders everywhere of St Andrews being the home of golf, this building reminded me of skateboarding. Looks awfully like London's south bank doesn't it?

 Was thinking about freestyle today... and ollies.

Today's vid features just the foundation of freestylye: the manual. I'll delve deeper in freestyle in future though.


I also figured I'd have to get back into ollies pretty quickly too. I don't have the leg strength I used to have hence some pretty weak ollies (apparently weak ollies are a global problem!), but I know someone who can help with that.

A footnote: it was only when i came to edit the footage I noticed I was wearing my Gil Scott-Heron t-shirt whilst the main prop in the vid was a bottle. It wasn't rocket science to make the connection and add the soundtrack. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it ...