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...

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 ...

The importance of just rolling around, Cramond.

If Cramond was a level on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

Today was the first day I'd stepped on a skateboard in three years. No big deal maybe, but in that time I've gained a fair few pounds and am still recovering from a back injury which has basically ruled out any proper physical activity for nearly two of those years. Hopefully the latter has subsided enough to let me skate a fair bit and work on the former!

Every board I've ever owned has rolled along the coastal path at Cramond, from the first plastic "banana board" to the various fish tails, hammerheads and bottlenoses of the '80s and '90s (why were those boards named after marine wildlife?). A fair few twintails from the strange era when wheels barely covered your bearings and some more modern lollipop sticks have also graced the tarmac here. 

Silverknowes Rd. on the way down to the beach.

Getting there was easy, I took the train to Haymarket and the number 41 bus from Edinburgh's west end takes you all the way there. I got off about a mile ahead because I knew there was some cruising to be had.

Silverknowes Road has a very smooth pavement of completely uninterrupted BitMac. I don't imagine this pavement gets a great deal of foot-fall so it's in a very skateable state for it's age.Took a leisurely cruise down seeing as it's been a while!
 

Basically it's just a big path alongside a beach for as far as you can see.

So this was it, I was about to enter my twenty-sixth (non-consecutive) year as a skateboarder, this was what it was all about... But something wasn't normal, it was nothing tangible, but it was there.
A triumphant return to skating wasn't something I was anticipating and in a sense it wasn't what I got either. However, that's not a negative viewpoint.

Could I pull a switch heelflip and land it straight off the bat? No.
Could I ever? Well.... I've been close! But, did I ever give a damn? Of course not.

The pillars on the way to Cramond Island were part of a solid wall to stop small boats and protect shipping lanes.    .There was also an underwater anti-sumabrine net at one point which stretched from the island to Fife.

So that's what it was. I went out and I skated and there wasn't the pressure to perform that you have at skateparks, so what did I do? Nothing, I did nothing other than roll around. Not even the satisfying crack of plywood on tarmac that a simple ollie provides, I skated and skated and skated and it was glorious!
 
I've always found skating to be a very personal thing, I skate by myself, for myself... Because I can.
I started alone and spent a lot of my formative skateboarding years skating alone. Having never really garnered any sort of sense of competition or desire to out-trick my peers perhaps made me lazy in developing a bag of tricks because I've never really had to pull something out of that bag,

Today was about reconnecting, making friends with the board if you will... It was back to basics. It was contemplative. It was, dare I say, zen-like.

What's wrong with this picture? Took me a while to notice...

The way I see it, if you appreciate the art of rolling around, the very fabric of what holds it all together, then it's all good. You roll in and roll out of every single grind, flip and air. So if you mess it up a little in the middle, the beginning and the end, the rolling itself should more than make up for it.

I'll probably spend a lot of time just cruising this time around, pondering the metaphysics of it all, but getting gnarly is on the agenda too...