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...

Over the hill?

I think the common perception is skateboarding is a young man's game, I'm constantly aware that people may be thinking to theirself, "he's too old to be doing that". Other's might think "that guy's having a mid-life crisis"!

Dunfermline skatepark

Middle age is a concept I've never really understood, I mean, Kurt Cobain was twenty seven when he died, making him middle aged at thirteen and a half. If I'm already eight years older than he was at the end of his life, where do we go from here?

Is it all downhill?

Language!

Well, nowadays it is. I moved to the north of Dunfermline a few months back and everything is literally down the hill from there. Before I moved I had a short walk to the local skatepark through the train station, and over the hill. Nowadays, it's a longer walk down the hill. A fair bit of skating can be achieved on the way to speed up the journey, but it's a long way back up the hill afterwards, especially if you're knackered!

Whay can't we all just get along?

 My general fitness is not great just now, I'm (a little) overweight and suffer from something called Sacroilliac Joint Dysfunction.  The two SI joints are located at the base of your spine where the pelvis connects onto it at either side. It isn't supposed to move much and is held in place tightly by ligaments. Unfortunately over time these ligaments can be torn through heavy lifting or general wear and tear. In this case, the ligaments can't hold the joint in place as tightly as it should be and the joint moves more than it should. This movement cause the joint to get irritated and inflamed and the resulting pain is excruciating.

Anatomy lessons.

I seem to be over the worst of it and have attended numerous physio sessions to try and improve the symptoms. Thankfully, anti-inflammatories seem to be controlling it now while the muscles around the joint are strengthening to give it extra support. I'm thinking that stopping skating and losing a lot of strength in my legs/glutes/abs as a result hasn't helped. Maybe that will improve the more I skate?


Having said that, I went to the local skatepark yesterday with my eight year old son, Kyle.
I bought him a new helmet, as his old Power Rangers one doesn't fit the image he was wanting to portray nowadays, and off we went. It's good to be able to pass on some sort of legacy and although he's not much into skateboarding, he brought his BMX and enjoyed riding around the park.

My son Kyle.

A couple of kids from his school appeared, so I just let him play with them get on with it while I got a bit of a skate in. I work a lot and I don't get as much time to spend with Kyle as I would like and when I do I'm often too tired after a ten hour shift to do anything physical. The back thing put a lot of activities on hiatus anyway, But I think I should try harder.

At one point I heard one of his little buddies say "you've got a cool dad". This struck a chord with me and I felt very proud. I hope some of this new found enthusiasm for skating might allow me to develop my fitness so I can spend more time doing things like this wth him so I can consider his friend's words to be true.

Did some more work on no-complies today, nailed a couple on a wee ledge and on the small transititon. I hung on long enough to ride out one FS 50-50 grind  on the small transition, but it took several attempts. Getting there slowly but surely...