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 ...

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...

Mad Tech, the ledge and the art of the no-comply.

Yesterday after taking in a bit of soul-searching at Cramond I couldn't resist returning to the spiritual home of Edinburgh's street skating scene. Bristo Square.

Bristo Square at Edinburgh University.

 I had the place to myself when I arrived, no other skaters were there, which produced mixed emotions. But with the amazing Edinburgh skatepark at Saughton having been open for some time now, I can see why.

I've found skateboarding, like economics, to be cyclical. Small diameter wheels gave way to big wheels in the days when everyone wanted to be like vert heroes Christian Hosoi or Gator; or closer to home, Sean Goff and Pete Dossett (what I wouldn't do for a Deathbox teapot t-shirt).



In the early to mid '90s  big wheels went back to being small with some skaters even using lathes to cut down their already microscopic urethane.

Sanding down already small 45mm wheels until they only just covered the bearings and no more seemed crazy to me. I'd be lucky if I got a new set once a year, so I needed plenty of urethane considering how much i was skating at the time. They needed to last.

Street skating got more and more popular thanks in no small part to this video part which is still one of my all time favourites:



Consumerism is something I'm struggling with just now, noone needs reminding of the current state of the global economy. With utility bills and even food prices spiralling upwards, more and more in the UK we've become a nation of scrimpers and savers. Seperating what you need from what you want is difficult when we're bombarded with marketing at every opportunity.

Capitalism exists in skateboarding as much as it does in the wider marketplace. Everyone is told they need a brushed aluminimum gadget; only to find that they then need the new version a year later, even though their current gadget is far from being obsolete! Parallels could be drawn to skate products: gimicky shoes and decks (remember boneite?!) come to mind.

Capitalism isn't wholly bad though, unsurprisingly if you know my history in the business, I admire the skater-owned shop ethos. Supporting skateboarding at a grass-roots level first and foremost. They make a buck or two out of it, sure, but it's never going to make them rich.
 
I find it difficult to skate, or indeed do almost anything outside when I'm on my own, without background music. Perhaps it's paranoia, slight agarophobia maybe. Maybe I just like listening to music. From portable tape players to CD to minidisc and now mp3 players/PMPs, I've owned a lot of pocket-sized audio hardware over the years.

Sansa Clip Zip, a wonderful piece of technology. Must stop smoking!

Having recently lost an iPod classic to the washing machine (all attempts at repair failed) I denounced Apple and purchased the Sansa Clip Zip, it's incredible for the price and the size.

As technology gets smaller so too does the world, I'm travelling slightly further tomorrow and I'll be rocking some good tunes on the journey and during thanks to this marvellous device.

When it came to concluding yesterday's skating, after attempting a fair few rolling FS 180 no complies and failing miserably,  I briefly returned to a favourite trick of mine, a FS no-comply to tail on the smallest ledge. It's so simple, but yet so satisfying. The no-comply has it all, the sounds of the initial pop of the tail, the scrape of the wheels and the resulting slap of the tail on the ledge are almost instantaneous but distinctly separate. I love the no-comply and I'm anxious to try it on transitions in the future.

I got talking to a fellow skater named Joe who rolled up with his mate just before I left the square because I was just too tired to continue any longer. A few friendly words were exchanged along with a handshake and the deal was sealed...

I am a skateboarder.

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...