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...

Into the unknown.

This is my first ever blog post and I'm going to make it short and sweet... tomorrow I return to skateboarding for the first time in around 3 years and I cannot wait! I'm experiencing equal measures of nervousness and  excitement.

I have a couple of locations in mind, but not going to commit to any, just going to see where destiny (and public transport) takes me....

I've only got one arrow left in the quiver at the moment, but it's a good one, tomorrow's ride of choice is a Powell Mike Vallely "Elephant" (a reissue of course, I'm not loaded!).
This bad boy is loaded with original Tracker Aggros, OG Bullet 66's and Bones Reds.

I'll also be trying out my new toy the Sandisk Sansa Clip Zip, the replacement for my iPod classic which unfortunately went through the washing machine. From what I've read, it's the best bang-for-buck player out there, there's one way to find out! It's getting filled up with songs in preparation as we speak.

Expect a full report tomorrow :)