Skateboarding Saves Me Twice

[Dowi]

seeing this thread constantly bumped made me read it constantly lately, and now i hate (love) you all because i'm looking at decks and trucks and wondering if my board is still somewhere at my parent's and how it was good when i spent all my afternoons wandering around looking for spots and stairs to improve my limited ollie abilities and how i totally not miss breaking my wrist 3 or 4 times.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Join us!

[Circuithead]

You are not alone. I restarted when I was 39. I told people at work I bought a board and that I was going to try skateboarding again. At the time, I was working in a brand-new business park outside of town, there were nice surfaces everywhere, it looked perfect.

A few days later, I turned up with my board and come 6 PM I decided to give it a go after something like 20 years off the board. I went behind the office to another building that had not yet been let. I turned around... And that's when I saw them. Dozens of people standing at the windows in the office: friends, colleagues and plenty of random joes I didn’t even know. All were watching me, some even filming on their phones. I only understood afterwards that the word had gotten out through the day, and that the message got progressively distorted and amplified… What was just an old timer trying to ride again had been transformed into something closer to Tony hawk and the whole Bones Brigade are doing a one-off demo tonight…

I had a simple albeit cool (well, I remembered it as such) repertoire of tricks back in the days, so I thought let’s just roll and try some stuff. In an ideal world, I had imagined restarting away from prying eyes, but fate had decided otherwise. After 5 pushes, I realized I had no stamina and my balance was beyond precarious. I was old and rusty and maybe this was all a very bad idea.
Let's blame the tools first: the new set up was playing against me, the bushings had not been broken in, the grip was overly efficient and felt like I was glued to the board, and the new shoes seemed fat and more suited to a trip on the moon. Truth is, my mind was telling my legs to do stuff and there was clearly some lag or communication breakdown here – my movements looked like some stoned puppeteer had control of my body and was trying to get me to skateboard: it grossly looked like it.
And there was the crowd… I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’m a musician, you are too, so you know what goes - shit happens, some gigs are terrible for various reasons and the show must go on. So, I thought fuck it, let's do this and I went for it. I gave them everything I had. I gave them no-pop ollies, botched bonelesses, rocket flips, no-complies that definitely wouldn’t comply, dozens of fucked-up landings, I sacrificed 3 bruised ribs and a sprained wrist, and I immortalized the performance with giant bloody marks on the floor as the fresh grip tape had ended up sanding my thumb to the bone - every time I was putting my hands on the ground to prevent a bail, I was adding more blood onto the light-coloured paving stones. Did people like it? I am not sure, I think they appreciated the standards. Not the standards of skateboarding, that was pitiful, but I guess they respected the level of dedication (or stupidity in equal measure)! It was a dry summer, the red swirls remained visible on the ground for days like primitive cave paintings acting as a persistent reminder of these painful new beginnings. I was quite glad the day it rained tbh!

I had to stop skateboarding for a little while after that. But I kept at it. That was 5 years ago. I still skate every week, every day if I can. I can do most of the tricks I could do in an earlier life and I enjoy learning new ones very much, even if the learning process is painful and slow, requiring a lot of stretching before and after! I can't skate all day like I used to either, 3 hours seem to be the maximum, beyond that I start to get tired and that's generally when I hurt myself.



Injuries happen regularly on gaps and rails (don't go imagining video worthy spots - more like 5 steps max) and I have turned up to many client meetings with bandages, casts, black eyes, bruises, scratches from the previous day or the WE. The worst one was when I didn’t land a back heel and got the board flying in my face instead. The edge of the tail cut my forehead from one eyebrow to the other, earning me 8 stitches just above the nose and a(nother) return trip to A&E. The bruised swollen and bloody monobrow was a great conversation starter!

Hahahah awesome and a great read!

I felt the same in front of my nephew. Yeah sure uncle Jay used to ollie pretty high, let me show you. And 5 seconds later I was brushing off tiny pebbles out of my bloody elbow but I got right back up and we kept going. I am definitely more sore now than I was in my early 20's but I know I'm actually better at it than I was back then. Every ollie isn't a hail mary and my more mature brain is better at consistent movements and isolating variables so instead of landing a ridiculous one 20% of the time, I land useful ones 90% of the time. To me this is huge. I don't need to pop 3 feet high to get on a box that is 6 inches tall.

Since all the gyms are closed where I live, I just eat the same amount of protein and veggies after skating than I did after working out. I can already feel an improvement in how long I can skate before turning into a wet noodle since June and 2 hours seems to be my max at the moment before I'm tired and start skating worse.

Your post is also hugely inspiring, so thank you for that.

seeing this thread constantly bumped made me read it constantly lately, and now i hate (love) you all because i'm looking at decks and trucks and wondering if my board is still somewhere at my parent's and how it was good when i spent all my afternoons wandering around looking for spots and stairs to improve my limited ollie abilities and how i totally not miss breaking my wrist 3 or 4 times.

The first step is acknowledgement. The second step is a nice complete from your local.

To me, ollies are still one of the most beautiful tricks in skateboarding, and one of the few ones that translate just as well in still photos than they do in videos. That's why I mostly stick to them and consider them my personal "basecamp" that I love coming back to, because I feel like they are always worth improving,

Look at Glenouille's picture. Isn't that the most beautiful fucking thing you're ever seen?

Don't tell anyone, but apart from Kick/heel/tre flips, most superfast flip tricks all look the same to me at first glance. But a controlled, straight, high ollie is always very impressive to me and looks amazing. I think the minimal movement of the board really highlights how in-control the skater is and lets you appreciate the trick even more.

[coldbrightsunlight]

I totally agree about ollies and flips and stuff. When I watch videos and the board flips all over the place beyond the basics I'm thinking "that's cool but I no longer know what's going on". Not to do it down, it's awesome and I love it. But seeing people do simple stuff perfectly with a lot of style....

[Circuithead]

I totally agree about ollies and flips and stuff. When I watch videos and the board flips all over the place beyond the basics I'm thinking "that's cool but I no longer know what's going on". Not to do it down, it's awesome and I love it. But seeing people do simple stuff perfectly with a lot of style....

Exactly, I'm not knocking super tech stuff at all, because I'll gladly watch it all and I completely get how people will debate over hospital flips and casper flips, hell I'll get into heated debates over floor mat texture between different years of the same car, but I'd need a slo-mo of every trick to really get it, while someone ollieing over a damn fence doesn't need an explanation, it's instantly recognizable as "fucking insane."

[Dowi]

That's certainly a good advice. I have never been a kickflip guy (mostly because it took me ages to make it, and even then it was 1 in a thousend tentatives) but man i could jump a lot of stairs. My knees still remember it very well.
Totally agree on the i-can't-see-what-flip-it-is thing: i'm impressed by those tricks but i'd rather watch someone jumping up/down the weirdest spots.

Anyway i just build a Lego Duplo deck for my daughter and spent the night trying to teach her how to stand

[coldbrightsunlight]

wooooo rad, getting the next generation involved

[Dowi]

I am ready to spend my evenings medicating excoriations.
Ps.i've found my old board, in terrible condition, but it still exists

[coldbrightsunlight]

woooo!

Think I made a good breakthrough with my ollie technique last night. I think I'm getting a bit of what you were saying Circuithead, while I'm still not as good as I used to be I feel like I have much more awareness of my movements for learning and practicing.

[Dowi]

We should found the Ollie club.
Slogan: Only Ollies for Allies

[coldbrightsunlight]

I definitely still feel a bit like that guy

[coldbrightsunlight]

Anyone know about what's good in shoes these days?

I have been skating in an old pair of vans and I love the feel but I've worn a hole through the upper where I ollie and scratched the hell out of my foot already within a week (ow). I want relatively minimalist shoes, not the insane giant things of yore, but that are still tough enough to really take a beating.

[Circuithead]

I used to skate in Puma Suedes and Gazelles and Campus. I'm glad to report that simple nice old school two tone sneakers are huge in skate right now and skate shops are packed with them. As far as durability they probably aren't the best though. Curious to see what others will recommend.

Been raining for a week straight here. No skato bueno.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Still skating in the Vans, gonna get round to buying some new ones as I keep wearing through socks.

Had a good session last night. Still only learning tricks I used to be able to do but I'm learning them a bit more systematically in different stances and stuff. Hit a couple of nollie 180s and half cabs yesterday which is a fun trick I could not do when I used to skate. And working on some stuff I've never done before, managed about 270 ollie on flat ground haha. Just need the confidence to throw myself round properly and I think I could get a 360 down pretty soon.

I desperately need a better spot to skate though Need to go hunt around the local area for evening spots, and I might go to a park at the weekend.

[Dowi]

360 Ollie on flat ground is pretty badass, you must be spinning faaaaaast. Never managed to go over FS 180 and BS 180