Bruising, cruising, drilling, spilling

The Past
The night before last, I went out in search of a stand-up show and abandoned it to the exploration over various curbs and cool banks within a mile of my place. Tried to skate this wall. Got up it. No Comply a bit. Was still warming up, and wasn’t hitting the speed and commitment to get up and turn.
TST (total skate time) 1.29: appox 2.5 hours.

Scouted a great curb from weeks ago, but security guard was there.

Then I saw this thing.

And after a parked cop deterred me from the lit DMV, I found the coolest Hollywood intersection on Waring and Seward. Quiet, lit well enough, no residences, cool brick sidewalks, old fashioned fire hydrant and lamp post. Felt like the set of the old Billy Jean video by Michael Jackson. Here I skated for about an hour, mostly trying Varial Flips, didn’t land any, but was working on the mechanics of it mostly, getting it to land right.

Above is a pic of the full moon at that intersection.
Toward the end of this fun exploratory, but not thrashing night, my legs, “woke up” and had that strong, flexible, “let’s do this” feeling that is ever present in the youth. I’m good, but on some days I have to skate an hour before I feel warmed up.
Tried one 360 Ollie, not expecting to have board control, but expect to go like 200 degrees and then the board careens away. Instead it was a very high and in control 180, with my foot landing on tail perfectly, like a stall on a curb. Not expecting this control I jammed the inside of my left knee on the nose.

The Present
I started this post yesterday. After an eight hour work day, I skated for about 45 min in library lot, and then 45 min home.

Total Skate Time: 90 min.

Stationary kickflip practice: 10 of 25. 40% make rate. Got some very high ones. I was 7 for 8 to begin, and then either overthought it, early kicked it or almost landed the majority of the rest. Learning curve, cuz now I’m getting it higher and the spin timing is changing.
Rolling Popshovit practice: 16 of 25. 64% make rate. Got some very high nice ones.
Then I tried 10 Varial Flips. 7 of them had the board landing right with me close to position, but I didn’t land any.

Future
Clean up and improve the above fundamentals while continuing to practice Varial Flips.
Eventually, 360 pop shovits, rolling kickflips and then tre flips.

New Trick: Landed Varial Flips Today!

Today:  After a couple days of rain and work, I got away to the DMV by my apartment. Closed. There’s tons of curbs on different levels, stairs, a long embankment, painted curbs with real coping, and nice flat. I also love it because there are no super close residences to complain.

Skated for about 90 minutes, with no expectations, just to warm up, have fun. Almost didn’t do drills.
And then I had a landmark breakthrough.Varial flips landed!
Then I turned on the camera and filmed a couple makes. I’m posting it as stills.
Stationary kickflip practice: 25 attempts, 13 makes. Make rate: 52%.

Rolling Varial flip practice: I attempted over 100, over the course of my session. Not counting, just observing dynamics through experimentation. I landed 3! Can’t say the make rate, but it was probably 2%.

Am super stoked after landing those. Then I also had fun trying to land kickflips off the sidewalk, didn’t land any, but I landed a nice popshovit off it, as well as high Ollie grab. Super fun. Unexpected.

And then there is this one where I slapped it onto the curb.

And then I also grabbed these stills from trying stuff off the curb, as a 39 year old 80s skater relearning and even expanding in new directions.

I had full pads on during most of this simple skating, and just forgot about it. Feels lame when I remember, but fuck it, this is for me. All the same I take them off when I grab video.
Tomorrow.
It’ll be Sunday, but it’ll be a trick just to get away with my board, between entertainment industry meetings and home life in the evening, and maybe a show also. If I stop to skate for an hour before the show, I’ll do maybe 50 kf attempts, and then not even count Varial flip attempts, just play with it for 25 min.

Today didn’t exist

Today disappeared. Slept a full 8, took time to do some show business, went to work, was busy during my breaks, it was raining and dark and late when I got out of work. Too bad.
Good to give the injuries a rest anyway. Something pulled kickflipping.

Practicing alone, Library.

Stationary kickflip practice.
With only 10 minute break, no warm up during work, did the first 25. Landed 9.
After work, from 8:30 till 9:30 I skated alone in Library again, the perfect place not to be bothered. Did another 25, landing 18 (72%). By the end, I did 100, and landed 48 total. 48% make rate.

Total skate time for day: 2.5 hours, includes commute

Reflecting: 100 kf practices plus 3 miles skate home, am quite sore.

Next up: Tomorrow just 50 stationary kfs for sure. Plus maybe rolling pop shove its, keep it strong.

Also, while rolling I goofed around with about 20 varial flip, or less. Didn’t land any, but was very surprised that almost half had the board land near where I wanted.

Practice: MLK at DMV

Today I got away for a little over an hour. Had fun. Was a beautiful Los Angeles morning. MLK day, so another day where the DMV was closed. All to myself. Played around. Did a bunch of high ollies off the curb, practiced grabbing them (stalefish style?) with my back hand. Tried about 15 flips or varials off the curb, didn’t land any. Those days of practice to follow. Feels awesome.

Practiced 50 stationary kickflips. Landed 27. 54% success rate.

Also, having trouble uploading video to wordpress. What a hassle. 

Warming up with a few board slides

There is a very busy parking lot for a two tiered plaza in Koreatown, and it has the sweetest long yellow “Natas curb”.
I was already running late to work when I saw a very rare opportunity to play on the curb. Months go by without this much space to grind. Gotta get there early in the morning.
I was super sore from hours of skating last week mostly kickflip practice and long commute, and I wasn’t warmed up. But I had fun for about 10 minutes before a car parked there.
Then I went proceeded to become another hour late for work. I went to the closed Koreatown library parking lot and kept skating. My job is flexible sometimes. I don’t work I don’t earn, but the hookie was a good time. I have to do it or otherwise life goes by.

A little fun at the DMV

Sunday. The DMV is closed, and it is near my apartment. It’s got some good curbs, steps nd a long skateable embankment. I went mostly for the flat concrete slabs in the shade where I won’t be bothered.
Feeling sore in general, tight, and with acute pain in right hip, I warmed up slowly with 100 frontside 180 no-comply tail or truck stalls. Gotta be a real name out there. Landed 23 of 100. I wrote full pads and looked like a dork. I usually don’t wear them all, but said screw it, I felt off enough to fall way more. That was  23% make rate. Would’ve higher without pads, but I did bang my knees a ton.
50 stationary kickflips, and at 25 had landed 6. Wasn’t going high enough, or wasn’t spinning clean enough. Took pads off, filmed a few. Then the last 25 I focused more on just the back truck, cuz really that’s my focus, get it up. I got many in a row. Decided to stop at 50, take it easier on the body. Landed 23 of 50, for a make rate of 46%.

Here’s where I start, what do I call these tricks?!

Is this a no-comply wall ride? Or a No-comply wallie? Through this whole entire blog I’ll mostly be putting together Frankenstein names for everything I do. I’m just saying, it isn’t like I have any friends that are also still skating. I met a 30 year old dude, he likes to skate hard, but I never let him know when I’m going skating. I’d rather skate alone, mostly on flat-ground right now as I relearn. I’m only skating for myself anyway. Ironic I’m even sharing the journey here.

Each day I try to do a little bit. Like I’ll count 25 to 100 attempts of a trick that is a building block for a goal. I was jotting it down, along with observations about the mechanics and the idiocy of what I’m doing. I was doing this to help me learn and inspire progress and ultimately, more fun. Since I was jotting it down anyway, and I was going to start just emailing the info to myself, I decided just to use a wordpress app and blog it.

Being such an ancient skater, I feel that a tre flip is just the coolest end-all awesome accomplishment, and I’ll be on top of the world when I accomplish it. Maybe I’ll end the journal there. (A tre flip being a kick-flip while the board spins 360 under your feet horizontally as well). Inevitably, my acute resurgence of love of skating will fade. I’ll stop skating, and stop blogging. Bound to happen. Just know that deep inside though, it’ll always be with me. A skater is who I am, regardless the age. Even when I didn’t skate over the previous 20 years, it was who I am.

I started just getting ollies down again. Then 180 ollies. Then I started practicing pop-shovits. I thought they were called 180 Ollie  shov-its, but a google search result said not to call it that. At first I could only land zero. Then after a week I was up to 7%. Then I tore my ligaments real bad in my right wrist. Spent 4 months in a brace and splint. Still skated though. Now it is about 4 months later. Right now I land about 65% of pop-shovits, but I’m doing them nice and high, while moving. This is to help lead toward a major milestone: varial flips. (I figure it is half-way to the tre flip, as it is a kickflip with a 180 spin instead of 360).

Here is where else am I at, to update you on my skate journal. Of course I need to relearn how to kick flip. I’ve been practicing it for about 2 weeks now, steadily. Well, a month or more ago I started practicing, but I slam my back foot down way too hard way too often – or I get all set to do the trick, but I move into the flip before snapping the board. In both cases all the force transfers into my right hip instead of into the board and pavement. So I really hurt my hip. Something I’d not have felt, or felt only briefly 20 years ago. That has slowed down the learning. Yesterday and today (so far) I haven’t even practiced kickflips, due to this same strain. In general though, they are coming along nicely, with more and more high flips with perfect spin and no strain. The day before yesterday I landed 24 of 50 (48%), and the day before that I landed 64 of 100! (64%). However, those are all stationary kickflips. My moving percentage rate will be much lower when I start drilling that.

So currently I’m putting together the ollie and the pop-shovit. Then I’ll move on to the varial shovit. At the same time I’ll work on the moving kickflip and then the moving varial pop-shovit. Then I’ll practice the 360 pop-shovit before trying the tre flip. Am I naming these right?

And guess what kids? Once I start practicing the moving 360 stuff, I’ll be wearing pads. I know! How dorky! But damn, it isn’t worth the grief I’ll get from my wife if I show up with another $2,000 hospital bill for skating in my late 30s.

But since I am an ancient skater, my fun, light fallback and warm up are always different types of no-complies. Like the photo. Up the wall with the no-comply, force the board into the air, jump up and land on it. As though the corner of the wall is a vert quarter pipe. Thank you Neil Blender.