Total unplanned flashback. As a kid, long before Sour Patch Kids were sold in packages (they were only penny candy back then), I used to buy about 100 sour patch kids for each skate session. Daily, that is. As an adult I rarely have processed sugar, so it was cool to realize I reenacted my old Sour Patch skate habit on the night of this photo. The other bag contains wax.
This last week or so
Totally sucked. In my previous post I mentioned I got to skate 4 or 5 times that week. But since then I only got to skate once over the course of about 10 days. Everything that got in the way was good (work, stand-up comedy, writing projects, marriage, fucking eating, being of service) but taken as a whole I seriously have the inclination to just run away. Claustrophobia!
The actual session
The one skate oasis in the middle of the desert of adult life went like this: it was awesome. My skate buddy brought out another dude (we’re all adults here), and that dude was an awesome skater and super not pretentious. So the fun vibe was secured.
We skated for about 2 hours. Just grinding, trying new things, playing with manuals and flip tricks.
During that session I began playing with a few things I’d like to learn, and made a little progress. I’m adding these things to the below partial list of “loose ends and new beginnings.”
In the middle of my friggin’ frustrating skate drought, I found myself running errands at the Pavilions parking lot at Melrose and Vine. I used to live right by here, and would practice manuals and also landed some of my first varial flips here. Smoothest fastest blacktop around. Great night skating spot. No bust.
Loose ends
There’s tons of tricks I’ve landed just a few times and then sort of moved on without really getting into my standard repertoire. Part of my frustration with limited skate time is just never having the time to really play with these. These need work. And by work I mean, steady focused play.
- Fakie 180 backside heelflip (halfcab heelflip)
- 180 Frontside kickflip (frontside flip)
- Backside tailslide
- Frontside tailslide
- varial flip to 50-50/axel stall (never did the grind, just the stall)
- Backside flip to 50-50
- 5-0 grind
- 270 no comply to lip slide
- Fakie backside flip to board slide
- No comply to lip slide
- 360 ollies (frontside, fakie and rolling straight)
- Kickflips for height and distance
- Backside flip to tail
New Beginnings
The other night – and in other recent sessions – I started to learn a few brand new things, and I can’t wait to keep going.
- Kickflip to frontside 50-50 (I tried this for about an hour accumulatively the other night. Came very close.
- Manual to 180 no comply out
- 5-0 grind
- Frontside popshov to late flip (one of my buddies says it’s backside, bt the other agrees with me that it is frontside).
- Fakie backside no comply big spin
On top of all that
There are lots of other things that don’t make it to either list, which are still only dreams I’ve yet to begin. These all exist on the wish list of tricks page. While I just updated that page, there’s more to add to it. I’d now like to do a fakie 270 big spin to tail slide. I’d love to learn an ollie impossible, and a hardflip, and a 360 backside ollie, and a fakie tre flip.
What am I getting at with this inventory of desires?
I’m overly excited to skate and play and learn, but I’m writing all of these lists now, at a time when time is tight, as a way to actually bitch about it. If unfulfilled desire leads to suffering, I am one hell of a suffering dude right now!
On the other hand, looking back to last summer, I was burnt out from pushing myself to learn, and felt like skating was becoming yet another thing I do militantly. I was like, “Fucking tre flips!” I was also very busy, but even during down time I mellowed out. So, looking at this state of unfulfilled skate desire suffering right now, I’m at least very grateful to even have the burn to learn.
Sprained wrist
I only briefly even mentioned this here. About a month ago I took a couple nasty falls. Even with the wrist guards I messed up my left wrist. Then I kept falling, over and over even afterward. So, at the moment, even a month later, my left wrist is still very sore and painful depending on the motion. It’s a work in progress. I can tell it isn’t broken though, so am not worried about it.
Relearning to Skateboard 