Modern Marvel: My Vew-Do Balance Board

You can see me here on my new Vew-Do Balance Board. My kind parents bought this for me for Christmas. My folks have always been supportive of skating, going back to my offsetting the cost of my first board at age 11, through to letting my brother build a mini half-pipe in their back yard when he was 16. And though my mother was somewhat concerned that I would hurt myself when I announced I was getting back into skating at 31, both mom and dad thought taking it on would do me good.

But I guessed I might lose whatever skating edge I'd been re-sharpening over the summer if I just atrophied over the winter, and so when I heard about the Vew-Do I was intriguiged.

The Vew-Do apparently came out in 1990--right before I quit skating, it seems, and was marketed to both skaters and general sports-playing-jock-types. I think I remember seeing it way back when, but it looked dopey, and of course the price is akin to a complete board, so that, to a 15-year-old, was itself prohibitive. But not so now. The folks were looking to buy me something different for Christmas, and this fit the bill.

So here it is, the Vew-Do SK8 model in all it's indoor fun-ness. As you can see from the photos, the board is just like a normal skate deck except instead of trucks/wheels it's got a heavy-duty plastic beam on the bottom that fits into a groove on the "rock"--a large, wooden mono-wheel support. One balances one's self by centering one's weight above the "rock", and then shifting weight from foot to foot to change the position of the board.

It's both more challenging and enlivening than I thought it would be, and I find myself hopping on it two or three times a day just to give it another go. Each time I do I find that my balance is a little more sure, and the experience of riding the Vew-Do is yet more enjoyable.

Next up: tricks on the Vew-Do. Apparently one can do ollies, kickflips, shuvits, and more. Best thing about it is now I can rationalize making a post here during the winter months (one that's not along the lines of, "It sucks that I can't skate.")

Waiting, Not Skating

I had a really good session the other night. In Utah County the evening was very cool, and though at first it seemed too cold, after a few minutes I warmed right up and the air was most refreshing.

Not much happening in terms of tricks, but good ollies, manuals, on and off of short platforms, all in my favorite parking lot.

And now it is snowing; not necessarily too cold, but certainly too wet and slick for any skating, which leaves me in the unenviable position of waiting for the Spring.

P.S. For those of you snowboarders who are instead rejoicing, yeah, I snowboarded for about 15 years, but it's just too much money and time for an old man like me. In a year or two when my son is older, then winters might seem a little riper and brighter...

Too Busy To Skate

It sounds ridiculous, but I've been way too busy to skate at nights. Barely have time to eat dinner, play with the boy, and get 7 hours of sleep.

End of the Summer

So the Summer is at an end, and I've not been posting updates on this 'blog simply because there haven't been a lot updates to make. My progression has been a bit sluggish--flip tricks are still very very hard for me to land at anything close to full-speed.

I do, however, recognize my improvements most when I don't skate for a few days--after a few days away everything seems harder, and all my attempts seem weaker. So I worry a bit about what will happen over the Winter; will I be back at square 1 in the Spring?

New Deck: Almost Uber Light - Mullen

My new deck finally arrived yesterday (I swear UPS is slower than USPS) and I laid on the grippy, changed out my bearings, replaced my trucks' kingpins, and put it all together.

Before

After

I took it out skating last night, and was immediately impressed by how high this thing pops. It's like spaceman ollies!

The concave feels very deep, which I'm not quite used to. In fact, I fell a couple of times because my feet were so "glued" in place by it.

As advertised, it does seem to flip faster, and though I'm still having a hard time with kickflips in general, heelflips seem to be easier to initiate (though harder to control, as the board flips at least another half-flip from the same amount of effort).

New Trucks or Just Risers?

I'm currently riding some older Grind King trucks. This model is very light, and has what I thought at first was a very ingenious kingpin that has a hex bolt inserted the "wrong" way through the truck. But the problem for me is that I like my trucks very tight. I even bought some new Bones Hardcore bushings, which--though very cool indeed!--didn't prevent the problem I'd been having: when I tighten that kingpin on down, the kingpin bolt pushes into my deck, making a nasty little indentation/pit.

Even though I haven't seen it cause a crack on my current deck, I know this could compromise the integrity of my deck. And while my current deck's pretty well out of life, but I don't want this to cause issues with my new deck, so I'm thinking of either swapping out the kingpin or buying some new trucks. I could try getting some rises on there to increase the gap between the deck and the kingpin, but that seems lame.

All Hail the Ankle Brace!

I'd been having problem with my right ankle while skating. I kept spraining it in--usually pretty minor injuries, but the fact that I kept using it and kept doing it didn't help.

So one of my co-workers, who does a lot of martial arts, suggested I get a little ankle brace.

I picked one up at Target for a dozen dollars, and it fits like a glove. It does make my shoe fit a little tighter, but what's most important is that it has significantly reduced my ankle strain.

I highly recommend ankle braces for your pushing foot to all skaters over 30.

Skateshops in Utah County

I haven't found a skate shop that I've been impressed with in Utah County yet, though I'm starting to get my bearings.

Board of Provo has been around for quite a while (I stopped in there once when they were on Main Street about 18 years ago!), and they still have the best name of any skateshop ever. But they seem smaller than before, though they probably have the best selection of decks in town. Too bad they have a crappy web site.

I really like the Vans store in the University Parkway mall. I picked up some shoes their a couple weeks ago. They also sell Pro-Tec gear, which I hope to come back for in the near future.

I've been to Milosport a few times. The guys that work there seem really cool, and they have tons of boarding equipment for snow, skate, and even wave, it seems. The first time I was there they hooked me up with a few inches of free grip for my tail. Very nice. I later went shopping for shoes but found they didn't have my size in nearly anything. Plus they were blasting this obnoxious rap crap from the store speakers. Duh. I gave them another chance and stopped in
over the weekend, and they helped me find some new bushings and bearings. Very friendly guys, so I'm going to swing in this afternoon to consult them on the problem with my Grind King truck kingpins.

Blackhole Boards is an online store with an amazing selection of decks and parts. I ordered my new Almost Uber deck from Blackhole last week, and aside from some UPS-related shipping delay I've really enjoyed the shopping experience. They have a kick-ass Board Builder web app that helps you store all your components for a complete as you shop. You can save your boards and come back to them in the future. Cool.

Rodney Mullen

As a kid Mullen was my hero. I remember when his freestyle board was focused on Rubbish Heap, and I dimly recognized that, yeah, freestyle is dead. That's about the same time I got out of skating.

Now more than ever I admire and look up to Mullen. Even today he projects nothing but a positive attitude that garners respect--a good example is how thankful he is for all the breaks he's had, and the people who have supported him. He's not afraid to admit his Christianity, which is fine by me; I'd rather have my son look up to a heartily religious pro skater than one who's amoral and befouls himself in public.

Yeah, I've totally set myself up as the old prude, but what do I care what anyone thinks? I'm right on this one. We need more Tony Hawks and Rodney Mullens. Skaters who are not only the best of the best, but decent people too.

Anyway, I liked this documentary on Mullen; you might too:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5332678536989755802&hl=en

Kids Today...

Alright, I was taking a break at Borders today, cooling off with a tasty beverage in the shade with a few magazines on my lap. Partly out of curiosity and partly out of nostalgia, I picked up a copy of each of the latest skate mags from the periodicals rack.

I have to say I was a little disappointed in the mags as a whole. As a kid I was probably far more fascinated with photos of skaters mid-trick, but now I find you have to read the captions to try to appreciate the combos. Also, skateboarding is so ubiquitously part of our culture that its no longer a treat to see someone on a skateboard--this simple occurence was a treasure back in the 80s.

More significantly, I was reading some interviews with pros in Thrasher and Skateboarding, and was stunned at how pervasive cursing, alcohol, drugs, and sex are in their normal conversation. To me its not a big deal how adults talk or act as part of their own private lives--so long as they're not hurting anyone else. But this lifestyle certainly doesn't represent what skating means to me. If this is indicative of what skating has become I can't say that I would support my own son's immersion in this new wave of skate culture.

This is not to say that when I was a kid skateboarding was squeaky clean. No way. Sure, we cursed. We listened to punk. We were generally rebellious and a bit obnoxious. But that was about it. When I think about how we poured over the pages of Thrasher and Transworld for pics, interviews, and news, I really don't recall it being offensive or startling. Most of the pros featured were there to help the sport grow and progress--not to be self-indulgent, self-important white-trash or ghetto punks sucking smoke and soaking booze, spewing out smack-talk and curses.

These pros setting a bad example for all the kids who will grow up idolizing and wanting to emulate them. You might say its not the pros fault--they didn't ask to be idolized; they aren't supposed to be a role model. Well guess what: they _did_ sign up. When they went pro they acknowledged that, yeah, people will watch me, kids will look up to me, skaters will look at me as the new "cool". The private life they once had is now made public, and by doing so it affects people.

At the very least I say the editors of these skate mags owe it to the kids to keep things a little cleaner. Thrasher's always been a little edgier than the other skate mag(s), but never R-rated like it is now. The whole encounter really bothered me, not because the content offended me per se, but because I thought, What can I show my son that's positive and encouraging in this sport? Do I have to be the filter for everything? Or does a parent just accept that modern life is becoming increasingly debased and amoral, and there's not much that can be done to protect the kids?

Pushing Forward

I've been a little discouraged by a bad pattern of minor injuries (e.g. both of my ankles are just a little bit sprained due to 2 successive nights of trying grinds and slides, and my bad knee is acting up simply from all the crouching/jumping) but its probably less the worry of long-term pain or injury (at my age!) than it is that I don't seem to be making significant progress as a result. After what felt like a very steady and positive progression, I suddenly feel like I can't quite make the next step, can't quite land or pull into the tricks that are still basic.

If I become more aggressive in my sessions I do tend to make progress a little faster, but at the cost of more spills.
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So this week I'm balancing recovery with practice. I'll probably go out tonight, but will either shorten my session or restrict myself to practicing stuff I'm already really capable of.

Alternately, I could just lift some weights or do some strengthening exercises that won't put my ankles and knee at risk. bo-ring

Logan Skate Part Awesome; Local Skater Sucks

Yesterday morning I was up in Logan, Utah and hit the concrete public skate park. The air was cool and the park was empty, however I was pretty timid being back on ramps and obstacles again so I really didn't make any progress or take advantage of the great terrain.

Until next time I will need to focus on higher full-speed ollies, slides, and grinds. Doing so I should be much more able next time I hit that park.

Nollies

It's amazing to me how hard nollies are, after all its the same basic ollie technique simply on the other foot. The fact that one is moving forward doesn't help. At any rate, I've been trying to pick up this trick (which I could never do before) and have been able to at least get the board a few inches off the ground with my front foot. So far these have been stationary nollies, but at least they are happening.

I'm practicing them 10 at a time at intervals in my session to sort of train my legs to do them on command.

The real problem I've been having is not pushing the board forward and away from me with my front foot--I need to focus on pushing downward, straight downward, with the front leg.

Stationary Board Flips

I went out skating tonight despite my banged ankles and shins, and had a blast. Again, I felt more focused than before, and actually was starting to get a couple of tricks that, though simple, I was never was able to get before:

1. board-flip to reemo. This trick starts with my feet square over the trucks, and you simply pop the board forward with the balls and toes of each feet (more on the back foot, I find) so that the board spins 450 degrees, leaping forward to land on the wheels with the board on its side in a reemo.

I landed this only twice tonight; most of my attempts put my feet on the wheels with too much momentum, pushing the board into a normal top-up landing.

2. toe-flip to casper. Actually I have no idea what the first part of this trick is called. It basically starts that cutesy remounting flip trick you do when your board lands on bottom-up and you're some feet away.

So you approach your board and catch the toes of your back foot just under the trucks (in the curve of the tail). You flip/kick the board away from you (so its flipping on its sides). Normally you would just flip the board 540 degrees to a top-up position and land on it to skate away, but here you just want to flip it 360 degress. Your front foot has to catch the flipping board as it approaches a full flip, and it pulls up. At that moment your back foot has to come onto the tail and push down so you're in a casper.

I can't get this consistently, but I'm so close I had to make an entry about it. Its still just a weak little gimmick, but its fun, and I guess a way cooler method of getting back on a impotent board.

Fun fun fun stuff. I can't wait to get back out tomorrow night.

Resting Up

The morning after my last entry I woke up a little irritated at my bleeding right shin, but to my surprise it didn't hurt much. However, when I pulled a sock on my left foot I felt a surprising amount of sharp pain--apparently I had smacked my left ankle sometime in the last week with enough force to cause a nasty little bone bruise. I've had to wear my sock rolled down on that foot for the last 4 days it's been so troublesome.

Needless to say I'd taken a few days away from the skateboard to let that sucker heal, but last night my appetite for skating got the better of me, and I ran a wrist wrap and two pairs of socks around that ankle before hitting my favorite parking lot.

I was very cautious trying flip tricks, but I actually found that a combination of the few days rest and a relaxation of my enthusiastic aggressiveness actually helped me skate more precisely, if not all around better. I finally was able to execute basic ollie-kickflips, though I'm not landing them at full speed yet.

I seemed to have figured out that with both kickflips and heelflips the farther off your board your front foot is the easier the board flips. Now with a kickflip as I edge my front foot off the backside of my board in preparation for the ollie I tend to weave to the left--I'm going to try to tighten my rear trucks a bit to allow for that.

And I will be taking it easier for the next few days as I try to nurse this ankle back to normal. In the meantime I suppose I can shop around for a decent pair of shin guards...

What to Do When You Can't Skate

As I mentioned, my shins had become pretty beaten in the past few sessions skating, so I'm giving them a rest for a couple of days.

What do I do in the meantime to not lose the momentum? I thought about springing for one of those balance boards like the VewDo, but the pricetag put me off. So instead I've been doing some calf and thigh exercises, the most effective being a squat that you leap straight up from. Nice and exhausting.

Also, now I'm diving into skate-related web sites and discussion forums, mostly lurking to read up on tricks kids are doing these days and ideas that will help me get done what I want to get done.

Shins

Back in the heyday of freestyle most skaters wore shin guards, as jumping about while a rapidly flipping board is spinning a foot above the ground beneath you is a recipe for some bruises and scrapes. I too wore shin guards for long practice sessions, simply because it helped me avoid pain and let me keep on practicing after a few failed tricks. I stopped wearing shin guards when I decided I didn't need them, and I came back into skating this week assuming that they were unnecessary. I am starting to change my mind.

I've been skating each night for the last week for about 45 minutes each session, and though I've smacked my shins a few times on several occasions its only been the last couple of nights that I've really begun to suffer.

Last night I was practicing shoveits and trying to figure out kick-flips again. That should be enough to tell you that I went home with some bruises. (Though at least I have 180 shoveits and pop-shoveits OK, and believe that 360s are not too far away).

This afternoon I spent half an hour at the local public skate park just watching the kids tear it up. I'm planning on trying the park soon myself, but I refuse to let myself go until I have all my basics back under control. From watching the kids today I recognized that I would really want to take advantage of slides and grinds at the park--in fact thats all the most of the kids were trying today.

So tonight I went back to my favorite parking lots and in addition to working on kick-flips some more (...I don't remember this trick being so hard...) I spent some time on some 8" painted curbs. Didn't take me long to feel out backside 50-50s and tailslides, though I by no means mastered them on the backside at least I was doing alright, though when I switched to frontside I failed miserably. After exasperating myself trying to get these down, I finally just went back to backside to end the evening. Well I was getting some nice smacks and short slides on tailslides and was having fun when all of a sudden, bam--I ollie too high and smack the tail down really hard to compensate and not miss the curb. But my front foots already too high itself, and the board strikes the curb, pops back up (and somehow towards my body), thrashing a lovely scrape all the way up my right shin. Curses. Time to lay on the grass and look at the clouds.

5 minutes later I'm thinking shin guards, at least for the time being, might be a good idea again. The pain had brought me to the grass, sure, but I'm pretty tolerant of pain and its typical for me to get back on the horse as fast as I can (if only to get my mind off the pain at hand).

But I also learned something in martial arts some years back that I've found to be true: even if you can take the pain, your body can become unconsciously wired to fear repetition of that pain, so much so that your body might resist your will when told to do something that might risk another instance of the same pain. When practicing and trying new stuff, its always better to go in padded and keep your body open to the new moves it needs to learn, rather than to fight the pain over and over and risk letting your body dictate what it will and won't do.

First Goal Achieved

I was analyzing why I couldn't seem to land ollies at a good speed, and after playing around a bit I figured it out and have now met my first goal. I can now really consistently land good-sized ollies at full-speed.

I was doing two things that were screwing me up:

1. I was crouching too low before the ollie. I'm now crouching only about half-way down.
2. My back foot was curled too tightly on the tail before the pop. My foot's now nearly flat on the tail, though the heel and arch still don't touch.

I think that I was doing these things based on what worked with freestyle skating: if you know anything about old school freestyle, the deck was considerably smaller, and had absolutely NO concave; it was completely flat except for the tail. Though I did skate street and ramp on normal boards back then, I mostly skated most of my skating was on a freestyle board, and thats where I learned most of my ollie and flip tricks.

The deck I have now seems to have a lot more pop in it, meaning I don't need to exert as much force to get it in the air for an ollie. I used to get the height I needed on the board by crouching down as low as possible; on the deck I have now, crouching low is not only unnecessary, it also makes me wobble due to the larger width.

The width of the deck and the beautiful concave allow me to relax my feet a bit more, meaning I don't have to do this huge and focused snap in the center of the tail.

I think this deck difference also relates to problems I'm having trying to flip the board in kickflips and heelflips.

Riding & basic tricks.

Alright, so getting back on the board is both easier and harder than I thought. Well, at least I have no problem with basic balance and riding. I've got pretty decent control of the board on turns and so on. Can still ollie stationary at a good height, but am having trouble landing ollies at full speed (though surprisingly I can land an ollie into manual pretty well). Speaking of a manual, I can wheelie for no more than 2-3 full seconds at a time, which sucks, and landing into manual I can't hold it for more than a second.

But I can still primo and reemo no problem, which is cool because I hear my old idol Mullen is ripping it up with new variations of those. Other than that I find I have to relearn even the most basic tricks all over again.

My first goal is to master basic ollies at full speed. I can't accept anything short of 2 feet, though I'm planning for 3 or more so I can get on top of objects.

My second goal will be to get a better wheelie so I can manual off and onto tricks. I'll probably combine this with stationary 360s/720s and beyond as a good attack on balance and centering.

Here's the rest of the street tricks I'm going to be re-learning over the next couple weeks:

1. boardflip
2. kickflip
3. fingerflips
4. 360 shoveit (full speed)
5. ollie kickflip (full speed)
6. heelflip (full speed)
7. ollie to casper
8. 50-50 (not the grind)
9. primo flip
10. powerslide
11. boardslide
12. 50-50 grind (back and front sides)

This will all be parking lot stuff. Then I'll move on to some of these, which I never had down consistently in the old days:

1. airwalk (full speed)
2. anti-casper
3. casper disaster
4. impossible (full speed)
5. tailslide
6. pogo

And here's my dream list:

• primo/reemo slides
• casper slide
• darkslide
• hardflip
• ollie north
• noseslide
• nose wheelies/manuals

Maybe I've got some of those names wrong. And there's probably a dozen other new tricks that you all can tell me about.

Anyway, I'm so damn excited I can't stay in the office any longer.

Gear

Back in the day I worked in a skateshop. It didn't really pay much, but I got a great discount on equipment, which makes it hard getting back into the sport and having to pay full price for everything!

The good news is that retail price for skateboarding equipment hasn't changed much at all in the last 15 years. A complete skateboard is still around $120 US, kneepads are still around $30, and good shoes still go for around $50. Even better, I've begun to discover that all the equipment and gear is way better than what we had in the early 90s. Boards are light, symmetrical, and beautifully concave. Pads are lighter but seem better-padded than before. And from reading some reviews it sounds like shoes have come light years.

I'll probably make several posts on gear in the coming weeks, but I'm going to start by listing what I've got right now and what I think of it all:

Board

Like I said earlier, I did buy a new board about 7 years ago hoping to get into skating then, but didn't really put much wear on it. So my deck, an Alien Workshop Rob Drydeck from 2000, is a bit old, but not in bad condition. Alien Workshop was a great up-and-coming brand when I was getting out of skating, and so I had to try it. I really love the pop on this board, and it just feels good under my feet.

The deck's pretty narrow, but I chose that on purpose because I used to freestyle a lot, and actually am used to a tiny board. (Speaking of which, I cut the a strip of tape off the nose for pain-free finger flips, and put a small strip on the underside of the tail for caspers. Old school, right?) Anyway, I think my choice of deck was a good one, as I'm having lots of fun on this so far. Lucky me!

I actually can't say what my trucks are, but I can say what they aren't: they aren't Independent and they aren't Gullwings. I guess Gullwing's not around any more, eh? Anyway my trucks seem alright, but my next deck+trucks will need to match each other exactly in width so I can do my old-school freestyle tricks with a less difficulty.

Wheels. Does this matter? Correct me if I'm wrong, but so long as you have medium-size, medium-hardness wheels there's not much to say about wheels. I remember springing for the good Swiss bearings, but I didn't obsess over hardness and size like I did when I was a kid (soft for street and hard for vert, isn't it?)

Pads

The only pads I own are a pair of older Pro-Tec wrist guards. I never wore pads except for wrist guards and shin guards on street, and only ever wore knee pads and a helmet on ramps. Right now I'm fine with just the wrist guards, but when I venture back into a skate park I'll need some new kneepads and a helmet, so I'll be looking for reviews and recommendations.

Shoes

Man, I'm wearing Chuck Taylor All-Stars. These are just the classic black high-tops. I've owned a pair of Chucks perpetually since Middle School, and I still love 'em, especially for lounging around. What I'm finding, though, is that they're no good for street skating. So I think the first thing I go shopping for will be some new shoes.

Journals of a 30-Year-Old Skateboarder

Hey, my name's Stein and I'm about half-way through my 30th year. I started skateboarding when I was 11, and was considered a "skater" for a number of years. But I abandoned the scene somewhere near my 16th birthday for a number of reasons. I was never any good, but I loved skateboarding and the alt-punk-edge of skating fit my weird-loner-kid personality.

Now I'm going back to skateboarding a total grown-up. I'm still a weird-loner-kid at heart, and I think my reluctance to abandon that aspect of my personality helped bring me back to skating after all these years. But I feel older every day, I don't have half the time or energy I used to have, and I ache in places I didn't know existed--without even exerting myself.

So this 'blog is a record of my experiences. I'll tell you what its like being over 30 and trying to develop skills in the highly technical and challenging sport of skateboarding. I'll talk about the good things I find, and the bad crap that inevitably happens in skating.

The idea of keeping these journals occurred to me as I was laying on my tail in a parking strip, completely out of breath and injured after about 20 minutes of really quite tame skating. I wondered how many other older guys go back to skating, and how many of them stick with it. I thought about how tricky it was for me, earlier that day, to shop for and buy new skate shoes (DC? Fallen? whatever happened to Airwalk as the major brand?) And I realized how utterly thrilling it was to finally land a handful of tricks at 30 that I could never get through at 13.

I should note that about 7 years ago I did buy a new skateboard with the same plan, hoping to get back into the sport, and actually doing pretty well for a couple weeks. Then I had a dumb little spill at the skatepark which resulted in a very painful and frustrating elbow fracture. This was a major problem for me as I was days away from moving overseas at the time to take a new job. Well, the combination of events kept me off of skating for the last half-dozen years, but now I'm committed, and determined to last longer this time.

Alright, well that's probably the longest entry I'll be making for a while. I'm going to instead focus on the equipment I've got, the equipment I need, the tricks I can do, and the tricks I want to do. I'll probably inevitably go back to the best and the worst times skating as a kid, and in doing so I'm sure I'll end up ranting about anything I see as being wrong with skateboarding today.