Ride

Park

Bellyflop

We had a nice warm November day today. Sun was out and temps climbed up to the 70ies. During my lunch break I went out to the small park nearby, the one with the nice red curb, a couple of ledges and the knee-high flatbar, that I'm trying

Setup

New Nora

After 2 popsicle decks I’m back to a shaped one: the Nora Vasconcellos from Welcome. I had this shape before and really liked it. For no particular reason, except that the width (8.6) suits me, it has a solid wheelbase of 14.6 inches and the pop feels

Setup

Monthly shoes

This DC Manual High Top held up a month until the sole was through and I could see all the way to the insole. I kind of blame the super sharp Jessup griptape on the new deck I set up a coulple weeks ago. It felt really sticky and could

Park

Happier Slappy Lipslide

The lipslide gods were much friendlier to me this morning when I went out to the curb for a quick session before work. I guess the hack that finally unlocked the lipslide was to do a tiny Nollie hop when turning onto the curb. Not sure if that technically still

Park

Sloppy Lip Slappy

When a slappy grind goes wrong I often end up with this weird move, where one truck is on the curb, the other one hanging off it and I'm doing a mini boardslide. This got me thinking that a slappy boardslide can't be that hard to

Setup

94a

Ace trucks came out with aftermarket harder 94a bushings for their AF1 and Classic trucks. Me and my eternal wheelbite problem, also my no-risers mentality, got them as soon as they hit the stores. I put them in last night and tried them out first thing this morning. They feel

Setup

Fucking Awesome

Switched to a new deck, a Fucking Awesome 8.5 with a 14.25 wheelbase, the shortest wheelbase I've ever had since I restarted skating. Usually my decks are around 14.5. Right now I'm just feeling the new super sticky griptape. Not sure if I

Surf

Mellow morning

Surf forecast was true to its predictions this morning: mellow 2-3ft bumps, well spaced sets and practically no wind. It was good morning session! I'm also getting the hang of it. Except for a few pretty bad attempts on the first few waves, I think I'm

Park

Backside slappies

After adding frontside slappy grinds pretty much to my standard repertoire, I'm trying backside slappies now. They're supposed to be easier, maybe for some people, not for me for sure. Granted, it took me only one session to get up on the curb, but I had

Setup

New shoes

The New Balance 440 Hi held up about 2 1/2 months, not sure how many session. I skate about 4-6 times per week for 30-60 minutes each session, so must've been about 40-60 sessions roughly. That's actually a lot. The first thing that went was

Park

Nose tappin’

Doing a little bit more practice on both, first the plain nose stall and then the nose slide. It's hard, I get the nose up most of the times, but my weight doesn't shift over. Maybe trying to roll on faster? Not sure, I feel like

Surf

Onshore waves

Not as good as last weekend, but still great to be in the water on a board! As I learned today, those conditions are called "onshore". The cleaner (smallish) waves were really close to the beach, hence the name "onshore" I guess. I think I caught

Park

Nose slide progress

We're getting there. Today I practiced rolling straight into the ledge and getting up into a nose stall. It's the timing of ollieing and shifting my weight over onto the nose that's the biggest problem here. Breaking it down helped. Once I got the

Park

Nose slide practice

Ever since I got the slappy nose slide I wanted to get up on a ledge and do an actual real nose slide. Even though it’s suppused to be one of the easy and very basic tricks, I find it quite hard to get that nose up there, and

Surf

Surfing Larry!

Best day ever!! Since I started surfing, which was about 12 months ago, today we had by far the best conditions I've ever seen, it was amazing!! I went out last night to look at the waves at the peak of Hurricane Larry's swell. They were

Street

Sad heelflip

When I restarted skateboarding I thought I'm going to spend some time in bowls and pools, just carving around a little bit. Low impact, not hard on any joints, little risk, and with enough padding and helmet, few consequences when you slam. I thought I'm too

Surf

Wind swell

Henri left us with some waves on the East cost, but way to wild for my abilities. Today there was a little bit of wind swell. Not great, really rough and choppy, and didn't get on the board a lot, but still good to be in the water

Park

A new curb

I found a new curb, a glorious DIY curb that somebody poured and dropped at the playground. A few years back we often went to this playground, it was our go-to. The kids really liked. It also has some small skate features, a few ledges, small stairs with a table

Setup

Going shieldless

This morning both of my back wheels just stopped turning, out of nothing. Not sure what happened. There wasn't any more dirt than usual around, it's a concrete skatepark after all. One bearing in a front wheel was causing troubles last week. But I found it

Park

Wallie, part 1

The other day I saw somebody doing a wallie to a frontside 50-50 on that angled bank/ledge. It looked so smooth, and so much fun, and also not to hard, something you could drop into your line without thinking too much about it. I had to try it. Getting

Park

Frontside disaster progression #2

On the tiny quarter I manage to get nose pivots to disaster pretty OK. Next step is to actually frontside 180 into a disaster. It doesn't quite work on the quarter yet, so I deferred to the mellow volano in the park. There's no coping, just

Setup

Broken pivot cup

Paying more attention to wheel bites recently, because I got a new deck with wheel wells and want to see if they actually help and are not only a placebo, I started noticing that the location of the wheelbite on one side is little bit different. That's when

Park

Pivot down, pivot up

The nose stall revert that I figured out last week made me realize that if I've enough time to turn while sliding down, there should be enough time to just turn and do a proper rock and roll. So there's that, yes, rock and roll works

Setup

Well, well, well…

Changing decks is often a good motivator, not that I needed any motivation to go out and skate these days, but it certainly doesn't hurt. I got curious about those Polar decks that have wheel wells and ended up getting one. It's the Polar Hjalte Halberg

Park

Nose Stall Revert

Easy peasy on the mini quarter, 2 sessions and I got it. First, getting comfortable with nose stalls and dropping back in switch, then figuring out how to turn and slide down. It's really much easier than it looks. I want to try it on a slightly higher