Anthem on eBay

Just letting people know that I've put my 158 Rome Anthem on eBay. It is an excellent board that's worth a look... Oh, and there's no reserve so you might just get a bargain :-)

Protec Ankle Pads

My ankle was in a bit of a state after being hammered by the edge of my deck too many times - so I hooked myself up with some Protec ankle pads. Hopefully these will help a little...

I wore the pads on Saturday night at the R-Kade skate park and they seemed pretty good. Actually I bought them in the little shop that they have there - which has some cool stuff in. They were comfortable enough - although there were a few collisions that were really painful. I guess it would of hurt more if they hadn't been there...? That's always the way with pads! If they keep me skating for longer then that's fine by me.

New Skate Shoes Bargain

It didn't take long for my Vans to wear out. I didn't buy them to skate in originally but that became their purpose. It was starting to get hard to ride in them because my foot was slipping forwards, and then out of the shoe...

With a trip planned to the skate park in Redcar on Saturday, I went into town on Saturday morning to get some new sneaks. The thought of spending £50-60 on some sparkling new trainers just to skate in was kind of bugging me, so I took some good advice and visited the shop T.K. Maxx. I've never been to this shop before, but it turned out to be just the ticket. I found some sweet new sneaks perfect for what I needed - £20 instead of £50. Bargain!

One More Go...

Just got back from a good session at the Exhibition Skate Park. Mike and I were working on frontside 180 ollies again. We were dropping in to try and take enough speed to the opposite wall to get above the coping. It was kinda working, but neither of us could stick the landing when we got up around the top.

Right near the end I landed one that was fairly high. Mal filmed it... I really need to sort myself some web space so that I can put some short clips on here. Something clicked and I felt like I could get higher (all relative remember). I think I started to consciously ollie upwards... something to think about next time.

Everyone was packing up ready to go and I was still running back up the wall to drop in again - "one more go". It was a good session.

One bad thing though: quite a few times when I lost the board it came back down the transition straight into my ankle... it is well swolen. Also I need to get myself some decent pads - the naff ones that I've got are way too small. Right now I'm slamming way too often not to wear them :-)

Bowls and Street

Last Wednesday Mike and I went to skate at the Exhibition Park in Newcastle. Mike decided he wanted to learn to get air above the coping. We thought a good place to start would be to do 180 ollies on the transition - so that's what we did.

It was so hard at first, but then we started to get the hang of landing on the transition. Mike was using the curves in the small bowl wall like mini hips, and I must say his ollies looked pretty sick (all relative remember). They looked good because they were super smooth... he was stomping the landing.

We moved into the bowl area to try and link stuff together. We're complete beginners, but the feeling of mixing up kick-turns, ollies below the coping, and rolling up regular then coming down switch is so good. It's so addictive... we ended up leaving the park just after 10pm.

That night I made my first rock to fakie (albeit it was on a 3 1/2' wall, and I bottled nearly all of my attempts). I also started to drop in on the medium sized bowl, which I reckon is maybe 5 1/2' high (probably feels bigger than it is).

On Saturday morning we went to the park in Gateshead - the Five Bridges I think people call it. I like it there, in fact that was the first place I skated on my board. However, right now I just want to ride more in the bowl. It feels closer to snowboarding somehow, smoother... but what do I know, I've only been skating for a month or so.

Next, I think we're gonna check out the skate park in Redcar.

Gear for Sale

I'm planning on putting some snowboarding gear on eBay - but thought it would be worth mentioning them here first.

For Sale: Rome Anthem 158 cm

• 2003/2004 season
• Less than 3 weeks riding
• Selling because I don't need two boards!

Hopefully you don't need to ask how good this board is... but just in case, it is one of the best all-mountain/freeriding boards you can get.

For Sale: Salomon Malamute Snowboarding Boots

• Size 6.5
• 2004/2005 season
• Approximately 1 weeks riding
• Selling because I don't need two sets of boots!
• The Malamute is a top of the range, stiff, aggressive boot

Let me know if you're interested...

Summer Camp?

Back at the end of 2004 I got my first sniff of freestyle when I went to the Demonium Masta Camp in November. At the time I had done a total of 3 weeks riding: a week in Chamonix during January 2003, and then two weeks in Chamonix, February 2004.

I was looking forward to the 2004/2005 season as I was getting more into snowboarding - and I was searching for somewhere to ride early in the season. I read about a couple of camps in a magazine and decided to give one of them a ring...

To cut a long story short, and it is a long story, I ended up hopping on a plane by myself and travelling to Les Diablerets, Switzerland. It was the last week of the camp and I was the only British guy there; in fact I was the only camper that week!

Before I went I knew absolutely nothing about freestyle riding. The best I could manage at the time was a small ollie - all I'd been doing was blasting around the mountain getting better at freeriding...

The camp was excellent. I was coached by "Jesus" (Jean Sylvain) - who was a very good coach as well as a mint rider. I remember at the time, my second day I think, he injured his hand in the pipe. The next day he was back on the glacier with a small pot up to his wrist. I was asking about backside rotations and he was like: "I'll show you", and then dropped a huge backside 9!

I had so much stuff to work on that I had to ask him to let me ride alone in the afternoons so that I could practice.

It now looks like Tonton is one of their coaches as well.

I didn't know it at the time, but the park at Diablerets is really good. They have a line of 4 kickers (each with 3 different sizes), and then two further kickers after that, making six in a row. The halfpipe is also really well groomed and is massive.

The Demonium camp gave me a really good freestyle grounding... I'd love to go back this year but I've already used 20 of my 25 holidays... maybe there's still room :-)

Anyone thinking of hitting a camp - I would recommend checking this one out. If you've got any questions just ask. Alternatively you can contact Dre who is one of the organisers, a super laid back rider, or check out the website.

Riding with Music

A lot of people these days seem to ride with music playing. I hadn't tried it until my recent trip to Chamonix... where I spent the last couple of days riding with some tunes playing.

Beforehand I thought that it was going to be distracting, but it was actually not. There's a little bit of faffing to be done when your mates are trying to talk to you and you can't hear them, but in general it was fun, cool, and it psyched me up.

I've got this huge playlist of my favourite songs from all the snowboarding DVDs I've got - so the association was right on. It was excellent.

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I didn't get to see much of the Olympic Halfpipe recently, and I saw more of the women's than the men's. I did however notice that at least one of the competitors was riding with music playing. That kinda seemed weird given that it was the Olympics, but I suppose it is part of the boarding culture now.

How many of you ride to music?

Native Skatestore: Newcastle

Just a quick note. A little before Christmas I bought my skateboard from Native Skatestore in Newcastle. It's a cool little shop: loads of decks, decent shoes and clothes and a healthy selection of DVDs.

Yesterday Mike got himself a new setup, and Grant replaced his nose-less/tail-less deck with something new. It's time to start practising...

Red Shins and Repetition

When I'm riding, each day I go out I try to keep in my mind one trick that I want to work on, and that's the one that I practice most. I will attempt other tricks, but I try to focus on one. I guess the theory is that you keep working it until you've got it dialed. This is my way of contiually progressing... always be working on something. Todd Richards mentions this in his book P3: Pipes, Park, and Powder, which by the way, is a really enjoyable read. He talks about hiking the pipe all day and practising a trick until it's easy - he's a motivated guy.

Well, I'm applying the same approach to some skating... I'm trying to learn to kickflip. In the grand scheme of skating moves it must be a basic trick, but right now I find it pretty damn hard - I haven't landed one yet. Over the last couple of nights I've spent around 45 minutes on a flat bit of street, repeatably trying the move. I figure that if I try it enough times I'll land one. Then I'll start to land them more often, and more often still. Eventually I'll be able to kickflip easily, on demand.

In the meantime however, I've got a red shin that's a little sore :-)

I Should Have Went Bigger...

So last night a group of us watched the footage we took in Cham. It's mainly just us riding around the mountain looking for hits to try stuff off. Normally when I watch footage of myself, I like the look of some things and dislike the look of others. But the thought that is common to just about all shots is: "man, if I had taken that with more speed I would have went bigger... would have had more time to rotate... could have put a nice grab in there."

I guess it's easy to say that afterwards when you're in the living room, and on this hill, hits always seem to look bigger from above - but still, I'm sure I can take more speed to most of the jumps that I try.

As it happens, while we were away we were wathcing the footage as we took it (on the evenings). One of the things that I improved this holiday was taking more speed to hits... I just need to do it more often.

Extreme Sports Channel: P.I.G

I don't know if you've see the P.I.G show on The Extreme Sports Channel - but I've been watching it a little this week. All week long it has been Ski P.I.G, which is cool, but I really want to see some snowboarding.

Not knowing when the show started I thought I might have missed the riding... so I checked out the website. Luckily it seems, the snowboarding starts today. It should be good, so check out the times and try to watch some!

Friday Night Skate Session

Friday night - Mike and I just had another skate session at the exhibition park. This one was loads better than last night - we pretty much had the park to ourselves. The were a couple of guys on bmxs, and the usual sporadic gatherings of chavs.

We were riding a really small quarter pipe a little. At first I was just riding out of it was as much speed as I dared take. Then I started tyring to ollie out of it a little - with marginal success.

The best fun though was riding in the bowl. We were literally just riding straight up, coming down fakie, hitting the other side fakie and coming back down regular. It's amazing how much balance just doing this takes when you're starting out. It's well scray when you start to hit the coping with your wheels.

The way I look at it this: when I'm riding the bowl on a skateboard, if I come back down the transition with too much weight over the front, I slam. If my weight is too much over the back the board slides out from underneath me, and I slam. Try putting in a kick-turn, an ollie, a rock to fakie or a rock and roll, and it starts to get difficult (relative to beginners).

Now on a snowboard, I've done a small amount of pipe riding. My airs are just starting to go above the coping, but nothing consistent. Now imagine being able to do ramp tricks on a skateboard and then hopping on your snowboard...

Snow and Skate

I'm of the opinion that if you're a good skater you stand a good chance of being a good snowboarder. You don't have to be able to skate well to board well, but I'm sure it helps. With that in mind, a few months ago I bought myself a skateboard...

It wasn't long before the weather got bad and there weren't many opportunities to skate - but the weather is shifting back now, so me and Mike are starting to skate again (I'm a complete novice btw).

Last night we were at the Exhibition Skate Park in Newcastle.

I'll let you know if improving my skating makes my riding better...

Chamonix, Le Tour: Accommodation Review

Last week myself and some friends spent a week boarding in Chamonix. We stayed in an apartment in Le Tour, at the top of the Chamonix valley. Here's a quick review of the accommodation:

Location:

The chalet/apartment is situated in the small village of Le Tour. As with most things, there are pros and cons to this location.

On the plus side, for just-boarding it is perfect. You are literally on the door-step of the Le Tour area (you can ride to the door). If you have beginners in your group, you are less than a minutes walk from the best nursery slope in the valley. If it dumps, Le Tour is great for good accessible off-piste, so you can make sure you are on the first lift. Using the Chamonix bus service to get to the other ski areas is excellent: not many people leave Le tour in the morning (meaning an empty bus) and not many people return to Le tour on the evening (again, an empty bus).

On the negative side you're not in Chamonix itself, so you don't have the large selection of shops and restaurants that you can easily walk to.

This trade off is down to personal preference - but there are other factors to consider...

The apartment:

The apartment was great.

• Sleeping 6 - 7 people it was spacious
• 2 double beds, 2 singles and a solid single futon
• A decent sitting area and a great dining area (nice big table with plenty of seats)
• The apartment has a really useful porch outside the front door. The porch is totally enclosed so is handy for taking boots off, storing boards etc. However, the porch door would benefit from a lock - we left our boards out there through the night, unprotected
• Hall area - tiled, with plenty of space for boots
• Ecellent kitchen including dish-washer, but missing a microwave
• Open fire place
• One bathroom, one shower room with toilet, and seperate toilet

Overall the apartment had good character, was spacious, had good sleeping facilities and had plenty of storage space. 6 - 7 people is comfortable. Two things that could be more useful: a lock on the porch door and more coat hangers in the hall way.

Value for money:

In my opinion the apartment is very reasonably priced.

Summary:

For some people a holiday in the Chamonix valley means staying in Chamonix. I've been to Chamonix four times - I've stayed right at the bottom of the valley, in Chamonix centre, and in Le Tour (twice). Each location has its benefits. For example, the chalet at the bottom of the valley was complete luxury, but it was also a 15/20 minute drive into Cham and there were no buses.

Personally, I really like to stay in Chamonix town. However, I also like to have a good apartment/chalet. Unless you're willing to pay, these two requirements are not easily fulfilled. If you're willing to look outside of the centre - and Le tour is a great little village with Argentiere 5 minutes down the road - this apartment is excellent! You won't get a chalet as good as this for a similar price in Chamonix town - simple.

Snowboard Instructor

Over the past 6 months or so, I've decided that I'm interested in becoming qualified as a snowboard instructor. At the moment I have no idea what qualification I need to go for, how long it will take and how much it will cost... I guess it is time to start finding some of this information.

This looks interesting - but I suppose the British Association of Snowsport Instructors is the place to start.

Anyone got experience with this kind of thing? Anyone qualified as an instructor and can help out?

Frontside 180

While in Cham a friend tried taking a few photo-sequences. Here's part of one of those sequences... I'm gonna try to to get the whole sequence on here without it looking naff... or maybe I will just link to flickr. Anyway, it's a frontside 180, and I'm about to grab... I'm not sure what the grab is. Melon I think...

Filming Snowboarding: Wide-angle Lens

We've just returned from a week's boarding in Chamonix and we did a fair bit of filming while we were there. I really like filming my friends' riding 'cos it's fun to watch back, and it helps you see what you're doing wrong - leading to improvement.

Anyway, before the trip I bought myself a wide-angle lens from Jacobs in Newcastle. In the past I've found that filming on "follow-cam" yields good results and it helps to keep things moving on the hill (less sitting around and stuff). A friend told me that a wide-angle lens helps a lot with keeping the subject in the shot, so I thought I would try one out...

I would highly recommend to anyone who films their friends when boarding to get one - they are class! Basically, you get loads more in the picture so you don't miss much action!

I'll try to get some video on the web some time...