After a short, sunny session on Saturday morning, I've hit double figures for ramp/bowl skate sessions. I'm officially hooked.
10 so far is pretty good compared with the poor performance of 2007 and 2008. I think the summer of 2006 is the only time I'd say that I skated consistently, until now. I'm skating once or twice per week at the moment. I'm expecting some of my commitments to fall away later this year, so I should be able to step it some more.
Last night's skate sesh at Redcar was pretty awesome. The three of us - Dave, Dan and myself - all skated well. For myself, I think it was the best I've ever skated.
On the mini-ramp I had the spine transfer working easy, stalls around the coping were feeling good, some nice long 50-50s, I had the frontside 50-50 fast and smooth, and the biggest frontside ollies I've done yet. I even had one or two nice backside ollies. Some sick runs.
Having the park to ourselves was nice too. It was all finished off with a Subway, a McDonalds milkshake and a hot bath (hard slam right at the end). Roll on next Wednesday...
I think the only way to get better is to push yourself by trying new things. Sometimes when I skate, I don't really know what tricks to try next. I'll think of something, or see someone doing a trick, but when I try it it turns out to be way harder than I was expecting. Or I'm just doing it wrong... The result is that I don't always have the next bunch of tricks to work on to keep me progressing.
With that in mind, I'm going to list the tricks that I can do now, on a mini ramp. Some of these tricks are consistent for me, others are less so, and some, I'll probably get the names wrong:
And this is what I'm working on next:
I've been a reader of the wsg for a good few years now, and more recently, I've written a few reviews of my own, covering some UK slopes. In doing so, I've been dealing with Steve Dowle, the wsg's head guy. Apart from coordinating effort for each review, it's been good keeping in touch with someone who's created something like the World Snowboard Guide. Organising, writing and maintaining such a comprehensive guide must be a lot of work. It's impressive.
I'm interested in how things work in the snowboard industry. What's it like to set up a snowboard shop? What's it like to run a chalet? How about producing a guide book? Hopefully, I'll get a chance to chat about some of these things with Steve in the future. But in the meantime, he's just started a blog: From Behind The WorldSnowboardGuide.
To quote Steve, this is what the blog's about:
I really want to talk about what it is like to develop and run a website like the worldsnowboardguide, to independently produce and publish books, and still have to do normal work for a living.
I'll enjoy reading it...
This is the new setup:
Last night was the weekly Redcar session, which was my first opportunity to try it out. It was all good. Definitely a little faster on the ramp, but apart from that, I didn't notice much difference, except that it's all new. It felt good to skate, and it had that solid 'pop' feel.
I seem to be doing pretty well with the number of times I'm getting out, and the improvement is following. No major advances, but I'm feeling much better around the coping. I had quite a few slams last night so the body's been a little tender today. Just gotta keep it up now and hopefully bag some new tricks...
I went for a skate early on Friday morning, a couple of hours at Silksworth. It was dry here, but it must have been raining fairly recently over there because when I arrived all of the bowls and surfaces had water on them. It was sunny though, so I decided to wait it out. I wanted to take a few photos, and, suspecting that I'd be buying a new deck sometime soon I thought a photo of my current skateboard was in order...
Me in an empty park.
The dendex dryslope at Silksworth.
To start off with I was picking my way around the wet bits, but once it dried out, my main aim was to work the spine transfer to check that I could do it at a different park. There are three spines at Silksworth: a small one that leads out from the small bowl, one that joins the small bowl and large bowl together - so it's kinda got two sizes, and finally, a medium/large spine that joins the large bowl area with another area.
The small spine from the small bowl.
The large bowl, and spine leading to the small bowl.
The medium/large spine (in the background).
It didn't take long to conquer the small spine. It's concrete rather than wood, but no problems. Next up, I was dropping in from the large bowl to get speed to transfer back into the small bowl. So I was going up a large transition to the spine and then dropping down a smaller transition. That was more difficult, and a little scarier. I did get it though. Getting enough speed wasn't a problem; it was getting the right amount of speed. It was quite easy to overshoot, which meant jumping off at the last minute...
I haven't tried going the other way and I haven't tried the medium/large spine.
On Saturday I bought a new setup. My wheels are pretty tired, the bearings are kinda shot and the deck's worn and starting to delaminate. Plus I just fancied something fresh.
I decided to go for something a little wider. The current Almost is a 7.75", so I stepped up to an 8". I'm told that wider decks are more suited to bowls and ramps, which makes sense, and there are times when I feel a slightly bigger surface would be useful. I also went for bigger wheels. I'm not sure what my old ones are; probably 54mm to start with, but they're smaller than that now. The new ones are 57mm.
I've gone for this slightly bigger setup because I most like to skate bowls and ramps. A bit more stability and more speed. The whole thing looks quite a bit bigger. It's a little heavier too, but nothing that I think will cause me a problem. I'm keen to try it out. No doubt it will feel strange at first, but hopefully it'll turn out good. I'll post some pictures soon.
Out with the old...
Last night was another Redcar session, the second of this year. I've been feeling a bit ill all week but I decided to go anyway, I didn't want to miss out.
I'm wanting to try new things each time I skate at the moment, but a couple of the things I had in mind for last night turned out to be harder than they were in my head. So, I decided to return to a goal that I've had for a long time: getting over the spine.
The method I want to use is to go forwards into a tail stall on the coping, ready to drop in on the other side. To be honest, I've never really tried it before, save for 10 minutes or so at Silksworth a couple of weeks back. After 10 or so tries I realised that getting into the stall was pretty easy. All that was left was to get my balance more forward...
More attempts... then I got it. Sick. It feels so good.
I pretty much had it on lock down by the end of the session. If there are any skaters reading you may be thinking "that's a pretty easy move" - and you're probably right. It is an easy move. But for me, it's definitely one of those things that seems hard until you get it, and then it's very easy, like it totally clicks. There are other tricks that I can kind of do, but a lot of the time they still catch me out. This transfer feels more like learning to drop in; once you learn to do it, you don't forget it.
Then again, I should probably hold off that assessment until I try it on a bigger spine!
Well to be honest, it's been over for a while. I won't be shredding anymore this season. Next real snow is likely to be next year, that's a long time off! Poo.
For the season just gone and the one before that, I've been limited to two weeks on snow. I don't want to say that sucks, because I've had a great time snowboarding, but in the past I've been used to more. Before that, I had three years of riding somewhere between 3 and 5 weeks over the course of 12 months, so the last couple of seasons have seemed something like a wind-down.
I'd like to put an end to that, yet, my plan for next season will be the same: two weeks away. I obviously want to make them a good two weeks! Good powder and good parks. Good powder mostly.
This reduction in snowboarding has changed my outlook a little. I'm sure it's slowed my progression, but more generally, I kinda fell less involved. In the past I've been looking for any opportunity to get away - I've been active throughout the season, and in the summer too. These days, it's much more like a holiday.
This blog is mostly about me and snowboarding; but when you're not snowboarding that often, it's hard to write about the stuff you like writing about. For the time being, I guess I'm just more removed than I have been. I look forward to next season - I hope to shred in Canada again - but it's going to be another holiday year...
So what now? What for the rest of 2009?
I'd like to skate more. I'm into double figures for outings already, albeit some of them are short, around the one hour mark, but still, I feel active on a board, standing sideways. I'd like to aim for at least once per week. That shouldn't be hard should it? Maybe more. I'll be keeping track of the sessions in the sidebar, so we'll see how I get on.
I'm going to set out with the aim to post a video each month. It might be short, and I/we won't film every time I skate, but it would be cool to show how I'm improving each month (if I improve). I've already done a few things new that I'm pleased with - the trick is to keep it going for a decent period of time. I'll put something together for March.
I'd also like to prevent the relapse of freestyle skills on a snowboard by hitting up the UK slopes. That'll be Cas' and the 'Fax. I've had it in my mind for a while that it would be good to do 8 sessions in one month: every Friday at Castleford and every Saturday at Halifax. I'm fairly certain that with some motivation one could improve as much over the course of 4 weekends in the UK as they could doing a week away. That said, such a program traveling from where I live would probably cost as much as a week in Europe! But hey, it's something I'd like to try.
So for now, I'll be tied up working on a couple of unrelated projects. I'm trying to get out on the skateboard, film some, and of course, I've still got the footage from Morzine this year.
Gav.
