Vincent finally busts out some real freestyle, this is a sweet little trick

After 2 good visits with my Chiro this week and handfuls of Myprodol I managed to go out for a skate again today. The strapping really works very well, but I took it really slow - my Chiro was joking that he’d see me on Monday again, and I really can’t afford to foob this ankle again. Anyway, 1 whole session filled with manuals and my ankle is still good and getting better - maybe next time I’ll try a shove-it!

Plaster is my friend...

If you watched the video clip in the previous post all the way till the end you would’ve seen me rolling around on the ground like a little girl holding my one leg…

Well, here you go - one busted ankle. No fracture, and the verdict is still out on a proper ligament tear, but given the amount of pain it produces when the myprodols wear off I’d say it’s busted well and proper enough.

Look at all the pretty colors...

In this video Alwyn tears his ankle to shreds right at the end of the session, when he’s done skating and messing around trying a weird nollie shoveit that I was obsessing over.

Part of the fun of skating is discovering new spots with cool things to skate. With everything being all nice and quiet today I did a bit of driving around to see if I can find something different, and I was very happy when I discovered these 2 very skate-friendly ledges in the loading zone of one of our local shopping centers. Both ledges had a really smooth steel coping around the edges which made for a real little skate-fest after I applied some candle wax to them, and I skated these ledges completely undisturbed for the better part of 2 hours (with a water break of course…)

San Ridge Loading Zone, Midrand

I even had the local security guard making friends, and after a brief chat he had a go at riding on my board, and he let my ride his Segway.Funnily enough we both almost bailed and decided to stick to our own respective rides.

Hopefully the security guards and the locals will remain friendly, because this is one killer spot to skate!

I used to watch the bail sections of skate videos for quite a few years to remind me why I shouldn’t go back to skating, and now that I am back in skating I watch these occasionally to remind me of what NOT to do.

Honestly though, if you don’t cringe at least once watching these then there’s something wrong with you, like the kind of wrong where you hurt little animals and get some sick grin on your face while you’re doing it…

P.S. Keep an eye open on all the ankle breakers at around 50 - 60% of the vid, you can’t actually really miss them!

Skateboard Bails

So less than 15 sessions later I’m getting ready to put the final nail in the coffin for my worst purchasing decision ever. These World Industries shoes have just gone from bad to worse, and there is unfortunately not a single part of these shoes that have behaved appropriately with regards to skating.

Today I decided to relearn kick flips… 15 kick flips later and I now have built in air con on my left foot… Yay…

Oh, and my left sole is worn flat… no more sticky out bits…

Below are some visuals, but beware, parental guidance is advised - it ain’t pretty!

On Sunday afternoon I went for my weekly dose of fun at Boogaloos Sunninghill, and in the spirit of the constant progress I’ve shown with every visit I decide that today is the day for extra loooooong nose slides - Sunninghill has the perfect box for those.

So, off I go. Drop in off the quarter pipe (at least those are a easy now) and get some great approach speed, crouch, pop, put my front foot down and instead of landing in a nose slide my front wheels land on the box causing my board to go 90 degrees to the left… WITH my left foot on it while the rest of my body is going straight still.

I managed to run a step or two on my right foot when the inevitability of bailing caught up with me squarely and slapped me down on the ground in rather classic fashion. Where’s the camera guy when you really need him?

When I finally came to a standstill (or is that roll-still) one of the little kids look at me with a slightly trembling bottom lip and says “a.. a.. are you OK?” I smile, nod, wink at the little guy and make concerted effort to get back to a vertical position without cracking any teeth while I bite down…

Body damage? Blue right knee, bruised both elbows, bruised both palms of my hands, really hurt my left wrist, and did something really funky with my right shoulder which I think took the majority of the impact in that bail.

So if you did feel a slight tremor Sunday afternoon around 12:30 in the northern suburbs then I would like to take repsonsibility for that one and at least get some credit for my efforts!

Even back in the day, when we were lighter and didn’t have credit cards, neither Alwyn or I rode parks or ramps. The reason for this was simple, there weren’t any close enough to walk to. Now that we’re old enough to be able to buy plane tickets, rent cars and generally do whatever we need to to get to particular skate spot we want to ride, we find ourselves learning the very basics of ramp skating.

If I didn’t feel enough of a fool trying to re-learn what I already know how to do, standing at the top of a 5 foot miniramp and crapping myself about dropping in is particularly blind. Especially when there are 7-year-olds doing it all around you and looking on curiously to see if you’re just psyching yourself up for a massive 720 stalefish out the other side. Equally distressing is the look on their faces when they realise all the concentration was just for the drop in.

Yesterday we paid a long overdue visit to the Boogaloos park in Sunninghill, conveniently placed right in between both our houses. While mucking about in the store, buying helmets, hitting each other over the heads and generally disturbing the customers, it turns out that some buying a belt recognised us from this very blog. Wierd, the Google Analytics report doesn’t indicate that anyone reads this damn thing except us. Dude, whoever you are, you rock. When we make stickers we’ll send you one.

So anyways, inside the park we had some fun as you’ll see from the video. Alwyn landed pretty hard on his ass and also took out his ankle a few times. I landed hard on my knee, but that’s what knees are for. Again, my body aches in many different and new places and I’m sure that its good for a 34-year-old to feel that way, it indicates that I am not just sitting in front of a computer all day.

Skating is extremely brutal on equipment - it’s actually brutal on anything that ever comes into contact with a skateboard! Given that my previous pair of shoes were well worn I got myself a good looking set of World Industries skate shoes, thinking that shoes from a skateboard company should be made for skating…

Saturday’s session saw the first time I wore my new shoes, and after 2 hours of skating it’s clearly evident that these shoes were NOT made for skating, and probably made for people that want to look like they are skaters, but never really set foot on a real board.

The laces were almost worn through from my skateboard’s nose catching them doing ollies, and the ollie patch on the side of the shoe is very well worn through, considering that it was only 1 session. And the stitching in the soles broke as well.

So what’s the solution? Duct tape and shoe goo… It might not be pretty, but it should help me make these shoes last longer than 2 months.