wonkablog

I got up early today and went to the park to go skating.  It’s always fun to go early because there’s no one there and it’s nice and cool outside.

The park I go to most often is called Fairmont, here in Sugarhouse, which is a small little district of Salt Lake City.  I live about 15 blocks away, I’d say, so I go there a lot.

It’s actually been one year today that I first went there, and what an adventure my first time was.  I remember it was like my second day of skating, and I rolled up to this ramp and thought, “oh, this looks fun!” and just dove right into it.  The first thing I remember thinking was “holy crap I’m going fast” and then I bailed at the bottom and really hurt my legs.  I got up again though and thought, “I’ll just try that again” so I went down a smaller ramp and bailed again, hurting myself even more.  Then I figured I’d just try and push up to the ramp and go down a small part, and I fell down again.  By this time I could barely walk, and I went limping to my car and got out of there.  I don’t think I even went back for like four months.  It was great.

Now, I go there quite a lot.  It’s a great layout, and perfect for my level since there’s room to both screw around and practice.

Plus, the sidewalks come with inspirational messages.

“you suck at skateboarding”

I love skateboarding.  I never thought I’d stick with it so long, but it’s been a year and I’m still having the time of my life.  I tell you what.

I took this last night with my cell phone while I was at Liberty Park skating. I was getting tired so decided to walk for a bit, and the shadow was just really cool looking. My crappy camera phone doesn’t do it much justice.

I ended up going out today as well for about four hours, two in the morning when I got up, and just got back home right now from another jaunt. Fun times. I’m slowly getting better, but not nearly as fast as I’d like. My body just isn’t used to doing any kind of sports, so it’s really slow progress. I need to find someone to get some lessons from.

The weather today has been absolutely amazing, considering it’s November, and since I was at home all day (problems going on with work), I managed to hit up the skate park for a good three hour session. It was a lot of fun, and I really needed both the exercise and the break.

I’m still not any good at skating in the least, in my opinion, since I can’t do any tricks … in fact the only progress I really have to show is that I can almost manual. I’m getting there. One thing I noticed today though is that I always go with the idea of just having some fun, even though I want to practice, too. I only end up spending very little time actually practicing, probably about 10 to 20 minutes, and even then only a few times a week. It’s not really helping things in the long run. The fact is, though, practicing is hard. But that’s about the only thing that’s really gonna help.

One major thing there is still to overcome is just the fear of it all. It’s always pretty subconcious I think, since the worst I’ve hurt myself is I pulled my legs and nearly broke my foot. There’s just something that makes me a bit afraid of launching myself into the air at high speeds and hoping I don’t kill myself that makes it hard to practice to start with.

I was talking to another skater there at the park this morning and I said it’s just crazy how you see these little kids come in here and just ride these bowls and drop right in without any problems, as if they don’t have any fear. His response was interesting, “It’s not that they don’t have any fear … they do, it just hasn’t been beaten into them their whole life like it is for us adults.” How true that is.

Still, despite my slow progress, I’m having the absolute time of my life. It’s great fun. I just wish I was a little better. I’ve though about trying to find someone to give me some lessons, but I have no idea how to find anyone. Mostly I just need some feedback. Ah well, good times.

I got to go to the AST Dew Tour today here in Salt Lake City. I’ve never been to one of these things, and had no idea what to expect. It was a lot of fun, ended up spending almost all day there. Apparently, there are about 80,000 skaters in Utah, and they were all here today. Holy cats.

In the morning and afternoon I was just hanging out in the venues. There were a lot of corporate sponsors there, and they all had some cool booths setup with some fun stuff. They even had a small mini skate park setup if anyone wanted to grind.

The best part was at night, though. They opened up the arena for the pros to practice skating before the finals tomorrow. I got there just after they started, and the pros were all on a huge half-pipe just screwing around and occasionally doing a cool trick. I managed to take a crappy picture with my cell phone.

Then, a little later, something cool kinda happened. On the other side of the arena was some more ramps and stuff that nobody was using. In fact, there was a bunch of stuff just lying around on the floor. But about a half hour after the practice started, a lone skater showed up and just started pushing around on the ramps by himself. People in the seats got up and started going over to check out was going on, and then when we all figured out it was Ryan Sheckler, the entire arena pretty much moved over to watch.

Ryan did some really sweet jumps, it was way cool. After a few minutes, some other pros came out and joined him out there and we got a pretty sweet show all to ourselves. It was great.

I’m just glad little ol’ Utah could get a great event like this. It was all a lot of fun. The finals for skating are tomorrow afternoon, and they are gonna be on NBC. Right on.

I’ve been putting off writing this post, but I can’t stand it any longer.

In my brief vacation from computers in general, I had a lot more free time and took a good look at stuff that I really wanted to do, but never did do because I’d be sitting in front of the ‘puter waiting for it to entertain me. Well, one thing I finally got off my buns and back into doing is skateboarding. Hard to believe, I know.

Believe it or not, I love skating more than almost anything. I used to skate back in the day, though I was still a beginner back then. I quit after a rather unfortunate accident hurt my head pretty bad, but I’ve always wanted to do it still.

What happened is the other Saturday I was sitting around trying to think of something to do, and as I was thinking about going back to do stuff that I always wanted to do, but never do, skateboarding came to my mind. The same old reason that I’ve been putting it off for so long popped back in my head (”You’re too old”), but this time I said, “Screw it, I don’t care … I enjoy it, I’m gonna do it.” So I went down to the local skate shop, plunked down some cash and bought me a brand new skateboard.

And since then, I’ve been trying to learn to skate all over again. This time I’m actually making an effort and not quitting and even though I realize I suck I’m learning, I am having the freaking time of my life. I’ve never had so much fun.

Sure, there are times when I feel a little awkward, mostly because I’m an old fart out here with the skillz of a 5 year old just starting out, but it’s such a blast that after actually getting out and doing a bit of riding I get over all the anxiety and just plain have fun.

I’ve been trying to go out for at least an hour every night after work, either around the streets near my place or up to Liberty Park, which is a great place to go. What’s really been cool so far is how quickly its coming back to me, and how I think I’m getting better at a decent pace. I’ve never been really good at sports at all, and I’ve always blamed it on poor coordination skills, but if I don’t think about it too much, I manage to do alright and not fall down. That’s really the hard thing there, is to just focus on doing your best and doing it over and over again to train your body. It’s all about patience.

One thing that has helped is YouTube. I can go on there and check out lots of videos of how to do stuff, and see where I am doing something wrong, like positioning my feet or whatever. Something else that has helped a lot is that one sport / activity that I’ve always been naturally good at is roller skating. I’ve been doing that for years on and off, and I’d actually say I’m a bit of a natural when it comes to that. I can boogie and zoom with the greatest of ease, so having that sense of balance has been a big help in learning to skate on a board. It’s easy for me to keep my balance when I’m just on a flat surface. Not a big deal overall, I know, but it gives me some confidence, at least. I’m going to have to start learning how to ollie pretty soon here, and it’s anything that involves air that makes me nervous.

Still, I’m loving every minute of it, and I’m not gonna quit this time. I’m having a ton of fun, and I see people do cool tricks and all I can think of is how awesome that must be to do. I think if I keep practicing every night I’ll be able to make a go out of it.

Another thing I did last night is I went and checked out some of the skate parks. I had no freaking idea that Utah had so many of them! Two, in fact, are really close to where I live. One of them is a block behind the grocery store I go to every week (Fairmont Park). Sheesh, I had no idea! I drove around last night trying to find the two closest ones and my eyes just about popped out of my head when I saw them both. They look to be a lot of fun.

So there you have it. As my little sister says, “you need to find a hobby that doesn’t involve a screen.” Right on.