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.
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!
