This past weekend the London Calling skateboarding event happened in, you guessed it, London. A lot of big shots from the English and U.S. skate scenes were there. It’s kind of an old school event.

Alva was there.

I saw some shots on his Instagram page of him skating South Bank. That spot is no joke. My dear friend Tony Gale took me there in 2015 and it is gnarly. Even the flat is gnarly.

Alva posted this image on his Instagram page. It is everything I love in skateboarding, in one image. What a fantastic shot.

So here is the kind of thing I’m working on — the details.

This move is pretty simple. A backside 180 slide into a 720 spin, into two end-overs.

Here’s the thing that I’m working to get better. The idea is do use this to reverse the direction of travel. In this case, I’m moving away from the camera, and I want end up coming back to it. The two end-overs at the end of the sequence are critical, because they generate speed to return the way I came.

The problem? I tend to over-rotate the 720 spin. I should finish it pointed right back at the camera. That way I would be doing a FULL 180 end-over off the nose into a second end-over, which would generate a lot of speed and flow. By over-rotating the 720, I reduce the degrees of pivot in that first end-over, thereby reducing the speed generated.

Yes, I’m out of practice. My goal with all this, as with all my moves, is for this to be one continuous flowing motion that keeps speed throughout.

Video is really a helpful tool.

Some of you might find it amusing yet unsurprising to find out that when I do stuff like this I pick a seam in the concrete and pretend it is the top of a banked wall. So when I do this trick, for example, I’m pretending it is a banked wall that I go up and then come down. I do that a lot in freestyle, actually.

When I do this trick on a bank, of course, gravity allows me to change direction without thinking about it. Also, on a bank I don’t fakie carve into the 720 much if at all, so the exact 720 is easier to do.

I finally got out and skated Sunday. I’m fat. I don’t really care. I’m rusty. I do care about that, but I’ll get it taken care of. This is my first real session of the year.

I can’t remember if I have posted this here before. I have posted it a number of places. I just keep watching it over and over, not because I just love my own skating, but because of how the music just fits the video, and the sky. It makes me feel good.