The folks at Chunnel.tv sent me this link to an interview with skateboarder and artist Mark Gonzales. Mark is always entertaining. Watch…
Category: skateboarding
Some downhill
Took the new downhill board out for some mild hills today, over in the Canyon Creek neighborhood. Skated a run I’ve done many times and it was fun. Then scouted out a new run — about a quarter mile long — maybe a bit longer.
Got a nice adrenalin rush at the bottom, where it hits a 90 degree intersection. Pavement in this area is concrete, and the intersections can be pretty choppy, so a 90% turn isn’t child’s play for a downhill novice. Anyway, I found the line and blasted through catching a little sideways drift on the Retro Freerides. Probably not going all that fast — I’d say about 20 or 25 tops. But still, was fun. Wore helmet and slider gloves.
Can’t wait to get this board on some nice smooth asphalt and a longer hill.
Skating
Well, I haven’t been skating much at all lately. The last time I skated much was October 2008, when I went out to California for a conference. Various family issues, fear of re-injuring my knee, and crappy winter weather have all conspired to keep me off the board. I really don’t like indoor skating.
However, I am going to try getting back on the board this week. The weather has been nice, the knee is feeling good, and I miss my skateboarding friends a lot.
I’m also considering seriously weeding my longboard collection down to only the boards I really like to ride a lot, which would be about 3 boards. My Comet Voodoo downhill board, LibTech longboard, and my 40″ Comet (plus the backups of this deck). I might also keep the Fibreflex Funshape. The rest I’m thinking about selling. I don’t see a lot of purpose in having multiple hill-carving boards when I live in such a flat area. Kind of a shame, because there are so many new developments with downhill boards.
But who knows? Maybe I’ll just get more longboards and THEN whittle the collection down. I don’t have a lot of “vices”, so maybe a garage full of longboards and bikes isn’t such a bad thing.
I would like to find a good all-around longboard that’s in good shape. The 40″ Comet is good all-around, but it is falling apart. I’m thinking that one of the Skull Skate’s decks might be a good choice. I’ve been looking at the Flowmaster and the Casket, although the Casket is a bit longer. I think they’d both be good for general street skating, parks, etc. I’ve been looking at the Gravity 45″ Spoon Nose for several years now, and I may order one as a “long” longboard. It has a nice 28″ wheelbase, which I came to enjoy on my 2nd longboard years ago.
The only thing that is a bummer about all these boards is that you can’t really use all the killer new large-diameter wheels on them. You need too many risers, and end up riding way off the ground. For these kinds of boards, I like to go no higher than a 65mm or 66mm wheel.
Anyway, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll sell some current stuff to finance new stuff.
Videos and Youtube
Last week a video I put on Youtube was blocked because I had about 1 minute of a Led Zeppelin song on it. I’m not going to discuss the whole issue of copyright, fair use, etc, here. I understand that Youtube is trying to make money and have a viable business model. It seems kind of pathetic, since my 1 minute video is nothing compared to the entire TV show episodes that are posted there.
Anyway, I’ll be hosting my own videos, on my own server, in Quicktime format, in the future.
In the meantime, here’s that little video (at least until my dispute is resolved against me!).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfmtOaIa7ZY]
California Trip — episode 2.
Well, I got to Monterey the other day, rented a car, and drove up to Mill Valley (in Marin County) to visit my old skating buddy Dale. When I got there, Dale had grilled up some insanely good chicken, which was great as I was quite hungry. We ate, and then watched a documentary about 1980s vert skating ripper, Jason Jesse.
Saturday we both got up kind of late, had some breakfast at a local eatery, shopped for skate shoes for Dale, and then in the afternoon went for an excellent hike on one of the many trails around Dale’s neighborhood. Later in the evening we went to see the new film, “W”. The film was enjoyable, but strange. Too over the top to be serious, but not funny enough to be a comedy. But there were some really funny parts.
I know Dale would like to have gotten some skating in. I’m happy though that as old skate friends, our friendship isn’t just confined to skating.
Got up this morning, had breakfast, and drove down to Mountain View for a freestyle session with Gary Holl and the guys from sk8kings.com. Lots of fun. I always enjoy skating with Gary, who is an amazing skater. He always gets some nice pics of me skating. Here is one below.
Big thanks to Dale and Gary for their hospitality.
After the session I drove back down to Monterey and checked into my hotel, which is where I am right now. Looking forward to the Internet Librarian conference tomorrow.
