November 16th, 2005

November 16th, 2005
I’m starting this skateboarding/snowboarding/wakeboarding blog today for a number of reasons. First, these boardsports are my passion, my first love (skateboarding), and what makes me tick. Second, for the longest time I have watched others in awe and never really looked at more own acomplishment in all three areas of boardsports. Third, my time in all of these sports is limited. Skateboarding is very hard on the body, as are the other two. So I want something to look back on, a diary so to speak, so I can reminisce in the years to come. “My desire to land it is strong”.
“My desire to land it is strong”. These were the words I was uttering to myself today as I skated for two hours outside my house. I took the day off school today to just relax a bit. The stress level at school has been high lately. Around 2:30 pm I got the strong desire to go skating. Time is ticking. Winter is fast approaching. The Weather Network says is going to snow tomorrow. Good for snowboarding, not skateboarding. At 3:00, when I finished marking, I went out with the desire to skate well. I warmed up normally with manuals, kick flips, heal flips, and 180’s. Then some of the local high school skaters passed by. For the longest time the only thing they have seen me doing is basic tricks, so today I wanted to step it up. I took it to the street, starting with kick flips and heal flips. They were landing so clean. Then came the 360 flips, a trick that has eluded me since my high school years. I worked on it for the majority of the day out. Back and forth, 360 flip attempts one way, frontside 180 kick flips, and/or kick/heal flips the other. The 360 flips were so close each and every time. I have realized that setting up almost like a regular kick flip, with your weight centred, weight on your toes, and by kicking more off the nose I was able to get some wicked flips and tons of near landings. Finally the words just came, “my desire to land it is strong”. After another half and hour of attempts I landed a sweet one, caught right on the bolts. Following that I was so excited and started trying other tricks and landing them perfectly. This is a total list of all the tricks I landed today: 180 FS and BS, nollie 360’s, nollie FS 180’s, tweaked-out ollies, one footed ollies, kick flips, heal flips, FS 180 kick flips, half-cab heal flips (huge and caught beautifully), fakie inward heal flips (huge and caught so high), switch FS 180 flips (first try, and a trick that I have not done/tryed for over a year, and finally a 360 flip after many close attempts. Overall it was an amazing day out. I hope for many more to come.