A Skating Win!

I've been meeting more skater dads lately, which has got me on the board a lot more as well (funny how that works). We live in the land of skateparks, with one less than four miles away in just about every direction, but sometimes a quick skate session at a street spot is all I have time for. The problem with these is, they hurt my knees and use way more effort than ramps. As I traverse my thirties, having these street sessions becomes way less enticing each month.

But today I was just feeling a street session. The kids were taken care of and I had a couple hours, but I went to a skatepark instead, not wanting to drive around in circles looking for spots when I could be skating instead. Not really feeling the large concrete features at the particular park I ended up at, plus the slippery, steep pool, I drove to another skatepark, but on the way noticed a couple street spots that looked good. With time to cruise, I gave it a shot, and found an even better skate spot, tucked away from the busy street and next to a seemingly empty apartment -- score!

Little mute handplant 180 under the bar.

The best part, however, was reclaiming something I had all-but-lost in skateboarding: creativity. I have always gravitated towards the more creative skateboarders, and not necessarily the most technical or gnarliest. Rick McCrank is one of my all-time favorites for that very reason (though he's pretty good overall), and that creativity was something I always tried to emulate. However, as I've struggled to keep skateboarding alive in my thirties, I feel like I've spent more time trying to maintain old tricks, or tricks I should be able to do for as long as I've been skating, instead of progressing into new tricks.

Tonight was a step back into the world of artsy-fartsy, however. I started off trying to do normal stuff...kickflips and 180s, things I used to be able to do but are becoming more and more difficult over gaps and the such. And those are great things to do, a sort of skate rudiment, if you will. But instead of beating myself up over losing those old tricks, or pounding away to get them back, I left them behind and started dreaming up how I could be creative, doing things maybe others haven't thought of, that might even be more interesting to watch than a technical trick. And I came up with tons of stuff that I'm pretty of proud of. You'll have to wait for Skater Dad III to see them, of course, but if this trend continues, the third installment of my Skater Dad series could be the best yet.

I think this is a board stall, to feeble stall, big spin out. Maybe...