Old Guys Who Skate

Yeah – so as you know, Ryan and I have been riding the Bonsor Flow Park.  So far it’s been an awesome experience.  The learning curve has been pretty steep – and the worst part seems to be mental.  What I mean is – we have the game to ride it, but there’s something that tweaks in the brain when you’re horizontal on a wall and staring down into a concrete trough.  Granted, we’re only talking about 6 feet at the high point – but 6 feet is still a pretty good fall.  And as Andrew said one day:  “At this age, I really don’t have a lot of pain left in me”. 

Well – it turns out – neither do I.  But apparently I have enough pain left in me to do this to my elbows.  Funnily enough, after the smaller looking injury, I broke down and bought elbow pads – the larger one happend WHILE WEARING them!  Although I think it was more of a burn from the long sleeved T-Shirt I was wearing at the time…

Anyway – just in case you thought I was making it throgh this process unscathed… 

So now that it’s been a couple of times riding the Flow Park section at Bonsor, I thought it was time to take smoe video.  So here’s one of me finally getting a good ride in! 

There’s something that’s super-cool about riding this park.  Now – of obvious note, I’m wearing more pads than RoboCop, and I’m only making heelside turns… but there’s more on the way.  The funny thing is, now that I’m kinda used to the heelside turns, the frontside turns are hard as hell… aint that always the way…

And since I’m in a video-tastic mood – here’s a similar clip of Ryan.  Only notice he’s starting to do some front-side turns as well.  Ryan’s been kickin ass at Bonsor.  I keep trying to go faster so I can keep the flow, but Ryan’s got the pump down – seems like he can go forever!  Check it:

And yeah – I know the vid’s are kinda amateur – I just haven’t had time to edit them and put music in the background.  I just wanted to load these bad boys up for today.

OK – so the last thing I was gonna mention about my board was the wheels. 

Well, actually, the wheels and bearings.  I picked up these sweet Spitfire wheels that (I think) look pretty damned cool.  They’re 54′s and I have no idea how hard they are (I have to admit – I bought them because I thought they looked cool…).  Anyway, it’s a WHOLE new ballgame from the old Powell Peralta mush-wheels on the ole T&C.  I finished it off with some Black Panther bearings – so smooth they’re smooove.  I was gonna go for the Bones Swiss bearings – but I thought, maybe I could use a little less speed.  …maybe that was a mistake!

Overall though, I’m LOVIN the new board.  The trucks are WAY looser than I was expecting, but I’m getting used to the ride and now I’m pretty much over the initial learning curve.  All in all – it’s a sweet rig.

OK – now that I’ve finished telling you about the board, let’s move on to the riding!!

But the trouble with being an old guy who skates – is that I have to take care of this “work” stuff… and “work” is getting in the way of my posting, and of me skating… Just who came up with this “work” stuff anyway?!?  PFFFHTT

Anyway – Ryan and I have been kickin it at Bonsor Flow Park lately and we’re actually making progress… More on that later – why?  Because I got VIDEO of us, THAT’S why!  SO, in order to keep things on the up-and-up, I found this killer video of Rodney Mullin – what this guy can do on a skateboard is insane…  It’s like watching Hans “No WAY” Rey on his BMX (I’ll find a vid of him – I know its not skating, but OMG, he’s insane!), only Rodney’s on a skateboard doing things you will twist your head at…  Enjoy….

rodney mullin