14.12.11

1986-2011 25 fucking years.

i dont write enough and as always, remember... this is for me, not you. my brain has holes in it, so i figure this will last until the first solar storm wipes out communication world wide and we all scramble and panic as computers, cell phones, credit card machines, nearly everything we idiots rely on for "quality of life" .... is gone. and hopefully our ability to write in run on after run on sentences will diminish too.

written from the cold first floor of the hampton inn in santa cruz ca. on someone elses dime tonight.

have you even gotten this far. if so, it doesnt get much more interesting than the intro really. a subpar story on a subpar night.

ive caught myself saying, recently, its been 5 years. its the last year ill be able to count em on one hand. im speaking to the last time i skated. thats right, here we go again. glory days, maybe. uninteresting, definitely. the other night, i set up a board. third brand new complete ive had in my life. its funny and embarassing at the same time. theres not a grind mark on either truck, the bushings are new, the wheels arent coned or yellowed, the board, not a scratch on it. my balance is gone, i cant walk in a straight line and touching the tip of my nose with my eyes closed is next to impossible. im waiting for the day i get pulled over for something gnarly enough to be asked to perform the drunk test... "officer, you gotta hear me out..." back to the main theme/load of shit. so, everytime i go to these work functions down in la, the crew i work with always ends up skating... im not too sure about the other departments... but i always borrow jay croft or steve infantes boards... they have set ups i like... i prefer these guys boards for different reasons.

jays board because i know how much pride he has in it. 1. i know its gonna be from ohio and 2, to him, its not just a skateboard. ive thought about his connection to skating and much like my thoughts (and with out asking him) i feel we are on the same page. a skateboard, my skateboard or his for that matter is a vessel. it gets you further than from the top of the stairs to the bottom or from one end of the pool to the other. its a transformation of time in some back roads sense. i feel, eventually, i would have gotten to many of the places that skateboarding took me... maybe it would have taken a life time or two with out a board, but onboard, it took only a few decades. jay will admit, he will stare at his board for hours just looking at its intricacies. i would do the same (but was always to embarassed to admit) simple things, like the cut of wheels. one brand compared to the next or the lines of trucks, amoeba-ish webbing, exposed axles to save weight as to kickflip better, higher, longer... i know a skateboard is 7 plies... but ive counted them on every single board i ever rode over the last 25 years. maybe hoping ill catch a company slipping or in some companies cases, overdoing it for their gnarlier riders. REAL, ahem, excuse me... did i say something.

for steves board, its similar to what i ride/rode (splitting hairs because what im able to do now, isnt what i consider "skating") his board, 8.125 (i think) was close to the 8.25 im conditioned to. i rode 60mm wheels, steves are bigger than most others, and the trucks are set up like i like em. loose rear truck with a looser front. its like a car folks... for those of you with tight trucks or worse,,, looser rear truck... i know its preference guys/girls, but ... really.. skateboarding is progression and innovation, so change up your kit.

all this text is really to combat a lack of photo uploads. ive had some pretty shitty computer luck as of late... rebooting a computer and .... i can make excuses all night. me idiot.

these times in la, skating the vans mini ramp or the house of vans in brooklyn (brooklyn is code for im cool enough to know my way around new york and know better than to hang out in nyc...i hope im really pissing some people off here)

fuck! 5boro! if you dont know about them, everyone ive met affiliated with that company fucking rules. ive met both the owners and most of the riders... theres not a bad word to say about any of them... they skate like i wished i did when i was in high school. they all skate the way that i wish i could if i was skating street. pensyl, akers, suski.... insane.

whatever and back to the senseless ramblings that i bet only chris courville will read because most of the others have clicked on to some other blog showing you the same shit you saw on the last blog... no this ones different i keep telling myself. what the fuck is there to write about.

skateboarding ruined my life
we're going to see 15 play in petaluma on december 30th
im using a credit card to go fall out of a plane when im in arizona
im doing push ups in hopes that it helps with kayaking....whenever i go kayaking (jane that means you need to start doing them too)

so however this has amused you long enough to get this far... take a breath and look something up on youtube, cause im done for tonight, american pickers just came on the tv...

3 comments:

dave herr said...

american butt pickers?

TwistyMcFisty said...

Honesty is never boring.

SkateAfterSchool said...

I know it probably kills you to not skate, but you've definitely left your mark as far as I and others are concerned. And reading shit like this makes me appreciate skating more and more. Yours and Tubbs' presence are missed every night at Tempe park...