I was talking with a good friend of mine and he made a comment about how back in the day, when we would skate, it would be much more structured. How many stairs can you ollie? Kickflip? 180, fs and bs? Can you grind this curb? How many which ways can you do that? Want to skate a manual pad? Ok, manual, nose manual, 180 out, shove it out, etc, etc.
Nowadays, I can say we're far more relaxed with what we do skating wise. For me, I just do what feels natual at whatever location I'm in. If I'm near a ramp, I might pop up my board, grab it with my hand and jump back on; something I would never do back in tbe day. The tricks I do today are far less aggrivating and painful than what I used to do. I get these weird, flat land,old school, I don't know what to call them, things that I do, and I just do them. No name for these tricks, as far as I know and I don't see anybody else doing them.
I'm in it for the feeling, that high of landing that trick or pulling through those speed wobbles and making it down that hill. The high that skating gives keeps me coming back, but it also keeps me moving forward. It can't be duplicated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to use your mind and your resources to come up with a new way of achieving that high. Carving frontside in the bowl, late night hill bombs in the neighborhood, rolling in the deep end at Pinckneyville; All super fun ways to get high without "drugs."
I took Marta to skate black box last weekend. That was fun. I was out for an adventure. I hit a couple things on the way. The manual pad at the Lofts, if they're still called that, is unskateable now. There's some damn metal pipes running down the top of it. Sucks. Just fyi to bum you out at the end of this post. Later..
