8/30/20
Gotta love the alarm-less mornings. I got out of bed today at my own leisure and ended up at the New Britain park around 8:45.
It’s been a little while since I last skated the bowl there. I wanted to get some carving in. There were a few other people at the park, a dad with his two kids was among them.
He was skating the bowl too. I waited my turn and dropped in. Felt good! But I remembered that my trucks were still a bit tight from last week’s heelflip practice. While I was up on one of the walls, I felt two of my wheels come off. It just didn’t feel as smooth as I was used to.
I asked the guy if he had a skate too, and to my luck he did! I now need to get myself one of those. 2 seconds and I was able to loosen each truck by half a turn. That was all I needed!
Carving around felt great, and I felt a bit more comfortable with some more speed as well. After a couple loops, I was coming at the wall where I’ve clipped the coping before. I went for a 50-50. Don’t know where that confidence came from, but I rolled with it.
Did not make it, but I did get the back truck locked onto the coping for a split second! This was before the camera was rolling, and of course, I did not get that close again on tape.
After that though, I headed up to the mini quarter pipe to practice some more 50-50 stalls. I was getting pretty close, and on one attempt the board got away from me. It rolled down the hill in the direction of the dad. He caught it for me, and I took a break to chat with him as he returned it. He was pumped to be back on board after over two decades off.
We chatted a bit and then got back to skating, he and his son dropped into the bowl, I went back to the quarter pipe.
I was getting closer and closer to locking my trucks locked in on the coping. “Klink-klink” … that’s the sound I was going for. Nice.
Before it registered though, I was off balance and the board got away from me again. This time it seemed to have a missile-lock on that guy’s son. He was standing in the bottom of the bowl and my board was barreling down the hill towards a ramp that would put it on a skull-cracking trajectory.
Shit.
“HEADS UP HEADS UP!” I yelled. And randomly thought to myself if there’s a skate version of “FORE!” like in golf…
The heard me, the kid turned and stepped aside, and it was a near miss. Phew. That would’ve sucked.
I awkwardly thanked the man as he returned my board yet again, no hard feelings. I trudged back to the quarter pipe to keep practicing. Thankfully without any more close calls. No one said skating was safe, anyhow.
After a few more attempts I felt ready to get back in the bowl, at least for a few more loops before heading out. Here’s a clip of me going for the 50-50. Still needs a lot of work, but I’m pretty psyched about it!
Happy to have surfed some concrete waves this morning, and to have danced with the lip a little! What I find cool is that the walls of this bowl don’t seem nearly as high as they did to me when I first started skating it.
August Heelflip Attempts: 507 (505+2 half-assed attempts this morning lol)
MikeFundaro.com 