I am having to teach myself how to skateboard all over again. I have not skated in a long time actually the last time
I seriously skateboarded was when my wife and I lived in California. I am starting to realize why many times my body stiffened
up on me on the rare occasion that I skate. It seems to be a stress reaction from skating. Every once and a while, when I
take the car instead of the motorcycle I like to take the skateboard and skate back and forth to class for instance. Other
than that I do not skate and have not skated seriously since about 1991. I am talking about skating at least 3 days a week
for 4-6 hours at a time, every week. I first thought I must be getting old that is why I can not skate as well as I used to.
That is not it. The sad fact is I have not skated for so long that I have forgotten how to do many things I used to do with
ease. How to stand, where to put my feet and most important to stay loose.
I used to skate giant ramps, at Mike McGill’s park for instance, coping to coping doing tricks every time for hours
on end. I used to do wall rides and skate off jump ramps 5 feet into the air. The photo on the Radman_Art site is a example
of that. On this web page that I made my self. In the video it shows a pumping technique that I forgot how to do, until just
recently. This is one of the first things I learned in California in the late 1980’s. I used to watch the skateboarders
and wonder how do they do that? If you roll a ball down a skateboard ramp it will settle at the bottom.
Skate boarding on the east coast was terrible when I was a teenager and my early twenty’s. I would have to drive
for miles to find a ramp, when I got a car. When I was a kid skateboards were imposable to buy. I found a skate shop in Road
Island once when I was 11 or 12. I will never forget it they had the coolest urethane wheels. You try to get a ride to Road
Island as a 11 year old. I remember at the age of 23 or 24 skate boarding down the street having people make fun of me like
I was a freak or something. All my life it seemed like that. I always felt out of place until I moved out west. I always managed
to get cool skateboards as a kid and the skate magazines too.
I made up my mind to move to California and work for a skateboard company. And that is what I did. I had a job working
for the biggest skateboard company in the world at the time. Tracker designs was owned by Larry Balma and Peggy Cousins at
the time both of whom I saw every day. I actually had a contract selling art to Tracker Designs. Tracker made very cool skateboard
trucks as well as published Transworld Skateboard and Snowboard magazines. They also had boards (I still have one they gave
me) and they made Skate Rags clothing.
