Default Sidebar

[Rio Ohki]

Scott Learns to Skateboard: Day 4 (May. 12th, 2008)
This blog could be incredibly easy if I allowed it to be. The amount of effort it would take to simply update everybody on my progress in regards to learning to skateboard would be absolutely minimal. It would look like this.

Day 4:
Learned to go faster.
Managed to carve the entire bowl.
Can do a tiny ollie, while standing still.

It’s not very impressive is it? You couldn’t call that a blog, you would call it a list. The point I’m trying to make, is that without context, without meaning, and experience behind the words and progress, this blog would be nothing. Thankfully, I have context, I’ve got a whole fuckin’ bucketload of context. Just you wait.

The night before Day 4 of learning to skate, was in a lot of ways horrific. This is nobody’s fault but mine and the little gremlins in my head. I won’t go into detail, it involves ex girlfriends, new boyfriends, ex best friends, and some BBQ that I didn’t cook right. The point is, it shook me, and Day 4 was spent in work, in a very, very nasty mood.

(At this point I should thank Suzi for allowing me to have my Emo moment on the phone that night. It was much appreciated.)

Being that Saturday is a work day, again, I couldn’t get much skating done. Managed again to Skate most of the way to work, making allowances for bumpy ground with bastard stones in it, and resolved to get some done in my lunch hour.

Upon heading to Kelvingrove Park for some lunchtime skating, I rediscovered one very simple fact, not just about skating, but about life in general. How you’re feeling affects the things that you do. To put it another way, don’t skate while you’re pissed off, or at least don’t try and do things you find difficult. If I’m honest, with the benefit of hindsight, my overall progress was good. As mentioned earlier, I’m skating faster, and carving better, with a better overall sense of balance.

The flip side of progress is that you have to make mistakes to get forward. Skating is full of contradictions, best explained in the movie ‘Billion Dollar Baby’. In boxing, if you want to go left, you move your feet right, against the body’s natural impulses. In Skating, the faster you make yourself go, the easier a time you and your board will have. Sadly, this goes against my natural impulse to shit myself out of terror at high speed on a wooden board.

In order to progress, you will fall over, and it will hurt. If you progress while angry or upset, then every bail feels like a personal failure, and hurts twice as much. It leaves a sour taste in your mouth, and bruises on your soul.

Despite this, I decided to return to the park after work, even just to mosey about on my board, and clear my head. Alas, it began to pour down. This did nothing for my mood. What did clear my head, apart from a good night out in the Cathouse, was the realisation that despite all the things that made me uncomfortable that night, I’m still here, still alive, still have my limbs attached, and still becoming a better skater. The faster and harder you push yourself, the easier things will eventually become.

Happy skating.

Scott.