Varial Flip

I haven't been skating much lately, as I've been spending much of that time rebuilding my backyard mini-ramp. I've also been trying to get into surfing more lately so I don't feel like such a poser, having written a book about surfing and all...

Anyway, after getting home from a bike ride and then a surf, my friend Shawn asked if I wanted to skate that day. Three sports? Why not, and so I headed out the door for a noon session.

Here is Shawn doing a sweet layback from an earlier session.

It was pretty relaxed, cruising around the bowl with him and another middle-aged skater. I don't think any of us was feeling particularly gnarly that day, though I did learn to roll-in to the mini-bowl frontside (I usually go backside), which is kind of scary. But as we skated, I threw a few flip tricks (kickflips, varial flips, etc.), and they were working. Now, this is fairly rare, as the energy it takes to flip your board over from flat ground far outweighs the energy used to cruise around a bowl, and so I don't do much flatground skating these days. But when it works, it works, and so after the other guys left, I started getting into trying a varial flip off of one of the banks. 

This isn't a new trick for me, or all that revolutionary, but as I mentioned, it's something I don't do too often anymore. More prevalent would be the 360-flip (or "tre flip," as the kids say), which is arguably more difficult, though doing a varial (a 180-degree turn of the board combined with a kickflip) does take more control in some cases. Either way, it was feeling good and so I was hucking them, but not quite landing. 

Shawn also provided guest vocals on this reggae/ska track, as well as skated in the music video.

Then a strange and sort of magical thing happened, that is less rare than a flip trick day, but still a little rare: I started to feel like a teenager again. Not in the lame, hanging onto the past until I hurt myself kind of way, but in a life-giving, energetic sort of way. This trying for a trick, over and over, pushing my body to its limit in the hot sun, well after my friends had left, is a lot like what I did during my high school skate "career." I just loved the sport so much, and something about the progression and the pushing wakes up a youthful energy in me that I only see on occasion. And so I kept going.

Eventually, I brought out the camera, mostly because I wanted to document what was going on and how it felt. You can see the video below (which doesn't even cover half of the attempts I made) that shows some tries, some falls, some other tricks (the little frontside boardslide up the ledge is new for me), and finally the landing. 

Again, none of this is revolutionary skating, but it felt good and I learned some lessons in the 45 minutes I spent messing around with this trick:

1. If something is clicking/working that day, keep going with it. I've spent so many sessions trying to force certain tricks that I "should have" been able to do. I wonder if I had just searched around for what happened to be working that session and explored those maneuvers, if I could have learned more and/or had more productive and fun skate sessions. (Could this one be true of our everyday life as well?)
2. It feels good to push yourself. We don't often push ourselves much, the older we get. It felt nice to breathe heavy, sweat and try something difficult. Let's do that more often.
3. Scooters are lame. You'll see just before the end that a couple of kids on scooters started getting in my way. It totally killed my rhythm and almost made me give up before I landed the trick. I've seen guys do backflips on scooters and, though impressive, it doesn't change the fact that scooters are lame. Remember that kids.
4. Don't be ashamed of your skill level. I mentioned that varial flips aren't super technical tricks, and is something I learned way back in high school. But again, it's something I don't do all that often and so it felt like a victory to me to land this one off a ramp.
5. Try to wake up your inner youth as much as you can. It feels so good to do it and will invigorate the rest of your day, even if you pay for it on the morrow (as I certainly did).

P.S. - If this blog has too many links, let me know. I clicked a button that let Google fill in its own links, which might have been a mistake...