About The Old Guy…

For too many deep seeded reasons to list here, I picked up skateboarding at age 54 +

I grew up in a small town in upstate NY.

Skating meant roller or ice. Skateboards were popping up here and there but were not in great supply. My first was a set of metal skate wheels screwed to a board my father crafted for me in around 1975-76. This made me reconsider skating in all it’s forms for a while.

I picked up roller skating around age 11 when the powers that be opened up the elementary school gym for a roller skating night. Then a rink opened in my town in around 1981 and for the next several years I spent as much free time as I could chasing girls on those 8 wheels.

Then around age 15-16 a guy moved to town and he had spent some time in California. I credit him with opening my mind and ears to music I would have otherwise probably not been as well versed in and together we made the journey with our dishwashing paychecks to the local Kmart where we purchased some crap that passed for skateboards at the time.

We rode them here and there, did a few basic turns and once our parents had ruled out building half pipes in the backyard we gradually gave up. Ski season was a very real thing and it was our “surfing/skating” so the skateboards became distant memories.

Fast forward decades later and I am living a short distance from Santa Monica and Venice Beach, CA the birthplace of modern skateboarding. I used to ride my scooter down to DogTown Coffee and sit there wondering what it would be like to ride the bowl down at the skate park in Venice. In all honesty I was too intimidated by the whole idea to ever even step on a board.

Now, living in NW Montana the urge has never been stronger. I need something to do for exercise physically, and mentally I find that listening to music and trying not fall keep me very focused and in the moment. This is good for me mentally. Very meditative and fun!