Fritz Bogott » longboarding

Carving

Fritz Bogott — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:45:09 +0000

My longboards have been gathering dust all winter.
+M₁ is at ice-skating camp.
+Rachel and M₂ are swimming.
+The ice is off the roads.
= An afternoon of soul-carving down the long slow hill in front of our house.

It’s spring!

_{Image CC-BY by AMagill}

Grinding and Grinding

Fritz Bogott — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:50:13 +0000

There’s a great thread up on grinding.be that mashes together skater culture, architecture and grinder culture. Go check it out!

_{(Skater image CC-BY-NC-ND by Ignacio Nuñez C.)}
_{(Grinder Symbol copyright is probably held down by Avatar. Used here totally without permission, but go buy lots of Warren‘s books.)}

LDP

Fritz Bogott — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:15:19 +0000

As seems to be happening to an increasing number of people, I have been evangelized by James Peters and company over at Pavedwave into building a longboard optimized for pumping (where you use a surfing motion to propel the board, rather than pushing off with your back foot.) As a father and an old fart, I can’t get much joy out of aggressive hill-bombing or sharing the road with cars, so surfing bike trails sounded just about perfect.

My RoeRacing Mermaid LDP deck arrived the other day in a giant flat cardboard envelope, and I bolted on some Carver CX trucks and some giant sticky 3dm Avila wheels and went out to give it a try.

I spent the whole session howling with laughter (which was probably creepy to watch, given that I was all alone,) but I’ve got the thing self-propelling (slowly) up and down small hills, and I can surf parking lots without ever putting a foot down. It will be a long time before I’m logging respectable mile times, but who cares!