Today brought two revelations.
First, The Madness continued this afternoomn, but I have limited its scope. I normally ride an 8.25/14.38 with 144 trucks. The previously mentioned vert ramp incident (see prevoius post) had me wanting a bigger deck for transition. I had set-up an 8.75/14.62 with 159s, and suddenly found myself liking it in some street contexts (esp. Smith grinds), but it was also kind of clunky, even on some bigger transition I skated this week.
So, The Madness had me aim somewhere in between. Today I put together an 8.5/14.5 with 149s. This is squarely between the 8.25 and the 8.75…and I really liked it, as it provided a little more stability than the 8.25, but wasn’t as clunky as the 8.75. This will certainly function as my “larger transition” set-up, but will also see some pure street use, too (I’m keeping the 8.75 around, however). There are few other “test brackets” I have planned before this current Madness Episode quiets down, but I’ll update on those later.
Second, I came to the conclusion today that I am never skating again* without knee/elbow pads (I feel like I’ve said this many, many, times before). I already wear them a lot, but man, did they ever save my ass today. After I skated the ramp for a bit, I was screwing around on this small wooden box (in video link below). I missed getting into a nose slide, and couldn’t get my front foot off the board. I went down hard (see video ender). Forward knee pad, and forward elbow pad, took brunt of the fall, but man, is my shoulder sore. I hate to think how that one would have ended (esp. the fwd elbow) without pads. If I can go down that hard, on a slappy nose slide, well, it’s better that I have some pillows strapped to me at all times.
*I’m excluding curb stall tricks from that mandate. Anything where I am grinding, sliding, on a ramp, or going fast…and the pads are coming out. I hardly wore them at all while on my Texas trip two weeks ago, and man, was I tempting fate. Fortunately, I came home unharmed.
Link: youtu.be/PBtd8s1Af…
