So it’s official, our town of Bennington, VT is getting a skatepark. And it appears to be a beauty!
We got on the skatepark train a little late and it was already being built by the time we heard about it. But I reached out to the organizers to see if could help out at all.
I’ll describe it more in the future, but it looks to be a really nice park, with tons of elements.
The only problem is, I have to be a good enough to give it a proper welcome come this spring! Construction is paused for the winter, but I have to keep up my practice if I am going to ever have a chance of becoming a local!
So it is the last day of December, 2024 and I have made several attempts at starting this blog. To be honest, I am not the hacker I used to be, and the new technology does not come as easy to me!
So this post will catch up our progress and adventures, until now.
I started my new skating education in the garage back in October. I found Braille Skateboarding’s bootcamp for beginners on Youtube and it has been invaluable. I am still on the first video and I am trying to be very regimented with mastering one skill before moving on to the next.
So far, the video has me practicing rolling back and forth across the garage, stopping by putting my foot down, attempting 180 frontside and backside turns and things like that. I have forced myself to take it slow, starting each practice with the very simplest movements.
Early in November we had an awesome visit to the skatepark in Riverside Park in New York. After some initial delays, we got down to it and had a great time. I restricted myself to pushing up and down the side and daring to go over a few small bumps. Eammon and my nephew Nathan were a little braver and went up and down some of the larger elements.
The scene was very family friendly, although there were real hardcore skaters mixed in with the toddlers on scooters. The best part of the visit for me was that the experienced skaters were more than tolerant of me and my baby steps, to the extent that when I bumped into one of the guys, we sparred with dueling apologies instead of static. Awesome! The park was nice as well, with a massive bowl off to the side. Nathan thought he might drop in but decided against it. It’s on my goal list to get in that bowl one day – I’m doing it!
Eammon and I had practiced in the garage for a while before we decided to check out the skatepark in North Bennington. Now, to some, this park would be less than impressive. It’s got those slippery metal ramps and a rough blacktop surface. But to someone who grew up in a time where skateparks only existed in California and our dreams, this is awesome.
My big skatepark trick is rolling up to a ramp and doing a backside turn on it and rolling away. Small victories.
Eammon can get higher up on the ramps then me, a combination of his snowboarding practice and youthful fearlessness. He is a good skate crew member and very encouraging.
Things feel different when you’re 47. It comes on slowly but surely, making itself know in little mundane ways:you’re at the top of a set of stairs and have to stop to catch your breath; you find yourself tending to a pulled tendon that you don’t remember pulling; you stand up on a skateboard and feel like it’s going to fly out from underneath you because apparently 12-year-olds and middle age people have a radically different sense of balance.
Since I entered my early 40s I’ve had this nagging urge to once and for all learn to skate. I had a couple of boards during the first huge mainstream skating boom in the 80s, and I was definitely “into skating”, but truth be told I could never really skate. Blame it on our gravel driveway! So when I turned 44 I got a nice new Alien Workshop board and went out a couple of times with my son, trying it out in parking lots and a couple of local skate parks (don’t be impressed yet, I was still in the “trying to stay standing still on the board phase”). I took a moderate fall, landed on my hip and realized that middle aged bruises healvery slowly and I was going to have to be super careful if this was going to work.
We had some family health issues and a big move to a new house in Vermont, so I took a couple years pause. This brings us to Day One.
This year I got back on the board and I found that my balance was worse than ever. I realized that I was going to have to go way back to baby steps. Like practicing standing still on the board baby steps. And this is OK. It’s an ego check and also a reminder that I have to take it very, very slow.
I have made a goal for myself to skate a halfpipe by the age of 50. That leaves me two and a half years. That should be enough, right? And I don’t mean some tiny halfpipe. I’m talking a real vert ramp. Maybe not Raging Waters massive, but definitely the type of ramp I used to watch Lance Mountain skate in the Bones Brigade videos.
So where to start? I decided to go back to the classic skate-incubator location: the garage. It’s not pretty, but at least it’s away from the prying eyes of the neighbors.
I started this blog to keep track of my skating adventures with my son, Eammon, and to chronicle my progress. from merely staying upright on the board to getting on that halfpipe and dropping in, if I am lucky and stick with it.
