How I got into skating — my first board

Yo, what's goin' on? @d-pend here. I got excited finding out that a @steemskate community was just recently started, and figured that it'd be a good time to tell my #skateorigins story.

I grew up with one sibling: my little sister. But I was really close to my cousin who was the same age as me. He was always the daredevil, and I was more cautious. We would bike around these hills near the creek where I grew up and get into all kinds of shenanigans.

He was real into skating and always wanted me to learn. I remember him saying "Yo dude, you should skate goofy; lots of tall skaters skate goofy." I was already six-foot-something in seventh grade and my limbs were all out of proportion with my body. My balance was terrible and I shied away from any sports involving foot coordination like soccer. So I probably tried to ride a board once or twice—I'm sure it was one of those cheap Wal-mart boards. I could never really get into it.

Basically, I never thought I'd be interested; I didn't want to get hurt and was more interested in reading books, video games, making music, etc. I played basketball and was runner so it wasn't that I was unathletic, just lacking the patience and determination needed to learn how to skate. Probably somewhat lacking the courage also...the only way I could be considered a skater was by playing skateboarding video games!

Flash forward all the way to 2019. For some unknown reason, I started getting recommended skateboarding videos on YouTube and got really interested. I learned about Rodney Mullen and a bunch of skateboarding greats and began to realize that skating was a way deeper art form than I thought—not just flashy flip tricks and jumping huge stair-sets. I didn't even know freestyle skating existed before that.

I eventually found out about Andy Anderson and the version of the Powell Flight Deck he skates. Those boards are insane, they use some sort of epoxy-infusion technology to make them basically unsnappable. You can drive an SUV over these things and they still won't break:

If you don't know about Andy, you don't wanna keep sleepin' on this kid. He's super well-rounded and incorporates a lot of different skate styles together in a really unique way. He has lines for days and is extremely fluid in navigating obstacles. The channel NKA Vids on YouTube has a bunch of vlogs skating with Andy that are worth checking out. Here's a short compilation of some clips that Nigel posted recently:

Anyway, so finally towards the end of last year I decided I had to try for myself and I got Andy's Heron edition of the flight deck which is really wide compared to most modern boards at 9.13" and has a somewhat strange-looking shape for primo tricks, flat tail for pogo, etc. Even though the flight deck is pricey, I wanted to learn on a board that was solid and would basically never break. The wheels I started out with are 59s and relatively hard at 97a, but not as hard and small as what most use for skate parks which are usually 99a or 101a.

I started learning just skating street around parking lots close to my apartment in October 2019. It was a wild ride, that's for sure! Since this blog is getting kinda long, I think I'll have to save that part of the story for the next one. If you want to hear how I ended up on crutches for a few days when I started skating then follow @dpend.active and I'll fill you in on that during the next installment!

(Oh yeah, and in the comments below — tell me which skaters' style you dig the most? And how did you first get into skating? And if you don't skate — would you ever try to learn?)

If you want, use the tag #skateorigins to tell the story of how you started skating in your own post. Use #hive-173115 as your very first tag to put it in the new #steemskate community.