Attempting to Land Kickflips, Skateboarding at 50

Skateboarding at 50.

On May 10th 2020 I turned 50 years old. While younger me never imagined I'd still be skating at 50, I have always said, Tony Hawk (one of the world's best skaters from my generation) is only two years older than me. When he decides to quit that gives me two more years before maybe I'll consider it. He hasn't quit yet.

While I'm not nearly as good as him I still enjoy being on a skateboard, and working on getting back to a level of ability that I had back in my twenties. That said, kickflips were not my forte, even in my twenties.

I reckon I could count on one hand, and still have a finger or two left over, the number of flat ground kickflips I landed. I actually had a greater chance of landing a backside kickflip to tail on a curb than I had of landing a standard kickflip, but even then that wasn't in any way consistent.

So in early March, while the world was in lock down from the pandemic, I thought that would be a good time to attempt to learn kickflips, and land one by my fiftieth birthday. To that effect I made a video stating my goal and also trying some new ideas to try and get me a little closer to landing.

As it turns out attempting to land my kickflips with the back foot only on the board was the most progression I've made in years with regard to learning the trick.

After this video I didn't do a lot in the way of filming my skateboarding, or even skating any more than usual. It wasn't long before my birthday started looming. The day before I got out my camera and skateboard to see if I could give one really big push to land a kickflip by my birthday. I also took the opportunity to run through my Braille Skateboarding Made Simple (Volume 1) tricks, and to update you with what happened with my entry into Revive's Design a Lifeline Competition.

If you're interested in getting a better look at my revised Pizza Monkey Lifeline Skateboard graphic you can view it in my etourist skateboards store.

Watching the video you'll see I didn't manage to land kickflips by my birthday. However, two days later I got out on my board with a camera again and did nothing but kickflips.

This video is quite definitely the closest yet I've come to landing a kickflip, getting both feet on the board several times. I don't personally count these as lands but I do call it progress.

At the time of writing this article I still haven't landed kickflips but I am still working at it. It would be a shame to get this close and then give up.

One of the few flat ground kickflips I landed back in my twenties was actually caught on video. It was only memorable because I recorded over it due to it being on one of the few Video8 cassette tapes I had for my camera at the time. It would be good to actually have one recorded on video again.

I'll keep you posted.

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TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

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