TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Trying Nose Manuals. After being successful with ollie manualing on the world's smallest manual pad I thought maybe I could try getting back my ollie nose manuals. You can see how I went in my latest driveway skateboarding session video below where I also again try to land kickflips and actually board slide my board slider. As it turns out my confidence in ollieing up, even an inch, onto a platform is just not there. I couldn't bring myself to even try with any level of commitment. I even tried moving the platform out of the way, and also explored to possibility of trying frontside 180 fakie nose manuals. None of it was happening so I moved onto my continuing efforts to land a kickflip. I thought this was a really good session with a number of close lands, that don't really count because the tail was down. Just not sure how to fix that? Finally I finished up with attempting to board slide as much of my board slider as possible after noticing all the backside grinds I had be...

The World's Smallest Manual Pad (well lowest anyway... probably?) After trying backside 50-50 grinds on my board slider I got to thinking of other tricks that I should be able to try without too much fear of falling over. Tricks that I used to do but have lost. What came to mind was ollie manuals, where you ollie onto a 'manual pad' (any kind of raised flat surface higher than the one you're ollieing from) and roll along on your back wheels a.k.a. a manual. I've struggled in the past with ollieing up anything but I had a large piece of plywood that I used to use as a ramp for my dogs to get into my van, thus, the world's smallest manual pad (probably?) came into being. Well, when I say 'smallest' I actually mean 'lowest' because the surface area of the plywood is actually quite a good size. You can see me skate my makeshift 'manny' pad in my latest Driveway Skate Session video below. Of course I first had to spend some time trying kickfli...

Queen Elizabeth Cruise Ship docked at Hobart. Photo from Mt. Nelson. Our second full sea day onboard the Queen Elizabeth Cruise ship was largely an exercise in passing the time before arriving in Hobart, Tasmania, the following day. If you're new to TET Life this post is the continuing story of my partner and I's cruise on the Queen Elizabeth that we took for a week at the end of January, start of February 2020, just a month prior to the world going into lockdown thanks to Coronavirus (at the exact time the first cases of the virus arrived in Australia). If you would like to read all the available posts in this series (in reverse order) click here . Day 4: Sea Day, Gallery, Shopping, Pub, and Hollywood Afternoon cocktails and scones while we lounged on the Pavillion Deck. After a late breakfast in the Lido restaurant (a real challenge at that time of day just to find a table) I went to the ships art gallery for a talk about a history of sculpture, specifically focussing on Bro...

Backside 50-50 Grind by TET I have been thinking about my board slider and how I might feature it more in my video skating sessions. I don't use it very often because all I can do on it is really short nose slides and fairly short board slides. In order to use it more I need to get used to doing grind tricks on top of it but because it has fairly large coping I don't find it easy to lock my wheels into it - even for a basic grind trick like a 50-50. As such, ollieing onto it (which I would do without a second thought if it was a concrete curb), seems like quite a dangerous proposition. However, after some consideration, I decided lifting my front truck onto the slider and then trying to leverage my back truck on in a kind of backside 50-50 slappy motion, seemed doable. So that's what you can see my try in my latest driveway skateboard session in the video below. Naturally I did spend some time trying kickflips first as I'm still trying to land these. Unfortunately my m...

On the off chance Kevin Smith or anyone from his organisation happens to read this review, I want to applaud Kevin for personally taking this movie on the road to theatres. I think that's amazing and more directors should release their films that way but... For the love of God, can you please find a way to release your films so that people in countries you won't be touring in can get to see them sooner... and I don't mean that BS where one streaming service gets the film exclusively for 3-5 months before the DVD/Blu-ray release and wider distribution to other streaming services. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Roadshow kicked off mid October of 2019. At the time of writing this it became available on DVD just a week or so ago. I bought a copy as soon as it became available here in Australia. So, about eight months after it released I can finally see it. I can also finally listen to the Smodcast Commentary track Kevin recorded, which has sat on my playlist for at least two months...

The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau. Reviewed by TET Unlike Chris Guillebeau's other books, such as The $100 Startup , The Happiness of Pursuit is less of a how to guide and more about finding inspiration. The book is set out in a logical order of sections and chapters starting with why people go on quests, what to expect while on a quest, and then debriefing once a quest is achieved (or not). However there is no ten point plan or step by step guide to achievement. Instead the book looks at many different case studies of people who have pursued seemingly insurmountable quests, what it took to get started, how they broke everything down into manageable tasks, the problems they faced, and their conclusions after having completed their goal. Along the way Chris offers practical advice from both his research and as someone who also pursued a quest of visiting every country in the world. Some of the real case studies include (and many probably wouldn't even spring to mind...

Giant Chess Set, Sports Deck. Our first full day at sea on our Queen Elizabeth Cruise was anxiety inducing. For the first time since, I can't even remember we would have no internet access on our mobile phones for at least 24 hours. If you're new to TET Life, or this is your first post, I'm blogging about a cruise ship holiday my partner, Enigma, and I went on at the end of January 2020 for eight days. You may like to continue reading from this point or you might like to start from the beginning, Automobiles, Planes, Buses, Trams, and Boats and then click   Queen Elizabeth Cruise 2020 to get the all the posts, in descending order, of how we got here. Day 2: Sea Day Breakfast in bed. It was nice but ultimately we decided  eating out was a better experience all round. A 'sea day' is exactly what it sounds like, a day spent entirely on board the ship at sea. All cabins have full room service included so we began our day by ordering breakfast in bed as the sh...