Results for transition

I’ve been wanting to interview Patti Hurst for a while now because it’s not every day you find someone who goes from complete beginner to riding bowls and ramps in their late 30’s/early 40’s. Patti also takes the time to help out other skaters who are just starting out when the opportunity arises and is proof that skateboarding is so much bigger, so much more, than a sport for young kids in high school. Skating will grow with you, will give back as much as you put into it, and Patti is a beautiful reminder of this. Also, she’s just plain badass and has so much style.

Here’s what she shared with us:

1. How old are you and where do you live?

I’m 42 and I live in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington DC.

2. How did you get into skating? How long ago?

I watched Shaun White win his gold medal on the halfpipe at the winter Olympics in Nagano. He looked like he was having so much fun! He was always laughing and joking around, even during the stiffest competition of his life.

I was 39, and I was tired. I had spent my whole life working 60-80 hours a week, volunteering in my off time, and raising my kid. I rarely laughed, and I yelled at my 6-year-old daughter more than i wanted to admit. I wanted to have more fun, and be silly like the Flying Tomato! I thought about learning to snowboard, but there’s no snow here. Then I saw Shaun do a McTwist on a skateboard, and that’s all it took! I wanted to know what it was like to fly in the air like that. I knew I’d have to work hard. I figured it would take about a year to learn to skate like Shaun White.

One day, I asked my dad to take care of my daughter, and drove to the local skate shop. I parked the car and took a deep breath. I prepared myself for ridicule. I didn’t know anyone who skated, and I was sure there were no adult skaters in my area. I walked in and told the 17-year-old street skater behind the counter that I wanted to learn to skate ramps and bowls. I had no idea what to buy, I had never set foot on a skateboard. The store clerk stared at me for a good minute (or what seemed like it), and then went to work. He showed me different boards, trucks and wheels. He explained the virtues of each, and let me choose after narrowing the selection down to two or three. An hour later, I had a really nice first setup. He suggested that I buy a helmet and some pads, as well as some special shoes. I thought all of that might be unnecessary, but followed his advice anyway. The store owner rang me up. He said that i’ll fall a lot at first, and that most women prefer longboarding.

I took my shiny new board home, and stood on it for the first time in the living room, on the carpet. I fell almost immediately, and my dad laughed. My wrists hurt! I laughed too.

See? It was already working.

In the last three years, my job has been on autopilot, I’ve quit most of my volunteer work, and I’ve suffered more injuries than I have in all my other years put together, all the direct result of skating. It makes me sad sometimes when I think of what’s gone, but I can’t say that I regret any of it. For the first time, I’m being true to myself. I’ve laughed more, learned more and loved more than I have in all my other years put together. And I don’t yell at my daughter anymore.

3. Were you intimidated, or was it no big deal?

I had no idea how difficult it would be to learn. I figured I’d have all the basic skills in about a year. If I had known then how challenging it really is, I don’t think I would have started. But, now, I’m hooked. One of my best friends says, “skating will ruin your life, but it’s so fun, you should do it anyway.” That’s sort of how it’s turned out for me. Almost every aspect of my life is different now, but better.

4. Do you have a crew of friends you skate with? Men, women, a mix? What’s the crew like if you have one? Do you ever skate alone?

I skate with anyone and everyone who will skate with me! I travel a lot for my job, and I take my board with me wherever I go. I’m really lucky to be a part of OldKookSkating.com, an online forum for adult skateboarders who never take themselves too seriously. There are men and women there of all skill levels, and they are my skate family. I’m also a member of the Skateboard Moms, which is a forum for women who dare to skate. I’ve met some really cool people through both forums, and session with them whenever I can.

At home, I have a regular group of guys I skate with, they range in age from 21 to 57, and they’re all much better than I am. They push me to try new things, and I benefit from their years of experience. We have early morning weekend sessions at our local park, and we get together to skate my miniramp when the weather isn’t cooperating.

5. What kind/style of skating do you prefer? What kind of terrain do you usually skate?

I skate anything and everything! Sometimes a parking block can be the best place on earth, you know? But, I’m most fond of concrete bowls. They send my heart racing, and I seek them out, over all other terrain. I love to carve fast and flow. I like the grippy feel of my wheels digging into the concrete. My goal this year is to take my skating to the next level: lip tricks.

6. How do you fit skating into the rest of your life? What’s a typical skate day or skate week like for you?

I skate whenever I have a minute. Sometimes it’s just a run or two at the park on the way home from the grocery store, or a quick ollie session in my office parking garage during lunch. I keep a board under my desk and manual on the carpet in my office to relax. I have a board in my kitchen, and I skate while I make dinner and load the dishwasher.

I try to preserve as much of Sunday as possible for skating. I meet up with friends at my local in the early morning, and we inevitably head out after a couple hours for other spots. Sometimes I head up I-95 to New Jersey to skate with the rad Skateboard Moms who live up there.

7. What’s your preferred set-up?

In the bowls, I ride a 9″ X 32″ old school style deck with Indy 169s, 59mm 100A Rainskates Stinger IIs, Rockn Ron ceramic bearings, and a strange combination of red, blue and orange Khiro bushings that works for me.

8. Tell us about that ramp in the house?

My miniramp is sooo fun! It’s the best home improvement project ever! We built it in a storage room in my basement; it’s 2 feet high, 8 feet wide, 20 feet long, with 2-foot wide decks and 7-foot transitions. The surface is masonite, and it has steel coping. When it’s cold and rainy out, you can bet that there’s a session going down, complete with ice cold beer, really good tunes and lots of silly fart jokes. The door’s always open to new skaters, come join us anytime!

Thank you Patti. Now I want to go skate instead of to work!

Made it over to Freestone the other day to work on transition.  I was a little rusty because of so much longboarding lately, but I did have the center bowl all to myself and started to get it back to where I was a few months ago.  It’s so fun, I need to keep working on this.  The square little bowl is the closest thing I have to a mini ramp right now.  I wish it was wood!

It’s really cooled off finally in the desert, so it’s the best time of year to skate.

Wow! I feel like a took a leap up a steep part of the skateboarding learning curve. It was a couple days ago, at the Wedge again, on this three foot quarter pipe with small coping. I finally dropped in, and also got my rock to fakie for the first time ever! I can’t even explain it, but every time I remember that i can do this stuff now, I get all giddy like a kid, and excited to get better and learn more.

The drop in is sketchy still, but here’s a little tip. Get a buddy to stand on the side of a quarter pipe, hold their hand out in front of you, so you can kind of have a mental helper, or even a real one. I actually held my friend’s hand two times before I did it without her. It really helped me get over that last bit of fear, and forced me to feel the motion of dropping in without falling, before doing it myself.

Here’s a vid and a few pics!
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/OF3ldLY71xg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Again, I really can’t say enough about pads and helmets, especially when you’re first learning something outside your comfort level.  It helps mentally, and of course physically.  Also, find a small quarter pipe like this, mellow.  It will be easier to get the feeling right.

As I’ve been learning transition these days, it’s been a must to learn to ride with coping.  Use it.  Not get hung up on it.  I’ve been trying to learn to rock-n-roll to fakie and while I haven’t done it yet,  I finally got a little closer today.  It’s the first time I’ve actually gotten the board back onto the quarter pipe instead of just stepping off as soon as my front wheels are past the coping.  So, it’s an improvement and I feel like I’m really close.  I wish it wasn’t in the 100’s, but I’m thankful to have the parks around me even if it’s hot.  This is at the Wedge.

Brian from OMA took some pics of us the other day. He’s given us some tips on being more fluid with carving around the park because he’s a master at it. Very loose trucks. Working on going frontside around one of the little pockets at Pecos. Coming along, but it’s much harder for me than backside. Nearly as hard as keeping straight what is frontside, what is backside.

Things are going well in the carving department these days. I was at the Pecos Skate Park the other day and one of the OMA guys offered me his board to try. I’d been trying to carve around a wall without kick turning, and he just told me I could probably do it with his board because his trucks were so loose. And he was right!

Another guy has a saying: “loose trucks save lives.” It’s true if you’re trying to carve a wall or a bowl and need to lean on those trucks to turn instead of trying a kick turn and sliding down or falling off the wall.

Anyway, here’s a few pics of the carving success! This is a huge step for me!

About loose trucks–I was terrified at first, thought I couldn’t control looser trucks if I was rolling down any kind of incline. I was wobbly at first, but trust me, you get used to it and it improves your skating. I guess I wouldn’t want them too loose if I was trying to ollie up onto a ledge or learning more street oriented tricks, but still, probably looser than I thought. I amazes me how fast (a day or so?) I was able to get used to fairly loose trucks and be able to really learn something new.