Alright pals, this is gonna be a long, utterly uninteresting post about my madness. Bear with me. Or don’t, I won’t blame you.
First of all, the reason why I’ve been experiencing this bout of madness (and why I haven’t posted in a good 6 months or so) is that I started my dream job in January and became a first-time dad in March. Those things are obviously what truly matters, and my skateboarding sanity is a very small thing to give up for them. I nonetheless hope that this thread is a safe space for my petty ramblings about deck shapes and wheel size. Second of all, I’ve naturally had very little time to spend on my board and won’t have much for the foreseeable future, and upwards of 90% of my madness is due to that. If I skated more, I’d be more in sync with my setup and wouldn’t feel the need to change anything. Skating more simply isn’t an option right now, though – but what I can do is scour the internet for new gear that might be in my wheelhouse and think about how I could tweak my setup to better fit my needs. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a good while now, with no end in sight.
Let me back up a little: Two years ago I got back to skating after about 17 years off the board. After a little experimenting with the new gear options that came about during my absence I settled on the Ishod 8.5“ twin with Venture 5.8 hollows and softer formula 54mm wheels with wide contact patches as my main setup. At 6’2“ and 200lb with a background in powerlifting I’m tall-ish, heavy-ish and brutish for a skater, and I very much enjoy the stability that pairing the 14.5“ wheelbase with Ventures gives me. My preference for large riding surfaces and softer duros also stems from that; I have zero finesse and struggle to properly set up for anything if the ride is even a little bumpy.
I’ve strayed from that setup, mostly out of curiosity, with varying degrees of success, but always came back after a short while. There are a couple of definitives I’ve been able to come down with:
- Anything narrower than 8.5“ is out of the question due to my big ass feet.
- Decks can’t be shorter than 32“ due to my height.
- I prefer fuller kicks, but don’t mind eggs as long as they don’t taper below the equivalent of semi-full popsicle kicks.
- I like my concave (but not necessarily the kicks) semi-steep.
- Riding surface can’t be below 20mm.
So far, so good. But here’s the source of my current madness: Bigger wheels (>56mm) give me the best overall ride on my board, and I get great pop for ollies and onto tall ledges. Practically all aspects of my skating improve or at least feel better on bigger wheels, so I would very much like to have them on my regular setup – but there’s one aspect that suffers: my flip game. And flipping my board is still the most magical feeling of all to me. So magical that I don’t want to cede a single one of my hard-won flip tricks. Which leaves me pondering the following questions:
- Why exactly do my flips suffer? Because I’m just not used to additional height and weight, of course. But since I don’t skate often enough to get used to it easily, is there something I can do to make the pop feel as similar as possible to my old go-to setup, just on bigger wheels?
- If there is, what exactly do I need to do? Find a deck with mellow kicks and a shorter wheelbase, and/or even switch to wheelbase-shortening trucks, e.g. Aces, to achieve a close approximation of my current pop angle?
- Would those changes be so substantial that they negate what I liked about my go-to setup in the first place? (Probably so.)
… And the one overarching million dollar question:
- Why do I focus so much on what I can’t do [well] on a particular setup when I could just suck it up and enjoy the limited time I get to spend on my board?
Huh. That was as actually quite cathartic to write up. Now tell me how I’m overthinking it and just need to go skate. THX!
Topic: Gear madness support thread (Read 372496 times)