Electric Avenue - surfing the streets.

Lockdown continues but let's not dwell on that as I suspect it is a very, very different prospect depending on one's situation. For me, well I am getting more real exercise in, getting back into martial arts (have gone almost full circle as I am practicing a lot of kali/escrima at the moment, something I did in the depths of Liverpool's China town in 1980). Also socialising online by playing a lot of Dungeons & Dragons which is a bit like being a teenager again! Riding wise I am restricting myself to doing a one a day ride just around my local, mainly deserted, streets which is both weird and great both at the same time. Now, the board of choice for these rides is the Stoke. Reasons for this are two fold, one I love the board, two the smaller travel battery is easy to run down to the 50% mark where it is best to store it at if not in use. Something that I couldn't be assured of doing with either of the GTRs. I am missing the grass riding and the pump track on

World in lockdown, Aussie trip forced to be cancelled, government seemingly befuddled about what to do, people being told to sneeze into their elbow yet panic buying loo roll... ('can't tell there arse from their elbow lad' as me dad would have said)... It is easy, and not really surprising, that so many people feel down. Under reaction, over reaction, who actually knows. But as the BBC weather report found out courtesy of Mr Fish all those years ago, surely it is better to over react and be pleasantly proved wrong than to under react and be fucked... But one thing is clear pastimes like skating/eskating are ideal to keep one's spirits up in such times. Unless you are on a group ride it is a fairly solitary thing to do, social distancing is easy to do and you get outside to get your dose of Vitamin D (which may be important in determining how bad you get the virus when you get it). Transport wise it solves the social distancing problem. But more than anything,

New T-shirt lol  Been waiting for the dry weather to coincide with an early morning off ever since I got the Stoke really. There was a window of opportunity this morning so I thought I would go to the local novelty spot - a 'skatepark' built in an old paddling pool. Used to take the push skates there for a while and wondered what the difference would be with the Stoke. Push skate 50/50 on my 50th - far too long ago now ! The park itself is little more than two curved banks opposite each other (in what was a round paddling pool) with a raised flat bank/ledge area and a grind box to the side... A pump hump sits in the middle. Good fun if you live close and catch it before the hundreds of kids on scooters and tricycles take over or before the dusk time gangs congregate! I have had the Stoke out on some flat bank/ramps a couple of times and already knew that there were quite big differences to the feel of a normal short board and the motorised Stoke. As far as I can a

Realised I had been esk8ing too much to notice I had not updated the blog since last summer... Oops So, here comes the normal promise to do it more often. Also, although I am old, fat and crap, people always say I have a shit loads of experience and knowledge skate wise that people would find interesting... Remains to be seen, but doing more useful stuff on this page might be more manageable than doing a Vlog on YouTube which is what is tempting me. EVOLVE STOKE        New kid on the block...  Let's talk about the Bantam, err I mean Stoke board from my favourite Aussie company Evolve (look at the board in the header). Excitement had been mounting since last September when word starting spreading about the new cruiser size board, originally named Bantam (as in light weight not as in Bantham the chook) Evolve had to change the name when the public bought it to their attention that GLOBE surf company already had a Bantam board (with basically the same looking deck as well

A week of riding has gone by, lessons learnt? This thing leaves the Onewheel in its wake. In a strange way I feel so annoyed having invested so much time, money and energy into the Onewheel. But, on the other hand the old Evolve boards had a few niggly things wrong with them that are now sorted so maybe it is a good thing.  From a skating/surfing background the Evolve is so much more natural a feeling. I thought I would hate the remote, but now don't really notice it.  Know one shouts, "Did you make it?" as I am riding lol.  So what did I mean by the Evolve being so much better, when in theory I thought it would be lagging behind the OW in most ways? Smoothness - with the AT tyres on the GTR it is smoother over rough terrain than the one big wheel. This came as a shock and was counter to what I thought. I suppose it is because the four wheels have a smoothing effect. Sure it can not take as big a obstacles as the OW (think roots and curbs here) but the thin

Like a kid on Xmas Eve is the only way I can explain the days before my board arrived... Must have been exceptionally good as this arrived on the doorstep: Whoop Whoop So straight to the opening sequence... FOUR DAYS LATER... Well didn't stop pouring it down until Thursday evening so it was a long wait to get the first ride in. Andy and a mate came across for the occasion and Ayer (my next door neighbour skate buddy) joined us. Now, I had got Ayer Onewheeling and he liked it but his true love is skating and I don't think it ever scratched that itch for him; so it was going to be interested what he thought. In my excitement I forgot to take any photos or video to immortalise the occasion. I did have a big post organised for how I had got on with the board/s (don't ask) and how I had been doing, how I now had street, all terrain 7.5s and the new hybrid 6s AT wheels but hey, as they say a picture paints a thousand words... 37 C degree day, early m