September 2008 newsletter

My skating news

The fractured wrist (or revenge of the London streets!)

So, just to prove that even reasonably good skaters fall over, I went ahead and tried to fracture my wrist!

I've started training to be a marshal for the London Friday Night Skate and Sunday Stroll and part of it involves going on a route check: several days before the actual skate, the lead marshal and the scout (not often seen by punters on the skate) go along the planned route to check for hazards that might need to be re-routed around. I was on a route check for the London Friday Night Skate and made a silly mistake: we went across some rough surface, I was a little slow, my weight was on my toes, they dug in, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor. At the time it didn't feel that bad but the next morning I couldn't lift the kettle without being in a lot of pain.

The X-ray of my wrist didn't show any definite fractures but, according to the nurse, the arm bones at the wrist joint "aren't as a straight as they should be"! I got treated, from entering A&E to leaving in a nice white cast, in an hour so, which shocked both me and the nurse.

I wasn't wearing wrist guards, which I tell all of my students to make sure they have, but I'm not entirely convinced they would have helped. In actual fact I think that the full wrist guards, which have plastic that go from the palm to past the wrist, would have probably made things worse. This isn't to say that I still don't strongly recommend, and demand for my lessons, that you wear wrist guards, just that the way I fell was one of those freak instances that wouldn't have been helped.

After a week in plaster I got to see a consultant and they didn't think it was necessary, so off the cast came. I've spent the entire month of August not teaching because I still couldn't put any pressure on the wrist, which would have been bad for any of my students who needed support or stopping, but now I'm ready to get back to it again.

I wholeheartedly apologise for all of this mess!

Courses coming up

Here are the dates and times for the courses I'm running in September, through to the start of October. You should keep an eye on the course calendar as that has the definitive dates, which may change depending on circumstances.

The Sunday Stroll course , where I take you from absolute beginner through to having all of the skills necessary to complete a Sunday Stroll, will be run over the two weeks in September. The dates for the lessons are Tuesday 16th at 7pm, Saturday 20th at 2pm, Tuesday 23rd at 7pm, and Sunday 28th at 2pm. This course has proven to be popular and at least two of the students who have attended have gone on to be avid Sunday Stroll skaters.

Each lesson costs £15, making the whole course cost £60 if you attend all lessons. Please remember that if you do not attend a lesson, or feel that you got nothing from it, then you do not have to pay that £15.

To book yourself onto this course, or for more information, visit the Sunday Stroll course page. When booking, please include your mobile phone number and which lessons you will be attending.

For this course to go ahead I need at least 4 people. If there are not enough people by midday Friday 12th September, I will delay by one week, and will let people who have booked know this by email. Remember that if you persuade 3 of your friends to come with you on this course you can go for FREE!

Many people contacted me about volunteering to help try out my Street Skater course and I'd like to thank all of you. If you volunteered and I haven't got back to you (I picked the people I have either taught or skated with so that I have less worry about the street skate lesson itself) please don't be disappointed: I will give you a £10 discount across the entire course should you wish to attend it when I run it for real. Hopefully the dates and times for this course will be available soon.

Students Area finally open

The one good thing to come out of the fractured wrist is that I got to spend some time putting together the students area of my website. My idea is that this will grow into an online manual for my students, giving them advice, videos, photographs and diagrams, to help them practice outside of my lessons. Each of my students gets their own personal page, which lists the skills they've learnt and courses they have attended, and the ability to participate in discussions.

I've decided that I'll also open this to people who aren't my students, except that you'll only get to see basic information, not the really in-depth advice. How do you get full access? Come for a private lessons or attend one of my group courses.

If you are a student of mine, and have not received your username and password, please contact me and I'll sort it out for you.

Stuff seen on the WWW

I've been wandering around the WWW looking for interesting skating articles and videos; so here's the best I've seen in recent weeks. Note that I am not responsible for the content of external third party websites or videos; some music and commentary found in such videos may contain language of an offensive nature.

If you have seen anything you think is interesting, contact me and I'll consider putting it into future newsletters.

Shoot-the-skate 2008

If you didn't already know, there has been an effort by the London skate scene to shoot the skate in 2008 (via Facebook). They've got a whole heap of video footage and photos, taken throughout the year, which they are sorting through to create a video showing this years skating and Dave White has finished a trailer for the circle line skate (via Serpentine Road).

Aggressive skating

rollernews.com, an extremely good source of aggressive skating news, regularly post videos: my particular favourites are from Roll'In Clemont. They also have the Razors G8 press release; I've got the Razor G7 aggressive skates and they're pretty good, not that I'm using them that much at the moment!

If you're into aggressive skating, and haven't already found it, then ONE is a magazine that deserves a read. It's available as a free PDF download, which is pretty cool, and has some interesting articles and interviews with skaters from all over the world.

Other instructors

For those of you, like me, interested in skating on the street, there are a couple of courses being run by skateinstructor.com that might appeal:

• David is doing a stair riding workshop on 20th September down at the steps between St Pauls and The Millenium Bridge. I'll be there because I want to do them backwards, which is, apparently, easier than forwards!
• Ray is running a skate jumping workshop (via Facebook) on 13th September down at The Royal Albert Memorial. I watched the last one he ran and I'm really impressed with how much the students improved.