This past weekend I travelled to Bremen, Germany to attend the first Freestyle Slalom Festival. It was a great event with a huge turnout. I’m sure it will become an annual freestyle spot now. The weekend was a great balance of competitions and just doing slalom with everyone when no official competitions were underway. Practicing with all the big names like Seba, Igor, JB, Phil and Nathan was worth the trip alone, never mind that I actually won the amateur battle! Here’s my write up of the weekend.

We did tons of skating over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A small group of skaters showed up Friday night including Seba and Igor, so our small group got to take advantage of some personal training time with the two of them. This totally rocked! Seba worked on heeling and toe-heel spinning with me, both of which I was able to put into my battle runs thanks to his help.

On saturday we skated for at least a few hours before any official events started which was great, because i got to meet tons of skaters, and so many great skaters showed me things i didn’t know yet. Overall this event had tons of unstructured time for skaters to do whatever they wanted, which really made it worth the trip. The “Rollersport Staddion” where it all took place is basically a perfectly smooth cement floor the size of three basketball courts at least. It was perfectly level too.

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I’ve had the best few days skating!  I learned a few new tricks: 

1. Front Italian 
2. Total Cross 
3. One foot backwards 

These few tricks I tried for the first time in the past few days and out of practicing the crazy over and over and over and over, all three of these seemed a bit natural (The first two still make me insanely dizzy). 

I’ve also discovered a trick that we talked about on here a bit which is the Greasy Italian.  It might go under another name but that’s what I’m callin it.  I still don’t have a video of it yet. 

There’s another one that I started doing but again, I’m not sure what it’s called.    It’s a varialtion of the backwards snake and backwards stroll.  I’ll have to up a video of that too. 

That makes five new things that I’ve started practicing since last week.  Very exciting!

I just spent 3 1/2 hours practicing for BattleUk. I’ve been nervous up till tonight, but i realized the best thing about going is that there will be tons of good skaters there who I can learn stuff from. Whatever happens in the battle is fine with me if i get to skate with all them!

So in order to do my best i’ve been practicing. Brian Lipko came out tonight for about 1 1/2 hours which made it easier for me to keep going. I finally got the front volte down pretty well today, and I’m starting to do runs without completely planning them out first, which is definitely good for the battle style competitions. I’ve been focusing on the 80cm cones almost exclusively now… hope that doesn’t hurt me this weekend.

Anyway, wish me luck! I’ve only got tomorrow night left to practice!

Just got back from practicing for a few hours. I wanted to spend the night working on the moves themselves, and tomorrow i’ll work on transitions between them. Tonight, i learned a couple new moves (spent some time on the universkate videos page first):

1) One Cone Stroll
2) Special

I tried to remember the front volte from seba’s video, but couldn’t figure it out… hmm sounds like a justification for an ipod video…

The Special is kind of cool. I didn’t realize this till after i started doing it right, but its just the X, but you’re only on your toes the hole time. Being so close to the X, its easy to transition into and out of from the X, and therefor all the other moves that I can link with X.

I also practiced my old moves (Crazy and Mabrouk) and all the moves Naomi showed me at the workshop:

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Dennis, Phila-Jeff & I did Naomi’s workshop this weekend, and it was great! I’m very happy that we were able to organize it on such short notice. Over the two days, I got the basics down for tons of tricks. Before I could just do Crazy and Mabrouk, but now I have learned Volte, Italian, Nelson, Crazy Sun, X, Wiper and the cool Sweep move from Naomi’s video as well as the front stroll, back stroll, barrel roll and a handful of freestyle (non-slalom) moves that I don’t know the names of (one was the grapevine, but Evan had already taught me that). Better still, Naomi taught us some good tricks for mixing moves together, using either Crazy or Mabrouk as a “soup base” to throw other moves into. That way you always know what you’ll do before and after a move, which takes a lot of the mental block out of doing a real freestyle run.

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Denni and I went to NYC this weekend for a quasi-organized saturday night skate with the Union Square Crew. I’d say it was the best group skate I’ve been on so far. First, Dominique and Marie from France showed up, which was a pleasant surprise. This gave us a good balance of slalom and non-slalom skaters. So, Denni and I took turns learning slalom tricks from our french guests, and non-slalom tricks from our new york friends.

The skate consisted of just the right ratio of skating through new york traffic, and then hanging out at good locations to do tricks or relax. And we did lots of relaxing, because it was still hot even at night.

I think a bunch of us are going to visit Dominique and Marie in france some time next summer.

We learned our first 50cm trick too! I guess its called the windshield wiper, or the “X” not sure which.

I’ve spent a few minutes each day since last weekend, combing through all the footage of our session. Its actually a pretty boring job, but i think i’ve put together the best video I could have. Its much more interesting than the last ones i posted with the same trick over and over. This time I made one video for me and denni, and mixed it up according to the music. I didn’t bother putting multiple runs of the same thing in, so it should be more interesting for everyone to watch.

We’ve got three new tricks, as you can tell from Denni’s previous posts: the grapevine, the new thing we’re doing on the cones thats like a cross between grapevine and crazy, and toe-heel snakes. I think we should just focus on these until we can do them fast before learning more.

go on over to the videos section to watch, or go straight to the movie

So the grapevine that Jeremy taught me looks a little different than the one in Brodie’s vids. There’s more turns involved and snaking and stuff… Brodie’s grapevine looks more like a modified crazy. Jeremy and I made a connection between the crazy and the grapevine while we were practicing. He said that the grapevine is like the crazy only crossing over the cones going forward instead of facing sideways. I’ll have to look at some video of us doing the grapevine or our “insanity” and compare it to the grapevine vids from Brodie. He does it kinda fast so I’ll slow it down to watch his feet movements easier….

… after looking at it in slo-mo, it still seems as if Brodie’s grapevine is actually the crazy done on cones spaced further apart than 80cm. It also seems as if it is nothing like the thing we have been calling the “insanity”. Maybe Jeremy will have some insight on this. Brodie moves very fast through this thing and with loads of expertise so I’m probably just not seein’ it.

This was a very cool session. There are a few different topics that came up this time: cups, weather, location, tricks, wheels, skates, future skate sessions, and other sites.

Cups
Jeremy brought me a set of the cups he bought. They rock. They’re pretty colors of “baby” blue and “I’m wicked gay” pink. I love them.

Weather
It rained. Blah.

Location
The location was a situation because there were a few locations that were possible rain places but none of them were definite. Then Jeremy said on his way up that there was a parking lot on the way to my house down the street. When he described where it was, I knew immediately where it was and thought it was a great idea. It is basically the same sort of place Jeremy has in Philly where the entire space is covered by a highway. The only difference is that in my area, it is a parking lot. So we skated during the day and met a couple skateboarders and a little biker named Steve, or Jim… hmmm. wait. Nick… that’s it. I think it’s a pretty good location.

Sunday, we skated from morning until late afternoon in two different locations. The first location was the bball court across from my place. That is my favorite place to skate ever. It is so perfect for setting up cones and just goin nuts with tricks. There are lines to set up the cones and it’s a super smoothe surface. We skated there until lunch and then in the afternoon, we went back to the highway because it started raining again.

Tricks
This was a good trick session. Oh man, I learned or honed 3 different tricks: the crazy, the grapevine, and a modified grapevine we invented as we went. We may not be the first skaters to have invented this but it’s pretty neat. It has to have a name of some sort.

The crazy has gotten easier for me especially at the bball court. As I practiced it more, I got a little better at it. I also learned from Jeremy that transitioning between front cross and back cross is a spread eagle or inverse spread eagle, which is supposed to be the sideways movement.

The grapevine is something Jeremy taught me on Saturday. I learned it pretty quick as it is similar to the crazy. It’s not really a trick that people do much on the cones. The only video I’ve heard about is one where one tiny part of the trick moves around a cone. Otherwise it is done beside the cones. I had trouble maintaining my momentum through this trick. I thought that if I can do it around the cones, I would be more likely to keep my momentum. So, I started to practice it on the cones. This gave birth to this 3rd trick that modifies the grapevine.

We initially called it the “insanity”. I think it is probably called something different already though. So this is where you do the grapevine in a compact way and less exaggerated backwards ‘S’, moving your crosses through the cones and doing the inverse spread eagle and spread eagle around the cones. I want to start practicing every day at the bball court.

Wheels
I ordered new wheels! Woo hoo! I will have rockered wheels very soon! Woo hoo!

Skates
I want new skates. Jeremy has recommended the Roces SKT 100 Slalom. These are the ones I will probably get when I purchase new ones.

Future Skate Sessions
Jeremy and I discussed going to the Big Apple Roll, which is a giant pile of city skates over 3 days. We’re going to go and have a blast. We’ll be there to get our skate on and blow people away with our beginner style slalom tricks. Awww yea!

Other Sites
I may be stealing Jeremy’s thunder but he found another slalom site. Looks pretty neat! American even! Woo hoo! I also registered at nycskaters.com. There are some great discussions/whining arguments on there. So great.

Conclusion
I think that we both learn way way way more when we’re skating together on one of our main skate sessions. I also think that solo sessions are really great for practicing what I’ve learned in a main session. I will be practicing these new tricks with my new wheels and new skates at the bball court every day after work (weather permitting). One last… Woo hoo!

I just got back from the basketball court across the street. When I go out for these solo sessions, I aim to learn something I didn’t know before about slalom. Here is what I learned tonite in about 30 minutes of learning the new trick Jeremy learned:

1. 80cm is a good width apart for this trick. It might be easier at 40cm.

2. Six cups stacked, of the cups we bought at Walmart, is a good enough stack of cups to withstand a pretty heavy gust of wind.

3. Thirteen cups in a line, or an odd amount, is good for going back and forth over the cones without stopping. I started out with a forward cross on the first cone, down the line forward crossing. At the last cone, I did the last of the forward crosses, then did the cool stop and go thing of the crazy to reverse direction. Then did backwards cross down the line to the last cone which was a cross, then did the cool stop and go thing of the crazy to reverse direction. Then did more forward crosses, and so on and so forth and so hence forth on and forth, fifth and sixth.

4. Doing the Crazy, I haven’t figured out the best angle to start with. I don’t know if it’s easier to do back and forth straight then diagonal, or do all diagonals. But I learned that the angle at which one starts with matters.

5. Doing the Crazy, I haven’t figured out how far out to go. But I learned the distance one goes out from each cone matters.

6. The laces around my ankles need to be tightened for more support from my skates.

7. Doing the Crazy, going from backwards to forwards is harder than the opposite.

8. I want to rocker my wheels as soon as possible.

So, I suppose you could say I learned enough for about eight sessions. It was a good 30 minutes.

Last time Jeremy was here, I bent one of the metal lace loops. I fixed it with some pliers. Good stuff.