Summer Skate Series: Volume 1

Picking Out My Board

Ever since quarantine rules were put into place and school was canceled for the rest of the year, I have found myself doing basically nothing. Sleeping 16 hours a day and on my phone the other 8 hours. Things got boring after awhile and I quickly realized that I had to put this free time to good use. “What can I do?” I asked myself. Read a 5,000 page book? Learn how to cook? Teach my dog new tricks? None of the above caught my eye in any way. I started thinking harder. What can I do that I won’t get bored of, that can keep me occupied for the rest of quarantine, and that I could learn from the comfort of my own home? After searching for a little bit, I stumbled upon….you guessed it….skateboarding. Once I told my family about how I reallllyyy wanted to learn how to skateboard, none of them believed in me. “You can get hurt easily” or “You are gonna get bored of it in the first week of trying” or even “You’re too girly for skateboarding.” What!? These comments only fueled my determination to start skating and prove them wrong . I hopped on the internet and started researching everything I needed to know about skateboarding.

I wanted to make sure I got the best board setup, so I had to do some extensive research. I looked at thousands of reviews online and watched YouTube videos. I also searched hundreds of sites to make sure I was making the right purchase. One of the designs from the Almost Skateboarding brand caught my eye. I chose the Almost Skateistan Double Doves Pink Deck because it was designed by Sky Brown, a 10 year old girl skater. A portion of the proceeds would go to a skate school in Cambodia. After choosing my deck, I chose some other things that I would need; wheels (56mm Spitfire Classics), trucks (Indy S11 Forged Hollow), bearings (Bones Reds), risers (Bones), hardware (Indy Phillips), and grip tape (Mob).

After about a month of researching, saving up my money, and convincing my parents to let me use their credit card, I finally got my board!

I also got some awesome new stickers with my package!

It was really fun going through the process of picking out everything I needed to buy for my first ever skateboard. But that was just the easy part. I knew there was much more to skating than just picking out cute accessories and posing for cool pictures for my Instagram. I needed to actually practice and commit. Stay tuned for next week’s blog post on how I learned how to ride and the beginning stages of my skating journey!

Thank you so much for stopping by! Be sure to subscribe for updates on when I post and follow me on social media @heyjnelle! I’ll be posting updates on how I’m progressing with skating every other week. Leave blog post suggestions down below and tell me what you thought about this one! I love interacting with you guys!