When I was younger, I built a mini ramp in my backyard. I didn’t ride minis too often at the time, but my girlfriend back then loved them more than she loved me, I think. She used to say “some girls want diamonds, but I want a mini ramp.”
So, with the help of a few friends, I built her one for her birthday. It was 16 feet wide; a four-foot mini with six-foot extensions. Since she wanted a mini ramp instead of diamonds, she had a shoulder that would pop out in a light breeze — I once watched her dislocate it at the bottom of a bowl, walk to the bathroom, and pop it back in before dropping back into the bowl — and she needed surgery. The day after we finished the ramp, she finally got her shoulder rebuilt and she spent the rest of the summer with her arm in a sling staring out the window at her ramp while we skated it. I felt bad. But I skated it a LOT. Sorry, Amy.
When we weren’t working, we were skating. And one thing it taught me was that in order to skateboard half-way decently, you have to fall more times than you can count. Every new maneuver requires a million bails. Every new maneuver is built on the back of countless bruises and bursas. Over and over and over again, you have to commit fully, not make it, and try again, over and over and over. It’s part of what makes it so fun and so frustrating at the same time.
Generally, when you watch a skate movie or see an image on your phone, you don’t see what went into the making of it. Which is why the short video Red Bull put together is so fun to watch: you see the fails. You see the over-and-over-and-over agains. Also, of course, there’s the fact that Ryan Decenzo is in Whistler, B.C., riding a skateboard on plywood on top of snow, trying to clear a 20-foot creek gap. It’s a recreation of Rick McCrank’s frontside 180 from an eS film back in the early-2000s, and after putting in the hard yards, Decenzo accomplishes what he went there to do.
