Why skateboarding matters

How would skateboarding get me into college?

I asked myself that question back in 2007, when I was applying to colleges.  How could I turn this thing I loved so much, invested so much time in, into something marketable to the admissions departments reading my application?  It was the first time I took a close look at how exactly skateboarding impacted my life – and what I found became my college admissions essay.

I am bringing this up now because I recently learned that the tech industry has started turning to skateboarding for ideas and to learn about how skaters think, as covered in a recent WIRED article – which focused on some of the same points I attempted to make in my essay seven years ago.  While there is some outside light being shown on skating, I think it would be cool to add to the discussion on why skating is important – from the perspective of a skater who has recognized its importance for almost a decade.

Me jumping off the side of my house onto my skateboard (called a “bomb drop”) ~2005.

First things first – what qualifies me to write about this?  “Who is this guy?” you might be wondering, legitimately.  I’m not a professional skateboarder, and probably* never will be.  Okay… so, I started skating when I was around 10 years old – the first time I stepped on a board I was hooked.  I was not a natural athlete at all – I bailed my first day on a board going down a steep driveway hill, and got a scab that I couldn’t have been more proud of.  Anyways, that day led to me asking for my first skateboard, which led to a 15 year obsession with it.  And I still prioritize time for it even though it doesn’t support me financially.  Actually, I even left a secure full-time engineering job to start a skateboard brand this past summer, with part of the reason being the hope that it will enable me to get more time for skating.  So, in a nutshell, that’s where I’m coming from.

*Never stop dreaming 🙂

Now, how is skateboarding relevant to you?  Have you ever thought that you weren’t creative?  Or maybe you think you’re not good at science or math or logic.  My guess is that you don’t know many people that are both very creative and logical, and we often treat them as either or: you’re a thinker or feeler; your work is either an art or a science.  We can be both creative and logical, though – and skateboarding can help us be both.

Skateboarding is a constant personal experiment.  The best skaters are extremely creative and extremely effective problem solvers – they dream up such unique, innovative tricks, and then, are able to figure out how to make them happen in real life.  Check out Rodney Mullen and Kilian Martin on YouTube – you’re bound to see something you didn’t expect could be done with a skateboard, and be amazed at both:

1. how in the world they came up with the idea, and
2. how they actually pulled it off in real life

Skateboarding is a constant experiment because, as a skater, you’re constantly looking at how you can utilize your resources to create something new – from, “what are all the possibilities for skating this ledge?  Like, what if I did a 50-50 grind then popped up to rail half way through to primo slide the rest of the way?” to “how can I redirect my body to make the board do exactly what I want it to do?  How should I position my front foot to get the proper flip?  What if I pointed my shoulders a little more to the left before I popped up?”  If you don’t skate, this may sound confusing, but the gist is

1. skateboards have a ton of degrees of freedom and can be utilized in a seemingly infinite number of ways, and
2. every little minute detail about how you physically attempt a trick will affect the outcome of the trick in some way.

Every time you skate, you’re practicing resourceful creative problem solving – and the more you practice, the better you get.

For most people, skateboarding takes A LOT of practice.  We fail a lot – if we weren’t okay with the idea of failure, and the physical toll that failure may in turn take on our bodies, we wouldn’t skate.  Failure is part of the learning experience, and skaters know this.  Stress from school and work seems to be all around us right now – there’s an incredible amount of pressure we put on each other to be right and not fail.  Our focus shifts from “what can we learn?” to “what can we not fail at?” – shifting our path from a potentially more adventurous and ground-breaking one to a path of low risk and predictability.  If we can become more comfortable with failure, we can open doors of opportunity to incredible things – that idea you have that seems really far-fetched and unrealistic… what if you just tried?  What if you went in embracing the fact that you will fail, and that the only way it can work would be after an unknown series of failed attempts?

Many of us are also uncomfortable with the idea of standing out and being different.  Being ridiculed, or made fun of, when we just want to live our lives as we wish, even though we’re not hurting anyone.  Popular media doesn’t always help us get over this.  But skating in public can – you’re going to fail, you’re going to be seen, people will probably say things – but it doesn’t matter.  You’re busy trying to better yourself.  You’re doing something with your life – more importantly, you’re doing something you want to be doing with your life.  Let’s get comfortable failing in public – skateboarding can help us with that comfort; it can help us be more comfortable with ourselves.

Life’s not easy for a lot of us.  It seems like everyone is doing something or another that they think will make them fit in or look better.  We’re surrounded by images of perfection more than ever now, as media penetrates almost every aspect of our lives.  It seems like a common comfort zone has been developed in our culture, invisibly entangled with self-doubt.  If sustainable widespread peace and happiness is what we ultimately want, there’s no denying society will need to make some changes – many of which will require us leaving our comfort zones.  Skating enables us to practice leaving our comfort zone – whether it’s pushing our social or physical comfort limits.  It also requires self-confidence – when you drop in on a quarter pipe for the first time, you’ve got to commit, because if you don’t, you will fall.  Then, when you take that risk, when you fall and get back up – often over and over, again – and you finally land that trick you set out for, you experience this incredible state of being – a state of total bliss; where everything you put on the line was worth it; the spiritual payout.  It’s hard to describe – if you skate, you know what I’m talking about.  And it doesn’t need to be with risky tricks – any trick that’s new to you.  Although, the more you push yourself, the greater the reward.

The spiritual aspect of skating is key to why so many of us do skate.  Maybe “spiritual” isn’t the best term, but what I mean is the deeper, “feel” of skating.  Skating is an escape.  It’s taking time for ourselves.  Feeding our spirit.  If we want to get anything done and accomplish anything, our best bet at succeeding will be keeping our spirit well-fed by taking time to do what we want to do for ourselves.  This can be tough for some people, but I hope you try.  Part of not taking time for ourselves is woven into our comfort-zone culture, making us feel like we always need to be working (and uncomfortable with the idea of working any less).  Like a 40+ hour week is what we need to work, with work quantity directly proportional to wealth, when, in reality, it’s not (and if you’re not familiar with this concept, do yourself a favor and check out Tim Ferriss’ The Four-Hour Workweek).  Developing our spiritual wealth is important, and I’ve found skateboarding to be a great way of acquiring it.

In college, I worked hard.  But I had one mental “rule” I tried to live by – if a friend ever asked me to go skate, I needed to “drop everything and skate.”   Skating is critical for me – I need to find ways to do it and make time for it.  If I can’t, I need to reexamine my life and may need to make some major changes.

Do you have anything you feel like you need in life?  How much time per week do you dedicate to it?  What have you learned from doing it?

Do you – and try to answer this honestly – do you wander far from your comfort zone?  Are you okay with failure?

Do you think we need creative, effective solutions to problems we face today?

Skateboarding can help, and that’s why it matters.

🙂

Skateboards Update

When I set out to start building skateboards, I really underestimated how fun it would be. I’ve been posting a lot of my updates via Instagram (btrif0), and then to Facebook, so this blog has not been getting much of my attention. So, I’d like to recap everything from the past month in a quick post here.

After failing to make a good wood mold by hand, I decided to invest in a vacuum bag skateboard press from Roarockit Skateboard Company. They’ve got tons of great resources and how-to videos, and my first board definitely came out better than I anticipated. I have since made two more boards with different molds, as I’m still trying to get the building process down (you need to have the right amount of glue and need to be very quick). I plan on starting to sell them as soon as I consistently build a quality deck. The other cool thing about this – I am trying to hone in on a board that’s perfect more my skating style (mostly freestyle/flatland skateboarding), and learning a lot about how I respond to different shapes.

After testing out a couple of boards with different shapes, I designed a few shapes that I’ll be looking to take to a manufacturer for the openSource(skateboards); product line I’m working on – you can check out the prototype website at www.opensourceboards.com – there, you will hopefully get a pretty good idea of what I’m trying to do (if not, please let me know, because that means the site isn’t doing it’s job!)

Here are the decks I’ve made so far:

The square-ended deck has since been converted to a semi-circular ended deck like the others because I wasn’t a big fan of it (it made certain freestyle tricks much more difficult).

Please post your comments and/or questions.  And, if you’d like any tips for board building based on what I’ve learned so far, shoot me an email and I can try to help you out!

Building boards and brands

Unless Design is in the process of developing a sustainable skateboard deck product line with an innovative design and distribution strategy – “π skateboards “.  I’ve been a skateboarder for almost 15 years – it’s been a huge part of my life, and still is – but I’m totally new to making skateboard decks.  So, why am I spending time and money right now trying to build my own skateboards rather than sourcing a manufacturer?  Building boards myself is about education and branding.  I wanted to share what I’ve learned so far from this venture, give you an opportunity to share your questions and comments, and give you an idea of where π skateboards is headed.

My educational and professional background is in mechanical engineering and product development – how could I not attempt to make my own skateboards?  But seriously, I really believe the best way to learn something is to learn by doing.  The standard for “street” style skateboards is 7 sheets of maple veneer glued together.  Sure, there are other guys incorporating bamboo and composites, but most of the skateboards I’ve ridden (and I have ridden many) have been all maple.  I have lots of experience regarding what to look for in replicating a high-quality maple skateboard, so this is where I wanted to start.

Through research on skateboard manufacturing, I found that most skateboards are made by the following process (and I excluded many details here to keep this brief):

• Take a tree and turn it into veneer – this is a whole process in itself, dealing with different ways of cutting logs, maintaining a specific moisture content of logs, differences in where the logs are grown, etc. Most skateboard veneers are about 1/16” thick (which is not a common veneer thickness, and is actually thicker than most standard veneer offerings – this makes finding skateboard veneers a little tricky).
• Cut the veneer to rectangular sheets about the size of a skateboard.
• Quickly apply adhesive to 7 sheets, stacking each sheet on the other.
• Quickly (before the adhesive dries) get the layered veneers into a mold, and use a press that pushes the mold together, and thus forces the layered veneers to conform to the shape of the mold.
• Once the adhesive dries, remove the glued sheets and let them sit for a bit before doing anything else to them.
• Next, cut out the shape of the skateboard from the glued sheets. Round off the edges.
• Drill the 8 bolt holes for the trucks.
• Finish with sealer and/or paint.

Sounds simple enough, right?

The key is getting everything just right – from starting with the best possible trees to using the best glues with the right amount of pressure, to having the finesse (or elegant equipment) to create a precise board.  When you really start to understand all the variables by working with them yourself, you learn how something seemingly simple is actually complex.  Thankfully, there are some very nice people out there that have shared what they’ve learned in making skateboards, which include http://www.diyskate.com/ and http://www.roarockit.com/. If you have any interest in making skateboards, I strongly recommend checking out these sites.

I’m trying to understand this process and learn what goes into making a high-quality skateboard for when π skateboards scales up.  But also, this learning process is tied into branding as well.  This is part of the story.

π skateboards.  This is the name, the brand, the image.  It’s more than just a skateboard – it represents something.  It fills a void in the skateboarding world.  Skaters are independents and artists.  We take risks and we learn to commit.  We aren’t afraid of failure.  Our mentality gives us a different perspective.  We are a community that not only supports, but places an emphasis on, the individual.  π skateboards represents the same perspectives of skaters.

The name π skateboards comes from my background in science and math.  π represents the beauty of nature and its patterns, showing us that things aren’t always as random as they seem.  This all relates to the brand:

• π skateboards embraces innovation and engineering to try and improve skateboard deck technology – while maple is the starting point, it is by no means the ending point.  π skateboards is and will be a continuous experiment.
• π skateboards are sustainable and natural – the FSC-certification helps ensure this, as well as non-toxic glues that help to minimize a skateboard’s environmental and health impact.
• π skateboards are not geometrically random, but rather promote shaping metrics that will enable skateboarders to further enhance their skills.

This is the vision – the “right side of the equation” for all you engineers.  Now I’m working on the left side.  I know some of the variables.  I know some of the operators.  And I know the general order of operation.  Now it’s time to use research and testing to figure out the equation.

If you go to our garage right now (time of posting this blog), this is what you’ll see – my homemade 5-ton hydraulic press and wood mold – both computer-designed. I was able to incorporate some reclaimed hardware and steel into the press, lessening its environmental impact a little bit.

 

I made a few as-built changes that are not reflected in the original model.

 

Molds will eventually need to be CNC-milled for greater precision. For the first testing, I tried to make it by hand to test the basic shape more economically and do a little proof of concept testing for another unique idea.

 

Sometimes you need a spacer and all you have is PVC tubing. 🙂

 

Attempt #1 – I successfully learned how to not make a hydraulic press and skateboard mold, and how to not glue together skateboard veneer. My notes: press was not sufficiently supported for required force (I underestimated how much force was needed to compress the veneers – the top bars started deforming before the mold was fully compressed), not enough glue, poor mold match-up (not smooth or a tight-fit).

 

Please post any questions or comments you may have!

From the labs at Unless Design, LLC

Unless Design’s first internally-generated product is currently in the development pipeline, and saying that it’s going to be pretty cool might be an understatement. A brand-new concept for skateboard manufacturing is being developed that could have a revolutionary impact on the sport and culture of skateboarding. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that it’s going to open up opportunities to improve skateboarders’ skills, spark more organized innovation in the art and science of board building, and, of course, be as environmentally and socially responsible as possible.

Right now we’re hard at work trying to source suppliers, doing our own R&D, and learning to ensure we deliver a top-quality result. We’re super excited about this idea and the positive impact it can have, so be sure to stay tuned for more updates!

Rethink about lawn

Think about lawns for a minute.  By lawn, I mean the dictionary.com meaning of the word, that is, “a stretch of open, grass-covered land, especially one closely mowed, as near a house, on an estate, or in a park”.  Are lawns really an efficient use of land?  Aren’t they just perceived assets that add minimal, if any, real value?

Lawns seem to be wasteful consumers of resources and energy.  For example:

1. Fresh, drinkable water is a limited resource, especially out here in California.  To me, this means we should be as efficient as possible in terms of water usage, saving it for only necessary tasks like hydration, sanitation, and agriculture.  Yet, I still see lawns getting watered, which I would think is being done for aesthetics.  Now, I get that a “nice” lawn can add value to a house looking to be sold, but it’s only perceived value founded upon the premise that a “nice”/valuable property has a “nice” lawn, and that a “nice” lawn is a green one.  But where’s the real value?  What if we respected the natural landscape, and perceived that as nice?  If we didn’t need to pump an unnatural amount of water to an area, just to grow grass for aesthetics?  Could we implement something that doesn’t need extra water, or maybe even produces water?

2. Lawn maintenance is full of expenses, and it really doesn’t seem like the expenses have any real valuable return, only perceived valuable return.  Typically, fossil-fuel consuming machinery is used to mow and maintain the lawn through landscaping.  It seems like we’re just putting energy into the lawn to take more energy out of it by cutting it down again.  For what?  Just the perceived value that a green, fresh-cut lawn has?  Is this more valuable than our health and our environment?

In brief, I basically see a lawn as an inefficient land expense.  I want to see more land turned into assets that generate real value, not perceived value.

Land has a huge potential.  It is space.  In the U.S., it is space that you can get creative with if you’re able to afford your own land.  You could grow food, generate power, collect and treat water, etc.  Think about it:

1. If you start an organic garden or raise animals naturally, you can save money on food, improve your health by eating better and being more active (which would come naturally with either of these options), reduce the demand for non-local foods being shipped to your area (again, another waste of energy), and even learn something new – and knowledge always opens up more opportunities.

2. If you generate your own power (for example, through solar panels, wind turbine, or hydro turbine), you could save money, maybe even make money from your local utility, and again, reduce wasted energy lost in power transmission via powerlines.  Also, it’s another opportunity to learn something new.

3. If you collect and treat water, you’d get similar benefits as from generating your own power.

These are just a couple of suggestions and ideas.  How will you get creative with your lawn?  Post your responses and ideas in the comments for this post.

Here’s my response, at the apartment I’m currently living in:

Planting some vegetables:

Barrel planter – tomatoes, basil, jalapenos.

Cilantro (?) sprouts.

First iteration of thermal-mass condensation irrigation system prototype:

Conceptually, this is a system that extracts water from the air by using coldness to condense that water. This was inspired by Edward Linacre’s Airdrop Irrigation System, which won the 2011 James Dyson Award.

Cheap prototype.

 

Functionality.  Sorry about the image – I’m not sure why it’s all cut-up… if you click on the picture it’s clear.

 

Observed condensation.

 

This prototype was NOT designed for efficiency – there is hardly any surface area and I’m unsure of PVC’s effectiveness in collecting condensation.  I’d like to try a copper coil next (a coil will provide more surface area and better heat transfer than the PVC – in other words, the air will have more opportunity to condense by being in the pipe longer (a coiled piece is longer than a straight piece) and may condense better if the coldness is transmitted to it better via copper.

This first iteration produced an encouraging 1.75 tsp of water over the course of 4 hours while the humidity was around 50-60%.  We’ll see how that improves!

Questions and suggestions are always welcome.

Note that this post is not just about lawns.  Think about the concepts raised here and where else they apply.

Continue the discussion in the comments, below!