I'm won't drill down too far down into the technical details of specifications as there are many other blogs that do this exceedingly well. Plus, I'm more of an artsy, right-brained person and tend to go by the feel of things more than letting my brain drown in a soup of numbers and stats.
First off, I see a ton of posts from skaters that are 6'5" with size 15 shoes who are in a quandary about the right size board for them. I really can't speak much to that as I'm on the smaller side at 5'7" with size 9.5 shoes, weighing 155 lbs soaking wet. Longboarder Ben could speak more for the tall guys (hint, hint Ben.) Does that mean that smaller skaters are less baffled with the amount of products available out there? Likely not and this took me a couple of years to begin to figure out what my preferences are.
Ok, time for some stats, but not a shovelful as promised.
I like boards that are between 14.5"-15" wheelbase, generally between 8.5"-9.5" in width. I've experimented with both shorter wheelbase and longer wheelbase boards. When I came back to skating, I started out with the Caballero Dragon and Bats Reissue (the mini size) as that was the board my mouth watered the most over when I flipped through the ads in Thrasher as a kid. Still one of my favorite graphics today:
Skate One has the dimensions listed with a wheelbase of 15.1, however the length of the deck is at 29.75. Not a big deal however, there is very little space between the front bolts and the nose. Which brings me to discovery #2, I like boards with a nose and by feel, I like around the width of my foot, plus a half more between the front bolts and the tip of the nose.
The Cab Dragon and Bats was nice enough, but I felt it to be a little too squirrley and responsive, plus I like to widen out my stance when I ride with my foot covering the front bolts. This meant my front foot would often slide off, leading to small annoyance and banged up shins.
I eventually gave the Cab Dragon and Bats to my daughter since she expressed that she liked it and enjoys riding it and bought another for a wall hanger ;)
Of Popsicles and Santa Cruz...
I then went to two setups. Since I took "Skateboard Classes" at Wakefield Park a couple of years back, I felt the pressure of conformity and went and bought a "popsicle." All Hail Cardiel!
I ran this board for about 6 months with Theeve Trucks and Bones 54mm STFs. With this board, I learned how to pump, ride transition, get my kickturns back, learned backside shuvits, and learned the basics of how to ollie. The concave and board feel of this 8.12 Antihero deck was o.k., but I absolutely hated those Theeve Trucks. To me, they did not turn well at all, and definitely not as well as Indys (and I rode Trackers from the 80's back in the day, which is a pretty damning indictment.) Not only that, but the noise they made, oh the noise when rolling down the street was akin to fingernails on a chalkboard. Never mind that even Bones Swiss bearings did not roll as quickly when mounted on them, likely due to clearance issues (metal screeching on metal, but I'll leave that one to the engineers.) They were soon replaced with Indy 139 lows, which I found to be much more to my tastes.
My only gripe here was as a beginner, I tightened those Indy lows down almost as far as the kingpin nut would allow and blew out the stock bushings in no time. I replaced them with a series of bushings and yes, I tried the Bones medium bushings and blew those out quickly as well (tightened the crap out them.) I eventually replaced them with the Khiro Low purple bushings which lasted in the trucks until I handed them over to LB Ben last month.
Since that time, I've experimented with a number of the smaller popsicle decks, ranging in size from 7.75 to 8.25. Of these, I've sampled Santa Cruz, Hook-Ups, Santa Monica Airlines, and Toy Machine. I may write more on my experiences with individual decks later, but my big takeaway was that the smaller popsicles are fun, but for me, they are best reserved for flipping around in the driveway and out in the street while working on ollies or flip tricks.
That said, I have always enjoyed riding "old school" setups from the 80's. They are part of me from when I started riding as a kid, but not only that, they are just soo damned fun to ride. I always try to have one or two setups lying around.
Out of a bit of nostalgia, I put together the Roskopp reissue below, complete with Indy 169s, reissue yellow churchglass 60mm 95a Bullet Wheels, and Swiss Bearings. Soo fun to ride. Little did I know that I would absolutely fall in love with the functionality of these Santa Cruz Reissues as they blend old school shapes and graphics with a more modern concave and design cues. The wheels were a bit hard for the blacktop and chewed up sidewalks around here in Northern Virginia, but they would turn out to be awesome in the concrete park!
The Roskopp was 9.5" by 31" with a 15.3 wheelbase. It had a more modern concave with the size of nose I prefer. I discovered bowl skating with this board and not only was it the board I first learned to drop in on, it was also the one that got me my first backside grind :)
Overall, this setup lasted for around a year and a half. I retired it last December when I broke my front teeth out in the flatbottom. I carved up to the vert section of the roundwall at Lake Fairfax with not enough speed and angle to carry me through. I tried to kneeslide it out, went a little way on my knees then face first. Thankfully, my helmet absorbed most of the impact (always wear your helmet kids!) It could have been much, much worse. No time like catastrophic injury to replace a setup, plus, I had some stress crackage around the bolts which made the trucks feel a little unstable. So for the holidays, I bought myself a Hosoi Hammerhead!
Continued in Part II
