A New Hobby!

About a week ago, I posted the picture above on Instagram and wrote:

Happy Saturday, folks! You might wonder what the heck you’re seeing in this picture. Hehe. This, my friends, is some weird/crazy prep for my new hobby to come! Woo hoo. I know, I know. This is a major teaser. Anyway, I’ll hopefully get back to ya ASAP and share my excitement fully with y’all. Just gotta figure some stuff out first. To be continued ? #teaser #newhobby #soon #waiting #preparing #mouhaha #excited #me

So what is it I’m going to do and what the heck is shown in the picture above?

Readers, it’s me measuring how long a longboard is in total, and how long it is where you’re standing. The arrows show the total length and the cylinder and the ball together show the center/standing part of the board! I wanted to get a better picture of how big/long it is. I haven’t really talked about this a whole lot before (except a picture or so on Instagram over a year ago → here), but it’s been on my mind for about 1.5 years now, and I even had a possible teacher in Asheville when we lived there. But somehow, it just ran out in the sand (as we say in Swedish), we moved to Sweden, and I was caught up in other things in life – like settling in in Sweden again, getting into my new job, and solving the living situation, etc.

But a few weeks ago, my longboard nerves started itching again. I talked about it when we had picnic in the park a couple of weeks ago here in Uppsala, and I found out that one of my co-workers wants to learn too! Perfect. I have a co-worker/friend here I can longboard with some! Then I found out that two more people at work are interested in skating/longboarding.

So I’m about to start a new hobby  – longboarding!

Right as this moment, I’ve just ordered one and I’m un-patiently waiting for its arrival, which will take a few weeks!! It’s an American Skate brand, called Arbor Collective which started 1995 in Venice California.

So the longboard I’ve ordered is an Axis Walnut by Arbor Collective in photography collaboration with the artist Matt Smith. It’s the kind you can cruise, (go from A to B), carve (ride an ‘S’ shaped path), freeride (a form of downhill skateboarding that is more trick oriented and technical), and do freestyle (boardwalking, dancing etc.) with, so it’s a pretty all-around board, but not too focused on tricks as you might think when thinking about a skateboard. Longboard is (obviously due to the word “long”) a long board which makes it a little bit more stable and hopefully easier to ride than a skateboard.

So this blog will probably be a tiny bit more focused on longboarding and I hope you would like to tag along in my learning process.

The one I’ve ordered looks like this ↓

Here comes some Longboard geek talk

• It’s a symmetrical, snowboard inspired shape.
• Offers a quick rail-to-rail performance, with drop-through mounting for a more ergonomic push and power through turns and slides.
• L: 40.00”  W: 9.00”  WB: 30.50”.
• Trucks: Reverse Kingpin with Caliber 50 Caliber 10.0.
• Wheels: Arbor Sucrose Initiative – Summit Series. Size 71.0mm.