Teaching old skater new tricks

CARY -- I manage to keep Rob Carter talking for 10 minutes before he finally asks, "So, should we ride a little?"

We should, I agree. Then quickly ask several more questions.

When I turned 50 two years ago, I bought myself a Sector 9 longboard -- a 40-inch skateboard built with cruising, not kick-flips in mind. Cruising level streets, cruising level greenways, cruising level sidewalks.

A few weeks back I rode by the Sk8-Cary skateboard park and stopped to watch a summer camp. Kids going off rails, kids riding ramps, kids doing tricks with names like ollie and McTwist.

"That looks kinda fun," I thought. I grabbed the oldest kid, who turned out to be Billy Dexter, who turned out to be the manager (who, I learned still later, turns out to be a big name in pro BMX biking circles).

"Do you do lessons?"

Dexter paused. "You mean, for you?"

Fortunately, I hooked up with instructor Rob Carter, who at the ripe age of 32 has come to appreciate that only a teenage body bounces back from fall after fall after fall.

"I can't do a handstand anymore," Rob confides. I think he's trying to make me feel OK about being older because he then demonstrates what it is he's too old to do anymore.

He shows me a retro version of one of the boards he started on in the mid-1980s and suggests it may be easier to learn on. It's 10 inches wide versus today's typical 7- to 8-inch boards ("The wider base offers more stability") and it's slightly longer -- 32 inches versus today's more common 30.

The most notable difference is that only one end has a tail. This board is made to only go in one direction -- forward. That, in particular, I find comforting.

"We'll push off and ride over that little ramp," he says, pointing to a very gradual platform ramp, a structure that rises maybe a foot.

He flies up, over the ramp, up a quarter-pipe, rides the lip for a moment, drops back down, stops on a dime. I make it up the ramp, the board and I part ways on the way down.

I salute the Town of Cary's wisdom in making us wear knee and elbow pads (and, at Rob's suggestion in my case, wrist guards).

"You OK?" he asks, then immediately suggests we relocate to a nearby basketball court, which is perfectly flat, to practice basic carving and "tic-tacking," goosing the board forward by lifting the lead foot on the nose and shifting weight back on the tail, then twisting the board left, then right, then left, then .... Somehow, the action propels the board forward.

I tack OK in the direction I'm facing, not so good toward my back.

"It helps if you're going faster," Rob says, apparently trying to be encouraging.

We head back to the skatepark, where I swap out Carter's easier-to-ride retro skateboard for my anyone-can-ride Oldsmobile longboard.

Carter proves a savvy instructor. While we're watching some kids perform a variety of astounding tricks -- many of which involve what he calls "the staple of modern skateboarding," flipping the board with their feet and landing perfectly -- he steers our conversation toward a more Mama Bear type of riding.

"When I got back into skateboarding" -- he took a hiatus to tinker with golf -- "the first thing I wanted to do was 'street course.' It's basically just riding continuously around the park."

With that, he drops off the 6-foot ramp we've been standing on and begins making long, graceful arcs up and down the park's various features. No stopping for a McTwist (that's a 540-degree midair turn, by the way) along the way, no scooching along a rail (the unsuccessful execution of which is called "getting credit carded"). Rob compares such riding to another passion, surfing. I'm immediately reminded of snowboarding.

"That's what I want to do!" I tell Rob when he swoops back up the ramp. He flashes a big smile; he's helped me make a connection with this magical length of seven-ply Canadian maple.

For the rest of the lesson, I stand atop a 2-foot-high platform, slowly nose over the gentle ramp, glide 15 feet across concrete to a 9-foot-high quarter pipe and use maybe the bottom two feet to make a bank turn. Or try to.

When our two-hour session is up, Billy Dexter wants to know how it went.

"Well, I didn't kill him," Rob beams.

That means I can come back for more.