Now that the long lasting cold is over, I’m back on my bike practicing for the last few days. The latest theme is bunnyhop 360, the trick where you ride on flat ground, jump up and spin a full rotation around the Z axis.

The reason I’m doing this is, naturally, because I can’t do it. People have come up to me and say “Haven’t you been doing it?” and “Thought you had it wired long ago,” but the truth is that I can’t, though I can do something similar with a bit of cheating. Since the trick looks fun, all new school riders do it, and that’s one trick I’ve actually always wanted to do, I’m going to push forward now.

I’ve noticed there are three things required to practice. Guts, basic skills and good equipment.

Guts, no problem. If I were lacking in it, I wouldn’t be able to be an athlete in the first place.

Basic skills, covered. I can bunnyhop straight over 93cm or so. I can also bunnyhop 180 about as high as 70cm, and in both ways with little carving before takeoff if height is not needed. Such a good point to start from.

Good equipment, checked. I’ve got my awesome bike. It’s slightly on the tough side than light, but I’ve confirmed that isn’t the point when I borrowed my friend’s super light BMX and still couldn’t do this trick.

So, all that’s left to do is practice. I’ve asked for advice from Sapporo’s young guns on BMX like Ucchi and Yuya. Preparation was perfected by checking howto clips on YouTube as well. The best verbal explanation to me was this one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The best and cleanest movement was captured in this one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We are living in such a convenient time. It’s also way less pressure to try to do something that’s already known to be doable.

Despite all that I’ve just said, the first two days were miserable as I kept wiping and tumbling with no clue. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll find something after a thousand or 10 thousand attempts. I’m psyched.

I had a crazy amount of work over the New Year’s, so I was doing it at full speed like yee hah and then caught a cold. So I’ve been sleeping, sleeping, getting up, eating, drawing bike parts and sleeping again, for the last week and now I’ve almost got over it.

Not just injuries but also sicknesses are troublesome because they shut down athletic things. For the last few days though, finally, I’ve been back at working out a little and jumping on snow piles and bridge railings outside. It’s my way of conditioning, like bike training without the bike.

Hope y’all are sleeping well and staying away from sicknesses.

By the way, I just caught the news that Sarah Burke, a freestyle skiing icon, has passed away. Reportedly she fell onto her head while practicing at a halfpipe, went into cardiac arrest on-slope, and had spent the last week in coma at a hospital.

It was July 1999. I remember meeting her in a mogul skiing camp in Whistler, probably before she switched to halfpipe/superpipe from moguls. She was a very normal and fairly pretty girl, then she went on to blow my mind when she started spinning 720s in front of my unprepared eyes. We talked very little then, but I’ve always had a warm and friendly cheer for her whenever I heard of her accomplishments in the following years.

Rest in peace Sarah, though I’m sure you were not done yet. I’ll miss you.

My last injury last autumn was actually pretty bad with broken bone in hand and broken rib that punctured the lung. The doctor first said my left collarbone was broken too, which turned out to be bone chips from old injuries. And the other shoulder kept aching for a long time despite the lack of any diagnosis for that part, which I guess was a bone bruise case. There also had been numbness in fingertips just until a few days ago.

Oh well, I’m back in the park again. I went to Edias today, the very place I got injured at and for the very first time to hit a skatepark after the injury. There were other riders as well, and it was fun. It was a good rehab for me in a lot of ways, since I haven’t been riding at parks much recently.

During the last few months of the last year, I was pretty seriously working out. I had to get back muscles after the injury, and it takes a lot of focus to get back in good and balanced shape when you hurt your limbs and lose power on one side. If you get back to sports before reclaiming the muscles and the balance thereof, you can easily end up with lower performance as well as a chain of injuries.

So, I restarted riding in October but now I’m finally glad that my body can listen to me and coordinate. And yes, I am going to keep working out so I can be even stronger.

Happy New Year.

The last year saw a lot of disasters. For us at NSP, however, it was decently fruitful with events like road trip to the main land and creation of a new frame prototype. On the other hand, there also was a lot of stress due to injuries that stopped the filming and DVD making process.

For this new year, we are making efforts to release the new frame, develop new parts and creating new DVD. Personally as a rider, I’m aiming to accomplish more as well as to simply have fun on my bike. For both you and for myself, I sincerely hope that the year 2012 will turn out great.

For myself, it’s been very good although I didn’t get much bike stuff done…naturally. A bike buddy was visiting from Aomori but I couldn’t even see him, let alone ride with him, as I was regluing grips on my bike and dining out. Too bad.

Anyway, I sincerely hope it’s been a good one for you, and that you’ll have a great holiday season.

So the holiday season is here. Are you buying lots and lots?

For myself, I happened to go shopping on Sunday, and happened to buy a bunch of shoes. Shopping Mall Rera in Chitose should not be underestimated. It’s said to have lost customers from Sapporo to nearer Mitsui Outlet Mall in Kitahiroshima, but I never saw such good deals in Kitahiroshima.

For the first time in about 10 years, I’m going to ride bikes in mid-cut shoes. To be honest I was going to step off from Nike after wearing a few pairs in the last years because they are narrow. But I like the construction of the mid and outer soles, and hey, they were under 3,000 yen anyway.

Also for the first time in 10 years, hello Adidas. Back then Adidas sponsored top BMX riders like Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist, and many of my friends had their signature shoes. I also saw skate shoes like Lance Mountain ones often. I was psyched to see they kind of came back, so bought these lovely skate shoes. And well, they were less than 3,000 yen anyway.

But you can’t just buy shoes and go ride. You want to make them your bitch by, to start with, re-lacing…don’t you?

Next, let’s see under the insoles. Speaking of which, I used to frantically get 4,000 yen shoes and also get 3,000 yen insoles for them. Not bad, but now my newest hypothesis is that these cheap stock insoles that probably cost only some single digit yen are just fine for sneakers like these. Insole tuning makes a big difference in skiing and snowboarding where the boot soles don’t flex, because there are so many things that insoles have to do including keeping feet in position, absorbing shock, and supporting foot arches. On the other hand, these functions are covered by the upper structure and midsole in sneakers such as skateboarding shoes. And insoles should not hinder the flex and twist of the outer sole. For instance, it felt terrible when I tried insoles with stiff heel plates on my Nike SB shoes.

So anyway, insole off. Typical sight of threads. Doesn’t look so bad here, but once I noticed some bumps and took the insole off, and saw a coil of this like a snake. These are just some extra threads glued down, so why not smaller?

Cutting the threads short near the toe.

Gluing the threads with my favorite glue, the Ultra Multipurpose SU from Konishi. Stays bouncy and works with fabric, rubber or metal.

Rewind the story a little, and I noticed the scissors were dull. Never cared so much about these kitchen scissors, but the blades were quite damaged.

Great performance after sharpening. Blades should always be sharp. And they should be good enough quality to deserve sharpening. Heat treatment is the key to make good steel stuff, but sketchy materials don’t allow it. It’s a similar story to bike frames. These scissors are good, well deserving the carved name.

Oh wait. It’s a name of some famous chef. Well, having a famous chef’s name should not be a bad sign, but I was expecting something like a signature of blacksmith. It’s a good thing I didn’t check details while sharpening and cutting, because then the perceived level of sharpness would not have been this great.

Finally edited the footage from the bag jump session in Niseko back in September. The original footage was basically for checking the form, so it’s not finished in commercial quality, mind you.

I would have gone back there like the next week if I hadn’t got injured a few days after this. Great times were had by my BMX friends, myself and even a skier friend, all of whom hung out there saying “hey, it’s not magically easier is it?” It is a new goal for me to be able to pull this kind of stuff constantly when the next summer operation starts. Don’t you want to join?

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was late fall yesterday; it is full on winter today.

I trued the wheels on my bike, because the ride has not been very smooth recently.

It was just the ordinary tech stuff, where you take off the wheels, take off the tires, put it on the truing stand and tighten or loosen nipples. The wheels have been apparently wobbly for a few months now, but I just hadn’t had motivation as I’ve been injured and stuff.

Also I added air to my suspension fork, because it became a low rider a few days back. The fork became so happy to be inflated for the first time in a few years and started to work pretty well again.

Whether it is a cruise from point A to B, or about pulling some bike tricks, things feel smooth and just great. It sure is important to keep rotating parts round.

On the same day, I changed the tires of the automobile. It may snow anytime now, and it actually has been in the mountains, so it’s important to be ready by changing to studless winter tires.

And it turned out awesome as well, with much smoother rolling. The summer tires were worn out like old formula one tires, with flat spots here and there. It just takes a little change to notice how the old setup was uncomfortable with all the harshness and noise.

As is common with all mechanical stuff, it is really important that rotating parts are centered and round things are actually round. If you ask me if being round is such a big thing I can only say it’s just normal, but I can say for sure that lack of roundness does ruin a lot of your experience.