Learning to Ollie, 2000s, by Spencer Ward

From MemoryArchive

Who: Spencer Ward
What: Learning to ollie
When: A few years ago
Where: My driveway

I remember a few years ago the day I learned how to ollie. My friend Alex, had been skateboarding for longer than I had, so he showed me how it was done. "You bend your knees like this, pop the tail of the board, and slide your front foot up," he instructed. I tried, but I was unsuccessful. I wanted nothing more than to learn the building block of skateboarding and progress to other tricks.

It took me many unsuccessful attempts before I landed an ollie that hardly got both of the trucks off of the ground. That did not matter because with more time and practice I would be able to ollie high and eventually move on to tricks that flipped and spun the board. It's fun to think back on this memory and know that I have come a long way from that, but without it I wouldn't have gotten anywhere.