June 02, 2019
In this part of the website I would like to share exactly how long things took before I was able to get pretty good at doing those incredible tricks that motivated me to writing this chapter along with other aspects of time that are most deffinitly apart of and intertwined with this whole tableskating thing.
Not only will your times be tough, rough, and confusing from the start...but the will also be absolutely magical to put things grey.
I firmly believe that repetition should equal uncontrollable exuberance and boy was I right about that after witnessing my first tableskater bust a one-of-a-kind move.
I must have been six years old when I witness my first skateboarding trick.
Amazing how I can still remember those thoughts of wonder and extreme joy inside.
In order to estimate how long it should or perhaps could take to perform your first tableskating trick; you should first understand how long it took me to successfully complete my first fingerboarding trick ever.
My first fingerboarding trick was a thing that I will never forget because of how obviously remarkable and painstable it was.
Just in case you havent got a clue what the word "painstable" means...it's a word that I just made up to denote how painstaking a tableskating trick can actually become if the tableskater is not maintaining the correct amount of focus while attempting to perform let alone complete such a physical action.
4 - 5 hours of pure trial and error.
The avocation of tableskating can take even more time than fingerboarding because of all the time it can take to set up the tables let along perform each individual tableskating run just to see if you ultimatly screwed-up the fingerboarding part of the whole thing.
It seemed like there was no end in site, but something just kept on pushing me forward.
100% intuition was upon me, exactly how our beloved Rodney Mullen simply knew deep in his sole that something better was just over the horizon waiting to take shape and manifest itself.
Who would have ever imagined that The Olympic Games would later become skateboardings biggest host.
So anyways, unlike in skateboarding where most things seam to be about form and balance, tableskating is extremely time sensitive and even more so than any other extra curricular activity I have ever come across.
Lets just say timing is everything...
Or is it?
Ok so I'm thinking 50% skill which would include some level of timing learned over the years from trial and error and the remaining 50% pure chance.
As a matter of fact, unlike in other artforms, where an action or function can usually be performed more than 90% of the time; every time.
Fingerboarding and tableskating seem to be right up there with golf and knife throwing among other honorable mentions.
To tell you the truth, I never know if I am going to land a trick I just launched...plus you can just forget about landing the trick at all if you screw up the "flip code" or if you prefer "super sig" which is also refered to as "the form or technique".
It's almost like NASA in the early 60's when they would launch Saturn 5's and hope to god that they wouldn't blow up in midair.
Though unlike NASA in the 60's fingerboarding and tableskating have way less risk and cost associated with them because of both of their very different natures.
Even with all the right conditions in place, over 20 years of practice and xp under my belt, and with using the most high quality tableskater I could find, I find myself only able to time the catch and land the trick less than 30% of the time.
"Eight times slower" and "eight times faster" at the "same time" is the most elegant form in the construct of time to represent what Tableskating actually is.
Literally, on the one hand we're talking eight times faster because of "The Special Theory of Relativity" do to the scale factor, and on the other it's just like an equation relating the value of a function for a given value of its variable to its values for other values of the variable or more simply put an infinit number of super complicated sub equations inside of a not so complicated base equation.
The first of its kind I think. The ultimate recursive sport.