Compressing 3 months into a few paragraphs

I haven't done a post since September 18th.  "What have I been up to," you ask yourself? A lot. A lot is the answer. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. I'll mainly stick to the highs because there are enough terrible prime time TV dramas for your daily dose of negativity.

The reason for not writing much on the blog is because Instagram has absorbed the entirety of my social networking life.  It's fast, elegant, personal, and relatively low on bull shit.  I like it a lot. You think up a clever (or not so clever) sentence or two to go with your picture, add related hash tags, and bam, done! If you want to see me on Instagram look me up at "Kasey_Clyde_dot_com".

-So I just looked back through my Instagram pictures for the past few months and we really have done a lot.-

Here's a walk through:

• Golfing: 
• Got some silver hawk clubs from Amber's dad that were quickly replaced with some Callaway Big Bertha's also from her dad. Score!
• Transmission rebuild: 
• I dropped the tranny from the 02 Silverado and I'm currently in the process of rebuilding (which is almost done) and reinstalling.
• "New" truck: 
• Got a flat black 93 chevy 1500 single cab step side truck to drive while the 02 is being fixed. Its pretty awesome and has a nasty v8 in it with straight pipe exhaust. Love it!
• Divorce: 
• Woohoo! Time for a new chapter of life!
• Sailing: 
• Trips on Happy Day and I took the kids out on the Buck Board and the 8ft Pram dinghy. All awesome trips!
• Farm animals: 
• The compound slaughtered meat chickens, which were delicious. 
• We added meat ducks, which we are currently picking off systematically. And I have to say these ducks are by far the stupidest animals on the farm and I feel like we are putting them out of their misery when we harvest one.
• A brown chicken that we thought got picked off by a predator turned out to have been hiding in the barn and emerged with 8 baby chicks in tow. Unfortunately, Hercules (being the cold blooded wiener dog killing machine that he is) took out two chicks. He was on the compound shit list for about two weeks after that. 
• Lastly we lost our goat guard dog "Tank" to cancer and had to get another. The new dog's name is "Chewie" and he is doing a fine job so far even though he is still a puppy.
• 1965 Chevy C10:
• We finally got Pop's Dad's chevy truck from it's tomb in the woods where it has rested for 20 years.
• Epcot:
• We drunk it up at Epcot for Jonah's Birthday and got to see Smash Mouth again in concert!
• K1 speed Orlando:
• For Austin's birthday we went to K1 speed in Orlando to race electric go karts. It was a lot of fun. You might be thinking that electric go karts wouldn't be that fun but I assure you they were faster than your skill level could make use of. It was a blast!
• Animal Kingdom:
• For Aaliah's birthday we went to (you guessed it) Animal Kingdom. Another awesome Disney adventure thanks to little sis Carey.
• Longboarding:
• Not boarding as much as I would like but I plan to fix that soon
• Bicycling:
• Inverness has a great biking trail, and great restaurants ( like Mcleod House Bistro) that Amber and I love to visit.
• Weightlifting:
• I've gotten pretty serious about weightlifting because I have never been very muscular and I want to change that. With the aid of the phone app. Jefit, I have been steadily working out 3-4 days a week and i'm really hooked.
• Car Shows:
• Ah, one of the best parts of fall. Ocala Pumkin Run, and Daytona Turkey Rod Run. I love car shows and these are great.
• Welding:
• Between building a drift trike from old bicycles to fixing trailers I have slap ran the welder out of wire.  I like welding a lot more than I thought that I would.
• Fishing:
• Thanks to Amber's Dad I have been going fishing about every other week and there is nothing I love more than being out on the water.
• Bearding:
• I'm cultivating a pretty epic beard. I don't know how far I will go with this but we will see.
• Bartending:
• I finally broke down and I'm back at redsauce bartending 3 days a week.  I really missed bartending and i'm glad to be back in that capacity.  Also there has been enough time since the sale of the restaurant, the money is good, and I miss a lot of the customers. It is what it is.
• Amber started bartending at her restaurant too and is loving it. She's a natural at bartending and has also become a certified server trainer. She's amazing!
• Shooting:
• At thanksgiving we did our annual clay pigeon shoot. We shot pistols and AR's as well as the shotguns. This only reminding me how much of a diminishing skill shooting is and lit a fire in me to get my edge back.
• New Computer/Gaming:
• We got a second computer so we didn't fight over them while gaming.  I've always been a big gamer and having a laptop with some serious hardware is a huge for me.

Well...there you have it. Our plate has been full, but full of good stuff. We don't plan on slowing down any time soon either!

For picture references to all these go to https://www.instagram.com/kaseyclyde_dot_com/

Popping my cement cherry

Longboarding has its inherent dangers. These are pretty evident when you put it into the prospective of going downhill on a plank of wood at 30 mph. (sure some people can go faster but i'm not that good)

I have had my share of spills and bails but this is the first one that put a hurting on me.  This was a relatively tame fall but it did scab up my left hip and grind my headphone cable right in two.

Luckily I'm only half stupid and I do wear full protective gear. I have on a triple 8  helmet, bell knee pads, bell elbow pads, and homemade slide gloves.  Thanks to all this the only thing hurt other than my hip was the tip of my left ankle bone.

In the video when you see me fall I'm not even going that fast but when I transition from the dark concrete to the light concrete it become insanely slick.  The board slides out and I make about 2 steps before I dive for home plate (into a curb.)

Enjoy!

The evolution of Clyde Longboards

So my newest obsession is longboarding.  I've skated regular skateboards ever since I was a wee lad but longboarding is a different animal.  I rode a longboard from the back parking lot up to work on a daily basis but I never realized what people were doing on these things.

Austin was the catalyst to this disease.  He wanted one this past Christmas and he started exploring what people were doing with them on YouTube.  It wasn't long after he had his board, a Sector 9 Sentinel 2, that we were like "we can do that," or "that looks awesome!"

Downhill.  That was the first addiction.  We started rolling down hills and trying to make corners.  I was on a custom solid wood longboard given to me by a friend Colin Torrence. I had put on some hardware I had from a small longboard, 8 inch wide trucks with small soft wheels.  The speeds kept increasing and the urge for bigger, steeper, and faster hills grew.  Soon we realized that we needed to up our game with safety gear and better equipment. We also envied the pro riders that were sliding their boards either around corners or to slow down enough before a corner to take it without flying off the road.

We got triple 8 helmets which went miles for making us feel safer.  We also nabbed some Sector 9 Butterball wheels.  I upgraded my trucks to Caliber 2's and we both slapped on some Redz bearings.

This worked for a while as we started learning to slide, albeit poorly at first, but every session improvements were made.  We were realizing the only way to tackle bigger and better hills was to be able to slide to a stop or slide to make hard fast corners.

Slide gloves were the next necessity.  It was the only way to slide without potentially turning your hand to hamburger.  Being the thrifty guy I am I went to Walmart and bought work gloves, cutting board, and JB weld for plastics.  

I learned a few things from building these. 

• First be sure to sand the cutting board before gluing the board to the glove or it won't stick. 
• Second, use thick cutting board.  You wear through the cutting board quicker that you think and you want to keep the glove away from the road.  A friend of ours, Kenny the philosopher, uses cutting board that is about an inch thick. The thicker the better. 
• Third lesson is it worked out well that I had a thin piece of cutting board on the glove already and glued a thicker piece on top of it. This allows you to pop the outer board off with a screw driver once it gets worn down and glue a new piece on without damaging the glove. 
• Last lesson is to use regular gorilla glue. The kind that you have to wet the surfaces and it foams up.  Personally I think it's the ish.

These gloves have held up ridiculously well once the new thicker board was glued on.  I saw a pair of nice, $50, brand new sector 9 slide gloves get absolutely shredded in the first session they were used while ours are taking heavy abuse with minimal wear.  When I say shredded I mean fingers showing through and the pucks velcro ripping off. 

So I fancy myself handy in the woodshop at my grandpas and I had been wanting to build my own longboard for a while now.  I bought some thin hardwood plywood and Gorilla Glue for wood from Home depot. Austin and I cut the sheet into 12" x 48" strips, rolled the glue on with a paint roller, and clamped 6 of the strips into a slight curve.  The very first "Clyde Longboard" was born!

 

This board traveled on a sailboat to Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas with the hope of riding some of the hills there. We unfortunately didn't get to Marsh Harbour in time to have a skate session.

I learned several very important things from this build too.

1. The Chinese hardwood plywood from Home Depot is garbage. It's 3 layers of crap in each sheet that delaminate and warp horribly. The 6 layers together create enough strength to actually ride but it is way to flexy for how thick it is.
2. I'm not sure if it was the fault of the Wood Gorilla Glue (which is different than the foaming original) or the fault of the board not being clamped tightly and evenly but splits in between the layers of plywood started to form quickly especially right behind the trucks where the flex was greatest.  It still held up and held its concave shape well.  

I really put this board through it's paces (at least as much as my skill level would allow) and overall I was very happy with it but I had ideas for the next board.

Fast forward to the present and now I have created the second version Clyde Longboard.  This one I took my time with and it came out really well for several reasons.  

1. It is still using the crappy Chinese Home Depot plywood but I still had a whole sheet laying around and I wasn't about to let it go to waste.  The difference this time was I built a mold from some leftover boards and 2x4's from rebuilding our deck that would clamp tighter and evenly across the entire surface of the board.  
2. I also switched to Titebond 3 wood glue that I kept reading about time after time on forums and in peoples YouTube videos. 
3. I added another layer of plywood bringing the total up to 7.  This makes this board ridiculously thick at 13/16" and pretty heavy but I weigh 205-210 so I need a board to support my weight.

So far I am really really happy with the board. It's stiff, stable, and I love the shape. We took it to Sugar Loaf Mountain in Clermont, FL and had some fun.  

We also got a set of Gullwing charger RKP trucks to replace Austins Gullwing sidewinders.  We got some elbow and knee pads so we are pretty much set on gear and now its time to keep practicing!

This is with the first Clyde Longboard when I was just learning to slide.

This is with the second Clyde Longboard with a little more experience. We've been riding for less than six months and have a long way to go but we are having a lot of fun on the way.