Catching Up With Ben Nordberg
November 27, 2009 @ 1:53 PM
If a person doesn’t have a spine in youth, he won’t grow one later in life either.
- Herman Hesse
What have you been up to since you smashed your leg?
I fucked my leg up over in California, so after the surgery etc I was there for 5 days and then got to fly home...since then just been resting it, started physio the other day so hopefully it will heal quickly.
What happened to it?
I fractured my tibia which is just below the knee.
What were you doing when it happened? Don’t tell me you were skating a spine? Those things are bad news.
I was out skating street in long beach with Geoff, Luan and a few others..we found a flat bar in a back alley. I was just warming up messing around with a feeble and on one I just slipped out and and sat on my lower leg...I thought I’d just dislocated it but turned out there was a fracture as well.
Do you feel like you’ve missed out on a lot since you’ve been hurt, or has it been more like a welcome chance to take a break from the spines?
Yeah missed out on a few things, feast tour and Tampa am..was gutted I had to miss them, I suppose in some way I’ve done it at the best time of year cause there’s not too much going on until like March, so I’m just going to rest up and then concentrate on getting it strong again!
How long before you expect to be back in shape and skating again?
From now should about 2 months until I can skate...hopefully i should be able to walk in like 3-4 weeks...from then I’m just going to physio the shit out of it!
Is physio involved gnarly?
At the moment I’m just doing stretches to make sure it doesn’t go stiff...I can fully straighten it now which is good, once I can walk I will do a lot of swimming and other things to get it 100 percent.
Since you have the 10 tricks up just now I have to ask – why spine? They seem to be a bit obsolete obstacles these days..
It’s at my local skatepark, I was going to just do one on the other mini ramp, but I thought it would be cool to do it on something a lil different.
Is that spine like the spot by your house you skate every day?
Yeah I grew up skating that ramp, so I’ve been forced how to learn how to skate it, ha.
Do you actually enjoy skating spines, or is it more like that’s what you’ve got, so that’s what you’ll skate?
Spines are one of my favourite things to skate, just doing a long feeble or nosegrab tail slap over them is really satisfying!
Name 5 of your all time favourite spines?
umm, fuck I don’t even know if I’ve skated 5 different spines, ha....there’s the one in Bath, one in Newport..to be honest I can’t think of any others, haha.
Name 6 of your all time favourite spine skaters?
well, I’d have to say....Mark Appleyard, Rick McCrank, Tony Trujillo, Cardiel...can’t think of any others…
Name your top most favourite all time sickest spine move?
Doing back noseblunts over them are fun...or just doing straight feebles feel epic.
Do you feel like spines are in decline, or are they on the come up again? Maybe you should organize something like the Change Of Guard thing that Jürgen Horrwarth does on vert, get the new generation involved in spine skating. You could maybe crash under the spine for the weekend, build a little barbee, have fun with it?
haha, fuck knows....I don’t think it will die out...for me they’re always fun to skate...I don’t think there will be a new generation of skaters just skating spines, ha…
if you’ve never skated a spine..go find on and skate it!!
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