aka the “old man skate” These arrived on friday, had to pick them up at the 7-11 at their post office desk. My Exclusive™ brother Apollo hooked these up for a nominal fee for me, packed them with extra prtmn photocopie prints (i’ve kept them all) making the box nice and snug.

I pretty much got these skates on the recomendation from friends who like me in their older skating years said these skates “bring back the fun” and make skating easier again. Honestly I had never even seen a pair in person let alone tried them on so I said why not and gave them a shot, after riiding some deshi skates how much different could these be?… quite.

I’ve always enjoyed putting skates together, I liken it to lacing a new pair of shoes, you take the time and get familiar with the components and experiment with different setting or positions of things. I needed to put the frames and wheels on since they come separate in the box. My first mistake was putting the wheels on the frames before mounting them to the skates. After removing all 4 wheels I morceeded to try and get the bolt into position which is a bit tricky since it s a cramped spot but I managed. Once the frames were mounted I got the wheels on there and began to get the shoes on.

The shoes are light and snug, kinda like rock climbing shoes very foot fitting. Getting your foot situated in teh skate without stepping on straps is a tricky bit but I’ll get used to that. Once in there the toe strap fits perfect and the main middle strap holds your foot into the skate like a snowboard binding, it feels strange at first… the top strap wraps around and back securing the top, this strap system is different from other xsjado skates, I’m not sure in the difference or the benefit of the dual strap but we’ll see.

First roll in these skates made my feet hurt, seems like you start using muscles in your feet you dont normally use. I also found out I over tightened the medial strap and it began to hurt, not to mention pinch my foot a bit on the outside of my right foot. losening up the strap and clicking it tighter by one or two clicks made my feet feel better.

Simple trick stalls on my front curb seemed the same as my previous skates, the freestyle nature of the frame was strange at first but I quickly found my feet finding their place quickly. At the same time I also noticed that royal type tricks were easier to accomplish than ever before, somethign my friend stu said they would be and although I was a huge advocate of flat set-ups I’m looking for a better skating now that I’m older not so much a political one so I’ll give these freestyle frames their due time, heck I had switched to antirocker recently just for fun.

In all and all, I’m stoked on these skates sure they feel a bit wierd but I’m sure I’ll have some good fun on them. oh and some pics…