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I have written about wrist guards BEFORE, but I have some new ones.
The last wrist guard gloves I had and wrote about were by Harbinger. Harbinger quit making them, even though they still make some very slick looking weightlifting gloves. I liked their wrist guards very much, even after my puppy chewed them up a bit. After long enough, though, you just have to move along, so I tried to order a pair of HillBilly wrist guards from Unicycle.com (the same place that had offered the Harbingers). The HillBillys seemed to have the same design and materials as the Harbingers- like maybe somebody saw the need for really nice wrist guards and said, “We’ll make ’em if Harbinger won’t!” “Good” I thought, and ordered some. The problem arose when I opened the box. I received Kris Holm Pulse wrist support gloves instead.
Damn.
They look good, too, but they weren’t what I ordered. It was easy to see at a glance why such a switchup could occur, the package was marked in such a way that it could have been either glove. I had to look twice to realize they weren’t what I ordered. Some rushed kid filling boxes all day, mostly with unicycles and parts, isn’t going to spend a lot of time double-checking to makes sure the right gloves are coming out of the bin and going into a box. I mean, how many different kinds of wrist guards do they sell, right? Right. They sell two. Damn.
I intended to send them back to get the right things, but the cost isn’t too crazy, I like the look of them, and I thought I might just reorder the Hillbillys and keep these, too, “I can use them for stuff other than skating, even if they don’t have a rigid wrist piece in them.”
My mistake. I took them out of the package, thinking I’d check ’em out, decide where I could use them, and then go order the HillBilly’s again. But they DO have a rigid piece of plastic in them, just not where the Harbingers do.
I thought these were going to be ‘wrist support’ gloves in the same way that my high-top skate shoes are ‘ankle support’ instead of ‘ankle brace’ shoes. (I have a wonky ankle. Gotta watch it or it folds like origami. The difference between ‘ankle brace’ and ‘ankle support’ has become important to me.)
These gloves, though, had the rigid plastic bit along the BACK of my hand, with nice thick goatskin pads on the palm. “Hmmmm” I said, while trying them on. “This might work.”
So I’ve tried them out. I admit I was nervous. Up to this point, I’d been using my Harbingers as little wrist skis. If I went down, I’d slide along on my padded knees and my palms (like a cow on ice, see?), then hop up and go again. These Kris Holm gloves weren’t designed to slide so much. And I worried that with the rigid spine, that if I fell badly, my wrist (that I use a lot when I draw, right? You guys get that the reason I’m cranky about my wrists is that I draw for a living?) would get mangled without the plastic between it and the nice concrete surface of our skatepark.
Not so much. In fact, I haven’t had to panic and think about how I’m falling or anything. There have been no rude surprises. The gloves are nice. I fall, I get up, it hasn’t impinged on my mind which gloves I have on yet. That’s a good sign.
I won’t say they’re an improvement over the Harbingers, just that I feel confident wearing them to skate. (keep in mind that Kris Holm is, after all, a unicyclist- and an amazing one at that. These gloves, unlike the Harbingers, were probably never intended for the kinds of falls taken in a skatepark, but then, the kinds of falls I take from a skateboard and the kinds of falls I take from my offroad unicycle are pretty similar.)
Here’s the details of the gloves themselves. Fingerless (fingered gloves are also available) and fitted well for my hand (I ordered the Large. I have trouble with gloves. My palms are probably more nearly a Medium, but my finger length is mutant long and my wrists are skinny, so fitting fingered gloves is an issue. I roll the dice with fingerless- it could go either way. Large turned out to be right) Nice goatskin suede palms. Plastic spine on the backs of the gloves, held in place by the wrist support wrap, which is held both at the back of the glove with a small bit of velcro (an improvement over the Harbinger, I think) and by the long piece of velcro of the whole wrap.
Good solid construction. Feels like it’ll be hot and sweaty, but I haven’t noticed it while riding. I sweated the Harbingers through so many times that white salt lines formed in the leather. Haven’t had that so far with the Kris Holm, but time, and a LOT more riding/skating, will show whether that’s a factor.
I like ’em. If you do stuff that requires wrist guards and, like me, you don’t like the little Ace Bandage/Grandma style thingies you can get at Target/WalMart/Sportsmart etc., then these are well worth the $30 they cost.
And if your job means that your wrists aren’t worth $30 to you, then I envy your freedom to ride unencumbered.
I have been giving considerable thought to bringing Hubris to various conventions around this country and Canada (Hey, Allan!) and so I’ve dipped my toe in, locally. Didn’t gamble much in the way of merchandise or table time, but it was fun, and I think there are a few new readers since then (Hey, guys!)
Here’s me at MidSouthCon-
I had some books to sell, a skateboard to sell, and lots of stickers to give out, along with some original pencil sheets for anyone who acted truly interested. I’d also like to point out that the outlandish buckskin jacket I was wearing was complimented more and more thoroughly at the convention than it has been for ten years prior.
There weren’t a lot of sales made, and it was tricky to keep the attention of the Convention-goers. Comic strips aren’t always the biggest hit at Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Comic book events. Comic Strips are for a different kind of reader. Some of you might take that as a compliment or as an insult when I point out that the convention-goers I was speaking to looked like this:
And like this:
There are various folks, encouraged by Memphis’ success in building a first-class skate park, who’re fundraising to help our their own towns in building nice skate parks, too. One way this is done is the occasional fun-fund raiser. Where folks donate things like (ahem) Hubris books and Hubris skate decks and… y’know… Real Art. Here are some photos I’ve been hanging onto of some fine lookin’ art that was sold to support the Hernando Skatepark, which (If I understand correctly) the town has already included plans for in a new park area, but if the local skaters can raise sufficient funds, then the city will put in a larger, better skate area. Coolness, I say. Just so long as maintenance for the park is accounted for in annual budgets, right, City Fathers?
It’s Kid Art Day here at Hubriscomics again. Derion drew a skateboarder. More or less. He originally brought me the drawing with just the guy standing there. When I said that only drawings with Hubris-type themes were going on the website now, he added the skateboard and the ‘speed lines’.
I usually return the kids’ drawings to them in a little sketchbook make from 11X17 folded and stapled. I think that may be Derion’s motivation. I think that ’cause he handed me the drawing the first time and said, “I want a sketchbook!”
If I keep upping the ante required for these sketchbooks, eventually these young’uns will learn to draw all kind of cool stuff.
I’m up to my eyeballs in deadlines, so DebRebel has saved us for content today by pointing me to this video on MSN. Some of the snippets I’ve seen on MTV’s ‘Ridiculousness’ and some of the ones I haven’t seen are ones that can be filmed anywhere people skate, but they’re all still very fun. Enjoy!
Oh, and there’s a dirty word at the end, so… y’know. Kill the sound or something if you don’t wanna hear a kid with tailbone damage say dirty words.
So there’s this big steel wave at the skatepark- put there on the first anniversary of the park, or thereabouts. Anyway, I’ve been told it’s eighteen feet tall or so.
And it’s got stickers on it. I’ve watched as people ride up it and slap stickers as high as they can get them. It’s fun to watch.
Today, I had a bunch of Hubris stickers and some young enthusiasts willing to get them as high up as possible.
Here’s a photo for scale. It’s a big thing. And some of those stickers are really high. Lots of the highest ones are put there by in-line skaters (you know- the guys with wheel-bearing boots on their feet) They’re sometimes looked askance at by the skateboarders, but by golly, they can get really really high up that wave. And they can’t ‘bail out’- if they land badly, they STILL might roll away. The skateboarders and bicyclers? Tougher to get higher, and more chance for bailing out- intentionally or otherwise.
Like this:
Yeah, that’s the kid’s skateboard way up next to him in the second shot. He got some decent height, and made a huge reach for the placement of a sticker, but there was zero chance of landing back on the board. Boom.
The guys were real troopers, though, and went through a lot of Hubris stickers on the wave.
If you duct tape a camera to the front of a skateboard, and have a hotshot (Hey, Chad) make a run through a serpentine, it’ll be a cool video, yeah?
Sounded perfectly reasonable to me.
Anyhow, the camera bobbles around and points down more than you’d like, and what you get is what your shoe sees while you skate.
That’s the trouble with a lot of skate videos. They don’t communicate the absolute FUN of what you’re doing. Most of them show you action shots of guys doing aerial moves that are amazing and all, but they don’t give you the feeling of BEING there. Neither does putting the camera on the front of the board, but it’s fun to try!
I managed to cobble this thing together. It’s weird, and I had some issues that YouTube didn’t like, but take a look…
I have no idea why it’s up in the corner like that. There were several versions that were higher resolution, too, but YouTube wouldn’t load those at all. I have no idea where I botched it up, but there you go. Anyhow, I have no idea why the one guy stood around clipping his fingernails… I mean, I’d already asked him to move one way or the other ’cause I was filming. Who knows.
What matters is that the clinic classes went really well, and a lot of skaters learned new skills. I learned to drop in at my favorite skatepark. So there. The next clinic and competition is in February, and involves ‘street’ skills- meaning that the flat areas of the park will get used. This time was for half-pipe type skills. Some of the very youngest students didn’t drop in- the older ones rolled in, and a couple of the very littlest guys climbed down into the bowl and skated from there. It was great.
Also, the laid-back music I put on this Gideo was for the little folks and their parents who see skate videos with all the screamin’ and the cussin’ and the crashing guitar noise and are put off by it. Don’t be put off. Go and get you some exercise at the skatepark.
