tchai's longboarding adventure megapost

[pardon the extra large number of posts today, I have the management skills of a raccoon - but this one is fully skippable, as it is not art-related]

If you follow me on IB, you'll know I've been fighting a winning battle against depression, and part of that battle is trying - and fully committing to doing new things - to finally stop being so afraid of being alive. You probably already know that I've been learning to longboard, but what you don't know is that I've also decided to build a wall mount/display for my board. Which is very much a completely new thing for me. My journey with DIY began with installing a light fixture in my room not long ago, then making a mossarium (unfortuantely it didn't survive because I didn't have the right container for it; will try again soon with a better one), and now this! What's next? Who knows! :D

Anyway, today I want to share a lil collage showing the longboard display. It's attached below! Of course I had to make the presentation all extra with the layout n halftone n shit. After all, I am tchai.

And now for some more words! The individual elements (of just the mount) go like this, from top to bottom:

• over cabinet LED light - originally neutral white, but I didn't like the clinical vibe it gave off, so I constructed...
• a filter for it made of orange, red, and pink packing tape (lmao), some clear plastic packaging (literally trash lmao) to hold the tape, and clear double-sided tape to attach it to the light (simple and effective!)
• literally just a coat hanger (just needed to make screw holes for the light)
• very cute and pretty feathery earrings (to really push the board's feather theme, but shamefully I didn't predict that it wouldn't correctly hang the way I wanted, so grip-forward it shall be - still looks good!)
• two faux-wood polystyrene panels (50x100 cm each)
• two aluminium hooks which I painted with "antique iron" spray paint, and wrapped in hemp twine around the wheel contact area

Honorable mentions:

• six drywall anchors+screws (two for the coat hanger, four for the hooks) - specifically Fischer DuoBlade, which are heckin exquisite, especially for beginners
• acrylic dispersion adhesive for the panels
• self-adhesive wire holders (for the wire from the light, to hold it; adhesive ones, the black little squares holding the wire, right there, see? they be holdin (the wire))
• the power supply for the light has 6 DuPont slots, so I can add more lights if/when I get more boards with their own, similar mounts :)

The total cost of this project, not counting the board and accessories, some tools, and a couple of things I didn't use - around $70. Not bad at all, but the most valuable thing is that it was an excellent learning experience, and a great source of satisfaction. <3

Yes, I have an incredibly orange room. What are you gonna do about it? Piss on the carpet? it's your carpet go ahead and piss on it idc

What's that? You want more words??? Okay! Time for tchai's longboarding progress!

• when I just started out, I could only practice balancing at home, and it turned out that I had basically no sense of balance - it's much better now and I can even feel the improvement in my daily life
• I ride goofy (right foot in front, left for pushing), but I want to keep trying to learn regular, because skogging (skating+jogging) sounds interesting, but it requires switching stances
• top speed so far: ~15-20 kmph (~9-12 mph) - very roughly eyeballed; might have just felt faster than it really was idk
• carving is love, carving is life (still learning it but wow does it feel great)
• feeling very confident going straight, but turning is HARD (for now); practicing carving helps lots here
• IT FEELS LIKE FLYING
• top distance in one run: ~930 meters (~0.57 miles)
• I can do three (and recently up to four) runs in one session lasting about an hour (including breaks); it may not sound like a lot, but I am not in great shape (despite the fact that "round" really is a great shape), and each session brings bigger or smaller improvements!
• somehow I only fell once so far, and only because a rock on the road said NO (I had protection so all is well); another rock caused me to safely but clumsily run off the board, and then in a couple other rocky encounters I actually managed to shift my weight enough to roll over the culprits after leaving a bit of a scratch on the road lmao

Overall, this whole thing brings me nothing but condensed joy - not only the riding itself, but what it does to my mental health - plus having made that mount is so neat!

Well dang, I reckon that was a whole lot of text, pardner. Great job and thank you for reading all of it! Here's an earlier WIP blooper for your trouble (was gonna hang it this side forward but uhhhh lmaoooo).