Photo By Sgt. David Bryant | Sgt. 1st Class John T. Armstrong, 36th Infantry Division future operations...... read more read more
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BASRAH, Iraq – “We old guys have to have great style, because we really don’t have anything else anymore. I used to be young; then one day I woke up, had no idea who the guy in the mirror was, couldn’t find my hair and my knees were shot. So you got to have style.”
While 43 may not be what most people would call “old,” and beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, style is one thing Sgt. 1st Class John T. Armstrong is not lacking when he steps onto his skateboard.
Skating has been a lifelong passion for the 36th Infantry Division future operations noncommissioned officer, who is currently deployed to southern Iraq. He got his first board for his ninth birthday; even though he said he had originally asked for a bicycle instead.
“My father and I were working on a fishing boat, and bicycles were kind of impractical,” said Armstrong, who grew up in Suisun, Calif. “But that’s what I wanted – a BMX bike – but my dad kind of ‘cheaped-out’ and got me a skateboard, so that’s how I started.”
More than thirty years later, the resident of Cedar Park, Texas is still skating; and doing it well enough to be sponsored by a skateboard manufacturer.
“I was already in the military when I picked up a sponsor; it was around 2006,” said Armstrong. “A friend got me hooked up. He worked for this company as a distributor and he said, ‘Hey, they’re coming on tour out here in Texas, do you want to try out for the team?’”
The company, Gravity Skateboards, sent him a box with some boards in it, came out, met him and he skated a demo with them, Armstrong said. “On the last night of their tour I was inducted to the team. I’m pretty much an old workhorse now. I couldn’t get sponsored at this stage; I think they just send me boards now out of sympathy,” he added with a laugh.
Armstrong has now been in the military for 20 years; he started out in the National Guard, served a four-year tour in the active-duty Army, then back to the Guard. Operation New Dawn is his first deployment, and so far the impact on his skating has been to knock down how often he skates to once a week, he said.
“I tell you what – the military didn’t hamper my skating at all. I’d skate just about every day,” Armstrong said. “I’d do it on my lunch hour, for [physical training] and I’d find some time after work. Here, I don’t have quite that amount of time.”
There is no difference in being a skater in the military than being a skater and, say, an accountant, he added. “The only thing I would say is that sometimes in the military, if you do something a bit unusual, people tend to raise their eyebrows just a little bit higher. But other than that, I get nothing but love and support for it.”
The tall, lean Californian is a sponsored amateur skateboarder. “I’m more of a sub-culture guy; all the contests I go to are pretty much for skaters, by skaters – where guys get together and barbecue, hand out various prizes, that sort of thing.”
The difference between what people see on TV with the X-Games and the real grass roots of the sport, he said, is that events such as the X-Games are primarily for television audience consumption and the average skater event is not.
“If you went to a typical contest – like ninety-nine percent of the skateboard contests anywhere in the world – you’d be like, ‘Wow, this doesn’t look like that big of a deal,’” added Armstrong. “Because you’re expecting the ‘Tony Hawk 900,’ the big, spectacular tricks and stuff; skateboarding is really a lot subtler. More for skateboarder consumption – you can look at an individual guy’s style and go, ‘Wow, that guys’ got great style.’ He may not even be doing any tricks, but you think to yourself, ‘this guy’s a great skater; he’s an artist.’”
“The best thing about skateboarding is it is a great expression of freedom; here is a sport that was invented by children,” Armstrong said. “There is no governing body, no rule book. No right way of doing it and no wrong way of doing it; just however you are doing it, that’s the way it’s done.”
“In fact there’s an old adage in skateboarding that says ‘the best skater is the one having the most fun,’” he added.
Skateboarding gives a person a great deal of physical confidence because there’s a certain degree of pain skaters go through to learn it, said Armstrong. Concrete is very unforgiving, and a skater definitely gets beat up during the learning process.
“By the time I got in the Army and I was told, ‘Private, go over that confidence course,’ there was no problem,” he said. “I’ve fallen from higher than that many times, so it makes you very aware of what you are physically capable of. And there is some mental confidence, as well, in knowing that you can accomplish those things.”
That kind of self-confidence, not to mention the pain of unforgiving concrete, comes from the “two-second accomplishments” skaters spend so much time practicing for, Armstrong said.
“That’s kind of the summation of skateboarding,” Armstrong added. “You don’t have a coach; you don’t have anybody teaching you how to do this stuff. You just kind of figure it out on your own, so those accomplishments are that much more meaningful. You don’t get a coach patting you on the back saying ‘good job, son, you did what I told you.’ It’s a great personal evolution for a lot of people, particularly kids. If you see a kid doing tricks on a skateboard, bear in mind that nobody taught him how to do that.”
| Date Taken: | 04.11.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 04.26.2011 06:15 |
| Story ID: | 69349 |
| Location: | BASRA, IQ |
| Web Views: | 258 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Surfing the Road and the Concrete Waves: Texas Guardsman skating in Basrah, Iraq, by SGT David Bryant, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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