by George Merkert
I was psyched when I read Scott Peer’s mail asking whether I wanted to head up to the Eastern Sierra for a little skate with him and a couple of his other downhill skater pals.
All I could think was, “Hell yes. I’ll skate it for sure.”
After years of building pages, maintaining indexes and style sheets, coddling content and FAQs and learning web development skills with Dreamweaver, I had to admit that my old-school web site www.GetRolling.com was no longer cool enough in today’s fast-paced, dynamic world!
Moving my Orbit newsletter to this WordPress blog in 2010 was the first step to making my interactions with skaters around the world more immediate and intimate.
Now I’ve opened up an even more dynamic presence. I hope you Like my new Facebook page, Get Rolling with Liz Miller. All from one place, in Facebook you will be able to read the Orbit Blog and my Twitter stream (@Sk8teacher) along with the photos, links and status updates I am using to keep things lively.
Your friendly crossing guard is here to point you to a few choice inline destinations shared from friends across the Internet.
I use and recommend Rollerblade brand in-line skates. You should too! I have never had a bad skate from K2.
A video is worth a thousand words: see Skate Skill Videos produced by Mark Davies at SkateInstructor.com
Inline Planet – Timely articles and interviews with skate luminaries, and home of the best social network for skaters, the Inline Planet Skater Network.
Visit the Inline Skating Resource Center to learn all about the who, what, when where and how of inline skating today.
Find just about every skate-related product on the planet at Skates.com, folks I know and trust.
The Skate Instructors Association (Skate IA) is an organization that certifies passionate participants of “small-wheeled sports” to effectively teach inline skating, roller skating and skateboarding. While skating certification itself has been around in various iterations for years, the Easter Bunny has just delivered the newly hatched Skate IA member web site http://skateia.org/.
Curious about certification? Here are Skate IA’s current skate instructor examination programs. For a quick video overview of the teaching components for several basic skills, see demonstrations by Skate IA Director and owner of Skate Journeys Skate School, Trish Alexander.
Downtown Nantucket Town, the day before our Zephyr Skating Adventure was to begin
I apologize for the lack of fresh Orbit newsletter stories I normally use to keep the Get Rolling home page fresh and interesting. Since my last Orbit announcement, my active lifestyle and passion for travel and being outdoors were in direct conflict with the hours of PC face time needed to generate, illustrate, index and announce a quarterly batch of stories.
In northern California where I live, the East Bay Regional Park District maintains miles and miles of multi-use trails that residents use for recreation, commuting and exercise. When I relocated from Alameda County to Contra Costa county, I was sad to leave the Alameda Creek Trail behind but ecstatic to find the Iron Horse Trail, a converted rail trail that Dan and I use on a weekly basis. We are so devoted to persuading others to come out and play on skates that we maintain a website called CASkating.com with these trails plus over 300 other routes in our home state.