I wanted to be a mountain biker because of a video game.
I was playing Descenders, and it looked so cool that I wanted to try it in real life. I stuck at it for a couple of months and I wasn’t really getting any better, and a good mountain bike costs a lot more than a skateboard or a scooter does.
So I tried skateboarding instead, and went to some skate parks for a bit.
Then I found Graystone, in Manchester. I only found it because I wanted to skateboard and my sister wanted to do gymnastics, and Graystone did both, so it was the one place that worked for the two of us.
While I was there I borrowed one of their scooters. That was it, really. I started having lessons, and I got my own for Christmas, a 2 Bare Feet.
It took me about 20 tries, because it’s scary at the top. People tell you to just go, and you stand there, and you don’t go.
Then on one of them I went. I didn’t decide to. I just went.
I couldn’t keep going to Graystone all the time. You can’t go every day. It’s quite expensive, and my parents aren’t free to take me every day anyway.
So I thought: what’s a way where I can still practise, and then just go and do it whenever I want?
I thought, oh. I should probably build a ramp.
My birthday was coming up, so that’s what I asked for, and my grandad gave it to me as my present. He’s a builder and he still works, and he helped me do it. We built it over a few weeks, on and off, and then it was done. It’s about seven metres long and two metres wide, in the garden.
Then my mum painted my name on it, in graffiti, as a surprise.
How much I ride it depends on the northern weather.
The tailwhip took me ages. I can backflip on the mega ramp. I learned it into the foam pit first, then landed it on the real one. Right now I’m trying to get a fingerwhip. I’m really close. I just can’t land it.
I’ve been lucky so far. The worst thing I’ve done is trap my finger under my scooter.
Then I couldn’t remember what tricks I had learnt, or wanted to learn next.
So I went looking for a website where you could tick off scooter tricks. A trick tracker. I searched, and there wasn’t one.
And I thought: scooter is really popular. Why has nobody made this yet?
My dad Rachid did the coding. I had the idea, and I did the design, and I know the tricks, which sounds like the easy part and wasn’t.
The hardest bit of the whole thing was the tricks themselves. Getting the names right. Getting them in the right order, so a beginner isn’t looking at something impossible and someone good isn’t bored. Loads of it kept going wrong.
It’s for the scooter community. That’s who it’s for. I made it so people can track what they’ve landed and find the next thing to learn.
If you’re stuck on your first trick: be brave. It’ll be fine.
I reckon I’ll be a lot better at riding. And I hope the site is better too, and more people have used it to track their tricks and learn new ones.
Every trick, five honest stages, and the next thing to learn. Free to start, and the free tier does not expire.