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Newsletter

Interview with Fritz Blaw (aka Motorblade)

July 2003

Let me start by introducing Fritz, who is a well-known Austin skater and has spent much time on the newsgroup rec.sport.skating.inline. He is the owner of motorblade.com, the Austin postering and skate lessons business. Welcome to LondonSkaters.com, Fritz, and thanks very much for sparing us some of your time!

Is that a big friendly smile or what?

Q: How do you cope with the weather and teaching skating in Austin?

A: Generally in summer months June-August I stop most teaching at noon (camps) or earlier (adult classes). I can also teach in the evening since it will stay light till almost 9pm in the summer. Most adults don't even sign up for classes in the summer, so my best times are September through May for adult classes. Lots of sun block and frozen squeeze bottles (left overnight in the freezer) are the best defence.

I drove a motorcycle for years so I learned to get kinda Zen and avoid that panicky, heart racing, heavy breathing heat freak out. I always wore a helmet (very claustrophobic) and you have to talk your body out of going into stroke mode. Working with kids whose adrenaline takes over and who may head toward heat exhaustion, means forcing them to sit and drink water every 20-40 minutes mandatory.

Generally we get year round skate-able weather, with a couple weeks of rain-outs and maybe one or two ice days (if we are lucky).

Q: So you teach a lot of kids! What do you find are the main differences between teaching adults and kids?

A: Kids need a quick efficient talk through of skills with a demo and then take turns mimicking the teacher and other kids with quick feedback comments. Followed as soon as possible with a challenge (obstacle course, game, hockey, tour) to use the skills in. Adults need more talk, more practice, more feedback and mimicking, and a little game at the end so they can laugh at their own and others' progress. So it is really pretty similar, with adults getting more of an emphasis on the verbal, analytical, feedback areas. Kids really remember and enjoy the game at the end of the skill component.

Big dang skate truck!

Q: So how did you find the Eddy Matzger workshop?

A: Its been a yearly thing here in Austin because of Lynn Durkee (ranked speed skater and former IISA instructor and ex-Oshmans skate salesperson), so I have wanted to do it for years. Gordon Sanders (Dallas Uber-skater) has been touting the workshop for years as well (we chat regularly on IM).

Q: 30 hours of skating a week is quite a lot! What are your favourite/main pair of skates, and how old are they? I bet you're pretty careful about comfort before you change these skates! How many different pairs of skates do you use regularly, and what are they?

A: I pretty much go with a new style every year since I stink up and slay a pair each summer.

I keep a hardshell (E4.2) for hockey, a Evo 7 and Aero 9 for adult classes, an Estilo TRS detail for the skate park, a pair of Derby/Natures in the car for poster delivery (also a pair of Mojo's instant skates for delivery because they fit over any shoe, these are my oldest model that I still skate). Another older model I keep in good running order are my RB Outbacks (rough road skates with 3 90mm wheels and leaf spring frame). I found a used pair for backup, $30 from a recycled sports store, yet in brand new condition. I tie my two dogs (Prince the Golden/Chow mix and Chippy the Catahoula Hound dog) and they pull me (the first 5miles) and I pull them (the last 5 miles) over the rough pavement that seems to be so common even on repaved streets(called shellcore). The Outbacks can even skate through grass and literally through gravel. Apparently this is a nordic sport on skis , so I would like to establish national competitions of roller dog pulls (ok I am tripping now). I'm also training for the Northshore inline marathon on a pair of Rollerblade Lightning 09's.

Q: Have you ever done any kind of inline racing? I'm assuming that your comment on the Northshore Marathon means that you've never skated a marathon before?

A: I skated a race here in Austin (the last and only one we had here) 12 years ago. I was in Racerblades (those mammoth five wheelers from RB) and had zero technique, but lots of fun. Now that I have the Matzger workshop under my belt I am heading toward "Northshore in 2004" (it rhymes) I will be 45 on Halloween that year so hopefully I will make a respectable time for my age/experience. Since I grew up in St Paul I can stay with my brother there and enjoy reconnecting with my roots.

Q: Skating with a 60 pound pack on your back must have left you with iron thighs. Why, and how did it affect your skating? I once skated 5 or 10 miles with a 15kg backpack and suffered for it.

A: 60 pounds is only what it weighed as I went out my door, remember every stop I lose weight as posters go on the wall. I skate slow and steady with a pack, gliding at every opportunity. It made me a very stable skater with an eye for traffic and pavement variables. One time a friend playfully slapped my butt and exclaimed "What do you have back there, a concrete wallet?" As I found in the Matzger clinic as I compared my abilities to other good skaters, I excelled in balance, and strength exercises but fell short in overall stamina, especially as speed increased and I was poor at race strategy and conserving energy for the end of a race. But give me those one footed balance exercises and anything to show of how strong my left side was (I have always worked my left side heavily) and I do great. My crossovers are strong and Eddy said my stroke had such a strong push at the end that it made him think of snap peas, no wimpy-at-the-end stroke for me.

Q: Is there much of a slalom scene anywhere near where you live?

A: There is more of one in Houston and Dallas where they have parks that lend themselves to slalom type gatherings. Here the veloway is the fave spot and it is designed for straight on speed/fitness skating. BTW it just got repaved and is smooth as glass. Any readers who were disappointed in the last couple years because of pavement conditions at our world class 3.5 mile skate/bike track will be very impressed by the repaving and others should put it on their schedule if they are in the area.

Q: What's the most common type of skating around your area, and is there any kind of social/community skate scene like that which we have here in London in Hyde Park?

A: We have a core of 20 or so skaters that meet for Friday skates in the suburbs (low traffic areas), a pickup hockey game on Sundays and smaller groups email and meet for speed skate workouts on some highways or the veloway. Lane Seymour and Patricia Rayburn are our most active speed skaters (Disney, Miami Philly attendees) but they represent the most pro-active component of local skaters.

We have a new Long Arts Center being built (with what looks like skate/bike/wheelchair paths in the schematics) and plans for a Lance Armstrong East West Bikeway which both hold promise as future skate sites. Generally we have few good places to meet and skate in central Austin that are not outlawed (UT Campus, The State Capitol and Sixth Street , the Drag and Congress are all forbidden to skaters).

Fritz's skating history

I was born on Halloween 1959 in Chicago Illinois. Moved to St Paul Minnesota within a year of birth. My dad is a paediatric Neurologist (now retired) my Mom was a school teacher. I learned to ice skate by the age of 5 on the pond in our back yard and the small rink in the park next door to our house. We moved to Dallas/Richardson Tx when I was 8 and I began hanging out at the roller rinks and pumping my allowance into pinball machines there. As a teenager I wandered away from skating. I went to University of Texas. at Austin for a astronomy degree but switched majors when a major bike wreck gave me a concussion and I decided to pursue an Elementary Education Degree. Upon completion in 1989 I began working in various after-school programs.

It was in 1989 that I saw Jimmy Turner, a half American Indian half African American deaf modern dancer skating on inline skates. He would skate groceries to peoples cars at Whole Foods Market . The real inspiration came one night (i was a baker on a graveyard shift) at 4am I saw him skating full speed with nothing but wind shorts on . Incredible sight, his sinewy dark skinned body pumping and flying by with out all the mechanical encumbrance of a bike. It was a vision quest of sorts for me , I had to have a pair. I spent my tax return (when i used to get those) about 200$ on a pair of the old black Rollerblade originals (Zephyrs were they called?). I proceeded to go too fast down my hill and rubbed some skin off my butt, then after a month of flat land skating I had the braking manoeuvre and turning down and I could carve hills.

Here's where the story gets weird. I had added a drama degree to my elementary education Math degree and was doing some dance and drama productions (acting and dancing roles) . We would get a flyer/poster for the show and usually everyone in the crew would take a dozen posters and we would split up the town . You go here I will go there putting up the playbills in a sort of communal effort. Well.... I said "Hey I have skates so give me 30 of those and I will do all of the Drag (UT's section of Guadalupe Street) and downtown." Well my reputation immediately grew and as other productions happened they would think, "Why don't we offer Fritz money to paper the town for us. Every month I had twice the offers till it was a growing biz, with me skating posters around Austin for 100's of dollars a week. I called it Motorblade Postering service because I used my motorcycle on rainy days. My logo had a skater on it and the local Rollerblade rep , a very hip dude named John Russell of Russell Sports Distributor, saw my flyer for my service on a cafe window, called me up and offered me sponsorship. Free skates , wheels, bearings, and t-shirts (I was sweating through mine pretty quickly). He loves posters and so I would give him a copy of the most collectible ones, Austin has a tradition of fine poster art from the 60's when the Armadillo world headquarters pumped out classic psychedelic posters. I went from posters for local community plays to , local bands , to major theatre and concert productions. During this years SXSW music Festival BPI (British Phonograph Institute) hired me from London to flyer Austin for the BPI showcase at the festival.

For the first four or five years(1989-1994) I was a single guy living near downtown Austin. I lived in the basement of a three story ,centuries old (at least 150 years old) mansion that had been rented out really cheap to bohemian types like me. I would strap on skates on Thursday nights and skate the half mile to the bar district(6th street) and poster the walls outside Liberty Lunch (legendary club), Esthers Follies (legendary comedy theatre) and other spots downtown. I could go to clubs (like the reggae club Flamingo Cantina) and since i was the poster guy and had flyered for a show there they would let me skate in free, and maybe get a pint free too. This is the sort of thing that made me a huge reputation and made me a "fixture" in the Austin landscape. I remember skating over the Lamar street bridge one time and having this little dark scruffy guy in aggressives skate up next to me , going backwards over gravel saying "Hey are you that guy who skates the flyers around ?" "Yeah " I said, "Who are you?" "My names Arlo" we had a few more words and then he was off popping a curb with a quick 180 , landing on rough gravelly pavement without a bobble. Later that week i saw an article in Inline Magazine (where they had done a interview with me the month before ) about Arlo Eisenberg the aggro wunderkind. OH My God, I had brushed up against the freakin granddaddy of aggro.

Well basically I kept up a steady skate schedule of poster distribution till I reconnected with my old girlfriend , Susan. We had lived together in my earlier "baker" days at Whole foods market and she had married , had a child and divorced a British dude (after living in Cornwall and Kent and having a child/Amber at Farnborough Hospital). We got married and then we had a couple kids ourselves(1994- now) . Well kids and life required that i do more delivery on wheels (the motorcycle had to be replaced by a station wagon) but I was doing more skate instruction each year .

I had established the image of the skating poster dude and I began hiring skaters to help on the poster route. I would get a pair of RB Metro's or Natures or Derby's from Rollerblade and send new dudes and dudettes out on the poster route as my teaching schedule demanded.

Next came the skate school evolution. One of my best friends and a fellow dancer had also caught the inline bug in about 1989. His name is Tom Giebink and as a former pro-am downhill skier with national ranking he had real technique and had gotten certified by IISA and was teaching classes. The classes were booming as was the whole skating trend in the early 90's. I had an education degree and was obviously a sturdy skater(60# pack on my back, 30 hours a week skating) so I helped him teach his bigger classes and we started a summer camp. Then he got injured and had better money opportunities in the software biz as did the other local instructor Ed Downs, (he didn't get injured but he did get a good software job). So that made me Austin's foremost skate teacher, I went and got certified by Kalinda Mathis and Mr Nelms a half mile from the skating rink I learned to skate on at the Roseville Oval in Minnesota (now that was trippy). I now teach skating for UT informal classes (adult) and kids after-school programs at 2 local elementaries and several recreational centres. I don't skate posters very often (about once a week) mostly I drive my car, but I teach skating anywhere from a few hours to 30 hours a week. I have one regular employee , Jillian McElyea who skates posters and helps teach classes and do skate parties etc... I now have over 100 pairs of skates in a uhaul truck with hockey equipment, quarter pipe, rails, scooters , skateboards, runt bikes, pogo sticks.

My new goal is to skate the Northshore Marathon for my 45th birthday (well its not on Halloween but close enough)

Addendums:

I want to make it clear that I am a strong teacher of basic through advanced intermediate skating. I don't catch much air. I can do 180's and a 360 (not too beautiful) . I can do a stall on a grind rail and I can drop in on a quarter pipe. I can skate backwards and can execute most advanced stops. I don't do pirouettes or other figure skating moves . I consider myself to be a sturdy confident skater with a knack for teaching beginners through intermediate, but once you get into speed skating and advanced freestyle, or advanced or even intermediate aggro you have pretty much passed me by.

I also don't want to over exaggerate my skating hours. Back in the "day" I might skate 30 hours one week and 10 the next (motor biking often had the same cache as skating, it was rad and I had the backpack so I impressed people). I only skate a 2-4 hour shift on posters 2-4 times a month now, and I hire out when it gets busy. I may teach 20-30 hours on a busy week in summer but generally log 10-15 hours skate teaching with a month or two with very little teaching (Christmas/New Years and August are slower or too hot). I skate recreationally only 2-4 hours a week though I hope to train an extra 4-8 hours a week when I begin marathon training in the fall.

Fritz's latest gig is refereeing the Womens' Roller Derby for Bad Girl Good Woman Productions on quad skates, for information check Bad Girl Good Woman.

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