Sheared through the rear axle of a New Avenue truck two days ago:

This isn’t even the first pair that I’ve destroyed. I snapped the kingpin out of the tool steel on another:

Which leaves me with a pair of Thunders:

Not three days ago, I finally admitted into my heart, mind, and butt that my Anderson Heron Egg Flight deck must finally retire, the victim of obsessive ollie/shuv/kickflip/rail drills:

RIP good friend! I really learned how to ollie well and began landing kickflips reliably on this deck. It’s kind of funny, actually, that I learned the kickflip on this deck because it’s such a fucking boat at 8.7″. The new Flight deck that I’ve replaced it with measures 8.25″ edge to edge, and feels like a darn popsicle stick, albeit with the wrong trucks.

So I retired the Anderson, and transferred my trucks to the generic Flight, only to immediately shear them off. I then find myself bolting the normie Thunders I originally had on the new deck to begin with, having bought an entire new setup on a trip to Bend where I’d forgotten my deck but wasn’t going to give up a full day of skateboarding for that.

If you’re annoyed reading this trivia, I have all the sympathy in the world for you, having endured the tedium myself and then again writing it.

I can’t ride normie trucks at all. I did one night on the Thunders and I bruised my heel and rattled my ankles something fierce. So even though I’ve broken 2 pairs of the Avenues already, I’m going to get a third because a) I love riding on them, b) to endure without suspension when you don’t have to is silly self-martyrdom and c) they state very explicitly on their website to not use other bushings.

Yes, yes. If you look closely at the photos of the Avenue trucks, you’ll see different bushings in there. Their website states very clearly that skating anything other than their bushings voids warranty, which is super fucking interesting, but I’m well out of warranty period, so while it doesn’t apply to me, I still wonder to what degree I exacerbated these failures with my own bushing selection.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter except to salve my own curiosity, as I fucking hate unsprung skate trucks.