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The Roller Skate Dad Podcast is Back! – 021b

The Roller Skate Dad Podcast is finally back after almost 3 years away. I know. It has been way too long, but I’m back.

In today’s special bonus episode, I cover:

  • Where did the podcast go? Why did it go away?
  • What have I been up to the last 3 years?
  • What has been updated on the Roller Skate Dad website since December 1st, 2021?
  • What is coming this year with the Roller Skate Dad website and podcast?
  • And more!

Episode 21b Transcript

[0:02] Hey everybody, welcome to the roller skate Dad podcast, This is episode 21 B.

[0:14] Let’s get started.

[0:17] Yeah, welcome to the roller skate dad podcast, the show that covers everything and anything in the wonderful world of roller skating.
Now, here’s your host, the roller skate dad himself, Jeff Stone.

[0:38] Hey everybody, welcome to the roller skate dad podcast.
I know it has been a really long time since I have recorded a podcast episode almost three years to be exact three years, it was May,
Of 2019, was the last episode,
of the roller skate dad podcast.
So this is not really a real episode, this is more of a, what the heck!
Where have you been for the last three years kind of episode.
So I wanted to kind of give you guys an update of everything that’s been going on with me, why I haven’t recorded a podcast episode and forever and what I plan on doing the rest of this year and to come.
So first, let’s start off with where the podcast go, why has it been gone for three years?

[1:33] Well, as many of you guys know this is kind of a passion project for me, the roller skate dad website and podcast and I am a software engineer by trade.
I’ve worked for a few big companies here in the austin texas area, as a software engineer for the last 20 plus years and as a manager and director,
of engineering for various large corporations and,
Right around 2019, end of 2018, beginning of 2019,
I actually left my full time position, working as a director of engineering at Visa, and decided to go out on my own and get back into actually writing code myself.

[2:23] And so I left the corporate 9-5 gig and got a couple of side clients and I do programming on the side and graphic design as well.
And I was starting the Roller skate Dad podcast and really working on the blog a lot during that time.
And that was going pretty well for about three or 4 months and everything was going well, except I started getting really busy with work and with trying to get,
you know, my, my side, my real business off the ground and get it moving so that I could actually provide for my family.
And so roller skate dad kind of took a backseat and it kind of fell off and I think it was May of 2019 was the last episode I looked just before recording this.

[3:17] So yeah, it’s been a long time.
Three years is a long time. I couldn’t believe actually that it had been that long, I had to go back and double check a few times and go, has it really been three years?
You know what’s, what’s happened?
So we’ve had a lot that’s happened since then um at the very end of 2019.

[3:39] I got really sick, like really sick, I was in the hospital for two weeks and uh let me let me rewind a little bit because this is actually an interesting story,
so it was a sunday.

[3:56] I remember this because my oldest daughter lily and I, we’re going roller skating down at Playland skate center here in Austin texas, which is where we skate,
and her and I were going down there for sunday afternoon session with all the other, you know little kids that are out there and all their skate mates,
and you know, I wasn’t feeling great, but I was feeling okay and I was like we’re not missing skating, so let’s go,
so we head down to the skating rink and I started feeling really bad once we got there and I ran to the restroom, did my business, went out skated,
but just felt off and after we left um we always would go grocery shopping, and so I stopped by the grocery store,
and I just felt miserable, like worse than I’d ever felt before.
And so we get home I had to have my daughter do most of the shopping for me because I was in the restroom the entire time,
and I just felt queasy and sick to my stomach and so we finally get home, get all the groceries put away, I try to eat something even though I feel horrible and within about an hour I just.

[5:15] I just threw up everywhere, I vomited all over um in the bathroom, obviously not all over my living room, thank goodness,
and I never vomit, like that’s just not something I do very often, and even when I used to drink alcohol, I never I never would throw up and so,
I knew something was wrong, but I thought well maybe I just have food poisoning or something, something really bad. And so.

[5:45] So anyway I went to bed or tried to go to bed and I wound up being up most of that night and the next day I tried to eat breakfast again.
I vomited and couldn’t keep anything down.
And the other thing that was really strange was that I couldn’t have a bowel movement no matter how hard I tried.
And so I wound up going to my doctor because I was feeling a lot of stomach pain and I said, I think you know something’s wrong, I’m not sure exactly what’s wrong with me.
So she checked me out, she said, well she goes let’s go get you a ct scan just to make sure.
And so I went down to cedar park, which is where our nearest imaging center is,
and I got a cT scan and on my way home I get a call from my doctor, it’s about a 20 minute drive from cedar park back to Lago vista where I live.
And my doctor said, where are you at?
And I said I just am about to get home, I’m about 10 minutes away. She goes turn around right now and go to the emergency room.
And I was like, okay, what’s up? And she goes, you have a complete blockage in your intestines, You need to go in, you need to have surgery immediately.

[7:03] So I came home, packed up my stuff, went back to the emergency room,
and wound up spending 10, 10 days actually in the hospital and had to have surgery done On my abdomen.
And I came to find out that I was born with this birth defect, that it was something that um impacts like 1-2% of the population and a lot of people have it and don’t even know it.
But basically what had happened was all of my intestines.

[7:38] We’re all pushed over to the left hand side of my body, which is not normal, all of it, small intestine, large intestine, everything pushed over to the left hand side of my body. How anything was actually getting out.
I have no idea. But but anyway, I spent uh you know, the good 10, 10, 11 days there and then spent a couple of months after that just recuperating and trying to get back up to snuff,
and obviously didn’t roller skate at all during this time and,
tried to get my wife to let me go back to the skating rink.

[8:19] In february.

[8:22] And she said no,
and then Covid hit.

[8:27] And so for a good, I’d say a year I didn’t get to roller skate at the skating rink.
Um During the, during the operation we came to find out and something I had actually known from when I was a kid that I was actually born with a collapsed lung.
So, man, I’m just faulty, everything’s falling apart on me, right? So, so I only have like one good lung, I have like one and a quarter.
The second lung on my right side is is kind of a shrimpy lung is what my wife calls it.
And so this shrimpy lung and with only having one good lung, my wife was like, you know, this covid thing is a serious respiratory virus, like if you get it, this could be really bad for you, you might not make it.

[9:16] And so I am not one who likes to just sit around the house all the time. I mean, I like my home and I like being at home and I love working out of my home, but if you tell me I have to stay here, that really makes me mad.
And so for several, several, several months, I was not a very happy person.
And so trying to do a podcast during that time, honestly, it was the furthest thing from my mind, I wasn’t even really thinking about it.
So I did do some skating outside, but not very much at all indoors because because of Covid and I simply couldn’t go.
So, So I got back to skating, I would say probably closer towards sometime in 2021.

[10:07] And started going a little bit more regularly. I was still skating outdoors from time to time, but not as much as I had been and I just really buckled down and was writing a lot of code, which is kind of boring if you, you know, you can kind of hear it in my voice,
actually really happy to be back, working more on the roller skate dad website and so it’s been a really crazy three years, really, really crazy three years and I’m just glad to be back,
for those of you who are here, who have been here the entire time that I’ve had the roller skate dad website.
I just want to thank you, you know, thanks for sticking around all this time.
I’ve had a lot of you guys over the years, these last three years in particular reach out to me and say, hey, when’s the podcast coming back, I miss it.
And so here it is.

[10:58] Um, it’s finally back and I just want to thank you guys when I first started the Roller skate dad website 3, 4 years ago, I guess it’s been almost five years ago now.
Um, I honestly thought it would be me and maybe a couple 100 people and as of today.

[11:20] March 10th 2022 when I’m recording this.
I mean I have over 4000 people on my email list.
People who are actually interested in roller skating and we get, you know, I easily get 50,000 plus people a month that come to the website.
So it’s just really exciting. It’s amazing to me that there’s that many folks out there that are that interested in this awesome sport and you know, I really appreciate it.
I I really appreciate all of you guys for being here and you know, thank you so much.

[12:00] So, enough about me, let’s talk about what’s coming up with the roller skate dad website and the podcast.
So in november right around thanksgiving, I said to myself, you know what, it’s time to put up or shut up,
it’s time to finally take the roller skate dad website and actually commit yourself to it a couple hours every single day every day.

[12:29] And so the first thing when I get up real early in the morning, I’m like a, I’m like a farmer, you know, waking up at 4 35 o’clock in the morning.
Yes, I know, that’s really early for a lot of you guys, um but I get up very early And I spend the 1st 2-3 hours of my day every morning, including the weekends working on the roller skate dad website.
And so in november right after thanksgiving, I was driving home from my sister’s house up in the Dallas area back to Austin and I said, you know what, starting tomorrow?
Good, uh you know, uh saturday, it was the saturday after thanksgiving, I’m gonna spend two hours and I’m just gonna start writing.
And so I’ve been doing that since thanksgiving of 2021.
Here we are in March, so that’s november december january february March, So five months, So it’s been almost five months at the end of March, it will be five months that I’ve been dedicating,
You know, about 15 hours a week to the roller skate dad website and now the podcast and I’m really excited because it’s just been a ton of fun,
and I’ve really seen the website and the readership grow.

[13:46] And so it just goes to show that when you put an effort forward towards something that you really care about,
and your consistent, which is my biggest problem in life staying consistent with the things that I need to be doing.

[14:03] That you can actually see some results.
And so that’s what I plan to continue to do.

[14:11] Um At least for the rest of this year, because I’d like to see by the time, thanksgiving of 2022 rolls around where the website and the podcast could be with sustained effort.

[14:26] So what’s coming? This is really kind of.

[14:30] I addendum or a preview, I guess I would say addendum onto what we, what I had previously recorded,
the 1st 21 episodes of the podcast, and that’s why I called this 21 B, I don’t really plan on taking this and,
creating show notes for it and doing all the work that I normally do on podcast episodes,
because this really kind of breaks with the the train of thought of what the podcast episodes have typically talked about, this is more just about me.
And I thought some of you might be interested in what happened and why was there no podcast episodes for so long.
So I thought I would give those of you who have been here this whole time, you know, a little bit of background.
So you understand more about what occurred and why it happened, so what’s coming in the future for the podcast?
Um and the website. So if you’ve been looking at the website over the last several months, I’ve spent,
four plus months basically going through all of the articles that I had on the website and refreshing almost all of them.
I have updated every single roller skating.

[15:52] Product review guide that I have to put more recent products on there, a lot of them had been, you know, gone out, gone off the market, you couldn’t find them anymore.
There were a lot of broken links, so I fixed a lot of that and I’ve added things like how to roller skate. I put a video series together on that.
I put together a how to, on how to rollerblade and in line skate as well as how to stop on roller skates.
There’s some videos for that one as well and,
you know, a whole lot of other articles actually that have just been really focused on to try to get the blog really moving in a better direction.
And I plan to keep doing that over the course of this year so you can continue to.

[16:43] Uh look for those on a weekly basis.
I’ll be sending out, you know, more skate gear guides, I’ll have a lot more how to,
you know, I’m thinking about things like um a whole series of articles on skate maintenance and on how to customize your roller skates and different things like that.
And then the podcast is really going to finish up on what I started on three years ago, which was to teach people how to roller skate.
And I basically got through picking out your first set of skates and then the podcast just stopped.
So the next episode after this one is going to be about picking out the right safety gear,
and then we’re going to get into me attempting to try to teach people how to roller skate via audio.

[17:45] So I think this is going to be a little bit interesting because I’m not sure how well it’s going to work just because it is a podcast, but I know a lot of you actually listen to me in the car or when you’re working out or maybe when you’re roller skating.
And so I thought, well, let me try my best over these next five or six episodes to kind of go over,
the details of how you not only go about starting to roller skate, but also like doing more advanced things like doing crossovers and skating backwards and,
doing backwards crossovers and, you know, doing two ft turns and one ft turns, both forwards and backwards and spinning and doing jumps.
And so this is going to be for like beginners and intermediate skaters, you know, if you’re an advanced artistic roller skater.

[18:34] You know, I’m a 47 year old guy, like you probably can do,
you know, double axels and triple axels, I’m teaching people how to do waltz jumps here in two ft spins, right, so this is more for beginners, intermediate skaters, people who,
maybe have been lifelong roller skaters, but maybe haven’t done a lot of tricks and things like that.
So those are the type of people that I’m talking to, but for those of you out there who maybe are much more advanced in like artistic roller skating or jam skating,
uh speed skating roller derby, I hope that the podcast episodes that I have coming up right after the how to roller skate series,
will be something that you’ll be interested in.
I’m starting to reach out more to other bloggers,
and podcasters who talk about roller skating, trying to get them on the podcast, talking to rink owners, talking to jam skaters and artistic roller skaters and roller derby players who would like to be on the podcast.

[19:36] So I’m going to be focusing the podcast after I finish the how to roller skate series,
A lot more on interviews, I just feel like after going back and re listening to all the podcast episodes in the 1st 21 episodes that the interviews were by far,
the most entertaining and the most interesting As opposed to you guys just sitting here listening to me ramble on for 20 plus minutes about some topic.

[20:08] However, as I said, I really am working on consistency and trying to finish things that I start and I did start this series three years ago and I never finished it.
So it’s really important to me to get that completed.
So that is what the next five or six episodes are going to be about is about how to roller skate and then we will have lots of interviews with different people in the roller skating industry,
so I hope that excites you, I hope you’re as excited about it as I am um starting to reach out to people right now actually this weekend trying to see if I can line some people up so I can start recording those interviews.
So, if you know of anybody who you think would just be awesome for somebody like me to talk to,
reach out to me, send me an email, you can reach me at Jeff at roller skate dad dot com or you can go to the roller skate Dad website and you can click on the contact button and fill out the form and contact me.
Um so yeah, that’s about it I think, and I just wanted to say again, thank you guys so much for being here.
And in the next episode I will be covering and finishing up the how to roller skate series.
Thanks so much for being here and get on out there and skate.

[21:35] Thank you for listening to the roller skate dad podcast at www dot roller skate dad dot com.
If you liked what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe rate and review the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, google or wherever you’re listening.

Wrapping Up

Thanks again for rollin’ by. If you have a question about the podcast or just want to leave me a note, please comment below.

I hope you will join me every week for a new episode of The Roller Skate Dad podcast.

Please subscribe to the podcast on whichever podcasting platform you listen on. And, don’t forget to join the Roller Skate Dad Club. You can do that easily with just your first name and email address from any page on this website.

Did you like what you heard? Do you want to hear more? Check out these additional episodes:

Want to Learn More About Skating?

Want more reviews on roller skates? Check out my Best Roller Skates page for a list of all of the quad roller skates I recommend. I also have pages for roller skates for menroller skates for women and roller skates for kids where I recommend the best skates on the market today. Or, check out my roller skates for beginners if you are completely new to roller skating.

Or, if rollerblades or inline skates are more your style, then check out my rollerblades for menrollerblades for women or rollerblades for kids pages. Or, if you are completely new, check out my rollerblades for beginners page.

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Jeff Stone

Jeff Stone started the website RollerSkateDad.com back in 2015. The site specializes in roller skate reviews and advice about skates and all things roller skating. When Jeff isn't skating with his two daughters Lily and Violet, he enjoys writing code, cooking, watching movies and hanging out with his wife Claire and their german shepherd, Electra.

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