KickPush2014 A Big Idea!!

"Once you make a decision the universe conspires to make it happen" Ralph Waldo Emerson

The other day while Tweeting with friends, I was introduced to follow, Kick Push 2014 and met the man behind the idea Andy Norman, Andy has made a decision to skate from John O'Groats way up in Scotland all the way down to Land's End in South West England, possibly as far apart as one can get without getting their feet wet in the ocean on the island of the UK.

Why is he doing this?

Because of his two loves, firstly longboarding (I'm sure we are know how he feels with that one) and secondly because of his love of the school where he works Lampard Community School , which is a "special needs" school and he believes these children's, and many more suffering from disabilities, lives would greatly improve by the joy that longboarding brings, I'm sure we all a agree that longboarding has the ability to change lives.

In Andy's words "Skating and school, yes it helps, here is the school I work at http://www.lampard.devon.sch.uk/ as you can see it is a 'special needs' school. Which links me onto why A Skate. I wanted to get Skating into the school as I thought that all the kids would benefit from it. I organised a guy to come down for the day and 50 out of the 80 students gave it a go and they all loved it so I knew it would work. Anyway, as I was trailing through the internet looking for inspiration using the key words skateboarding and autism, A Skate cropped up. To say that I was blown away was an understatement! So we got to work raising money to fund a skate club. The whole A Skate thing help when I showed my ideas to school leadership as it gave the club a almost legitimate side. So why A Skate? Well they inspired the school club I guess so want to pay it back and hopefully raise enough to get them over to the UK to start their good work here.

So far the response has been brilliant. http://faltownskateboards.com/ have come up with decks to use for training and http://www.holeytruck.com/ will be sorting out trucks. Both companies are fairly local to me which I think is awesome as the 1st skate is pretty local (120 miles)

The total length of the big skate will be about 900 miles and will probably take about 25 days. No records will be broken as I have seen people do crazy stuff like across Australia, which is amazing, but my skate is really the maximum time I can give because I have to work!! Bless the Summer Holidays!"

We are the longboarding universe that can help conspire to make this idea happen for Andy and the ones he will be helping in skating this mammoth journey over 900 miles. 

Andy's main aim is to raise awareness and funds that will go to his two chosen charities -

Asthma UK  - Andy is a long term suffer of asthma, so obviously it's a charity close to his heart http://www.asthma.org.uk/

A Skate Foundation - They bring the healing power of skateboarding to kids with autism in the US. They want to get a foot in here. Please if you do nothing else check out http://askate.org/ it will inspire you and bring a tear and smile to your face.

How can you help?

1. Spread the word
2. Make a donation to his charity fund
3. Send Andy a message of support by tweet ( @kickpush2014 ) or a FB message to www.facebook.com/kickpush2014 


Thanks for reading and all the best Andy!!

Jerry