You’re interested in woodwork and spend some time building things to skate. I was going to ask if it’s important for you to have an outlet outside of skateboarding such as that, but as you build skate-able objects; it seems you can’t escape it. Do you find it hard to switch off from skateboarding at times?

No I usually just obsess about it until I burn myself out. Then I hate it and do other stuff until I come back to it. Building stuff for me is very similar to skating. You just get an idea of something in your head, whether it’s good or bad, and you want to try to do it and sometimes it works and sometimes you just eat shit. It’s pretty much the same.

Is having a family a big part of dividing your skateboarding life from your personal life or have they crossed paths as your wife and son skate, right? Did you find yourself having to cut any of the Away Days trips short because of important things back home?

My wife doesn’t really skate, she has done a kickflip, but it’s been years, (laughs). For my kids it’s just another toy, they don’t interfere, they let me do my thing. I guess sometimes I had to cut them short but I always look at it like I don’t cut them as short as most nine-to-five dads have to, so I still feel fortunate.

Does having those family obligations make you value the time that you do have to skate more?

Yeah, it makes me actually skate whereas before, you just have all the time in the world and just fuck off and do whatever. Now it’s like I don’t have that time anymore, so the time you have you try to spend it a little better.

Because of your mixed background, do you feel it’s almost quite grass roots to ride for adidas?

(Laughs), yeah, I guess so. It’s a German company, I grew up in Germany; it’s kind of cool coming back to that.

Do you think adidas’ approach to skateboarding is different than some of the other bigger brands because the brand itself comes from a different culture?

Yeah maybe, I don’t know where it comes from but they seem to want to embrace skateboarding culture more than the other brands. Whereas maybe some other ones want to make it more like a sport or just want to be number one. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but it’s definitely like that. I don’t know whether it has anything to do with it coming from Europe or not.

With everything that has become so popular over the last few years, I think there’s some expectation that Away Days could be a sort of antithesis to the ‘trendier’ aspects of skateboarding. All of the team have a style of skating they’re good at and don’t follow what’s ‘current’ to an exact degree. They seem very comfortable and settled into their own niches if you know what I mean?

I haven’t really thought about this stuff. I guess we’re all just doing what we’re doing. I don’t have a problem with no-complies and I love low impact skating. I think it’s cool that all that stuff is kind of a trend. It’s just another part of skating that got neglected and then got found again and it’ll get neglected again and some other thing that is being neglected right now will come back. It’s cool that skateboarding is a little more well rounded now, even though people are doing no-complies all over the place. Even if they do choose to do no complies and whatever it still seems like kids can do it all now.

With younger skaters hopping onto what is seen as ‘trendy’ or cool’ so much now, do you ever think that the overall culture is becoming more homogenised?

I don’t think so: I think it’s always been like that. There have always been fads and trends and it’s always going to be like that. Skateboarding doesn’t care – it’s still just a board with wheels.