I'm sure my dad asked, and I probably made up a story about the wood!

Yeah, when I talk about street skating, I'm mainly talking about the genre of ollies, stairs, rails, ledges, etc. None of that had been invented yet.
On that first photo, I'm doing a handplant near the very top part of the ramp, which was almost vertical. So, I am hanging on for dear life because vertical tends to pitch you IN toward the flat bottom.