The Nomad Life with KebbeK team rider Emmanuelle Daigle

With the nomadic lifestyle becoming more and more popular and because we, as skateboarders, are used to travelling the globe in search of different skate locations, I caught up with Emma Daigle to talk about her travelling experiences and to know more about how she sustains her active lifestyle.

Meet Emma

Emma Daigle is a 20-something skateboarder, traveller, yoga instructor and artist. She’s known for her nomadic lifestyle, hitting the road every chance she gets in search of new experiences and enriching her life with travelling.

She just got back from a month long trip in California, skating the famous Tuna, a local go-to skate spot. But as soon as she got back, she already started planning her next trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.
Last year I’ve met Emma briefly at KebbeK KnK Longboard Camp, her last stop on her mini euro tour. She travelled through Sweden and Austria beforehand, visiting freeride events and enjoying some random skate trips to the mountains.

I hit Lillehammer, Almabtrieb and KnK. I enjoyed going to less events and skateboarding more. It was the best of both worlds. Link up with people at events, catch up and then run off into the mountains and skate from dawn to dusk. Non-stop.

In between events she also went rogue with an improvised Kebbek Skateboards team trip in Austria, driving around and skating epic mountain passes.

Isac Printz, Jurgen Gritzner, Benjamin Sabol and herself included explored the nearby Alps and filmed some skate shots for their soon to be released Better Weather Tour video. Don’t worry, we’ll feature it as soon as it comes out to keep you in the loop.

A sustainable travelling lifestyle

When Emma is not skateboarding, she likes to switch it up with other outdoor activities like rock climbing, mountain biking and hiking.
And because of her active lifestyle and her yoga skills, she’s able to sustain her trips by teaching yoga and doing odd jobs along the way. This includes anything from cleaning houses and construction work to random art contracts.
In our conversation, Emma revealed, she doesn’t look up jobs online but rather follows the ‘word on the street’ and even get’s multiple job requests via social media.

So far she didn’t feel the need to find any season jobs in Europe because she lives simply and travels on a budget. But I got curious and looked up season jobs online.
I found that there are many jobs available if you’re planning a longer trip through Europe. You can do anything from babysitting to teaching English, to picking oranges in Spain…but that’s a totally different article.

Connecting with new people

Being an open-minded person means Emma is always open to work on different projects that make her see things from a different perspective. She met Oreon Strusinski, an ocean photographer and the author of the pictures you see in this article.

I wanted to shoot with him to see what type of angles and ideas he would come up with given that shooting skateboarding on ‘land’ is not his main focus. It’s always interesting to have someone from another discipline come in and bring a new outlook to the sport.

Emma did the shoot on her current setup which is her pro model from KebbeK Skateboards, Paris Trucks 165s and Blood Orange wheels. Here’s what she has to say about it:

The board might look small but it’s nimble and surprisingly stable at higher speeds. It’s got a subtle micro drops which suction cup your feet to the board.
Its smaller size makes it perfect for the avid traveller.

Future plans

For now, Emma is travelling through the US and simultaneously planning her next trip to Japan and China. Her focusing is on possibly making Asia her Fall / Winter reality, partially skate related and partially out of curiosity.
Hopefully, we’ll also get to see her somewhere in Europe if the wind blows hard enough 🙂