skate journal: all over seattle with JP (July 25, 2009)
After a fun night of seeing the Mighty Jesus Lizard Josh and I decided to start wearing our hangovers off at the ballard bowl. The bowl is pretty fun really. I didn’t try much initially other than carving and I kept getting in the same ruts. Josh had some good tricks in the shallow and was skating it like a mini. I wussed out of trying the grind on the pool coping. Oh well.Next we went to University of Washington to explore as neither of us have been there. Josh had heard that the ‘red square’ area was good for skating so we asked some people how to get there. The best was when Josh asked an elderly Chinese man where ‘red square’ was. Kinda funny. We found it eventually and it wasn’t as good as we hoped. We were both kinda dieing and after some bad 3 stair ollies we started playing a game of SKATE in the shade. We realized we were right next to the library so we moved away and ended in the sun. It didn’t seem to bother me at first and I Josh fell prey to my amazing flip trick skills. That is a joke. The game went on for awhile. We played another game and the heat was wrecking us. Josh pulled through and banged out some good flippers and won that one. We never managed a tie breaker?!?! Doh.This is where it’s going to get fuzzy. It was like skating with Nate, we cruised around and tried all kinds of stuff. Josh always landing what we were trying at least 5 tries before me. First it was an ollie up a ledge, quick up a two, down the two and off the bench. Next was dropping in on a kicked bank next to some stairs. I don’t remember anything else before we stopped at a Chipotle and got some food. After that we started with a downhill manny pad where we continued the tradition of Josh landing stuff before me. He mannied it and then nose mannied it before I mannied it. After that we cruised down a hill then rode did an idiotic downhill ledge drop run. I didn’t even get the satisfaction of landing it due to a squirrel running right under the last one. Ugh. After that we skated another dropin thing where I slammed on the warmup dropin about halfway down the bank. Great. We eventually both ollied onto the ledge and rolled down it. I was pretty hyped really as it’s a bit gnarly for me. Some more cruising and spot checking went down and we ended up at a brick area with all kinds of two stairs and across the street some 3 stairs. We both ollied up the 3 which took some effort after all that skating. And well, we’re old so it takes effort regardless right? The two stair area weird too. After some dorking I settle on attempting something up a two stair, going around a corner, ollieing up a 3, front 180 down a 2 into a narrow landing, then something off the next 2 if I ever got there. I didn’t. I was really trying a kickflip up a two to start it, but a cop put an end to that. Lame. We pretty much just cruised down and left campus at that point.Last up was a skate plaza in Bellevue that ended up ruling. When we first drove by it looked lame and there were tons of people just standing around. We went and got some drinks then game back and it seemed like a different place. That place seriously rules. Josh ripped that place. Nose mannies everywhere. Front tailslides on the bank to ledge. Nose manny up and around the uphill pad with a front 180 out. Much more. I was dead tired, but having fun. I got a manny around the uphill pad. A front 180 fakie 50 180 on the kicker to banked ledge. Bad front 50 on the bank to ledge. Way too many tries for an axle stall revert, then a first try fakie smith fakie stall. I couldn’t get a manny down the downhill pad. The last few tricks I got were a back boarslide transfer into the bank, front board transfer then lastly a front board back 180 transfer. Fun. Long and awesome day. The next day was rough though. Couldn’t even hardly walk.