skate journal: valmont with carleigh and JASON! (april 24, 2012)
Jason showed up at my house to get some DVDs to review for Four magazine. He heard that Carleigh and I were interested in skating Valmont for a bit and he wanted to come. AWESOME! President Obama was giving a speech at CU and after picking up Carleigh we somehow managed to be the last car on the road before the Obamacade. It was pretty epic. Jason drives pretty slow and we were laughing that we were gonna get run over. We ended up getting almost to Valmont loading dock before finally having to pull over. We watched him roll by. Pretty sure he saw us waving.
Going to Valmont with Jason was a trip down memory lane. This was one of our favorite spots with so many great sessions. My arthritis was kicking a bit, but there was no way I was going to complain. Jason chilled out, shot some phone photos and used the loading dock to stretch in ways that he hasn’t been able to in months. It was inspiring to be there with him. I warmed up with some noseslides and front board attempts, but never got one (poser photo #1). You can see Carleigh in the background. She warmed up the hard way trying to ollie all the sets of cracks coming down the ramp.
After that Carleigh started skating flat like I’ve never seen her before trying tricks I’ve never seen her do. She landed on both b/s flip and halfcab flip, but didn’t quite ride away. I was hyped to see her trying new stuff (although I guess she has landed a halfcab flip once).
I love doing my little crook jibs here. I tried a bunch where I’d push up to the curb to the right of the fence (see Carleigh’s photo above) and try front smith stall kickflip out. I got really close. I had a few bad halfcab noseslides in there too and some back 50s where I come in at 90 angle. Jason told me I should stand up more on my crooks so I tried. Kinda hard, may have gotten one.
Apparently I’m too old to ollie up onto the taller part of the ledge now and land a trick (poser photo #2). Oh well. I setup a little pallet to ollie over and Carleigh and I tried some lines. She ollied it then did noseslide shove real quick. I tried ollie then front 50 shove and never quite got it. Carleigh got close to some kickflips over the pallet, but kind of lost her mind at the end. Doh. That was the end of the evening anyway. Seeing Jason for so long was awesome.