Had to break in some new shoes since my Lakai’s were dead. I had gotten some Etnies Rojo’s awhile ago from Meta. They seemed great for skating and turned out to be decent at least. My board and wheels are totally shot too, but mostly my legs were just super sore and stiff from driving from Omaha. I didn’t do much even though I tried for awhile. F/s halfcab flip was probably the only highlight. Oh and a heelflip that rotated on the ground and a really bad slam due to wheelbite. Argh. Happy to be home though.

Goose turds everywhere.

Next morning we hit the Rochester skatepark after a fine breakfast at Grandma’s Kitchen. Yum! This park didn’t exist 20 years ago.

Ollie was cruising around and ripping. There was almost no one at the park so we could do whatever. He was doing 180 flyouts both ways, manuallying the deck of the crack ridding halfpipe, 180’ing into banks, doing hippy runs over ledges and having a blast. I didn’t expect much from myself and apparently was coming down with pink eye once again (it’s a symptom of reactive arthritis) and mostly just chilled. I did front rock and front d on the qp after cruising around for a long time then skated the smallest ledge I could find for awhile. Got crooks, noseslide, noseslide to fakie, front 50, front 50 180, front 50 shove, front 5-0, couldn’t do back 50 and it started raining so we left. I was hyped to see one somewhat older person at the park, but it sure is weird when everone wears headphones. Oh well, goodbye Rochester, maybe we’ll see you again some year and maybe I’ll still be skating ..

I started skating in junior high, but it was here in 10th grade that I turned into a lifer. I lived in Rochester for 5 years. Three years of high school and two years of community college. It’s where I decided that skateboarding was the best thing ever and found Dinosaur Jr. Not a lot has chanced since then. In the midst of a long summer vacation we had an extra day so I could visit Rochester for the first time in almost 20 years (19 to be exact). After seeing my old house we hit the nearby middle school where I learned how to grind on this curb. I still remember how the day went. Solo mission in the crisp midwest autumn air. Had never done more than a few lucky grinds, but did like 20 of them and a 5-0 or two. It was easily the most stoked I had ever been.

I had totally forgotten about this wallride right at the front entrance of the school. I did a few wallrides on it, Ollie did a little wallride to fakie with just the front wheels.

Not sure if I could do frontside wallrides back then, but I could now.

Ollie’s favorite trick is the Coffin and he had fun doing it down the hill.

I don’t remember this curb being there, it was fun to boardslide through the “skate stoppers”. This spot was funner then I remember, the little hill after the ledge was fun to do tricks into. This might also just be me being delusional and excited to be skating these old spots. Not even to just be skating them, but skating them with Ollie.

I had totally forgotten about the loading dock in the back too. A friend of mines car got stuck back there and he was pinned between his car and the loading dock at one point. So crazy. I’m not sure why we didn’t skate it more back then. Maybe it’s because people hadn’t really started jumping down stuff then. I 180’d it and Ollie rode off it. Then we went to lunch at Grandma’s Kitchen where I worked in high school. So awesome.

After lunch and checking into our hotel I brought Ollie to my favorite skatespot from my Rochester days. Kellogg Middle School. The loading dock in the back was my favorite. The metal ledge thing especially. I learned a lot of tricks on that thing. Tricks I can’t do anymore like front 50 to front lip to front 50 180 out. Ha those were the days. They had made an attempt to skate stop it, but it didn’t last. I did a bunch of 50s and 5-0s and had a weird familiar feeling. I skated that spot so many times back then it felt like I was home. I tried a few of the 50 to lip combos, but couldn’t do it. No biggee.

This gap started getting some play near the end of my Rochester days. I don’t think my brother or I ever even tried to ollie it. It’s kind of funny looking back and wondering why I would have never tried this knowing most of my friends did. I was longer then I remembered it being, but not as tall as I had thought. Which I guess made it a little hard, but I ollied it. Only once and it was sketchy, but whatevs, I’m just hyped that I ollied a gap at 39 that I couldn’t do at 19.

To hype me up for the gap I did a fakie nosegrind on the slightly downhill part of the ledge, treflip on flat then ollie the gap. Ollie was really stoked on the ollie (ollie ollie ha) and said he didn’t think I could ollie something that big. Nice. We used to do the fakie nosegrinds there a lot I remember. Super fun right there. It’s also funny that I did a treflip, because I never landed a treflip back then. I got close and I remember getting super close one night where I ditched prom for an H-Street demo and we all skated Kellogg after. That was a fun night. Anyways, yeah, more super hyper rambling. I was excited to do a treflip at a spot where I had tried and failed over and over to learn them.

I can’t describe how awesome it felt to skate an old high school spot with Ollie. He doesn’t skate a whole lot these days, but he seemed to pick up on my excitement and killed it. Back 180 off.

He also boardslid this side. Bad cell phone photo on my part.

Ollie got a little board of the blue ledge spot, so we went and check out the new stuff. I think this might have actually been put in right before I moved. You can see how serious the session was in the video. When Ollie did his run the first time I got his back with an ollie over the curb out of the ramp. It was fun. There was some rad ledges nearby too that I’m not sure why we never skated in the past. They were waxed up real good too. We sat around for awhile and I kept thinking we were in Boulder since I totally felt like I was at home. So funny. We went back and met a friend from high school for dinner and talked to him for several hours.

So good to see you Pat!

I thought I’d be retiring for the night, but since it would be my only night (ever again?) to skate downtown Rochester I went for it. First spot I ended up at was really fun. I started with a manual across this which had a horrible approach..

.. ollied up the curb, then did a fun little carve on this, then ..

.. noseslide or boardslide on pretty much the most perfect marble ledge ever. Well, except for that fact that it was really tall and I was really tired. But look at that ledge? It’s perfect!

I wandered to this other bank spot I remember only skating once back in the day. I have no idea why I thought this downtown was big. It’s like 6 blocks, it’s so easy to skate it all. Anyways, the bank spot was not as good as I remember, especially with the pebbles everwhere from the road construction. I moved on, saw this in the road and ollied it in a couple tries. It was easy one way as it had a long approach. I wanted to ollie it going to the other way too though which was close to the sidewalk so I had to setup quick after dropping off the curb. Being the dork I am I decided to line it out, back 180 up the curb, sw front 180 in total darkness, then ollie the pole. It took me forever and my first few back 180s were so ridiculously dumb. After that I rolled and walked around for awhile not really finding anything.

I saw this, kinda surprised it didn’t have any marks at all. But the rail was weird. I considered dropping in on it, but used my exhaustion as an excuse not to.

I came up on these. They are insanely perfect. The entire building was surrounded with them. I wanted to front 50 one of them, but kept slipping off and almost hitting my face on the wall so I settled with crooks. I rolled out because I thought it would be a bust.

I came up on this corner and about freaked. There was a perfect round bar, perfect ledge (behind the round bar) and a decent flat bar (more behind the round bar). Being the exhausted old dude I was I went with the easiest of the three..

.. the ledge! I remember skating this back in the day too. It grinded really good. I had some from 50s and crooks that felt so good. Cops drove by and didn’t say anything. That definitely didn’t used to be the case. It was kind of weird because the only people out that late were people in scrubs or Mayo Clinic patients so skateboarding definitely stood out. I skated it for awhile though. I did a bunch of crooks going backside because it was just so fun. It would lock in and go. I don’t think I got anything crazier then a front 5-0 the other way, but I had a blast regardless. I cruised around a bit longer, but was too tired to skate anything else. Super hyped I went on the night mission. Super hyped to have seen Rochester again and skate some of the old spots. Sorry for what I believe is the longest skate journal entry I have ever wrote. Hopefully it wasn’t also the most boring. I should add that this was the first day I truly enjoyed having the bigger setup. Maybe it’s because my body remembered the huge boards we rode back then.