Ollie, Carleigh and I met up with John for an early session at Broomfield park. Yes, I said Ollie! So stoked he wanted to skate a little. We warmed up with some wallrides on top of the big bank. Then I skated the quartapotty with John and Carleigh. We tried to deck rock ‘n rolls and front rocks. John got pivot to fakie. I had some new shoes that had me feeling really weird. They are a little too small for me, but I gotta learn my lesson and skate them. They are some DC Wes Kremer shoes. Yeah yeah, DC’s I know. Not my first choice, but I wanted to get some shoes from one of my favorite shops out there, Motive, and this is what they had for me. Anyways, they were kind of slippery and feeling weird. While we skated the quartapotty Ollie was doing body varials on the steep bank. John laughed because he knew we would never do that. We played a game of SKATE. I recently remembered starting games of HORSE in basketball by shooting free throws until someone misses. First one to miss goes last, last one to miss goes first. So we started with kickflips. John missed after one and I out lasted Carleigh and we played a really long game of SKATE where tricks were rarely landed. One high point for me would be getting John a letter on a treflip. Ha! That never happens. I ended up winning it with f/s halfcab flip. I was struggling though. Struggled with front 50s on the ledge after that. It made me miss low trucks. Ugh. One of these days I’ll be happy with my setup again.

Rating: STYLE
Rating: COMFORT
Rating: BOARD FEEL
Rating: BREAK IN PERIOD (Good rating means quick break in period)
Rating: SOLE DURABILITY
Rating: UPPER DURABILITY
Rating: OVERALL

These shoes lasted 12 skate days

My first Sole Tech shoes in awhile. Man, they are comfy. That’s about all I have to say good about these shoes though. They took a long time to break in. The inside of the shoe on the heel tore out so my right achilles was rubbing on something hard. The tread pattern wore out quick. The soles still felt decent when I gave up on. They had a little hole starting in the sole. I would have kept skating them, but I didn’t feel like shoe goo’ing the toe area for the 4th time. The board feel wasn’t all that either. I think Emerica takes pride in making kind of bulkier shoes, so maybe they would be good for you.

Had a friday off work! Bernie came over around 11:30 on a nice day and we headed to little Arvada for a Square State BBQ / skate jam. After a brat and hotdog I met up with Bernie who was showing off for the kids skating the ledge pretty good. I was kinda feeling things out for awhile. Lazer and Jake showed. Brett showed. Jake, Bernie and I were skating the ledge. Bernie did a front smith kickflip out all steezy. Kick back tail. Jake leaned back 50s. I did a few crooks and some slow front 50s (I don’t get why this trick is so much harder with higher trucks). I went over the little spine thing and was coming back over it via smith transfer when disaster struck. I’m not really sure what happened, but I remember thinking “This is going to hurt really bad” and thinking my head was ok then BOOM. Hit the ground really hard. I thought it was just my right knee that was dead, but apparently I was out or something for a bit because everyone was standing around me in the park. I think what happened was the bill of my hat hit the ground luckily saving my face, but still resulting in a lot of pain and possibly a little concussion. Ouch. I sat out for a while and never really felt good at all after that. Jake and Lazer killed the tranny. Brian, Jake and Lazer did frontside slashes over the love seat. Jake then front 50’d over it. I got an ollie onto the manual pad and kickflip off. We played a game of SKATE that Jake won. Brett skated some of the best I’ve seen him skate.

Then Brett, Bernie and I met Carleigh and Jack here. It looks perfect in this screen grab, and well, it really is. It’s harder then a skatepark hip that’s for sure, but it’s still pretty much perfect. Bernie did ollie and back 180 lickety split. Jack went for 360 flip out of the gates. Carleigh did ollie then pop shove. Brett was trying front biggee and accidentally did it to wallride. I had a couple of kickflips that were so small they didn’t clear the hip. Then it was filming time. And it kept being filming time forever. I mostly just filmed dudes losing their minds, throwing temper tantrums, not having any fun and not landing tricks. Carleigh however, got some kickflips. She’s goofy (footed) so whether she will admit it or not, the term frontside kickflip is involved. Near the end I skated a bit. I got a better kickflip, no comply front shove, no comply 270 and boneless 270. All of which had lots of tic tacs and no air. Carleigh darn near learned backside flips. That spot is cool. There is a lot of stuff there. Oh, and the photo above of Bernie is a self portrait after he wiped blood on his face and started talking about riding a buffalo into battle. Like I said, “losing their minds”.

A super nice evening. Got home from work, crashed for a few minutes and then skated in front of the house until Ollie was ready to play basketball. I was pretty tired, but I always am anymore. I didn’t get too far in the trick list, but managed a treflip right as Ollie came out.