Jack had shown me a photo on his phone of this spot and when us older dudes were thinking of spots to meet at I remembered it. Dave had gotten to the school before us and said there was nothing at the school. Ha. But this spot was there and I thought it looked pretty awesome. Luckily we had to wait for Neil to show so Rob (yes, Rob is back!!!), Dave, Ollie and I were forced to wait there and skate. Unfortunately we didn’t have any wax, but I thought it was still fun without it. Ollie found a basketball so he just hung out and shot hoops so he was hyped. Rob was reaquainting himself with skateboarding. I saw a first try kickflip. Dave was doing lots of 180s and nollie/fakie shoves. I was hyped on how my legs felt. This might partially be because I got some basketball shoes for when I play with Ollie. We played for awhile on Saturday and it felt like leg rehab. I guess playing basketball in tiny vulcanized shoes is not a good idea. For that matter maybe tiny vulc shoes hurt even when skateboarding. Or at least when they are worn down to just the insole. With all of that said, I had some new shoes.

After my previous pair of these I had said I’d never skate them again, but Meta Sam said that Lakai has a new manufacturer and he hasn’t seen any problems with them. This is great news because the Carlo is one of my favorite shoes ever. Considering the previous pair wore flat in one session and this pair showed almost no signs of wear in one day I’m guessing Sam was right. Anyways, enough about shoes. I skated pretty hard out of the gates. I love random spots that aren’t perfect. I got ollie up the curb, front board transfer up. Ollie down the “bigger” drop, front 180 off. Front 180 down then switch back 180 off (so stoked! although there was no pop involved). Eventually kickflip up the curb then front board fakie transfer up. Hyped on that one too. The smaller setup was ruling it and solidified in my head why I like low trucks. They are so much better for street skating and trying to have somewhat quick feet. Even without wax Dave and I tried to cali grind off the two stair. He managed to get one and then did a drop down boardslide off it too. Neil looked at it and was over it immediately. He skated a bit, but mostly just played basketball with Ollie. Jack, lets skate there again! These dudes suck! Ha. With wax the spot would be amazing. You can even wax up a long ledge for boardslides.

Next we went to a long, red metal flatbar/curb that we later coined as Retal Curb. Ollie continued his non skating ways and just hung out. The rest of us had some fun boardslides to get started. Neil and I added crooks and halfcab boardslides. Rob did a lot. lap over lipslide, smith. boardslide pop out. Dave straight slayed this thing. Boardslide, boardslide fakie, long front 50s, almost front 50 back 180 out, feeble grind transfers. So good. Lazer showed and did a couple tricks before sitting down. I got a couple tiny front 50s on it and tried a bunch of kickflip back boardslides, but my board was too new to commit to it.

We got some burritos, picked up Jason and headed to Southern Hills for a mostly mellow session. Ollie skated a little finally. Did some pop shoves and a coffin down the handicap ramp before finding a tennis ball to shoot hoops with. What a jock. Ha. Rob, Neil and I played a game of SKATE to get started. I was the first out. I wasn’t too into the game. I started skating the ledges though and had fun. Boardslides, noseslides, crooks, a couple slow front 50s. Rob ruined his board on a wallride nollie out attempt on the brick wall and tried some 3 flips (both tricks on his ‘by 40’ list). I skated kind of hard for awhile. I have been so bad at ollieing onto stuff lately that I forced myself to ollie onto a bench for awhile. I couldn’t do it with any speed, but I did manage to get one with a kickflip off at the very end of the session. I had also landed a 3 flip with one hand down and man it rules being 40 and not even thinking I need to clean that up. Fun times. Great having Rob around again. Great to see Jason.

These shoes lasted 15 skate days

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

DC is as corporate as I will go with a shoe company. Wes Kremer rules though and it was about time I support my fine friends at Motive and get some shoes from them. I wish I could have tried them on as it seems DCs run smaller then other skate shoe brands and I would have liked a bigger size. Oh well, they are vulc so they stretched out and ended up fitting great. Other then the ugly brown/black colorway this is one of the best shoes I’ve had in awhile. The board feel was great, they were ready to skate pretty much right out of the box and they held up well. They should give up on the “Super Suede” saying though, I had to shoe goo the toe just as quickly as any other shoe brand with normal suede. All in all though a great shoe that I was really impressed with.

I met up with Dave after work on a nice friday afternoon. My legs didn’t feel as bad as normal. I rolled around a little before Dave got there. Once he did we started skating the mellow flat bank and mostly just stayed there the whole time. We rattled off quite a few tricks. Dave got fakie flip and a first try kickflip to fakie. Dude! He also came remotely close to a switch flip. I was getting used to a new board (8″ this time since I’m out of 8.1s) and my low Venture trucks again. I really like how quickly that setup kickflips. I got a sloppy b/s flip, a fun feeling f/s flip followed by a b/s flip flyout. b/s halfcab flip. Then started going for 360 flip to fakie which I’ve only landed a couple times in my life. I got one. It was an over 40 make with a hand down, but you know what, I’m 40. It counted! Ha ha. Dave did some more cool tricks like nollie bigspin, switch front shove. There was this little kid from Isreal riding around on a plastic board having the time of his life doing early grabs and stuff. It hyped us up. He had no concerns about doing cool tricks, he was having a blast and it ruled to see. I added fakie flip to my collection, couldn’t get fakie 3 flip and landed a few f/s halfcab flips at 90 degrees and stopped. Doh. We finally moved on to the other corner of the park where Dave crushed the little bank that’s the top of the oververt corner. Back tailslide to fakie. He also got nose manual the long ledge. I lined out halfcab flip then crooks, but struggled with front 50 so bad. Finally got a couple at the end, but I slammed pretty hard as Dave was leaving and decided I’d leave too. I was glad that my legs were feeling a little bit better. I give credit to the low trucks. Ha ha.