After a long day of watching Ollie play flag football then playing basketball with Ollie I was able to tempt him with skateboarding at Red Curbs since it was raining. But by the time we left it was sunny and dry so we ended up at Valmont area. I had some new shoes. Well, some really old shoes that I’ve worn to work for a year or so. Some Fallen James Hardy Ramblers. I can’t even find a photo of them online anymore. My Lakai’s weren’t dead and I might skate them again, but I had forgotten I needed to shoe goo them again and it was too late to fix them up before skating. Right out of the gates I could tell these shoes sucked. They are fake vulcs and gum sole and they were slippery. Kickflips were weird. We started at this bank area:

Ollie had fun doing body varials and did the best frontside ollie(s) ever. Basically went for a frontside ollie, but didn’t really ollie, stopped, then popped an actual ollie and laughed. Ollie rules. I managed kickflip to fakie, backside flip, fakie flip. Then a line with front 180 over a little curb gap, switch front 180 off a curb, ollie a tiny median, frontside flip on the bank. Then a varial flip fakie and a front shove fakie. Ollie did a few body varials and fakie shove attempts where he rode up normal then body varialed, came to a halt and tried to fakie shove. So awesome.

Next we went over here. Do a trick into this bank, a flatground trick then something on this bank:

Ollie was doing awesome cannonball runs down it, then going for 360 body varial on the bank. He never quite got that. I was going for no comply 180 into the top bank, halfcab flip on flat then nollie tre on the other bank. The halfcab flip proved hard as I kept slipping off the darn grip. Argh. Got kind of close to the whole line.

Last up was this area. In the distance you can see Ollie. He did ollies down the 2 then 180s off the curb. The best front 180s I’ve seen him do. He also did the ollie off the loading dock at the top of this page. I ollied up that before. Crazy. Definitely couldn’t do it now. I had a little line of front 180 the 2, sw 180 the curb. Ollie cheered as he always does when anyone lands anything. The kid is awesome. I started trying a line of nose manual the slanted manny pad, ollie up onto the sidewalk then kickflip the 2. Well that ended up sucking. The nose mannies were easy. The kickflip ended up being easy. But that whole ollie’ing up a sidewalk backside was not. One time I hung up and dove into the bushes and pillar. Ouch. I ended up doing a weird 90 degree ollie to tic tac and got the line. Perhaps I can blame some of it on the new(old) shoes, but man not being able to ollie up a curb hurts. But skating with Ollie was awesome and seeing his goofy kid tricks after pushing mongo puts a smile on my face.

Had the day off work and oh man was it nice out. Met Rob, Jake, Brett and Dave at the Street League park. We were there to lower the scoring curve. Warming up there isn’t easy, everything is tall. Maybe unless you are a 20 something year old like Jake. He was scoring some points right away. 50’ing ledges right away, etc. He had a nice front 50 to front board and front 5-0 on the bump to ledge. I finally got a front 50 on it. Brett was ripping too and landed his first ever switch heel off the little bumb. Jake tried to mess with the scoring by standing in Dave’s way which caused a board to the head when Dave fell on a nosestall to fakie on the bank to ledge. I would have DQ’d Jake, but Dyrdek is more generous. I got a front D on the qp. Jake did back blunt on it. Dave had some rad boneless (I think) variations where he would just throw the board away. I could not land a kickflip to fakie from the higher kicker to the lower kicker. Oh yeah, I had a new board:

Super hyped on this graphic and the fact that Null is 10 now. In fact I think it’s crazy. But, back to the training. It’s hard to remember all that went down. Jake ollied the rock gap. I wussed out. I had a treflip on flat early on that got a lot of love. That’s only because it’s a dream trick of Rob’s right now and Jake hasn’t landed them lately. I let Jake take a couple tries on my board and he was amazed at how awesome it flipped around. He looked jealous. But I told him I’m more jealous of someone that can skate high trucks and not complain. Dave worked on nollie cabs and landed a couple fitting in the over 40 category. He will soon be in the over 45 category and will have a whole new lower bar that will still be sicker then Johny 19 Year Old kickflipping a 10. I got an ollie up the euro on the mellow side to front 180 up the tall 2. Felt good. Near the end we skated the long ledge for awhile. Brett got noseslide shove and some long front 50s. Jake did halfcab noseslide, back 50, front 50 and probably more. I got a few back crooks, front 50s, front 5-0s, a front 50 shove (over 40 make), and a sketchy back 50 for my highest back 50 in a few years. neat session. Sorry this journal entry is totaly incoherent, but I don’t remember it much and I’ve had a couple glasses of wine.

Skated across the street on the curbs at the school for a bit. Did some 50s. That was about it. Felt like dook on a skateboard.