On a super nice day I snuck out at lunch to hit the little park by IBM with Fullertron. We started out skating like 40+ year olds. Ugh. Oh I was on a new 8″ Little Dude board since I had cracked my tank of an 8.25 last night. I can’t say the 8″ felt amazing and it was actually kind of weird for ollies, but for flippers it was way funner. We mostly skated the bank shown above with some other stuff mixed in. I had to be back at work within an hour so we didn’t have much time. Fuller did switch shoves both ways on the bank, cab, fakie shoves, etc. Almost boardslide shove on the flatbar. I got fakie varial flip on the bank and kickflip to fakie as well as b/s flip. I really struggled ollieing the little flat bar. In fact I landed so bad I probably should have snapped the tail off. My legs were feeling very heavy. I don’t get it. Neither of us skated great, but it was nice to get out in the nice warm sunny weather. Dave ended the session with a fakie flip (above).

Man this spot ruled.

I’ve wanted to skate the post office by my house for about 10 years now and I decided this night was the night to make it happen. Rather then start right at the post office though I cruised across the street for a bit to get warmed up. I was feeling pretty rusty and ended up at this odd configuration of stairs. Going up them was really hard for me. There is not much runway and a slight uphill between the 2 and 1. I finally started getting up the two with enough speed to get up the one as well and first try got front 180 down a 3 stair in the background of the photo. It’s actually a pretty good 3 so a pretty fun run. I was breathing like crazy from jumping so much, but wanted to also do back 180 down the stairs. I got close, but ended up giving up.

Then I went back to the post office. It was quite a bit harder then I figured it would be. The goal was to do a trick into the handicap ramp then a trick on the bench. Well the ramp was way narrower then I thought and the bench comes up real quick with a nasty crack right in front of it. I did eventually get a couple kickflips into the bank with jibby front boards on the end of the bench. No front 50s like I wanted, but I think it would just stick anyway. I also had a line of switch front 180 into the ramp, ollie a little curb gap then a horrible ollie on this weird little hip. My legs were feeling weird. They had energy, but they were heavy. I think it’s pretty clear that the gluten free diet is having a positive effect on my arthritis/muscle pains. Hopefully it will keep getting even better. My board was finally starting to really bum me out. 8.25s are not the size for me. I added pop shove, nollie and halfcab into the ramp before moving on to skate flat in the lot next to the post office.

I tried a front lip on a parking block first though and crack! I was happier then a pig in mud! Going back to 8 inch!