Got stuck working all day missing out on a miniramp/ditch session with friends. So around 7 when I got done working I asked Ollie if he wanted to skate campus with me and he said yes. Awesome. We started out in the area above, I’m not sure what building that is. Ollie and I dropped in on this little thing. Then we ollied the longer two stair in the middle of that photo and messed around. I started trying a line of kickflip off a curb, ollie up the long two, curve down the handicap ramp then front 50 the 2nd stair of the curved set on the left. Took me a few tries and Ollie was losing his patience and swinging a branch at me saying “The swamp man is after you!” It made me laugh and I got the line with a really bad front 50, but whatever, I’m still getting used to new trucks (I think I finally found the winning combo for the bigger setup though!!!) and how they turn. Then we ollied a 3 stair and came upon this four stair which Ollie did this coffinish grass ride and I just ollied it.

Then we came up on this rock ledge which I have never seen before. It doesn’t grind too well and it took me a few tries to get a couple. Long enough for Ollie to get bored and download a new game onto my phone (Don’t Tap The White Tile), set a high record and shoot a photo of my butt sticking out on a front 50. So with kids these days that tells you it was only about 5-10 tries.

Then we ended up at these long sets of stairs. Ollie beat me to doing all of them and it made me happy. The last couple were a little scary since you barely land before the next set. We each did it a bunch of times and decided to film each other. I tried to ollie the 5 stair after it and failed as it was a little long for me and has a big crack before it. Ok, so the crack just looks big, but doesn’t effect anything. Doesn’t mean I don’t use it as an excuse to try the stairs. Then we did the hill down from the basketball stadium a couple times. Ollie didn’t even foot drag the second time. I had fun ollieing some cracks going relatively fast for me. That was pretty much it. Hyped that Ollie was down to skate and was so fun to roll with. I had eaten gluten the night before and was pretty stiff. That’s the third time I’ve tried to eat/drink something with gluten and every time it’s resulted in pain. Lesson learned. I just really, really, really want to have a good beer in the summer. Oh well. Argh.

Went to Crisis early to do big bidness before Fuzz opened. While I was at it I setup some Independent trucks. It’s funny how I avoided Indy forever and realized I had never put better bushings in them so maybe they are an option after all. And since the Royals were done due to too much wheelbite, Ace were done because the kingpin was loose and the hangers were bent (POS trucks) I was down to try Indy. With the white medium Venom bushings.

We went to the bank spot out on on 120th. I had a lot more energy then last time, but was struggling a bit due to the obvious reason of having an almost entirely new setup. Rob and Neil each had good lines after a short warm up. I don’t remember them exactly but Rob’s was something like kickflip out of the curb kicker, bean plant on the bank, kickflip on the bank, boneless. All done well. Neil also had a long one with Neil comply boneless, backside ollie, frontside ollie, basics done well. Neil and Rob also had b/s 180s out of the curb kicker, Rob had a kickflip on the bank. I struggled with kickflips out of the curb kicker, but eventually got one in a line with a kickflip on the bank after.

Then we went to a ledge we’ve never skated across the street. We should call it the struggle ledge because we all struggled. It wasn’t that tall, but it was just weird. Rob got a few crooks, Neil got into a few crooks, I slammed on a front board, got into front 50. Then a cop came to boot us and we thanked him for putting us out of our misery. He laughed.

We drove around for awhile and ended up at some abandoned government building. We found a smooth section and a curb that slid well for boardlides and hit it for awhile. Rob had a bigspin front noseslide, lap over lipslides, Neil had lipslides. I had a few “switch” boardslides and then almost got a line of kickflip over a hose, 3 flip on flat then kick back tail the curb. I broke my board on a heelflip on the way back though. DOH.

So we went to Crisis so I could setup a new board. I went with 8.5 this time mainly because there was one of the new Neandernulls with a yellow bottom sheet. Freakin’ gorgeous! We went across the street to the Safeway ledges. Neil was sore and didn’t really skate. Rob and I skated pretty hard for awhile. He got a lot of his tricks. Cab front nose, nollie front 50 first try, front 5-0, lots of good back 50s, back 180 fakie 50 halfcab out, back 50 back 180 (I think). I got a few back 50s and then one locked in kick back 50, but couldn’t get another kick back 50 (was gonna try shove out), a hilarious “front smith” where I didn’t grind and somehow fell out of it and rolled away, tried front tail shove, tried crooks on the fence ledge but kept doing noseslides. My flatground game was ok, got a treflip and started hucking Rick flips for some random reason. Even landed on one that could maybe count on defense in an over 50 game of SKATE. Rob and I ended with a really fun game of SKATE that went T-T before I won it on a fakie bigflip. Other tricks that went down were 43 shifty, no comply shove, no comply 360, no comply, front shove, b/s flip, fakie flip, halfcab flip, f/s halfcab flip (Rob went double or nothing on it and unfortunately came up short). It was a perfect ender for a really fun day.