Had from 7:30-9am to skate again so I went for it. I wasn’t as motivated as Tuesday and was pretty tired. As I’ve said a million times, I’m stubborn and I’ll try to skate regardless. I was thinking of the mellow bank above the night before, wanting to finally land a switch kickflip on it. After parking near the hill I skated there feeling ok actually and popping little ollies over cracks. I did my first no comply, alley oop nollie 270, pop shove fakie. Was starting to think it might be a good day. Then came b/s kickflip again. It took like 10 tries. WTF this is normally like rolling off a curb for me. I tried switch flips for awhile and didn’t get close at all. Got a varial flip to fakie first try, then failed at 360 flips to fakie for awhile.

Here’s where the real depression kicked in. I tried to ollie the small rock and couldn’t get close. In fact I could barely pose an ollie over it. I tried for awhile and gave up feeling totally defeated, questioning my bigger setup and skateboarding in general.

Then I saw this weird thing. Someone good could do a cool line of ollie onto the bench then a trick over the pole. Riley, I’m looking your way. I thought I could ollie out to it, but my confidence was at an all time low and I couldn’t even go to front axle stall. So I figured lining it out might help. I tried some f/s halfcab flips on the brick in the parking lot next to it and failed miserably. After awhile I figured out it was the bricks doing it and moved to the regular asphalt and got a couple. The first one was ok, but when I came down to the sidewalk there was a golf cart style vehicle in the way. Ugh. The next one I landed was almost primo and somehow fell onto the wheels. I took it. Then I did the sketchiest ollie up a tiny curb ever and headed to the curved bench. I was just gonna do 50, but it ended up not feeling bad and with a little grindage on the back truck I made it up, took a quick push and front 180’d back to safety. Flipped off the bench and pushed switch back to the car. Sorry this entry is so depressing. I’m really hard on myself when I have a bad day of skating. But it was in the streets so I can’t totally hate. As bad as the last line was, it made me feel alright.

(setup 8.5 null venture wide lights thunder bushings 54mm nulls es accel slims black/white)

After another day of working at home to watch Ollie I convinced him to go skate Louisville park. I quickly realized I was in for a tough session. We stared in the snake run thing which was actually pretty fun until a bunch of little kids showed up with no skatepark etiquette at all. They sucked. And they were scary to watch. They looked like they were going to die all the time. Some other guys were playing SKATE near the ledge so I kind of avoided it. I couldn’t kickflip on the bank. Ugh. I took awhile to do a boardslide on the bank to ledge. After awhile I started trying to front 50 the bank to ledge. I have gotten so bad at ollieing that I struggled to get on it. I got a few that grinded at least and felt cool. Tried to back them up with a b/s flip over the hip, but no luck. Ollie was trying fakie 3 shoves on flat and getting really close. He also had some good lines with front 180’s off the ledge, halfcab on flat then boardslide the little ledge. I did a few ledge ultra basics then started trying to do back 50 on the bank to ledge. Ollieing over the hip into back 50. It took me forever. Literally, forever. I’m not sure if I did that back when I used to skate there with Jason, but he would do it easy and 5-0 sometimes. Ollie was trying a line of a f/s carve around the corner, b/s 180 over the hip and then fakie 3 shove. He got to the fakie 3 shove almost every try, but never got the 3 shove. I ended with a noseslide down the hubba that took too many tries and a front 50 across and down the nearby ledge. Man I struggled.

(setup 8.5 null venture wide lights thunder bushings 54mm nulls es accel slims black/white)