skate journal: dog park then valmont bank with the crew (dec 16, 2017)
Did some stuff in the morning then met up at the dog park. I was there first, Rob shortly after, Garrett, Riley and Fuzz a little later. Rob and I were there awhile and we were struggling. My first kickflips felt good, but I kept bailing fakie flips and halfcab flips weren’t working. The stiff PJs are hard to get used to, but my heel pain is slowly going away so I guess they are helping. Rob had some lines going. Cabs, front shoves, kickflips, several b/s flips. Came close to treflip. I tried the fakie bigflip, varial flip, treflip line some more. Had some better feeling fakie bigflips, but still couldn’t manage the treflip even though I was committing and felt like they should work. Rob was working on varial heels when Riley showed. Riley gave him some advice and went on to do it first try. Jerk! Ha. Riley’s flippers are top notch. I hope that skating with him more again rubs off on me. His switch heels! Garrett had some styley treflips and manuals. Dude is smooth. Fuzz showed, cruised around pushing then did every shove variation. It was cool. I had a good slam on a f/s halfcab flip. We bounced across the street.
I was thinking we were gonna skate manuals, but after I showed Riley a wallride we all assembled at the bank which ended up being quite fun. Well, I sucked it up struggling even with kickflips. Got close to treflip fakie before I started filming Riley. Garrett was trying wallrides too. Dave, Rob and Fuzz were ripping the bank. Fuzz did the Gonz move (cab kickturn late ollie), fakie 540 kickturn and would go on to get a sick front nosepick on the curb of the bank. Rob did the bank Joe Hamilton (yeah so Joe has a ramp trick (50 to rock), ledge trick (front lip to front 50 to shove or some similar variation) and the bank trick (cab bigspin)) and would do it to boardslide. Riley’s run was nuts. I’m most blown away by how fast he was going for the halfcab. He didn’t even push, just took a few steps and threw down and he was flying. Garrett got a cool front tail b/s flip out. Dave did a cool front tail shove. Then everyone was out, but I wanted to skate some more. Rob was kind enough to film a line I wanted to do. Front 180 the little gap up top, fakie shove on flat, halfcab flip on the bank. I got it pretty quickly. Everything felt good for me, but I was super embarrassed about how I looked. Oh well, it’s an awkward spots and I actually linked up the tricks I wanted. Decent day. Hyped on everyone stacking a clip or two.
(setup 8.25″ null atomic cowboy, venture 5.25 awake lows, 50mm bones stf v1, 3 washers on the inside of each axle, venom 91a bushings, new balance numeric 533v2 black/gold size 11.5, custom orthotic insole)