Went to Blue Skies hockey rink to meet Dave on a completely insane warm day approaching 70 degrees. When I arrived there was some snow near the upper goal and streams of water running down the hole rink. Warming up wasn’t so easy. Dave beat me to kickflip! Then he almost went on to beat me to halfcab flip. Yikes! Ha. I went for awhile thinking I might not land anything, but some things ended up working. Heelflips especially, I landed a lot of them. Dave did a lot of kickflips. He was almost doing them in lines with multiple shoves and varial flips. I had big dreams, but they didn’t really pan out as I was too inconsistent. My legs were tired. I got fakie flip, fakie varial flip, fakie shove and close to fakie treflip in one line. That would have made my day. I only got to the fakie tre once though. I had quite a few tricks with absolutely terrible landings. It became kind of funny. Dave claims he’s never done a regular halfcab flip, but wow he got close right away and stayed close. Can’t wait to see him do that one on the regs. He couldn’t quite get fakie varial flip which was odd. That’s kinda how the day was. I tried a bunch of tricks, some easy, some hard, landed some of them, but nothing that stood out. I did a line of heelflip turn around and the worst fakie heelflip. Aki showed! Dave and I were pretty tired at that point, but streams had dried up so much they were small enough to do tricks over. And just like that we had a new spot! I tried a line of switch 180 over one, front 180 the bigger one then fakie tre. Got close, but never rode out of the fakie tre. Dave was doing a random trick then back 180 the larger puddle then trying halfcab flip. Man he got close. Aki was doing f/s halfcab over the smaller puddle, back 180 the larger one then switch flip on flat. I think he got the switch flip. Dang! We all kickflipped the “large” puddle that had evaporated so quickly every try it got easier. I wish I could have stayed, but I needed to get back to work.

(setup 8.1″ clutch sample deck, venture 5.25 awake lows, 50mm bones stf v1, 3 washers on the inside of each axle, white venture bushings, new balance numeric arto 358 black/white size 11, custom orthotic insole)

After working late then watching Stranger Things with Ollie and his friends I went across the street to the curb. It’s kind of funny because Ollie and his friend were skating in the garage. The curb had gotten pretty dry, but still grinded. I skated slow and mellow. Did some 50s. Forced myself to try a front tailslide. Didn’t really slide, but did get up on it better. Tried some nollie front 180 switch crooks. Felt close the first try then got further away each time. Tried a few kick back tails and got into a couple, but never rode away. The curb is low enough for me to “nollie front 50”. I put it in quotes because it’s more of a nose scrape and pivot the trucks onto the curb. Still fun though.

(setup 8.1″ clutch sample deck, venture 5.25 awake lows, 50mm bones stf v1, 3 washers on the inside of each axle, white venture bushings, new balance numeric arto 358 black/white size 11, custom orthotic insole)