Slept in til 7:30am for the first time in awhile. I guess the dark morning even stopped Lucy from waking up and mewing for food. Dave F had already texted saying he’d be at the dog park around 8am. Yikes. I got ready quickly and drove through mist. Both Daves were there. Dave F had been there for awhile and was looking good on his board already. There were a couple other dudes there too. I’ve seen them before, both nice dudes, both rocking long hair. Dave F did a good early grab method off the new kicker. I tried too, but I didn’t tweak. Dave L cracked us up with a missed hand placement and said he hadn’t tried an early grab since high school. We kinda played on the new manual pad contraption for awhile. I was happy to get some intentional front 5-0s on the low part, 50 the tall part to manual then hang up on the angle iron, ollie up boardslide off and my favorite, finally some back 50s. Several back 50s. Dave F had ollie up front nose and front 50. Dave L was manualling it and popping over everything casually. Dave F did an amazing grind up to back tail on a weird wallie ledge deathtrap. Pretty incredible. I got close to a line of front 50 a cinder block ledge, heelflip on flat, kickflip off the kicker. I gave up on the line after awhile and just did kickflip. It took longer than I wanted and jumping that “high” definitely made me sore, but it felt good to get a clean one. Dave L did a really good back tail on the new ledge. Then we played a game of SKATE. Dave L missed a few tricks like shoves and fakie bigspin and would soon be the first one out. Dave had gotten me with cab, varial flip, switch shove and something else. I won it on a heelflip. Then we sat and chilled for awhile. Eric showed up, Dave F left. I thought I would be done skating, but Dave L and I started dorking around on the wedge and it brought some life back into my legs. I got a halfcab rock to side rock. Dave L did a crazy backside kickturn 360 off the nose that looked so hard. He made it look easy of course. Eric was ripping. Front 50s and front tails, crooks the tall street bench, ollies/wallies/180s. The front tail on the taller part of the new obstacle was a fav. Then we hucked for a bit. I tried fakie 50 switch 180 out, but didn’t get it. I did get a weak sauce front 50 to front disaster the new obstacle. Gotta get a name for this thing. A little help someone? Eric went back and did a heelflip back 50 in a few tries. It was really good. Then we hucked kickflip noseslide/heelflip nosesides/halfcab flip noseslides. Eric was closer, but neither of us got it. That was a lot of skating and quite fun.

After chilling awhile I went and skated some flat on the side of the school. I was very sore and not expecting much and I didn’t do much. I got kickflip, fakie flip, haflcab flip, bs flip, f/s halfcab flip. I had done a few of each trick, just trying to get somewhat consistent. I went down for a heelflip and the knees weren’t having it so I called it a day. I had put thin insoles in my shoes and put a bottom washer on my trucks to hopefully reduce wheelbite. Both seemed good.

(setup  8.25 null curby deck, venture 5.2 awake low trucks custom hollow cast baseplate, doh dohs 88a boardside bushing no washer minilogo 94a roadside with flat washer, 51mm bones stf v1 wheels with 3 speed washers on the inside, new balance numeric 288s white/gum size 11.5, no insoles)
(pain level 3/10)