After work the snow had dried up (yes I said “snow” and yes it was 90 the last time I skated and it was only 37 out). Jake and I met over on the side of the school with the good concrete and after a brief warm up went right into the first game. We started with a lot of 180s, shoves, no complies, etc. I was 0-3 on kickflips and Jake beat me to it. I barely held on to mine. He would get a fakie flip before me too and I double or nothing’d it and got two letters. I was bumming. The big wheels were feeling like big pop sponges. I would get a letter on halfcab flip too. But, I got a first try heelflip and you know what, Jake got a letter! Ha ha. This goes back to Sep 4 when he said I wouldn’t get another letter on him with heelflip. Ha ha. I forget what I went out on, maybe frontside flip. So we played another game with no repeats. We would take a while to land our tricks. I think I got him with switch shove revert, f/s halfcab flip, fakie bigflip and something else to SKAT. He had me on a few, I matched varial flip, but he got me with fakie 3 shove even though I was close and a couple other tricks. I had SKA, but since he was at SKAT the treflip battle was on. We went at it for a long time. I would get a few that were worthy of redo, but not of setting the trick. Even two in a row at one point. So on a personal level I was kind of happy. Jake would land on a bunch of them bolts, but just wasn’t positioned right to stay on. I ended up getting one and Jake didn’t get it. I had taken Cass’s advice of staying more centered rather than being behind it and it really helped. It made for some different bails for me though as I wasn’t used to it. I cracked my board real good on one attempt too. But man it was fun battling for treflips. I so much wish Jake would have landed one too, back to back would have ruled. Get those heelflips too Jake!

(setup 8.38 null plant life deck, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.8 92 custom hollow baseplate, stock bushings, 54mm spitfire f4 99a radials red/yellow swirl, new balance numeric 306 foy b/w size 12, thin 533 insoles)
(pain level 3/10)