skate journal: fun lunch curbs with dave then depression session at frederick (nov 17, 2020)
Snuck out for some lunch break fun on a gorgeous day to meet Dave across the street. It was a fun one. Since I was so sore I wore my 288s. It may have helped. I didn’t really try many flippers, but slappies went well. Dave got some really good slappy front crooks to fakie. I got some to regs. We tried to switch it up, but he couldn’t go to forward and I couldn’t go to fakie. Dave had an amazing slappy crooks or two. I got a few little switch slappy crooks to forward and followed one with a kickflip off the curb cut to the parking lot. I was doing some good regular slappies for me and trying to follow them with kick back tails, but never got it. Dave was working on switch slappy front crooks and getting into them so good and grinding them. I didn’t see him land one, but he was there for awhile after me. He drove by me “working” on the front stoop shirtless soaking up the sun. Ha. That was a fun session.
Later on I went to Frederick to meet Skelly, Mike, Sean, Hayden and more. Donnie ended showing after awhile. The park wasn’t very crowded initially, but would get kind of crowded, and then totally clear out while we were there. I sucked it up. Like I can’t even describe how depressing this session was for me. There was only two things I did okay. I noseslid the bump to ledge easily and I did the pull up loop second try. Honestly the loop was the most fun thing I did all night. The 8.5 killed me all night. I couldn’t kickflip the hump and I couldn’t b/s flip the hip. I think it was less than a month ago I said to my friend Josh “I would rather skate a 7.75 than 8.5”. So how did I end up on 8.5 again? Well, blame the pandemic and the board shortage and my idiot self. I never got a nose manual, did some of the worst crooks of my life on the ledge, couldn’t halfcab noseslide. On top of that I was finally getting the slightest bit of confidence to back 50 the lowest ledge in the park and my wheel fell off. That was a sign I should have left, but did I leave? No. I did manage a slappy front crook on the bank to curb when Donnie showed. He was hyped on that. Sean was funny. He said “I don’t know if I can 50 this bump to ledge” then did it perfectly with the most casual style ever. He would go on to 50, ollie, 5-0 a lot. But he couldn’t f/s flip the Glen hip. Ha ha. It was great seeing Hayden skate a park again. It’s been too long. He rips everything. The alley oop fakie 50 down the corner qp was so good. Back smith, 5-0s, tailslides and blunt the bump to ledge, f/s flip the bigger hip, fakie 5-0 halfcab out the little ledge. Mike was charging. He always does. It’s been awesome skating with him again lately. Slappies, wallrides, wallies. Skelly popped some good ollies over the big hips, back 180s and almost bigspin the smaller ones. Donnie charges. Front 5-0 the steep wall, unreal slappy survival tricks on the yellow curb I can’t describe, showed up the BMXers transferring from bank to bank and so much more. Oh, near the end of the session after hucking a front heel over the little hip ( I had no business hucking, but that’s what I do when I don’t want to commit to tricks) I was going towards the manny pad and things felt really weird. I carved a little and knew exactly what happened. Yup. Broke my kingpin. A dude there said “It is not your night” and he was right. I had fun skating with people. I was hyped to see everyone ripping. But my god I did not skate how I want to in any way and it really depressed me.
(setup 8.5 null plant life deck, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.8 titanium with custom hollow cast baseplate, venom 88a bushings, 52mm spitfire F4 101a radial slim, new balance numeric 306 foy navy size 12, nike sb zoom air insoles)
(pain level 4/10)