skate journal: short douglass with rob after plumbing issues then sauls (nov 28, 2020)
After a bad night of sleep due to knee pain and then dealing with plumbing issues for several hours I gave up because I needed to get outside in the nice weather. I met Rob at Douglass around 2:30. The warm up battle didn’t seem overly long for either of us. Today I could land kickflips, but struggled with halfcab flips. We mostly tried lines starting out on the road, going up the curb and hitting the various ledges. I had a decent one early on. Pop shove on flat, ollie up the curb, first try heelflip, noseslide to fakie, switch 180 off the curb. Rob got fakie bigspin, back 180 up the curb, then halfcab boardslide the side of a bench. It was nuts. He also had front boardslides, no complys up the curb, some of his old patented quick foot action – back 180 – fakie bigspin – nollie shove all done super quickly. He got a couple kickflips, but they didn’t come easy. Flippers weren’t really working for me, neither were crooks. I would get a couple halfcab flips, fakie flip, but couldn’t get b/s flip or treflip. I also couldn’t even ollie onto the bench. Argh. There was a pink haired scantily clad woman dancing on her rollerskates while we were there. It was a little distracting. Then I left to meet Skelly and his buddy Mike at Saul’s. They were late, so Saul and I skated. He had his patented fun to watch fast grind lines, close to some proper stand up back 50s. I did some carve grinds and axle stalls, couldn’t get a front slash even in the shallow. Mike and Sean skated it pretty well when they got there shortly before dark. Mike had some smooth style and good slams. Skelly had lots of front smiths and back grinds. It was rad seeing the stoke that everyone gets when they see Saul’s.
(setup 8.25 303 clfx spirt deck, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.8 trucks (cast baseplate titanium hanger), venom 88a bushings, 52mm spitfire classic shape f4 99a, 3 washers on outside of wheels, new balance numeric 212 blue/gum size 11.5 stock insoles)
(pain level 5/10)