In what is becoming somewhat of a birthday tradition we assembled at Evergreen park on a nice breezy day.  It felt like we were the first people there since winter as there was pine needles and gravel around the park. It’s gonna be impossible to remember and document all that happened. I’ll start by saying there was a lot of people and for some reason the pressure of skating around everyone really got to me this time. I could just not get it going for the life of me. Kevin was the only one there when I showed, but Sean, Rob, Ed and Jake would arrive shortly. There were some others there and a decent sized crew of Evergreen youth would show up too. Hayden would show with Jake 2, Peyton and Bo too. Fuller and Simon would show when we were contemplating calling it a day. I’ll start by saying I was skating incredibly bad to start and it literally took my 15-20 tries to get a kickflip to fakie on the little wedge behind the hip that was supposed to be the start of a ‘fun’ warm up line. I was thinking in my head “maybe this will be the year I hang it up”. I’m not sure if it was a Rob bean plants over the hip or his back 50s, Kevin’s smile, Hayden’s treflips or Sean’s front 3s, but I did start to have fun. I still didn’t land much, but I did have some fun. The backside flip took longer than it should, but not as long as the previous time and I got fakie bigflip over the hip in about 5 tries. That would help me mentally. I was hyped to see Rob boardsliding the hubba. Kevin was shredding everything like he do. Sean’s warm ups would be my ender enders. His back nosegrinds on the aluminum bench were incredible. Bo’s energy is contagious. Lots of pop on everything, pressure flips, crooks on the aluminum bench were gold. Jake killed the steep qp, got fakie bigspin over the hip, nollie bigspin. It was rad that Ed joined. He had some poppy ollies over the wedge, grinds on the qp, boardslides. Hayden and Jake 2 brought the heat immediately and you could tell they were hyped to skate that park. Hayden still appears to have stolen treflips from Bo. Apparently Peyton hasn’t skated in months, but it didn’t show and he was shredding. I sat to eat a snack and Rob, Ed, Kevin joined me. It was looking like we might bounce, but then Simon and Fuller showed up. So we had to try to get it going again. I’m glad we did because the park cleared out a little and some fun was had. Dave and I played with various noseslide transfers on the wedge/back of hip. Kevin and I rotated filming for a bit until we got our lines. I was happy that the b/s flip came somewhat easy again, but getting crooks instead of boardslide after the nollie front tail was hard. Sean did like 100 front 3s and f/s halfcab flips over the hip. Kevin is a trooper filming him and even did pivot fakie while filming once. Amazing. Dave did a b/s flip over the hip which he doesn’t think he’s done before, also halfcab flip, bunch of switch ollies. When we left he was still skating and did a switch front 3 over the hip. Simon is so good, the back lip on the vert qp was bonkers. I was trying to get treflip over the hip and was almost committing when my board landed on my foot and hurt my toe enough that I basically stopped skating. It bummed me out that I didn’t ever get my feet on it. All in all a fun session. It’s weird though. Hard to live up to the hype. I skated mostly terrible, but felt lucky to have so many rad people to skate with.

(setup 8.5 null jack pro deck, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.8 cast baseplate titanium hanger no big washer, 52mm spitfire f4 101a radial slim, new balance numeric 212 pink size 12, footprint mid elite insoles)
(pain level 5/10)

Feeling really tired after a week of work I went to Saul’s.  Jake and Saul were already there skating.  But we ended up mostly talking it seemed.  Saul had some fire though and did some good grinds.  I got one shallow end front slash and posed some Madonnas.  But I couldn’t even do the axle stall setup when Saul attempted to film me so I could see how far off I was.  Jake didn’t go too hard for him, but still rattled off a bunch of tricks I hope to do there some day.

saul 8.75 setup venture 6.1s 53mm spitfire conical full red/blue.  shoes: nb# 288S maroon size 11.5 no insoles)
(pain level 4/10)