Went over to the school after 7 on a cold night. The curbs were wet, but the flatground area was dry. I wasn’t feeling good and warming up proved difficult. In fact I think it took about 8 tries to get a kickflip. I choked it up to having new shoes and tried to stay patient. It was really tough though I had so little confidence and skated so slow. I was hating how bad I’ve gotten at flip tricks. I managed the warm up line of kicklflip, no comply 180, fakie flip. Then fakie flip, halfcab flip. Halfcab flip proved difficult and I was really struggling to make the board move. I didn’t land anything more actually. I posed a few tricks, switch flip felt possible, but bailed something taking it to the shin and had a reflex that focused that board. Ugh. I sat quite depressed for a few minutes getting super cold then went home.

(setup 8.3 null smoke valley, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.6 v-hollow hanger cast baseplate, spitfire 51mm 99a radial slag green, adidas puig b/w size 12 stock insoles)
(pain level 4/10)

Had a few hours of free time on Mother’s Day and needed to bring boards to Emage. Was gonna meet Will, but it didn’t work. And it was probably for the best as it started to rain the second I pulled into a parking spot near my favorite granite ledge. DOH! I debated skating at all, but I would get a few crooks in before the ground was totally saturated. The weren’t great crooks.

After Emage I stopped by Safeway ledge as it was dry. I had purchased some Adidas Puig shoes. I didn’t want to deal with the uncomfortable 440s so I went right to skate the Puig’s. And they felt pretty amazing to be honest. I didn’t land much for flatground and didn’t want to do too many kickflips because I hadn’t had a chance to pre-goo the toe. Well I didn’t really land all that much on the ledge either, but it felt good to skate a ledge where I can actually do back 50s. I should have cleaned up the back 50 shove, but I chose to try other stuff instead. I kind of did a couple front tail jibs, kind of a front smith, close to back 5-0, didn’t even try flip in anything argh. Still it was fun.

(setup 8.3 null smoke valley, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.6 v-hollow, spitfire 51mm 99a radial slag green, adidas puig b/w size 12 no insoles)
(pain level 4/10)

Dave L and I took the long way to get to the ditch picking up a couple parking blocks on the way. Rob, Will and Dave F would show shortly after that. This ditch looks easy to skate, but it is not. The steep side is quite steep. My first reaction was to go skate somewhere else. But we skated and it ended up being quite fun. We put the broken cement parking block and smaller plastic one at different points. I warmed up with some boneless tail transfer things and rock ‘n rolls. I couldn’t kickflip to save my nice initially. I really don’t like the 440s. Rob had some amazing backside ollies on the bank near the building. Fuller had a really bad slam right away doing a deck 180 on the weird ledge to bank by the building. He recovered though and was quickly doing rocks and feebles on the parking blocks. Dave L was doing feeble stalls on the plastic curb which seemed scary to me. After awhile we moved the cement parking block down and rub bricked/waxed the edge which grinded pretty well once we got it going. Dave L had some nice front slashes then boardslides and hurricane and decked transfers on the building ledge/bank. Will had some grinds on the bank, couldn’t get frontside though. Neither could I, too scary. Fuller had however was doing front and back tails, grinds, then some crazy back 180 pivot transfers. I had some fun slappy crooks once I figured out how to get to it. Rob and Will took off. We put the plastic curb upright on the bank. Dave L had a great line ollieing it to quick nollie lip. Then I tried wallie 50s for quite some time. It had gotten super windy. I worked pretty hard and got an alright one that came to a stop on the grind. Then Fuller did it frontside in like 5 tries without having to push like a madman. Man he’s good. Fun session. Then Rob and I went and helped with some clean up at dog park which felt pretty awesome to help with.

(setup 8.3 null smoke valley, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.6 v-hollow, spitfire 51mm 99a radial slag green, new balance numeric skateshop 440s size 12 no insoles)
(pain level 4/10)