On another cool cloudy day I went to the Valmont extreme sports complex. There was almost no one in the skatepark side so I started there. I had changed my setup. 8.25 with thunders. As much as I have grown to hate Thunders I think this setup is most aligned with the type of skating I’d like to do. It felt really squirly and small at first, but I ended up having fun. Went in on flip tricks on the flat bank pretty quickly. Got kickflip and b/s kickflip pretty quick. Then found a decent line into it fakie finally and took too long to get fakie flip and halfcab flip. I couldn’t quite get bigflip or front heel. Then I started trying noseslides on the hip ledge and would get a few. Then started trying to do a line of back 50 the weird downhill lump qp, noseslide, kickflip on the bank. I was really close and it was fun. But after a while I gave up and moved on down to the main course.

Was stoked to see Dennis skating, it’s been a while. I struggled with flip tricks and I mostly blame my shoes for being way too big. But there was a kickflip that was so incredibly easy it made me feel happy about my setup change. I did mostly the same old stuff as I was recalibrating once again. Ollies felt good, grinds a little weak compared to the wider Ventures, flippers felt very different. I had some fun trying to 180 a parking block then fakie/switch tricks on the new plastic ledge. I also finally managed a slow front 50 on it. So nothing groundbreaking, but I did skate hard for over a couple hours and felt good.

(setup 8.25 null spanbauer, jessup ultragrip, thunder 148 hollow lights with venom 88a bushings, spitfire 51mm classic shape f4 101a, new balance numeric 272 black size 12 half front insole)
(pain level 4/10 lots of skating recently)