On a nice morning I went to dog park to meet the Saturday morning crew. Rob, Cass and Jake were the only ones I knew would be there, but Will, Nick and many more joined. I was sore to start and wore some vulcs hoping for less of the ‘cupsole knee pain’ I get. They felt good for most of the session, but by the end I was too sore to continue. After some cruising around a big game of SKATE started. Jake, Cass, Will, Rob and me. Lots of 180 variations, shoves, etc to start the game. It would eventually come to Will and I and I managed to pull off a sketchy halfcab flip then fakie bigflip to end it. On the main course Cass was charging. Seriously skating harder than I’ve seen him skate. 5-0s, front noses and several back 180 nosegrinds that were super solid. Rob is still kicking off the rust but I saw a back smith, halfcab noseslide, back 50 no comply shove. Jake and Will were doing front tails on the little ledge. Jake almost getting nollie back tails after. I skated okay, had a few slow front smiths on the little ledge, crooks the bench. Was still happy with my setup, but not so much vulcs that suck a lot of the pop away. I need to unlearn that I can’t ollie high enough to get on the ledges there.

(setup 10/10 8/3 null abstract33, jessup ultragrip, thunder hollow 149, 51mm bones pj washers outside, new balance numeric 272 b/w size 11/5 half insole)
(pain level 5/10)

After a follow up with Mitchell (best sports doc in Denver) about my calf I met up with Jake at Cushing park. It’s my first time being there since the redo. I’m not sure if I even went before the redo or not. It was 60 degrees out and beautiful, the park wasn’t too crowded. Took me a bit to get a feel of things. That may have been made worse after a setup change and wearing 440s again. But I really liked the setup. I played fakie flip with Jake and his friend Max in the parking lot. Jake tried some fakie bigspins over the hip. I got a little ollie on the a-frame then back around to a cruddy noseslide. We did a few basics on the ledge then Jake skated the miniramp for a while and kept skating the ledge. I was kind of blown away by a really slow front 50 3rd try. I haven’t popped onto a “taller” one in a while and that setup snapped right to it. Like I thought I was bailing and went right into it. Then Jake and I played a game of SKATE in the parking lot. I had a streak of 3 flippers in a row that made me happy. Kickflip, fakie flip, halfcab flip. I would go on to win with a very slow, but rewarding treflip. Back to the park we lined out ollies up the euro, qp trick, ollie the little set. Jake did it quicker with a back blunt on the qp. I flailed on the qp for reasons I don’t understand so gave up and just did a back 50. Ollieing the little gap was painful, but fun. Was also hyped to see Ft Collins Jake there. No, not Creepy Jake, but Airbud Jake.

(setup 11/10 8/3 null abstract33, jessup ultragrip, thunder hollow 149, 51mm bones pj washers outside, new balance numeric 440 white size 12 half insole)
(pain level 4/10)

After work went to dog park for about an hour. Didn’t skate great, didn’t skate terrible, but didn’t have much drive. In fact I’m not really remembering anything about the session other than a dude Eric tried to show me nollie heels and they felt closer than normal. Oh, I had taken Noè’s advice on a setup change and very much disliked it.

(setup 2/10 null 8.25 esher, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.2 v-cast royal bushings, bones 53mm pj, new balance numeric 288s w/b size 12)
(pain level 3/10)