After a rough night of sleep and a tiring day in the office I arrived to Valmont first. I was debating if I should skate at all and decided to start at the park since it was empty. I quickly became obsessed with a run in the pond that kept getting longer and I would finally get it when Dave and Paul arrived. Rob had been there for a while, but was over at the ledges. The line started as backside grind then kickflip to fakie. I would get that then thought I should do a kickflip to forward on it. And once I got that I decided I should do a noseslide after. All of these weren’t so bad and I did them a few times and it was fun. But a final kickflip to fakie on the super mellow bank after became surprisingly frustrating. It felt cool to get all of those tricks though even if I was dying of thirst. Dave is a wizard at Valmont and doing lots of cool tricks like a halfcab kickturn front truck bash the pole jam. Seriously cool! Rob had joined after a while and we hit the park for a while. Rob was close to kickflip on the bank and had some nice b/s ollies the hip. I saw Paul ollie the hip too and to the rainbow once or twice. I went for front heels on the bank and would get several all while continuing the streak of heel dragging every single one. I couldn’t get treflip after. Dave’s kickflip over the hip was so casual, the no comply tricks so good too.

Then we went over to the dog park where Rob had a good idea of playing a game of SKATE, but the not-so-good idea of having Paul start. Paul would win the game without ever losing his turn. He had done treflip and fakie flip before dumbing things down for us on some 180s. I think the switch front bigspin was the death of Rob and Dave then I would go out on heelflip after even though I would get one the next try. Dave and I played on the little flat bar for a while, getting switch front boards which are so fun on it. I hucked some kick back lips which felt doable until actually trying to commit in which they seemed impossible. Maybe I should be able to do back flips first? Also tried a couple flippers then kickflip front board which was seeming possible until I got too tired. Dave did feeble to boardslide. Then Paul, Dave and I all tried switch flips for a while. Seemed like Paul was the closest this session. I left because I was feeling deliriously hungry.

(setup 5/10 8.25 null is all you need, jessup ultragrip, royal 144 hollow kingpin, 52mm spitfire f4 99a yellow classic shape, new balance numeric 440v2 white size 11.5 half 440v1 insole and currex runpro insole)
(pain level 5/10)

Woke up super early and went to Boulder park before work because I knew I wouldn’t be able to skate after work. It was cloudy and nice out. I struggled for a bit as one would expect for being so early and having had a few glasses of wine the night before. But ended up having some positives and fun. I had a setup change of course, 8.25 with royals and it was fine. Took a bit to get a noseslide on the bench the kickflip to fakie on the hump. Struggled with kickflips, but b/s flip on flat felt good. Had some easy ollies up onto some of the ledges, but struggled from the bump for some reason. Got to a point where I mostly just skated the bench. Would get boardslide, noseslide, noseslide fakie, crooks, switch front nose, halfcab noseslide, front nose fakie, switch nose, front 50, accidental front 5-0, front 50 180 and front 50 shove. Felt good to get up on that bench without an insane amount of effort. I guess the recent ledge work might finally be paying off (probably jinxed myself). I had also tried some bigflips on the hump, most of which felt unlikely, some front 50s on the hump to ledge, some frontside nollies on the turn around bank up top. It was a pretty fun session, too bad I had to go to work.

(setup 5/10 8.25 null is all you need, jessup ultragrip, royal 144 hollow kingpin, 52mm spitfire f4 99a yellow classic shape, new balance numeric 440v2 white size 11.5 half 440v1 insole and currex runpro insole)
(pain level 4/10)