skate journal: dog park / valmont with PJ Ladd :) (sept 13, 2024)
So yeah, this really happened. I don’t really know how to write this entry. Everyone hear knows he’s been my fav skater since WHL. I have been DM’ing a little with PJ for years. He’s always been super nice and when I saw he was in Omaha I reached out and asked if he was coming through CO. He said yes and I told him about dog park, but it didn’t seem he’d be coming through Boulder. I had plans to meet up with Rob, Paul, Ed on what initially seemed like would be a normal mellow Friday session. But pretty quick into the session PJ said he’d be coming by. After an initial excitement freak out I was able to settle down and we skated.
PJ and Paul showed up around the same time. It was actually kind of funny because PJ slammed on his first kickflip. Like just a little look around at the park, stand on the board, slam on a kickflip. He then did some warm up flatground just going slow in a little section in the back of the park. Then we were all skating just doing our things. Rob had a nice manual around the lurb, back smith the curb (got a cheer from PJ). I’m sure this comes as a surprise to know one, but this session is a blur for me and I don’t remember much. Paul had some nice switch slappy crooks, back 5-0s. PJ had some really casual kickflip manual, 50’d everything, first try front shove back 50. We thought he left, but turns out he was just chilling a bit. Ed had shown and was cruising around getting manuals and ollies and everything. I had some crooks, slow 50s, switch front noseslides.
After a while we noticed PJ skating the actual skatepark so Paul and I went over there. I may have gotten a little line of boardslide transfer into the bank followed by b/s flip the hip but I honestly can’t remember if I did the bs flip. PJ was mostly skating the bump to ledge. PJ did front shove back 50, back tail, nollie crooks, kickflip noseslide pretty quickly. He also took a few tries to ollie the pyramid, but then did 180 and kickflip first try. Varial heel the euro hip first try. A funny kickflip over the hip where he readjusted and landed where most mortals would have bailed. I knew it was now or never to get a clip of him showing me up and he thought the idea was funny. Thanks Paul for filming. PJ had initially tried to show me up with treflip noseslide, but settled for kickflip noseslide. At this point things were pretty normal and it was super fun. I did noseslide then kickflip to fakie on the bank after and PJ did nollie crook (I think) followed by such a casual treflip to fakie. After this I offered to film his his treflip noseslide which took him several tries. It was cool to see his process and that he doesn’t in fact always land everything. When trying the frontside flips Paul was trying the noseblunts. It was cool and both dudes got their tricks. Paul and I chatted with PJ for a bit after skating and it was awesome. I really can’t believe it happened and how normal and fun it felt once it was done. Epic day for me. Thanks for coming to Boulder PJ!
(setup 5/10 8.5 nullosaur, jessup ultragrip, ace af1 low 55 hard bushings, 53mm bones stf v1 pj (ha) wheels, new balance numeric 440v2 wide white size 11.5 with half insoles and currex runpro insoles)
(pain level 4/10)