Totally wrecked from SF and wanting to just hang with the family.  That’s my excuse.  I worked on my Sf skate journal

Last day in SF.  Flight was leaving at 3pm and we were all pretty worked after the night before.  While the others went to Lowcard to shop for panties, Nate, Jason and I went to a nearby ledge that looked super fun.  It was another super nice and sunny day.  I started off slow, but we all seemed to get on our tricks shortly after Nate got some wax and made things happen.  Jason got lots of back 50s, back 5-0, front 50, front 5-0, front smith and the banger of the session – back feeble.  Nate was doing 10 feet long back 50s so easy, 10 feet long back 5-0s, back 180 fakie 50s, front 5-0s, and landed a back 180 fakie 5-0 180 out for the first time.  My tricks were crooks, back 50, front 5o front 5-0 and I landed my first ever real front crooks.  A few of them.  Enough to even get the front crook grind mark.  Rad.  The regular crooks were my favorite though.  The ledge was granite and against a wall.  It grinded so good and made so much noise.  Every trick felt amazing on it and it was all of our favorite session of the trip.  Goodbye SF, I love you.

After the first night of not raging we woke up to rain.  Figures.  It was just showers though.  I skated some flat in front of Gordon’s house after it dried up.  I did like 20 kickflips just trying to get them to feel right.  They kinda started to finally.  Neil was landing pretty much everything he tried.  I managed an ok backside flip and a couple other flippers that gave me hope of being able to skate that day.  Next we went to the skatepark which was pretty crowded.  Nate, Jason and I stuck to the bottom corner and messed around on the jersey barrier.  Brian too.  I got my first ever rock ‘n roll on a jersey barrier.  I guess it’s a skatepark so it’s not legit, but it seemed pretty rad.  Brian got a good front rock on it.  Jason, Nate and I tried to do runs with wallrides on the barrier followed by manuals on the nearby ledge.  Nate was able to do all that with a nose manual.  Damn kids.  Jason and I could hardly ollie up the ledge.  It was soooo frustrating.  I threw a bit of a fit, but maintained myself.  Jason came up with a good list of reasons why we couldn’t do this.  1. The ledge was slippery.  2. There was  a crack.  3. We’re old.  4. Dennis Busenitz was skating the park.  5. Brian Anderson was skating the park.  6. We suck.  Ha.  After awhile I did a wallie front tail on the little bank hip that was there too and then resorted to just fanning out on the 100 pros that showed up for the Omar Salazar party.  Brian Anderson was the most impressive.  He was so rad that he would start lines outside the park doing slappys and end up inside the main area doing front lips on the huge bank.  Dude was ruling it so hard.  Such a casual style.  Such a rad dude.Next up Fuzz, Jason, Nate, Neil and I took the BART downtown to hopefully skate EMB area.  First we sessioned the wallride bank at the BART for awhile.  When we got off at Civic it was raining though.  DOH.  We walked and walked and walked and ended up at Hubba/EMB and it was still wet.  Ugh.  We finally just went to eat dinner then we went back to the shop.  I skated flat in the shop for a bit.  Basically just did kickflips until they felt right which they finally did.After that we went to the Nike party and party partied.  Photos from that soon.

Another beautiful day in SF.  Sunny skies, a bit breezy.  We met up at Gordon’s house.  While people were gathering Jason and I rolled around a few blocks looking for something fun.  We didn’t find much other than a red curb that we didn’t stay at for very long.  I tried kickflips for awhile in front of Gordon’s house, but could not get them to feel right.  Argh.We departed for the pool and wow was it a rad spot.  We all took awhile to warm up in this thing because it was so tight.  I didn’t skate it great, but managed to carve around a bit and get some scratcher grinds and almost a front rock.  It was about 5 feet deep and went to vert.Brian, Gordon, Lazer and Fuzz killed this thing.  Brian especially blew me away.  He had so many tricks and was flowing around so good.  The one footed front tails were my favorite.  Or I guess they are called madollies.  Gordon had the lines for sure.  Fuzz may be bummed he resorted to front tails again, but man he does them as good as they can be done.  Nate got some good front slashers, Neil was hauling ass and tons of others were there.  It was fun.  Near the end of the session I was trying a line with a back scratch grind followed by a front rock.  Couldn’t quite do it even when Brian told me to “earn my flannel”.  Ha ha.Nate, Carleigh, Jason and I went to skate some street around the house since the session got so crowded.  It started for me by getting super frustrated trying to ollie a bucket off a curb.  I did it somehow, but I don’t know how my little ollie cleared it.  Next we walked out to the ocean and got sand in our eyes then hiked up some mellow hills for a bit.  We didn’t find much, a couple little hips and what not.  It was fun going down though.  At one point I committed to ollie’ing a median without looking first and did the sketchiest wallie/ollie at speed and somehow made it.  At the very end of the day I tried a few treflips and could not get close.  I got super pissed.  I wanted to break my board.  I was soooo mad.  I just hated that I was in SF and too sore to do hardly anything.  Ugh, I landed one finally then went on in to the pizza contest and failed at that too.

So insanely sore from the previous day/night in SF.  Gordon had organized a contest at 3rd & Army so we went there pretty early on.  Others had gone with Gordon in his truck, but Nate, Carleigh, Lazer, Neil and I skated there.  On the way there we were cruising down the three block mellow downhill section and I went to just manual an intersection.  It kept going though.  And going and going and next thing I know I went over a block.  SO HYPED.  I’ve never manualled a block in my life.  This would be pretty much the only decent thing I did all day, but hot damn I was hyped.We got to 3rd & Army and it was pretty crowded already.  I felt too sore and awkward.  After a bad attempt at warming up I went to the store with Brian, Lazer, Carleigh and maybe Nate.  Some funny stuff happened there.  First, us dudes were sitting at a table and Carleigh was standing next to us so this broke looking dude ends up getting up and bringing a chair over for Carleigh.  Funny.  Then I decided to go for the green apple quick step to loosen up my insides and it worked.  Rad.Back to 3rd & Army I played a game of SKATE with Brian.  Right out of the gate he landed an impossible and gave me an S.  He said he felt great.  Unfortunately he didn’t get another trick and I beat him with some ok tricks along with some bad tricks.  One of the few good ones I remember was a no comply back shove which felt great.Later on tragedy struck as Nate rolled his ankle trying to do front 50 front 180 to fakie nose man.  He stepped on the edge of the box.  Doh.  He ended up being kinda ok the rest of the trip, but bummer.Most of us sat and watched the gap contest.  Some dude with the name Glenn landed a perfect nollie b/s bigspin.  So good.  A few minutes later Carleigh comes out to try and ollie the gap and almost dies on the narrow approach.  Sketchy!  She got closer the next few tries and then put a couple down and rode away far enough for me to count it.  She slammed hard a couple times.  She ruled it.  Trick of the trip in my opinion.Next up the Cruz video premiere.  So fun.  Such a late night.

After a somewhat late night of partying I woke up early (8am) at the shop.  The forecast was rain for the day, but it was dry.  Skate!  Nate and Neil woke up too and we were out by 8:30 to Eagle Donuts then hit the streets by 9.  We cruised down the mellow hills and ended up near the Potrero skatepark so we just continued on and went there. Those hills near the shop are SO fun.  I was still hurting when I pushed though and it was bumming me out.  There were a few people at the skatepark, but not many.  Neil was ripping pretty quickly.  He had some cool lines going with lots of little ollies and good speed.  It’s hard to remember this as it’s 5 days later and we partied every night.  I know Nate did a rad lipslide across the box on the mellow bank.  I did a couple first try tricks on the super mellow q-pipe.  Front D and b/s nose grind kinda.  At some point I started trying wallies out of the bank to ledge to manual to the little q-pipe.  Never quite got it.  But it was cool to see it took Brian Anderson a couple tries to do the same trick a couple days later. Then I started trying Neil’s line of carve on the huge bank, b/s 50 on the q-pipe, ollie on the twinkie, tailslide on the bank.  I never really got an ollie.  Partly because I suck at ollies, partly because there seemed to be someone coming everytime I was near the twinkie.  It took both Nate and I a long time to do our first kickflips.  I got an undercrook on the ledge.  Ha, it’s my patented 2″ jib crook.  Neil started doing tricks up the euro.  Kickflip, one foot, b/s 180, no comply.  Ripping.  Nate and I tried tricks on the tight brick q-pipe.  Nate got a rock ‘n roll and a scratch grind.  As I went for an axle stall I said to Nate, “If I land this one it wont rain the entire trip”.  Landed it.  Hyped.  Unfortunately it didn’t quite hold true.  After a few hours we got a call from Lazer saying they were ready to skate.  Back to Eagle Donuts for breakfast #2 and meet up with the crew.After the best bagel sandwiches in the world and new Trick Factory calendars from Brian we hit the streets.  We started around the corner by the shop.  Everyone was kinda messing around.  I still felt awkward on my skateboard and pushing hurt.  Ugh.  I managed a couple runs I wanted to do since last time.  Kickflip up the curb, cruise down.  Front 180 up the curb, sw 180 off the little drop.  We worked our way up the hill a bit and bombed into the corner.  Nate, Fuzz and Neil were hauling ass.  Then we rolled toward the flower shop by way of lots of hiking up hills, skating down them, hiking up other, skating down.  SO FUN.  I was foot dragging alot instead of power sliding, but at least going pretty fast for me.  We fanned out at the Omar Salazar noseblunt ledge.  We ended up on top of the hill by the flower shop and Gordon offered me $10 to bomb the hill with no foot drag.  I went for it.  I was going quite a bit faster than I thought because at the end I did a foot drag to stop but it wasn’t enough and I ran into a fence.  It was maybe my favorite moment of the trip though.  Even though I didn’t slide out at the end it still felt awesome to bomb an entire hill and only foot drag at the end.  The rest of the crew came flying down and everyone was hauling ass.  So awesome.  People were flying. I didn’t get the $10 because of the foot drag at the end, but whatever I had fun.The Flowershop was locked so we skated the ledge area for awhile.  I was hurting.  So sore and tired.  Ugh.  We skated the gap area.  I did a little run with an ollie over a flat gap then a super slow ollie over the gap where I landed not moving at all.  Fuzz and I laughed a good minute over that.  Carleigh ollied it first try then landed on pop shove first try.  She beat herself up for awhile and never quite landed it.  Lazer ripped it with an ollie over the last flat gap to manual pop over the gap.  Sick.  Fuzz did some cool ollies up the ledge then front 180 the flat gap then switch ollie the gap.  Nate had a good clean ollie over it too.  Next we skated the actual ledges.  Fuzz did a sick line with all the basics.  Front 50, front 5-0, front tail and the worst halfcab flip ever done.  Brian got his tallest front 50.  Nate did some nollie front tails and some basics.  I was bumming out and sad that my body was so sore already and unable to ollie well.  I got a couple front 50s, but that was about it.Next we skated the Flowershop tranny spot.  I sat out the first part of the session just trying to catch my breath and get some energy.  Everyone was ripping.  A couple other dudes were there ripping too.  Gordon did some crazy stuff.  He skates that park so well.  He got a new trick for himself there on top of all his sickness – it was either a fakie D on the big wall or a frontside grind.  I’m not sure.  Fuzz was cruizing around fast, Neil was flying around and ollie’ing into tranny the way only he could, Brian almost got front rocks on the extension, Lazer skates tranny good, Nate was having fun too and landed a grind on one of the vert walls as we were leaving.  Fun session.  After all that skating we hiked more hills/skated down them, etc back to the shop.  Party time.

After four days of being stuck in a class and not doing my normal stretching routines at work I got out early hyped to be leaving for SF shortly.  It was gorgeous outside and Ollie was skating with his friend Cooper in the driveway.  I set my board down to push and this weird pain shot through my left hip/groin.  Ugh.  Great way to start a trip.  I kept skating a bit though.  Kickflips felt ok.  I ended up skating the ledge with them which is right by the house so I have to skate super slow (nothing new there eh?).  Ollie was doing slappy front 5-0s.  I was trying kick front boards and got one.  It was horrible, but landed.  First one ever.  Sweet.After a bus ride, plane ride and then a train ride I skated with Nate, Neil and Lazer from the BART station to Cruz Skateshop where we were staying.  We sessioned the curb for a minute, but nothing too serious went down.  Hyped to be in the greatest skate city.