skate journal: Late Night Valmont with Jason and Jake (May 24, 2010)
After dinner I went swimming for a couple hours with the kids then immediately picked up Jake and Jason and headed to Valmont. While Jason waxed before testing Jake and I did a couple laps around trying to manual every possible manny pad on the way. That’s 9 each way. So hard. I think we each got about 3 of them total, but hey we were just warming up. A little ways into the ledge session Jason slammed and got a shinner. Not, just any old shinner, but a horrendous and horrible shinner. Click here to see the blood. Not for the weak at heart.Anyways, Jake and I skated for a bit longer while Jason laid down with his leg elevated. I was actually skating better than I have been lately. The new shoes don’t have very good feel though and I’m kinda all over the place. Jake and I both did runs with ollies up the ledge, kickflips on flat then front 180’s off the dock. I tried another one with sw front 180 up the ledge, no comply shove on flat then front shove off the loading dock, but I didn’t commit. Felt like it was possible at least. Jake had some good front tails. We tried to race to 3 3 flips, but neither of us got there. I landed two of them, but they were both so bad I think it adds up to less than one. I was feeling pretty good on energy and trying lots of flippers in between ledge bails. I really didn’t land much, but it felt great to skate hard finally. All this swimming has really helped the groin. The ledge tricks I got were back noseslide, back board pop out, front board pop out, front noseslide to fakie, weak front tail (but I suck at that trick so yeah!), front 50s, crooks, back 50 and came close to front 50 shove and front 50 to front board popout.Right before leaving we had a little kicker session off the low part of the escalator. Jake got nollie and halfcab. I got kickflip and close to front shove. I did a few kickflips, but they all felt rocketd. Ugh. I blame it on the bright blue shoes.
