skate journal: Southern Hills with Valmont and Ollie (Aug 28, 2010)

Another hot day, kinda getting sick of the heat.  Since everyone was kinda slacking on getting to a ramp jam in Denver I decided to take the kids to Southern Hills while I waited.  It ended up being so fun that we just kept skating.  I was still pretty sore and unmotivated at the start, but was able to ollie up stuff pretty easily for a change.  I came remotely close to ollieing the gap between benches which I’ve still never done.  It’s on my list of tricks I need to do before I die.  Ha.  That and manual at Willville.  Two boulder staple tricks that I have still yet to do.  Anyways, Ollie was ripping.  Fast ollies off the two stair, manuals down the handicap ramp, cali grinds, and still a mean mongo push.  Sam is getting better too.  After awhile I started trying the ol’ John Brandow Challenge at Southern Hills.  Trick on bench, trick on bench, ollie up two stair, ollie onto narrow ledge, ollie 4 stair, trick on bench.  I was trying manual the first bench (never got it, but just an ollie up is enough for this so I’d take it), noseslide the second bench, ollie, ollie, the 4 stair is really weird dude to the crack and the fact that there is a wall 8 feet after you land, and then a front board on the last ledge.  The hardest part for me was once again, ollieing onto the narrow ledge.  Once I got that there was no way I was gonna bail the 4 stair which ended up being easier than I thought and a sketchy front board to end made me really happy.  I skated around a bit more, but somewhere in that mess I cracked my tail really bad.  The kids new it was broke so they wanted to try focusing it.  Silly kids they would land on the bolts expecting it to break.  Ollie eventually made it crack more, but it was funny.  So back home to setup a new board.Well actually, back home to setup a new complete.  And what’s a new complete without new shoes?  The I-Paths were sick, but starting to get holes in the bottom.  So yeap, I’m poser #1 with new everything.  My new setup consists of: The brand new ‘Nothing Beats A Null’ deck, Bones Reds bearings, Thunder Titanium Lights, Super Nullethane 52mms and some new eS First Blood shoes.After setting up the board I wanted to skate a ledge bad.  I like watching the graphics get scratched off a new deck.  We went out to Valmont where apparently all of a sudden I could no longer ollie and took like 8 tries to get a front 50. Oh yeah, I can blame the new complete!  Ha.  Ollie ollied (ugh) off the escalator part of the loading dock from almost the top and did a really cool hippy walk over a couple chairs.  Then we hit the nearby buildings.  I did mostly ollies everywhere trying to get used to my new setup.  Had a run with ollie the little grass gap, ollie the little median, ollie out of the bank over the curb, run into a wall and get laughed at by Ollie and Sam.  Ha.  Ollie was ripping way more then he ever has.  He was doing these ollies out of a little kicker and skating really fast.  Sam started riding off curbs for the first time so he was hyped.  Around the corner to the next area where there is a two stair followed by a curb.  Ollie and I both tried to drop down into manual and the little guy beat me.  Oh boy.  We had fun in that area for awhile.  I tried a run of sw fs 180 manny (never got it  without scraping), ollie a median, then manny drop manny on the weird curbs under the two stair.  On the second go of it I slammed on the manny manny and kinda rolled my ankle.  It turned out to not be so bad and we kept skating.  On to the next building where there is a two stair that’s waxed up.  I tried a few grinds, but it wouldn’t go and then ollie started trying boardslides on it.  It was so sick because you had to ollie over the first stair to get on the second.  He totally did it too.  Not a long boarslide, but wow.  We finally headed back to the original spot where Sam and Ollie did lots ollieing off curbs and manual attemps.  I did a chinese nollie manual at one point so Ollie tried it and learned it just like that doing the next few like it was nothing.  To end it I made myself do 5 kickflips in a row which was harder than expected, but I and blame tired legs and a new complete on that.  Awesome day.  I can’t describe how amazing it is to really skate with your son.  It’s insane.