skate journal: Early bird at Thornton park aka kid madness (Nov 25, 2012)
Had a early morning ‘old man session’ at the Thornton park. Nate, Carleigh, Jake and I got there around 9:15 where Sam and Neil were sitting in their cars waiting. When we arrived there was a person with a remote control car and about 7 scooter kids. Great. This sort of crowd bums out Fuzz a ton. Luckily the remote control car was put away before Fuzz got there. Neil and Jake were killing it out of the gate. It was crazy. I felt like a zombie. I hate skating early in the day. I took several tries to do a simple wallie then could not commit to the 3 stair so I gave up, pouted for a second then went and skated the tiny manny pad for awhile. Sam joined me. We did some manuals, nose manuals, wallrides, etc. That thing is super fun. I also got a back 5-0 and came close to back nosegrind. Sam had to go open his shop so I went and joined the crowd again. Everyone was ripping. Some of the tricks I saw were Carleigh boardslide the little trail then noseslide back shove out the bump to ledge. Jake had a marathon run that started with a boardslide, polejam/wallie, front smith the deep end and then a frontside flip on the bank. So good. Fuzz mannied the top of the ledge above the 3 stair, gapped over the step up to blunt slide on the flat bar, sick front ds everywhere, low to high rock fakie, front noseblunt on the qp to kinked bank. Nate wasn’t supposed to be skating, but was rolling around on my cruiser board and did some manuals, kickturns and wallrides. Even popped an ollie once before we yelled at him. I finally ollied down the tiny 3 stair that everyone else ollied first try and then was turning around and trying to fakie bigflip over the hip. Unfortunately my feet would kill me on every bail as the blisters were getting really intense. Neil and Fuzz had to go. The rest of us skated the little manny pad/wallride thing. It was fun. We all did some different wallrides, manuals and you could grind it too. I technically landed a back nosegrind, but it was like a nosegrind turned to willy and since it’s curb high and I just rode off. Still, it was the first back nosegrind I’ve landed in a long long time. Then it was off to lunch and hang with Jason for awhile as my toes burned in these god awful Slash’s. Look for them in my trash can tonight.