skate journal: Awesome night at Lafayette with old and young (6/25/2013)
Woke up feeling the best I’ve felt in a while. Worked at home on a hot day. Was planning on rolling to Lafayette park with Jake to meet Rob, Dave and Fuzz. Right before leaving Ollie expressed some interest and after some deliberating finally decided on joining us. We arrived to a pretty crowded park as tuesday nights are old man night. There were a couple others there with kids, but they mostly stuck to the big bowl. I kind of stuck with Ollie initially as his shyness was weirded out by the crowded park. We hit the middle of the park. Shortly a session on the tight qp at the entrance started up. Fullertron and Salmon were going off. Fuller did long front 5-0s, boardslides and front lip. Ridiculous. Jake was banging out tricks too. Front d and front blunt! Rob was steezing out back smiths. I got a back hurricane which I’ve never done there before and way hyped on. Couldn’t get the front feeble though. Ollie was cruising the little section and then doing some frontside ollies on the little curb cut rock thing by all of us. Ollie and I started skating the “street” area a bit as no one else was skating it. I hung up getting into a noseslide down the small hubba and dove to flat. That wasn’t so fun. Ollie was trying lots of fly out pop shoves and back 180’s. He didn’t get the pop shove. I was breaking in the Nikes with flip tricks still, halfcab flips worked, kickflips worked, treflips not so much. Fuzz showed. We skated a steep bank for a bit. He crushed it pretty quick with rock’s both ways and an axle stall. The best part of that park is that there are endless ways to skate it. I got a kickflip to fakie on a bank that felt great. After awhile I saw Dave doing this sick bluntslide out of a little quarter pipe to bank and joined him. He got a couple ridiculous bluntslides. I got a sketchy front tail and an ok front tail. Fuzz worked on front noseblunts. Rob did some rad crail airs. Ric destroyed the middle bowl and lipslid the bank all in one run. He kills it so hard! Jake apparently redid Jason’s noseblunt trick from Off The Couch, but without the Sammy Davis Jr clip after. Rob and I skated the mid sized bowl for awhile. It’s a fun one. I was happy that I got most (if not all) of the back 50s I tried. Need to get some more tricks in there though. The best part of the night for me was that Ollie was skating for real. He wasn’t glued to my side. He was skating all over the park, finding his own lines and loosening up with my friends. At one point Ollie did a back 180 off the manual pad and Rob said “Nice Ollie” so Ollie bowed. It was hilarious. Also if Ollie and I crossed paths through the park he would give me a salute like a soldier. Man it was funny. He did have some really good back 180s and he almost had some ollies up onto the manual pad. He did several ollies up to rock then pull up which is a good start. The rest of the crew was sessioning the smaller narrow white qp while Ollie and I just cruised around doing whatever. Other then a 3 flip with a bit of speed nothing stands out so much for me. I was just cruising and landing a few tricks. Almost noseslide the tall bump to ledge. Failed miserably at a few carves in the vert bowl. Fuller was killing it. Got a doubles line with Ollie where I did a frontside wallride on the bank to rock and he did a b/s wallride on it. Wallies off the corner of the rock into the hip are the funnest thing ever and Ollie did it first try. Geez. Fuzz and Dave did some crazy switch pivots/feebles on the narrow white qp. All in all one of my favorite nights because Ollie skated hard and seemed to be flowing at the park and not needing to be right by my side allowing me to hang with my friends a little more. Thanks dudes for being cool to Ollie. Summer rules. We hung out after the lights shut off for awhile and I kept saying we had to leave to get Ollie to bed. But Fuzz came through with a quote that made me laugh. Fuzz, “Ollie do you have school tomorrow?” Ollie, “No”. Fuzz, “Then tell your dad to chill out”. Ha ha awesome. Oh yeah, I cracked my board really bad on a 3 flip so I’ll be setting up a new one and at the gas station on the way home they were giving away donuts so lucky Ollie took 4 of them. That’s one stoked kid!