Skate journal: Safeway ledges, arthritis, chad, Daryl, Blake, Neil (Feb 22, 2014)

After a really frustrating morning waiting forever for the furnace guy to show and then spending a fortune I met up with Neil and Blake on a cold afternoon. My arthritis was in effect. Wind and cold makes it bad. Ugh.  I was there first.  I didn’t think I’d be able to even Ollie at first. I messed around with slappy noseslide variations and that seemed to loosen me up. When Blake and Neil showed I was able to skate somewhat OK.  Neil charged it for awhile. Front lip, switch board slide, back 180 over a little box. He was done quickly. Blake almost heelflipped the box, front nosed the tall ledge and when chad and Daryl showed had the most crazy slam. His foot went under the fence and when trying to pull himself up the heavy bar on the top of the fence came loose and hit him in the head.  Hard. It was sketchy, although quite hilarious looking. I had brief moments of being able to skate OK. Had lots of back 50s which I’ve struggled with for quite some time. Tried some lines. Got one long one.  Front 180 a puddle, switch 180 another one, front 5-0, noseslide the tall ledge, Ollie the corner of a grate, Ollie up onto the ledge and ride off, bs flip on flat.  Whew!  Struggled with fakie bigflips. Got one slow kick back 50, kind of some front smiths, halfcab flips felt good.  Daryl is so fun to watch.  He skates fast and powerful. He boardslid the 5 stair rail, lots of fast grinds on the ledges, a nollie heel noseslide, skated his dog around the parking lot. Chadman has stee  on flippers. He did lines down the little hill most of the time. He also messed around with switch inward heel noseslides.  It looked so rad.  Then  we chilled at crisis for awhile.  Fun fun.