These photos sum up today's post-work attempt at skateboarding. #strugglefest

A photo posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Aug 22, 2016 at 6:10pm PDT

New shoes again. Hopefully for the last time in awhile. New PJs, size 11.5 this time. The park had a collection of total beginners and scooters when I arrived, but it quickly cleared out, then quickly populated again with a younger crew. I was just kind of cruising around trying to warm up for ollies with kickflips. I tried ollieing onto the lower C ledge a few times, but I was really tired and skating so slow. Then I mostly just tried lines between the mellow bank and the long crappy ledge. Never got one spanning the whole area, actually I probably never landed more then one trick in a row at all. I had tried a few switch back 3s as they are my next challenge and they felt doable. Dave showed and cheered me up as I was feeling so much older then everyone else there. Around the same time another older dude showed up and skated the bowls though. We spent most of our time between the long crappy ledge and the knob. We both would get switch back 3s. We were hyped. We didn’t film yet though as they need some work. Dave actually did several. I only did one and when I rode away my butt was mighty high in the air. I took the photo of my board sitting in the bottom of the bowl after a failed attempt at a switch back 3 where I turned about 45 degrees and shot my board into the bowl. This was shortly after several failed front 50 attempts that resulted in some angry yelling. I also went primo and slammed hard on a fakie flip. The struggle was real. Dave was skating alright though, bunch of tricks on the knob, nose manual the ledge, halfcab boardslides, halfcab noseslides. I started trying switch noseslides. On one of them I came to a halt, my front foot came off, I put it back on the board and hucked a 360 shove. Totally landed it. Things felt better. Then I tried to land one actually sliding with it. Got pretty close once. Going the other way I was trying a line of a little scratch grind on the knob, crooks the ledge, kickflip to fakie the little bank. That was a lot of exercise though and it got me tired. I ended by finally doing a halfcab noseslide. Dave ended by slamming really hard twice before getting a sick bluntslide on the knob then bailing the boardslide above and almost getting hit with his board. Somehow I left in a great mood. I think it was because I had Dave to skate with and share the struggles of being older. Sure it was rough, but there were a couple of fun moments in there and those are what we skate for.

(setup: 8.5 null message deck, venture 5.8s, thunder bushings, 52mm reed wheels, steele/gum new balance numeric pj 533)