skate journal: wilville, 287 ditch, crisis curb, red hawk, brian’s ramp (june 10, 2017)
Up pretty early to skate! It was already very hot outside, but we got to Wilville sometime around 9am. I was on a wider setup so my shoes didn’t feel so big. It helped. There were two separate sessions going on. The manny pad and the ledge area. I went in between both. The ledge was popping. Nate, Joe, Damon, Josh were killing it. Nate nollie front lip pop out, boardslide pop, boardslide pop to fakie. Joe boardslide pop, halfcab boardslide pop out. Damon fakie nosegrind back tail, tried cab back tail. Josh front tail fakie, crooks, boardslide pop out. I got noseslide. Pretty sick huh? On the manny pad Matt got nollie varial heel manual to the bank, Dan was trying a fakie shove fakie manual, Eric pretended he wasn’t ollieing at all when he turned into manual. I tried switch 180 manuals for awhile. Didn’t get too close. Then Josh, Joe and I tried kickflip manuals for awhile. I started off feeling pretty good about it then started totally losing kickflips. What the heck. I started hating the bulky 868s. Josh got one perfect. It was so sick. At that point I gave up. Joe kept with it though and nailed one. Sick!
Then we went to 287 ditch. The crew grew larger and I grew more tired. Fuzz, Rob, Neil, Nolan, Carleigh, Jack joined us. It was hot and I was not feeling it. Josh bashed his shin and wasn’t feeling it either. We sat next to the human crap and watched others. Gross. Jack and Nolan did double noseblunts. Nolan almost got back noseblunt, then did nosegrind on the parking block and switch nosegrind too. Insane. Jack had some moves. Front tail shove, hurricanes, bigspin manuals. Rob front tailslide. Joe kickflip rock ‘n roll. Eric boardslides and surprisingly no staple guns that I can remember. Carleigh with bluntslides and tailslides. Neil was in the back doing his patented ollies on every wall and trying to get things working. Fuzz had some fast and steezy noseslides.
We gathered at Crisis. After awhile we broke in the newly repainted parking blocks. I did a bunch of slappy crooks as did Rob. Jack hurricanes. Boardslides by all.
Then we went to Red Hawk where the crew got even bigger with Riley and Garrett joining. It quickly turned into the Riley demo. First try out of the car manual the stage then immediately to switch manual. He was going full speed into switch manual and fakie ollied into the rock. Unbelievable. There is no way I can remember what all everyone was doing. I was feeling off and kind of trying to hide, but it was hard with everyone there. I had one good crook and that was about it. Josh front 180’d up the stage and nose manual the rock. Neil had an incredible line with front lip then front nosegrind. It was great seeing Neil shred it. Jack and Riley did quick ledge tricks then ollied the 10. Remember a few days ago when Jack thought he broke his toe? There was so much ripping going on. Matt did quick up to nose manny the stage. Joe did front lip to front 5-0. It was quite incredible seeing so many great friends ripping so hard. Unfortunately we got the boot.
Fortunately Brian’s was right there and we went to his ramp to skate and bbq. A lot of shredding was had there too. I enjoyed it and had a couple okay runs for myself before retiring to food and mosquito bites. It was fun watching Nolan and Riley there. Brian is so good on the ramp too. 360 drop in?!?! I think everyone did their tricks. Neil almost got killed by a board shoot out, Dan did get killed by one. Fun ender for a fun day.
(setup 8.38″ null machine deck, venture 5.8 wides, venom 88a bushings, green spitfire F4 52mm classic 99a wheels, 3 washers on the outside of each axle, nbnumeric 868 12 black/gum with old stock NB# insoles)