skate journal: parker and aurora with nate (Feb 12, 2010)
Had the day off work and was planning on hitting a couple shops in Denver. Nate wanted to join so we headed out early to Parker. There was some snow, but most of the park was skateable. We started in the bowl section which wasn’t as well off, but there was a path from the roll in over the pyramid into the big steep flat bank and back. We both wanted to grind the top of the flat bank, but couldn’t get our back trucks up there. Instead we both settled with lines of backside tough guy (or in our case it was more like backside wuss guy) then roll ins into the tranny of the pyramid. Pretty fun.After that it was mostly ledges for the next couple of hours. My new shoes were feeling really good. It’s funny how much I like these DC shoes. The Crew seriously rule. My calf had been hurting pretty bad from the night before, but the pain seemed to be going away with every push rather than getting worse. Anyways really early on Nate slammed hard trying to do a front nosegrind pop out. We both were kinda doing our own little lines. I know we both did front 50s on the Pier 7 way-to-tall-to-be-a-real replica, Nate was doing front Ds on the little q-pipe, I was ollieing into the tranny (well, the end of the tranny anyway), etc. Ledge tricks were going ok. I got lots of crooks, a crooks to fakie, didn’t get crooks shove, back 50, bad back 50 back 180, front 5-o, front 50 front 180 and of course a super sick 2 foot long boardslide that started it. Nate had quite of course. Back 5-0, back nosegrind and ended up getting a few back 5-0 front shove’s out. SICK! At one point we both did a super fun line of ollie from the bank up onto the 2 block then ollie the 2 block. That was my highlight of the session. Nate was giving me crap for not getting front D’s on the qpipe so I forced myself to do them. But I didn’t just do the same ol’ boring disaster, I thought it would be cool to add tic tacs to everyone of them. Fun. I was trying a back 50 then ollie a snowpile that was right away in the landing, but ended up totally slamming and thinking I sprained my wrist really bad. It ended up being ok. Took some of the wind out of me for sure. Towards the end of the session Nate and I were basically each trying our own thing. He was doing lipslides from the bank onto the 2 block. I was trying to ollie up the first ledge, front 50 the second then pop down into lipslide on the lower ledge. I came really close. Close enough that Nate thought I landed it. So if we use his opinion where he looked away right before I fell off, I landed it. Ha.At the very end we skated the kids mini bowl. Nate was worked up to some really good frontside ollies over the hip. I did some really bad front ollies and got a couple back 50s around the hip the hard way. Fun! Nate was just dorking after an ollie and did a super easy fakie front 5-0 to fakie. He lands new tricks just like that. I wanted front 5-0 270 in, but ended up just going with front tail 180 which I’ve never done before. We left for Continuum feeling completely exhausted and cold.About an hour later we arrived at the Aurora park which had way more snow. Ugh. We ended up skating a tiny mellow q-pipe for about an hour and it ruled. We both did a few of our not-so-basics quickly and starting trying new stuff. For some reason I chose front feebles and I battled it for quite a long time, but eventually put a couple mediocre ones down before doing a legit one with a grind. So hyped. Nate started trying frontside nosegrind pop outs. Whoa. He would also eventually get a couple. Such a ridiculous trick. I had moved on to kick back pivot attempts (never done this on real tranny before) when someone else joined us and did it first try. Both Nate and I were cracking up like WTF? It ended up being really funny and the dude was really nice saying he didn’t see me try it before that. Either that or I was so far away that it didn’t resemble it. Ha. I kept trying it though and ended up getting a kickflip to back smith lunch break. Rad. Then me and the guy that totally showed me up (who ended up being a super nice guy) tried kick back tails for awhile. We both got kinda close, but no where near a make. Before leaving I wanted another front feebs and did my best one yet second try. Absolutely perfect way to end a great day of skating. Then it was off to 303 then race home to bring India to 4H club. Yippee!