skate journal: last day of 37 solo campus awesomeness (4/11/2011)
After my last couple horrible performances I decided to go out solo to campus and have fun darn it. I had taken a nice nap and was ready to go. I was on call for work so had two phones in my pocket and wasn’t up for another Real premiere (the Denver one). I started out in the area behind the student center that has the really good concrete that I played the game of SKATE with Fuzz and Connor. I can’t believe I had never noticed how smooth it is there before. It’s the best place on campus for flatground which is extra awesome because I like that area a ton already anyway. I had made up my mind that I would like the new shoes and it seemed to work. Warm up tricks were dropping first try until I realized I had landed a bunch first try. Then it was normal Glen, but that’s cool because I moved on to hammers. I wanted to try a long line. Front 50 a metal stair, ollie onto one of the ledges down the 5 stair, ollie off it, 360 flip on flat, ollie up the two, ollie down the two, ollie down the three, ollie up the three. It didn’t start good because the stupid metal curb was somehow ridiculously sticky and the easiest trick in the line took the longest. I did somehow get the whole line though. The 3 flip included a hand in the make and the ollie up the 3 at the end was a front 90 because I was so exhausted. I was hyped though. Then I moved over to the handicap ramp area with the ledges/rails. Last time I was there I freaked out because I couldn’t ollie onto the ledge. This time I could and then decided I should try to manual it. Pretty scary for me and I got really close a couple times. Not only do you have to manual the ledge, but it drops down a level, then drops again and you have to thread the needle through the rails. That would be fun to get sometime. I was happy to finally be skating hard after a few days of lackluster effort.
I started heading toward the hill ledges, but saw a somewhat tall ledge off the bikepath that I wanted to ollie onto. It was quick and after a pretty good slam I managed to do it. Pretty hyped on that. Next was the hill ledges for awhile. I did quite a few backside noseslides where I was trying to dropin a little further up the hill each time to go faster. I had a few bad front 50s on the top ledge. A few ok 50s on the curved ledge at the bottom. I started trying front tails on the top ledge. I got a couple that didn’t slide. Eh. I backed one up with a front 5-0 on the curved ledge. Neat.
On to the nearby parking lot where I had tried a line before and never got. No comply 180, fakie ollie up a curb, fakie flip, sw front 180 off the curb. I slammed on the fakie flip over and over because it was downhill and there was a crack that I kept landing in. A couple times I started the line off by ollieing off the nearby ledge with the death drop on one side. So scary. Anyways I finally landed the stupid fakie flip and went back to the student center for some more flippers. I got a few treflips, heelflips, f/s halfcab flips and did a f/s halfcab heel that would have only counted on defense in an over 50 game of SKATE, but it’s been awhile for that trick anyway so whatevs. I hucked a few Rick flips for good measure too. At the end I tried to do a little line of kickflip over a crack then nollie tre. I was going pretty fast for me and never got the nollie tre. Doh. I had fun though. I was so tired I didn’t even ollie the 4 stair on the way out. Had a blast.