After a very late night at the Old man jam at Launch and then a full day of work I stopped by the “rollerblade” skatepark that’s right by IBM. I was motivated to try flip tricks by Pat’s BATB 7 entry. It was cold and windy and I had new shoes. Another pair of the NB+ Stratfords. It’s nice not changing shoes every pair anymore. There were two young kids there. One was super obnoxious and annoying, the other other was chill and nice. One had a skateboard and one had a scooter. It should be pretty easy to figure out which was which. Anyways it became pretty clear that I was too tired/sore to skate worth a shit right away. But my stubbornness is strong and I kept at it, skated slow, did 10 flip tricks, ollied the flat bar, front 50’d the ledge and called it.

Pat’s entry for the Pros vs Joes. Man it would be awesome if he made it.

First and foremost, the old man nights at Launch are the best. It rules meeting up with people that have put in so many years on their boards. There is so much passion and good vibes in the air. I rolled up with a couple of my favorites Brian and Fuzz and we arrived at a relatively crowded session. We met Nate’s friend Matt. Carleigh was there with crew. Skelly, Mike, Andy and tons of others. The ramp was heated and crowded so I stayed away and started on the new qp and bank. Matt and Andy stayed there for the most part too as well as a few others. The qp was the main attraction initially. I got a front feeble and did my first ever boneless on transition. It felt rad. Gotta work on putting my foot up on the coping though. Andy had hurricane, front rocks (which are apparently new for him). Matt had nice ollies and more tricks then Nate said he would. Front d, back d, front t, back t. Then we put a little ledge on the bank. It was textbook perfect, but somehow hard to skate. Matt did a million tricks on it. I struggled with kickflips into it and only got kickflip axle stall. Also got hurricane and a bunch of front smiths while setting up to try a kickflip on the qp. I eventually got a bad one.

People were going nuts on the ramp. I saw Carleigh get rock to fakie on the over vert. Fuzz do an effortless sugarcane. Brian front rocked the over vert so steezy and had a run that appeared to last forever and contain every crazy trick he does. Andy, Skelly, Matt and I played a game of SKATE. I played horrible, but still lasted longer then young guy Matt. I think Skelly won it on a 360 back no comply. We skated the bank/qp some more. Matt did kickflip fakie, nollie flip fakie, 3 flip fakie. I did halfcab flip sketchy. We skated the parking block for awhile. I managed a little crook stall on the qp followed by a slappy crooks on the parking block. Fun. I was so tired that I wouldn’t bail the slappy crooks and sometimes some funny/weird willy grind/something variations came out of it. Made me laugh.

By now, the ramp session had died down so I finally went up there. Carleigh was ripping. Mike was trying some crazy carve lines. Skelly rules. My second run was probably the best run I’ve had on that ramp. It had a front d, back nosegrind scratcher, front rock and some fun carves in it. Later I would add back scratch grind revert, fakie back smiths, a really fun corner grind and a bunch of failed front smiths. Carleigh slammed to flat on a front d. Matt had some back 50s and a nice frontside ollie. Skelly did a rad fakie boardslide transfer into the ramp thing that was crazy. Mike got his crazy trick of flyout of the corner to rock fakie on the little qp on the deck. So sick. Epic night.