skate journal: thanksgiving day front shove battle royal (nov 22, 2018)
On a nice morning I met Sean at the Dog Park. He had signed up to film me try the front shove down the dentist 5. Poor guy, but man, what an awfully nice guy. We got there about the same time. He went right in on kickflips and heelflips while I slowly worked on no pop shove its. I had gotten my slow kickflip, no comply 180, fakie flip line when I noticed Eric’s ledge sitting in the distance. Rad, we brought it out. Dang that thing is tall. Well, as you can see, not for Sean. He destroyed that thing so casually. I was hyped to get a line of halfcab flip, crooks, backside flip (although the bs flip was terrible). I tried another line of heelflip, front board, 360 flip, but never got the 360 flip. Sean was mostly just skating the ledge. He had a couple more at the end like fakie nosegrind or fakie 5-0. I also tried a bunch of front shoves and they were kinda working. Sean said we each had to do a good backside flip before leaving. Oh man how little does he know me? Ha ha. But he suggested a tip which is to stare at your back foot and it worked pretty well for me actually. As in I landed one backside flip without a huge tic tac. He got a few, but it had to be totally perfect.
Then we were at Dentist 5 with a truck right in front of the sidewalk. Argh. I figured I’d have to find a different way to line it out, but wanted to ollie the stairs a few times before trying the shove anyway. Sean ollied it first try. I tried to get his back, but bailed. he front 180’d first try, I still bailed. Even after he back 180’d it I bailed. But I did get it. Then he kickflipped it a couple times and I got his back before feeling out how to get up the curb. The no comply shove wasn’t an option as I couldn’t do it at the 45 degree angle to get around the truck. I settled on kickflip up which wasn’t easy. I hucked a couple front shoves that felt more doable then last time then Sean started filming. What a nice dude. The kickflip was hard, that angle was killing me. I went through a few waves of close to getting the line and not close at all. Then I was in the zone and SNAP, broke my nose real bad. Noooooo! I looked at Sean’s board and told him I’d give him another one if I broke it. Ha ha. But only a few tries later I rode away and it felt incredible. Like up there with the top best feeling tricks I’ve landed. I’ve never done a front shove down more than 4, so this is pretty cool at 45 to get it down 5. We called it a day after that. I was very happy.
setup null 8.38 dream machine deck, 5.8 venture black icon trucks, venom 90a bushings, 3 washers outside each axle, bones 51mm stf pj v1 wheels, new balance numeric 212 cream size 11.5, vans ultracush insoles)
(pain level 2/10 felt great before the jumping started, but I would expect to hurt after as I have no tolerance for drops anymore)