skate journal: darn wind. lazy dog park early then lyons park later on.
On a breezy morning I met Rob and Kevin early at the dog park. I was annoyed with the wind before I even got there and had very little motivation. I had a new board. This time 8.5. Maybe since that’s all I have in stock I will eventually be grateful that being out of other sized boards forced me to stick with 8.5. Or maybe I’ll go buy a 7.75. Who knows with me. I put larger wheels on it too, some 54mm Bones I had. My setup felt pretty weird. I liked the board, the wheels were probably too much though. Kevin hadn’t skated in a few weeks after rolling his ankle so he had some serious energy. Nollie nosegrinds, 5-0s, back 180 nosegrinds, nollie flips, switch flips, a bunch of ripping. Rob was looking good too. We were on the far side for awhile with the two step and weird contraption. Rob did a nollie shove boardslide! He also had runs with halfcab noseslide and front board the tall part of the weird contraption. I felt better on front 50s on the low ledges, noseslides, halfcab noseslide. Then we ended up back at the little new ledge. Kevin manualled it and then all the way to the parking block. I slammed super hard on an attempt to wallie manual off the parking block. We were all messing around with new tricks. Kevin did fakie back 50 halfcab out. Whoa. He couldn’t quite do it out of fakie back nosegrind. Dave had challenged me to switch front 50 b/s halfcab out so I started trying slow switch front 50s and got a couple. I was already happy about that then started trying the halfcab out. As you can see I got a lame one with a flop out, but with how quick my phone dies sometimes that’s how it goes. Rob had been trying fakie 50 b/s halfcab out at the same time. He got his right before me. Back to back new tricks for old dudes! That was pretty cool. After that the wind was just so insane and we were all good to go.
I was planning on avoiding skating the rest of the day, but Skelly and Mike hit me up to go to Lyons. Somehow I felt like going. I arrived to a crowded park and was in disbelief at how bad of a park it was when crowded. Once people are up skating the quarterpipes the whole middle of the park becomes pretty useless. And that’s the stuff I wanted to skate. There were bikers, roller skate girls, rollerbladers and a bunch of skaters. Some of which I knew and was hyped to see them. Dustin, Moses, Veronica. Skelly, Mike and Dave of course. I started with Skelly skating the little qp at the top getting in peoples way. He would have some nice front disasters and ollies on it. I didn’t get more than front slash, but it was a good setup to noseslide down the hubba going slow. Mike had some rad wallie flyouts into the bank. Eventually the park emptied out and we had more fun. Fuller put together some amazing lines with some frontside airs over the hip, axle stall transfers, boardslide transfers, 180s up the euro, fakie shoves on transition. He had a fakie sex change on the little bank too! I had some fun back 50s in the mini ramp section. That’s the tallest I’ve done in awhile, but the transition is really good so it didn’t seem so scary. I settled into a line of noseslide the hubba, front 5-0 or 50 the ledge, treflip flyout. Never got the treflip flyout although I was quite close a few times. Dave did some cool ollies onto the pier 7 ledge then back 180 into the bank. Mike got a front nose on the bump to ledge. Dave got boardslide to fakie on the bump to ledge and bump to rail. I took too many tries to get the boardslide on the bump to rail. In the end we messed around with the little ride on ledge area. Dave did back 50 up to manual. I ended with back 50 up to nose manual 180 into the bank. Sounds way harder than it really is, but it was a fun end of the session. Fun crew, not so sure about that park though. It’s definitely one of those parks that gets crowded way to easily.
(setup 8.5 null plant life deck, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.8 titanium with custom hollow cast baseplate, venom 88a bushings, 54mm bones stf 103a v5, new balance numeric 306 foy navy size 12, nike sb zoom air insoles)
(pain level 4/10)