skate journal: dog park then some basemar dorking on thunders now (jan 3, 2021)
On a really nice morning I met up with Rob, Kevin, Mike, Eric, Dave F and eventually Sean at dog park. I was on my 3rd setup change of 2021 already. Well, just a truck swap out, but that’s pretty huge. I want flips to be easier so I’m going with some Thunder 148s. And boy did they flip good at first for me. After some rolling around to warm up I would have several first try flippers. Kickflip, heelflip, halfcab flip, b/s flip and some others that came in a few tries. Front 50s felt good on low stuff, but I struggled with the taller ledge for a reason I don’t know. Crooks felt extra good. I had a fun line of front 180 the parking block, halfcab flip on flat, front 50 back 180 the little guy. Everyone seemed to be skating well. I saw Rob get some halfcab noseslides on the taller ledges. He also had two really bad slams in a row. One on a back 50 body varial out that was looking so good until the last second when he hung and slammed so hard. I haven’t seen him bounce off the ground like that in a long time. Then on the next attempt he hit a stop rock and went down hard again. Argh! He kept skating though, front 50s, first try kickflip, much more. Dave was in demo mode. Everytime I’d see him he was landing something crazy. Front crooks to fakie, switch crooks to forward, front 50 back 180 transfer the beam, halfcab back 50 back 180 out, halfcab boardslide several parking blocks to fakie and much more I’m forgetting right now. Kevin and Mike were ripping the ledges. Nosegrinds, nollie nosegrinds, back tails, back smiths. Kevin did back smith the tall bench then back 180 nosegrind the cinder block I think. Wowsers. Kevin and Mike did back to back back smiths on the tall bench at one point and I got their back with a tiny crook jib. I couldn’t get a fakie nosegrind to save my life. I’m not sure why. I tried some switch front crooks and failed, was close to rick flips and nollie varial flips. My last trick was a front 50 kickflip out on the little guy. It was fun as I haven’t done that trick in forever. Dave got my back, but I forget what the trick was. I think switch crook. Eric had been ripping. Got a few back 180 heels, 5-0s, tails, lipslides, ollies over stuff easily, back 50s on taller ledges now. Sean ollied over one of the angled crossbeams all crazy and of course had nosegrinds, 5-0s like they were nothing.
Some people stopped skating, Dave, Sean and I went to Basemar. Sean wanted to ollie the bump to parking lot, but there was a truck parked half into the landing. So we ended up dorking around. We hit the little flat gap to manny. Well, those guys did. I was tired and sore. I was stoked Dave ollied it. Sean did manual, 180s to halfcab and fakie bigspin out, 180 nose manual. Then we skated the bump as a bank doing lots of side rock variations. Dave was going hammer though and going for sex change. He ended up focusing his very old board, going to his car and getting out his 7.75 putter then doing it first try. Ha. He would also go on to get a really cool trick that I filmed for Stubborns 2. I don’t know what to call it so I’ll just say it’s a nollie shove into a fingerflip. Sounds awesome right? Then Matt showed up to sell a calendar and we chatted for a while as the sun finally came out again.
(setup 8.25 303 deck, jessup ultragrip, thunder 148 HL, venom 88a big bushing, 91a small bushing, spitfire 52mm 99a f4 classic shape, 3 washers inside each axle, new balance numeric 212 black/pink size 11.5, footprint mid elite insoles)
(pain level 4/10 probably from feeling a slight cold or something)