skate journal: brian’s birthday bash at boulder park parking lot (feb 6, 2021)
Feeling a little skeptical of a Boulder park session and stuck wearing my glasses I pulled into Boulder park a little late. To my delight everyone was in the parking lot. Ha. The parking lot is new and there were some manny pad options, a new 2 stair with a weird wallride. Brian challenged me right away with nollie tre. It goes back to a bet he made me 10 years ago. I just had to land a front disaster and he said he’d land a nollie tre by 40. Well, he’s 49 now and going for it again before 50. I definitely wasn’t ready to commit to it as a warm up though. Jake challenged me to SKATE and we would slowly eek out perhaps our longest game ever. Unfortunately not because we landed so many tricks. Kevin and Brian were going for wallrides down the two stair on the weird curved metal sculpture. Rob and Travis were chatting. Other’s started showing up. Jack, Ted, Kyle. Everyone was skating flatground for the most part. Who would have thought Brian’s 49th bday jam would turn into a flatground session? Ha. Jake had got me two letters on halfcab flip, switch shove and f/s flip and I was at SKAT. At one point when Brian was trying nollie tres I tried one and got it. I was hyped. I got a heelflip, something else and took forever to get a fakie bigflip to get Jake to SKAT. He had been trying treflips for a bit, I thought I would get mine quick. Nope. I was really struggling with the bigger board and cupsoles. Brian was playing treflips too and landed on got his feet on some. Kevin did like a million flip tricks, including treflip, nollie tre, first try switch tre, nollie b/s flip, switch f/s flip, switch b/s flip, so many. Ted and Kyle too, man they landed a lot. Jack was going off. Lots of flatground. Varial heel, Rick flip, switch front heel and like 5 nollie tres off the two stair a lot more jaw dropping tricks normally done first try. All this was happening while Jake and I were still trying to land treflips. Ha. I would eventually get a really bad one. I don’t know if it was old age sympathy or just people desperate for one of us to land it, but it seemed to count. Jake got super close, but didn’t put it down. I did a few slappy crooks. Kevin did back 180 nosegrind shove. Rob slammed pretty hard on his first slappy crook attempt, but got a cool line with back 180 up the curb, halfcab 50 (I think?) and then beanplant off the curb. Then we played on the curbs near the entrance to the skatepark. I did some front slappies and slappy front crooks. Kevin did a gorgeous front blunt pop out. Tashi had a rad slappy crook to noseslide. Jack dropped in on a trash can. Then we went into the park. Brian was going for one of his 5 tricks by 50. I don’t know what you call it, but basically run along your board up to blunt fakie. Jack was trying back 3 flip over the weird hip. Kevin may have gotten nollie back big over it. I tried b/s flips, but was struggling with eye blurriness and just feeling too weird. Rob was busy almost taking out scooter kids. Brian would conquer his trick and did it oh so good. High 5s for that one! Really fun day. Great skating with Brian again.
(setup 8.5 null spanbauer deck, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.8 red cast baseplate titanium hanger, bones medium bushings, 52mm spitfire f4 99a classic shape with all washers outside the wheels, es accel slim plus grey size 12, xero thin insoles)
(pain level 3/10 not bad especially considering how long we skated)