skate journal: old guy fun at tow truck ditch (may 8, 2021)
Dave L and I took the long way to get to the ditch picking up a couple parking blocks on the way. Rob, Will and Dave F would show shortly after that. This ditch looks easy to skate, but it is not. The steep side is quite steep. My first reaction was to go skate somewhere else. But we skated and it ended up being quite fun. We put the broken cement parking block and smaller plastic one at different points. I warmed up with some boneless tail transfer things and rock ‘n rolls. I couldn’t kickflip to save my nice initially. I really don’t like the 440s. Rob had some amazing backside ollies on the bank near the building. Fuller had a really bad slam right away doing a deck 180 on the weird ledge to bank by the building. He recovered though and was quickly doing rocks and feebles on the parking blocks. Dave L was doing feeble stalls on the plastic curb which seemed scary to me. After awhile we moved the cement parking block down and rub bricked/waxed the edge which grinded pretty well once we got it going. Dave L had some nice front slashes then boardslides and hurricane and decked transfers on the building ledge/bank. Will had some grinds on the bank, couldn’t get frontside though. Neither could I, too scary. Fuller had however was doing front and back tails, grinds, then some crazy back 180 pivot transfers. I had some fun slappy crooks once I figured out how to get to it. Rob and Will took off. We put the plastic curb upright on the bank. Dave L had a great line ollieing it to quick nollie lip. Then I tried wallie 50s for quite some time. It had gotten super windy. I worked pretty hard and got an alright one that came to a stop on the grind. Then Fuller did it frontside in like 5 tries without having to push like a madman. Man he’s good. Fun session. Then Rob and I went and helped with some clean up at dog park which felt pretty awesome to help with.
(setup 8.3 null smoke valley, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.6 v-hollow, spitfire 51mm 99a radial slag green, new balance numeric skateshop 440s size 12 no insoles)
(pain level 4/10)