Woke up early on a Friday and I like skating early on Fridays so I’m less sore on Saturday.  I had another setup change and I liked it.  But man the first couple pushes I thought my knee may give out.  Ugh.  I would go on to skate pretty well for a bit and felt agile.  Had some fun warm ups and little pops over the hips.  Had a couple warm up lines going.  West I did noseslide to fakie then fakie big the hump.  Then crooks followed by kickflip over the front hump which I did not do well.  East I tried a line of front disaster, kickflip the back hump, front 50 shove.  Never got the kickflip.  I had put tablets on, I blame them and their dumb square non-flipping shape.  Pain started to kick in pretty fierce.  Argh.  I was trying front 50 back 180 the bank to ledge and front 50 shove the bench.  Was close, but got neither.  After a while I slammed on a noseslide on the bank to ledge and slammed way harder than I should and decided to call it.  Argh.  Skated terrible again.  I did mostly like my setup though.

(setup null smoke valley 8.3, jessup ultragrip, royal 149 lights, 52mm spitfire f4 99a tablets, 288s grey 11.5 no insoles)
(pain 6/10)

I hyped up the tennis courts to Rob as a chill alternative to the dog park.  And luckily when we arrived there was no one else, but it would soon get quite crowded.  Argh.  Guess it has been empty for me since it’s been winter.  Cass showed pretty quickly too.  I was wearing different shoes and had a major setup change so nothing felt good to me.  I would have some okay crooks, switch front noseslides, a slow fakie front 50, slappy crooks and a couple slow kickflips.  Rob had manuals, nose manuals, almost no comply shove manual, halfcab nose and halfcab boards.  Cass manualled the ledge, back 50, can’t slappy crook, switch board the parking block, a good heelflip.  We started a game of SKATE.  Somehow within a couple minutes Cass was out and neither Rob or I had any letters.  Donnie showed and we got to chatting/skating so the game never continued.  Donnie did a few basics, but mostly skated fast and didn’t launch over the fence or anything ha.  I didn’t skate very well and was kinda bumming that the warmer weather means other people will be skating there.  Oh well, luckily there are like 4 parks now.

(setup null smoke valley 8.5, jessup pj ultragrip, royal inverted 144, spitfire f4 99a classic 52, 272 black 12 half insole)
(pain 5/10)

Arrived to a mostly empty Square House as I was pretty early.  Took a couple runs on the ramp, then Dave showed and went to the park section so I did too.  After a while Bryan from Sk8 Ratz joined and we mostly skated the park side just the three of us for a couple of hours.  Warming up was difficult!  I’ve been in a lot of pain lately and I don’t know why.  It’s been a few days so I don’t remember the sequence of things very well.  The first thing I remember was a nollie bigspin on the bank, maybe a few slappies.  It was nice being able to start slow in the middle of the park.  Dave and I had started to get things going when Bryan showed.  Had some fun noseslides and eventually crooks on the bump to ledge and took too many tries to get kickflip to fakie on the bank.  Dave would get some solid 50s and almost back 180 out.  Bryan had front 50 shove and front tail, close to fakie big tail.  We spent a lot of time on the euro.  I took wayyyy to long to get a couple kickflips then could not get the hip b/s flip after.  Bryan got a Glennish looking treflip (IE 270 flip and not clean) and kickflip.  Dave would line out pop shove further and further until he got it.  He was the only one grinding the diamond cut coping, some fun frontside grinds across/down the new feature.  I was trying to back 50 across down and totally hung up with the kingpin which immediately ended all hope of me sticking with my setup on venture lows.  We eventually went over to the ramp.  Eric, Brian, Tom, Billy were there.  Seemed like those guys were having fun.  I don’t remember a whole lot other than me bailing axle stalls and the knee pain being too much to keep skating.  Dave was funny and did a bunch of front 50s right after Eric made fun of them.  I get the diss, even if I think that trick is fun.  It was a fun night, I need to figure out why I’m hurting so bad these days.

(8.25 null spanbauer, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.2 lows bones medium bushings, spitfire 51mm 101a classic shape with 2 washers inside, new balance numeric 288S grey 11.5 no insoles)
(pain level 5/10)