On a sunny but cool morning I gave India a ride to work then went to the skatepark. I was armed with the same crappy Xero’s, but a couple smaller boards. After some carving around I did some flatground ollies with both and basically nothing happened. It was so depressing. Like I totally attempted to ollie and the board did not leave the ground. It was almost kind of amazing in a way, like wow, it’s amazing how much the body can degrade after 3 weeks of not skating when you’re almost 50. I would stick with an 8.25 with venture lows and it was okay, but I still had ghost pop over the hip. Cass would show after a while. He hasn’t skated in a long time, but he’s only 30 something (okay almost 40) so he was good. Covid got him good. He would get kickflip over the hip, almost a sick line of back bigspin the hip, fakie fail then front big on the bank. I got some kickflips. As in plural this time. I got around 5 kickflips to fakie, but they took a long time to get the first one. Never got two in a row. Jack B showed while I was trying to backside flip and was about to lost my mind. Luckily I finally landed one. Cass called out a fun game of best dork trick on the bank. He would almost get a fakie casper, but kind of rolled his ankle. That wasn’t a dork trick anyway Cass! I did some bean plants which I haven’t done in a long time, but they sucked and would not make Rob proud.

(setup null 8.25 hesher, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.2 low v-cast, spitfire 52mm f4 99a classic, xero kelso bw size 12 NB insole from some 306s)
(pain level 5/10 not worth it)

On a cool winter Saturday I heard that Valmont was shoveled. I hadn’t got the okay to skate yet, but I was feeling good and went skating. I had told Dave I’d maybe skate 20 minutes. He knows better. Two hours later I finally decided to call it. Maybe because that’s how long it took me to land a kickflip. Ha ha. Honestly though, I tried to wear some Xero Kelso shoes that shouldn’t injure me. They didn’t, my legs felt better, but man they SUCKED for skateboarding. Dave hasn’t been able to skate much lately either due to a hurt back. I was happy to be able to push without pain. I did have some fun when I wasn’t trying a kickflip to fakie which literally took like 50 tries. I thought it was mostly the board being so big, but really it was the shoes with toe spacers. Dave had some rad switch tails over the hip, fakie flip on the bank, boardslide to fakie on the rainbow, nollie back 180s over the hip. Jesse had shown and did a few amazing pop shove tail grabs over the hip. Dave wanted to learn one. As you can see he kind of got it. Then he hurt his back on the invert. Doh.

(setup 8.5 null vhs, jessup ultragrip, royal 149 ultralights, 54mm bones stf 99a slims, xero kelso b/w size 12)
(pain level 3/10)