Woke up early, attempted to go back to sleep, failed, went to skatepark. I had made my setup change to match Alton’s setup I liked so much the day before. Would I like it again? The odds were stacked up against me skating before 7am. Especially when skate coach dad pulled his SUV up to the park and proceeded to coach his kids for the next hour. I hadn’t been there in a while. The bad graffiti and trash everywhere sucks. It’s so embarrassing. I started very slow, thought for sure I would leave quickly as I was disliking my setup a lot to start with. But man, it came around and I ended up really liking it. It was poppy and flipped pretty well. I had a few front 50s on the little pad, across the bump to pad. I couldn’t get a b/s flip on the hump, but I did get a first try halfcab flip on it after a noseslide to fakie. On flat I had some good feeling kickflips and a first try b/s flip. Took a bit to get a really slow halfcab noseslide. I settled in on a little line at the end of nollie tail the pad then front 50 shove the bench. Took a while, but I landed it and I was hyped. I was happy how easily I was popping onto the bench and didn’t have my recent knee pain.

(setup 6/10 pmg 8.25, jessup ultragrip, indy 144 reynolds hollow mids with hollow kingpin, 51mm bones stf v1 pj, new balance numeric 288 sport white size 12)
(pain level 4/10)

After work on a warm afternoon went to dog park and it was chill when we got there, but quickly filled up with the youth. Our crew was Paul, Rob, Jesse, Alton. Seemed like we started pretty mellow and didn’t really get into a groove. I don’t really remember anything really. Rob and I played a game of SKATE which featured lots of knee pain, one kickflip, lots of no comply variations. It was pretty fun other than the knee pain. After that Alton learned his first nollie f/s flip, Jesse rattled off several flippers, I came incredibly close to switch f/s flip and Paul seemed close too. I was fully committing and watching it flip under me and there were a couple that felt like they could be makes. Gotta keep trying that one! Alton had a boss front nosegrind on the back of the tall ledge. I used his board and got a first try crooks on it and the madness was real again. I had a different setup because I didn’t want to put together a new one really. I didn’t like it.

(setup 2/10 null abstract33 8.3, jessup ultragrip, thunder hollow 149, 52mm spitfire f4 classic 99a, new balance numeric 288 sport white size 12)
(pain level 5/10)