skate journal: friends school manny pad and a little more with dave (jan 17, 2026)
Let the temps warm up after a cold morning. Was going to dog park, but randomly remembered this spot on the way there that I’ve never skated. I was there about an hour myself. I had a setup change. 8.3, slappy trucks, old 51mm wheels. It felt good although the wheels felt small. I would get manual pretty quickly. Never got nose manual. Hucked a lot of flippers, landed very little. They have these tall butter benches that are light and I pulled one out to skate. Had some noseslides and noseslide to fakie on it. Was trying non-stop lines, never quite getting any good flippers. Was close to kickflip up the curb then front shove out of the curb cut. After one attempt I went to push off, but my board totally stopped and I slammed so hard. Turns out a bearing had broke and the wheel got wedged against the axle. Doh!
So after a quick trip home and wheel swap out I was back. I had opted to switch to some larger wheels and boy did I hate them. I could no longer manual or do many flippers. It sucked. I had pulled out the bench again, but a car pulled up right where I had put it off the sidewalk. It was the janitors, but they were happy to see me and waved. Dave showed a little after this. He would take a bit, but did manual body varial out. We got the curb to grind/slide a little. Dave slammed on a back tail. Fakie nosegrind to nose manual was first try on the camera. I had gotten close to the front slappy, kickflip up, front shove off, but couldn’t kickflip up when Dave filmed. I never got the front shove off and I don’t know why. Dave had some nice kickflips off the curb. I was hyped to get a couple crooks on the tall butter bench and some back 50s on the curb. Dave’s back 360 at the end was so good. Fun session.
(setup 4/10 null 8.3 hayden, jessup ultra, slappy lights 8.5, old wheels 51 then 53, splay rev s-series black size 12 remind cush insole)
(pain level 4/10)