On another nice February day in the 50s Ollie and I picked up Jason then headed out to Lafayette to meet Brian, Jake, Neil, SSK (Square State Kids), Fullertron and probably some more I’m forgetting. I didn’t feel like filming anymore and Brian totally understood. Ollie was in his typical shy stay in a corner mode or would just follow me around. We kind of messed around for awhile. Jake, Brian, Blake, Brandon, Alec and I did a six man front rock on the mini bank to curb. I punched Brian in the stomach on accident in the process. Ha. Blake was a good sport and filmed Brian for the most part rattle off another 10 or so front rocks. He was killing it again and took some super hard slams at the end trying to do a double front rock with Jake. Kudos Brian. Looks for the birthday montage soon. As far as skating goes I skated kind of ok, but was feeling very clumsy and arthritic. I dropped into the shallow end of the vert bowl a couple times. If only it wasn’t so slippery I would try to get tile on the vert. As it is though I just suck up all my speed and barely make it out of the waterfall. We sessioned the manny pad thing up top for awhile. Neil killed some front lips and front lips to fakie. I got a few tricks. Front 50 back 180, front 5-0 shove, manual. It sucks you can only skate it frontside. Grinding granite is really fun though. On the way back I got a couple treflps. Then I skated the double down section in the street course. Ollied the 3 then noseslide the hubba. Also got halfcab flip into the first bank, then noseslide the hubba. There was ice in the path of the frontside way so I couldn’t really hit that. I tried to get on in the flat, but didn’t have the pop to do it. Argh. It kind of bummed me out. At one point I tried to do a manual out of the little qp then boardslide the granite ledge, but I basically just ran into it and cracked my board really bad. Had to leave. Pretty fun session. Jason seemed to have fun watching. Trick Factory in effect. Oh yeah, I had new shoes. Lakai Brae. Neat. The Supras were some of the best shoes I’ve ever had, but had finally worn flat on the sole.

I was home with Ollie as Liz and India were out doing stuff. We had already played basketball for awhile and I wanted to skate. Rather then wait for the girls to get home to watch Ollie I talked him into going skating. We drove around for a bit trying to find something, but lots of spots were snowy. We found this near Ball Aerospace and it ended up being fun enough for the next hour or so. Ollie and I played around before Carleigh showed. There was a little two stairish drop behind where I took that photo and I would ollie off it to start some runs. Ollie did a couple body varials on the bank and almost a 360 body varial. That was about it for him. Other then that he just kinda followed me around or finger painted with the dirt on the car. Carleigh showed up, super hyped on the spot (not) and went to work on pop shoves to fakie, then front shove fakie, then kickflip fakie. I got a really bad one of those side rock kickflips, kickflip fakie, fakie flip. Carleigh then tried a bunch of varial flips and landed a couple. I tried a line of front 180 the little drop (weirder then it should have been due to puddles in the landing), fakie flip on flat then fakie treflip on the bank. Never got close to the fakie tre. Tried another line with ollie the drop, treflip on flat and then it doesn’t matter because I never got the treflip until later when I tried it on it’s own. Last up for me was a few ollies off the drop over a patch of snow. Not big at all. So my arthritis wasn’t too bad. I originally thought it was acting up due to the wind, but it never really got windy. Hmm.

Oh yeah, I had new shoes. Fuzz gave me permission to not skate those Hufs anymore as he agreed they felt like the worst shoes ever. These Supra Amigo’s don’t seem like the best shoes ever, but they are certainly leagues above those piece of crap Hufs.