Super tired, fighting a cold and haven’t really skated in days.  Perfect recipe for sucking which is exactly what I did.  I met Nate at St Julien for a late night downtown boulder session.  The lights there don’t work as well as they used to.  I didn’t even really have energy to try flip tricks and just tried front tails on the ledge.  I may have landed 1 or 2 slow ones.  Nate killed a bunch of good ones.  Next up we did flippers into a downhill parking ramp which ended up being pretty fun.  Nate did good tricks like nollie f/s flip, switch front heel.  I did slow-moving-no-pop tricks like varial flip, halfcabl flip and fakie flip.  The powerslide at the end of the ramp was the funnest part of the night.  We left after that, but not before skating a real jersey barrier (aka, no tranny at the bottom).  I did a couple wallrides and a wallride to fakie.  Nate went crazy and did a rock fakie on it.  So sick.  Gotta skate downtown on Sunday nights more often, it was dead.  Kinda like me.

My brother was in town with his family and decided to try and remember what skateboarding was.  It took him a bit but he got rock ‘n rolls, rock fakie, tail stall and a little scratch grind.  Rad.  I got most of my tricks and it was a fun little session.

Had about half an hour free so went over to the school with Ollie. He wasn’t really into it, but I was trying all the basic stall tricks on the no setup curb. Did a back tail which is very rare for me.  Bummed Ollie wasn’t feeling it, but hyped that my new shoes felt good.  I’ve worn them around for a few weeks now and their good and broken in.  Skated flat in front of the house after that and landed a lot of tricks quickly including a 360 flip.  Yippee.

Neil, Nate, Fuzz, Jason and I went out to the Lafayette Tech Center area after the rain dried up on a gloomy memorial day.  We started at the bird bank which is a kind of weird spot.  The bank is steep with some rocks before it and the asphalt isn’t that good.  We put some weird metal tubes down for a bit and skated them for a second.  Nate was the only one to skate them well.  Fuzz, Neil and Nate ollied a cinder block like it’s nothing.  I guess it should be easy for me too, but it wasn’t.  The best part of this session was trying tricks over a 2 x 6 that Jason put out.  So awesome.  Neil, Fuzz and Nate nollied it.  I got a kickflip over it first try.  Fuzz ended up doing a lot over it.  No surprise there.  At the end I finally ollied the cinder block and Jason almost cabbed the 2 x 6.Next we went to this crack infested are that has some chunky ledges and stairs.  Ended up being a total blast.  There was a euro gap up a two stair, a four stair, a weird ledge, all kinds of stuff.  Nate and Jason almost front boarded this rad ledge.  Fuzz front lipped it.  I took several tries too long to kickflip up the two stair, but had a blast trying lines later on.  Ollie up a somewhat tall ledge, ollie or front 180 the four stair, chinese nollie a big crack, pose kickflips down the two stair.  The rain came in before I could get it.  Cupsoles rule.  My feet weren’t even sore and I jumped down the 4 stair at least 10 times.

Thunder storms were looming, but we hit it for about an hour before the rain kicked in.  We all started slow, but by the end were all skating pretty good.  It took me about 40 tries to get one slow back 50 which was the only real bummer.  Those ledges are weird.  At the end I was trying to manual the first one, then kickflip off the second.  I never put the two together but kickflipping off was super fun.  Brian tried some hurricanes at the end in the rain and hurt his foot trying to kick his board.  It may be the best slam ever if my camera didn’t eat the tape.

Not much time to skate again.  Met up with Jason, PJ and the TF over at the old Ash Ramp and after sucking it up on the ramp there for a bit, we went to Fairview.  TF wasn’t feeling it and left for a motorcycle ride.  PJ was tired from a bike race and used that as an excuse to act old when he’s really just a spring chicken.  I tried to get as much skating in as possible in the 2 hours I had to skate and it was some of the happier I’ve been with my skating in awhile.  I can’t really even remember ‘tricks’ really.  I just messed around and ollied a lot.  That spot is fun.

Quick after work session with Jason and Nate at the tiny manny pad we used to skate a lot.  Jason and I were there for a bit before Nate joined us.  Between Jason and I we had like 3 tricks total before Nate came in and literally did 6 different manny tricks in a row first try.  Talk about feeling old.  Geez.  Nate is good.  I had a good time even though I really didn’t last much.  I kept skating hard and tried a lot of new stuff.  Came somewhat close to a fakie bigspin manual.  Tried it like 50 times.  Considering I’ve only landed a fakie bigspin up a curb a few times I wasn’t that bummed.  The one rare trick I actually landed was a nose manual nollie front 180 out.  Well, more of a front pivot out, but who’s keeping score?  I came close to a few fakie hardflips too.  Fun.

Very tired from being up late and lawn work Ollie and I went ot the school across the street.  I basically just skated the no setup curb the whole time.  Ollie almost did a front 50 on it first try.  I tried to skate coach him into trying it again, but he didn’t want to after it didn’t work in a few tries.  I went through the basic stalls the started trying the Jason trick.  Front 50, back 180 while on the ledge into a fakie grind.  Seeing as how you can’t grind without any setup speed I tried just stalling it.  Turning the back 180 is way easier than I thought it would be.  I landed a few of them.  But since I wasn’t moving who knows how easy it would be when grinding.

Brian, Neil, Rob, Greg, Jam and I headed up to the Fort to hit Northside and check out the contest.  It was crowded which it should be.  I didn’t even skate the park between runs like others did.  I basically only skated flatground which was fun.  There was a bunch of games of SKATE with Skelly and John too.  All were fun.  I hardly ever land anything.  Rob and I skated the little slanted ledge near the park.  It was really dry, but we still had a blast.  I got into a couple hurricanes, but didn’t commit to a land.  Tried front smiths and back feebles, but since it didn’t grind I never landed them.  Tried a bunch of tailslides but only got up on the top good a couple times.  Next up we went to the new pool which was also crowded.  It looks really fun, but the numbers were too much for me.  Rob and I just skated flatground and a plastic parking block which ended up being really fun.  Rob was doing really sick ‘slappy smith lapovers” and grinding really far.  I started trying it and managed to land one or two.  Fun.  Next up was a game of SKATE with John and Andy from MRKT.  What a fun game.  John has 360 flips every try and Andy was close to full cab flips.  I somehow won.  I think the tricks I landed were pop shove, kickflip, halfcab flip, fakie flip, 360 flip, fakie varial flip, frontside halfcab flip amd maybe something else.  I had T.  Even though I mostly skated flat all day it was a super fun day.  Ok wait, who am I kidding, skating flat all day is why the day was so fun.  Ha!

Didn’t have anything else going on and Nate wanted to skate.  We were both tired and he seemed extra bummed on becoming unemployed soon.  We met over by Silver Mine subs to skate the new ledge spot, but ended up not really skating it.  I guess you could just say we didn’t really skate much at all.  Nate had some really good and long back 50s on a curb near the wallride thing.  I tried to manual into a frontside wallride, but upon hitting the wall my back foot hot pocketed super bad.  Ugh.  Other than trying a few flippers and two mile an hour hurricanes on a curb it was a pretty unispired session.