Was having a blast playing tennis with Ollie and got a call from Jake while walking home wanting to skate Rampy.  Word!  After only about 10 months of owning Rampy I finally started quickly like I’ve skated it before.  Got lots of my tricks real quick and had a good time.  At the end of the session Jake and I raced for gummy bears to tricks we were working on.  He was trying front feeble.  I was trying fakie back pivot to fakie.  He got his first try after making the deal.  It took me about 10 more tries.  I owe Jake gummy bears.  Yeah!

Haven’t been able to really skate in awhile and decided a solo red curbs session was in order.  As much as I sucked it up, it didn’t disappoint.  For whatever reason I went there thinking about a couple dumb little lines.  Like kickflip up and off the manny pad, ollie over a yellow bar and then 180 it without pushing, and finally a kickflip front 50 on the curb followed by a lipslide.  A parked scooter made the kick front 50 not an option so that line was out immediately.I started off real slow.  Insanely slow.  It took me at least 10 minutes before I could try a kickflip.  It was rough.  I eventually got into somewhat of a groove and landed a few things like front tails on the taller curb (yes, I call it the taller curb because it’s like 2 inches taller than the other curb and therefore tall), nose manny the manny pad, kick back tail the low curb etc.  I then kinda tried a few lines over and over.  One was crooks the ledge, back 50 the tall curb then kick back tail the low curb.  Never got all three.  I got the ollie over the yellow bar followed by 180 over it pretty quick.  Toward the end I was beat, but wanted to try some flippers.  So I did the kickflip up the taller side of the manny pad and kickflip off.  Tried to back it with a 360 flip but never got close.  Tried a bunch of nollie flips and never got those.  No surprise.  The other line I was trying was no comply 180, fakie flip, fakie big flip, fakie bigspin up the manny pad, front shove off.  Got it all but the front shove off.  And they all looked horrible.  Pretty hyped.  Didn’t really skate that well, but I skated really hard and needed a solo session to get my skate going again.

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.