Fuzz, in Crocs.  Wow.  And yes, it’s a joke.  Hopefully anyway.After a pretty long wait to get the crew together we met at Brighton park with some decent cloud cover. Some were ripping, but I officially could not skate for shit. I wasn’t the only one though.  At one point Lloyd and I tried to play a game of SKATE and gave up after 4 failed kickflips. I had to fight back the urge to focus my board constantly.Next we went to a bank spot that needed to be swept and waxed up. It was a frustrating session to say the least. No one was really feeling it. It was kinda weird because half the crew didn’t even skate which surprised me. It’s a mellow bank, who doesn’t want to at least give it a try? The only thing I did was land a couple back 5-0s to fakie that were horrible.Next we went to the infamous boob spot. So hard to skate. Fuzz, Lloyd and Neil were killing it immediately. Melons, stales, anything they wanted. I was still fighting the urge to focus my board. I eventually landed a wallride and a smile finally emerged on my face that I couldn’t hold back. Wow, I was having fun! About time. I failed at several other tricks then went back to the wallride. Skelly was working on wallies and bet me a beer for whoever landed it first. I pulled through somehow. A few tries later and Sean got taken out with a horribly bad rolled ankle. Ouch. Lloyd slayed that spot. Wallie front 180 into the bank. So sick. Felt great to skate a full day again even if the first 3/4 sucked miserably.Lloyd trick of the day.  Wallie front 180.

Pretty much just hung out with the kids all evening, but skated flatground on the street for awhile while Ollie and his buddy Cooper skated the sidewalk.  It actually went kind of ok for me.  I mostly just tried the basics but going faster than I normally do, which isn’t saying much.  Ollie ollied (I’m gonna have to change his name) a skate deck which kinda hyped me up.  I got lots of kickflips with a bit of speed and shove its.  Sounds weak, but somehow it was fun.  Been trying lots of nollie flips again lately too.

Legs were dead, tried to skate the ramp.  Didn’t go so well.  Not wanting to fall on my hip combined with lack of skating lately equals lack of skills for me.  Fun crew though.  Worst journal update yet.   By far.  I should at least list some tricks or something.  Nah, even Jason was struggling on the ramp and he owns ramp.

I tried to get the kids to play basketball or baseball or something other than skateboarding, but Ollie was insistent that we go skating.  We went to the school across the street.  India rode her scooter and Ollie rode his skateboard.  Behind the school there is a little drainage ditch that is about 2 feet long with grass on one side.  Ollie tried over and over to ollie it.  Pretty rad, he was actually snapping his tail pretty hard.  My legs were dead once again, but I joked around and did a front shove and kickflip over it into the grass.  It’s so fun skating with Ollie because I can totally just goof around and try tricks I’d normally be too embarrassed about.  Ollie ended up doing a halfcab ollie into the little ditch.  It was quite rad actually.  He started asking me how to do shove it’s and kickflips as well.  I told him to get his ollies down first so he doesn’t end up like me.  Ha.  I spent at least 10 minutes trying flatground manuals with back shoves out.  Never got one.  Decent time for what it was and how sore my legs were.

Met Nate at the little manny pad.  Pretty tired.  Pretty sore.  Took me about 10 tries to get a manual.  Almost over it, but kept going.  Nate shows up and does manny, nose manny and front 180 nose manny first try.  Kids these days.  I ended up just trying kickflip mannys over and over and ended up getting a couple.  Other than that I put down a few flippers I haven’t since before the hip.  Ok session.

So I have to confess, I started this crossfit workout thing in the morning with my homie Zach and it’s killing me.  I don’t know that my legs have ever felt this sore.  Instead of resting or chilling I went skating with Ollie out at the mellow bank to curb.  At first even a backside stall was difficult.  After seeing Ollie ollie (yeah I know, I didn’t really think that threw when we named him Ollie) off the end of the loading dock and land it I figured I better step it up. But even that wasn’t enough to give my legs any pop.  Before we left I was finally able to do a few basic tricks on the bank to curb.  Ollie was doing nosestalls on it and did a rock fakie by putting his front wheels up on the fence.  So rad.  He’ll be better than me in no time.

And that’s saying a lot.  I had run a mile earlier in the day and was super sore.  Ok, ridiculously sore.  I couldn’t hardly ollie at all.  I ended up just riding down these four long stairs and manualing out of them.  Stupid, but kinda fun.

Skated red curbs due to the rain. There was puddles everywhere, but it was still fun. I couldn’t really do flippers at all due to my hip still feeling weird, but it was fun. The only two things I did remotely cool were a front 180 over a puddle followed by a switch 180 to front 50 and an ollie over puddle to manual to noseslide fakie. Yipped. Filmed a bunch which hurt bending down but the old guys came through with some bangers.

Jason has been my main skate homie of the last 10 or so years.  Wow.  It was a Friday and we were celebrating his 37th birthday by going skateboarding all day.  We started at Windsor skatepark where Jason skated the best any of us have ever seen him skate.  It was amazing.  He did front board fakie and front board down one of the rails, powerslides on everything, feebles on the flatbar, basically, he didn’t skate anything like you would think a 37 year old should skate.  Jason rules.  Myself, I didn’t skate all that hot.  I tried several no comply tailslides on the bank and rode out of a couple bad ones.  New trick for me so I’ll take it for now.  Jack, Nate and I played a game of SKATE that Jack ended up winning while beating me with a switch flip.  Not only did he say “ok Glen, here you go” before doing it, but he made it look like it’s as tough as rolling off a curb.  Basterd.  One day I’m gonna land it though, and then I will also win a million dollars in the lottery.Next we skated a fullpipe.  It has all these sketchy bolt things sticking out every 8 feet or so.  I hit one.  I slammed.  Hard.  3 days later and my hip still hurts and is all black/blue.  Ugh ugh ugh.  No more skating for me.Then it rained and we ended up at the covered manny pad.  Gabe, PJ, Chad.Jason was the last one skating.  From the left, Jack, Nate, Chris, Jason, Gabe, PJ, Chad all sitting while the oldest dude there was still skating.  Go Jason.Nose manny like he’s only landed a couple.  Oh wait, he has only landed a couple.  Rad, Jason killed it.

Jason, Nate and I had just watched And Now for the first time and only had time for an hour or so of skating so we were pretty hyped up to say the least.  The only times I’ve been to Lville park recently was to help teach kids how to skate at 9am.  That’s too early to skate. Anyways, I was taking a warm up run in the snake run and since there was a bunch of BMX’ers around I figured the coping was really sticky.  Nope.  I slid out pretty bad and landed on my wrist on the coping.  Thought I broke it at first.  Ugh.We ended up skating the ledge as we always do.  It was a pretty hectic session.  The park was really crowded with people that were actually skating so it was chaos.  Nate beat me to a front 50 back 180 so I was cursed on front 50s all night causing me to hurt my wrist even more.  Luckily crooks were feeling good.  The 8″ trucks help with those for sure.  Within 5 tries I had done crooks and crooks 180.  Unheard of for me.  I started trying crooks shove and was getting close, but the board kept spinning to far.  I decided to go with crooks bigspin out and somehow came super close.  Gotta go back and learn that one!