I might win sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I’m better.  Ha.

I hope Nate sees the humor in this one.

Another frigid winter night.  About 8 degrees.  UGH.  Nate and I wanted to do something different so we drove downtown and parked next to the side entrance to the St Julien parking garage.  We went down the side stairs unnoticed and found a mostly dry cooling parking garage with tons of parking blocks for us to shralp.  I say “cooling parking garage” because it seemed to get colder by the minute.  It started off pretty warm, but by the time we left we could see our breath.  The parking garage was also covered in at least a quarter of an inch of dust.  Yuck.We ended up at a group of oddly arranged blue parking blocks.  You couldn’t really grind or slide them too easily because the ends either ran into puddles or pillars.  But they were fun to try stuff over in lines which we did for awhile.  I can’t remember all that went down at that point, we were mostly just kinda dorking around.  At one point I tried to sw front 180 a puddle then kickflip a parking block that was right after it (by “right after it” I mean 20 feet which isn’t much setup when your old and slow like me) and I got it.  I even pushed switch before the 180.  I think Nate did a nollie shove over one followed by a no comply on another.  He’s got good no complys.  He said it’s the old man 8″ board that allows him to do old man tricks so well.  We settled in on trying stuff over a parking block for awhile.  Nate put down a ton of tricks of course.  Nollie, nollie shove, nollie 180s, 180s, halfcabs both ways and a banger at the end – nollie flip.  I struggled with kickflips, but got some as well as 180s, a sketchy pop shove, sw front 180 and a horrible backside flip.  But it’s definitely the first backside flip I’ve done over something and after the sketchy one I was getting close to doing a good one.  Nate started doing the little dump truck tricks where you ride into a curb and put the nose on then transfer to the other side.  After a couple regular ones he ended up doing all kinds of variations.  180s both ways, shoves both ways and attempts at nollie b/s flip out and more.  It was rad.  I couldn’t do the regular transfer, but after tons of tries I got a nollie back shove transfer.  Felt really fun.  We left the frigid garage after ollieing onto a very narrow sidewalk going down the hill of one of the exit ramps.  SUPER fun and sketchy.  It’s about a foot wide with a wall next so it feels like your going to hang up at any second and go flying.  By the end your going fast.  We both did it first try though and it was a great ender on a fun evening.

Gonz rules.

Ollie had been skating Rampy basically all Saturday and Sunday with his friends. After dinner I decided I should get a little session in and he joined me to show off his new moves. He did lots of halfcab rock fakies, willy grind, fakie ollies, body varial (at the top of the tranny now), fakie b/s pivots, backside slasher grind and started trying back 50s. He never got one, but he was close to back feebles. I was hurting from a rager of a night with the Might LZA and didn’t expect much from myself. I managed a couple front feebles and front tails amongst some other tricks I should be able to do better.

Cold and snowy on a Saturday. UGH! So sick of winter. Anyways I got up kinda early feeling better than the last few days. Ollie had been bugging me for a new deck and showing me his totally chipped deck. I told him he had to land a new trick on Rampy before I’d give him a board. We went out there and he was ripping. He’s done rock ‘n rolls elsewhere, but not Rampy. He did a few of those, learned willy grinds and did a bunch of half cab rocks. Guess he earned the new board. I wasn’t skating too well, but had fun. Got a front feeble or too and came close to hurricanes.Later on we hit Red Curbs. As soon as we got there it seemed much colder than we thought. Not only that, but the snow was blowing in and half the parking lot was wet. Ugh. The crew was Neil, Brian, Cheyenne Matt and the Daggers. Aka a mixture of Satellite/Meta dudes that happened to show up at the same time as us. Jason came and drank coffee, but said it was too cold to skate.Much to Brian’s delight the manny pad was one of the few dry obstacles. I don’t think anyone skated that great. Neil was in a t-shirt and yelling at his skateboard alot. Brian was standing around complaining about the cold. I would have liked to see him land that impossible lipslide. Matt was taking it easy and laying down some casual manuals. The Daggers were ripping. I was getting warmed up about the time we left. I’ve never quite got kickflip manuals across the whole pad. Still no. Winter sucks.

More crappy snow.  So sick of it.  What is it, winter or something?  Anyways, I worked at home because India had been throwing up that night and I didn’t feel great.  I didn’t want to get other sick.  By the end of the work day and a nap I felt ok.  I went to pick up Jake and go to Meta then Circuit City, but Jake wasn’t at his house.  After some phone tag it turned out he thought I’d be later.  Luckily Nate works about 20 feet from Circuit City and he was able to skate.  Although he was having some troubles getting used to a wider and longer board as well as changing from Indys to Thunders.  We started out doing some basic tricks over puddles.  Unfortunately it didn’t take Nate long to totally slam on a kickflip and kind of roll his ankle.  He was out quit.  Before he left I told him ‘this one is for you Nate’ and I put down the illest front shove ever backed with a treflip over a puddle to size of a ballin’ Hummer SUV.  Ah ok, you all know I’m joking.  I did a 2 mph front shove, some tic tacs then a slow 360 flip over a foot foot long puddle.  It was fun though.  I left after that too.  But before the last run some of the other stuff I had done was varial flip over a puddle, fakie bigspin and a run of pop shove, nollie front shove, front shove.  My legs actually felt pretty good.  So sick of the snow.   Adios.

Tired and sore from yesterday’s marathon session. Nate showed up on a snowy night and we went to it. I was understandably lacking in the energy department and it showed. Nate was getting used to his new board and really hyped. Pretty early on he took the best spill on Rampy yet. Fakie tail stall to dive backwards over the short deck and into my wall. He cut up his hand a bit, but other than that he was fine. Whew. Right after that Nate got a front disaster revert which he had never done before. It was one of his patented “I’m not quite on this trick perfect so I’ll throw in a revert” moments and it was awesome. I did most of my tricks, but I was tired and they took more tries than normal. I got a couple more front feebles which felt awesome. Nate got a couple more tricks he’s never done before we called it quits. Front tail front revert and fakie front pivot to rock ‘n roll. Rad. Nate seems to be doing fine on the new 8″ board. I should probably take a day off from skating, but oh well.

VX 2000, Century Fish Eye, camera light, case all kinds of goodies.  Go buy it!