I skated the Orem skatepark on my lunch break for half an hour, working on bs 180 disasters, boneless ones, and just getting the feel of that park again. The weather is quite becoming for afternoon skating this week.
Later in the evening David and I skated the Springville park for over an hour, spending most of our time on the mini ramp, working on 50-50s, fs 50-50s, etc. I overdid it, but didn’t kill myself. Landed just 1 out of 10 kickflip attempts.
I skated a local church parking lot with David tonight, working on grinding a sewer grate and kickflips. Landed 3 out of 30 in my night practice. For some reason I felt closer to nailing it tonight, though I barely landed any at all.
David returned from CA and I’ve not yet succumbed to the cold that’s going through my house, so we headed North to American Fork’s skatepark where I worked on ollies onto the box, 5-0s on the big quarter pipe, ollies over the prostate orange barrel, ollies down the bank steps, and carving the big bowl. David caught a little footage of me learning the latter:
I haven’t skated since Sunday, thanks to a wicked ankle roll at the AF skatepark. Crunch crunch. So I’ve been doing physical therapy exercises instead at night, and that’s straining my calf and thigh muscles nicely. So even though there’s no skating going on, at least I have no excuse for failing to work out my knee. Looking forward to the weekend, though.
After watching some video of pool skating last night I was determined to learn to carve a big bowl. So early this morning I drove out to Payson’s skatepark, which has a fairly small clover bowl and a slightly larger kidney bowl. I spent half an hour dropping into and practising carves and pumps on the kidney bowl, though I didn’t quite hit the coping. I then spent another half an hour just skating around the park. In the little 5 ft bowl I was practising 50-50s and 5-0s when I slipped on the coping and fell to the flat on an unprotected wrist. I’ve hit that wrist so many times I’m lucky I’ve not broken it.
Later in the evening after Jamie and the kids had gone off to Bear Lake I drove North to the American Fork skatepark just before twilight. I spent an hour practising dropping in on the big clover bowl–7ft with 1ft of vert in the shallows, maybe 9 or 10 ft in the deep end. This was my first time dropping in on vert since I was probably 15, and it went alright–I only bailed on my first attempt, and made the next 7 or 8 easily.
I did have a hard time keeping speed–probably because I was still a bit spooked during the drop-ins, but did manage to make it around the deep end in a carve, and usually back up around the shallows.
I spent another hour skating the rest of the AF park. I worked on ollies to manual up the box, bs 180s on the hip, and 5-0s and 50-50s on the big quarter pipe. I tried to grab indie on an ollie off the box, but choked and rolled my ankle enough that I thought it might have fractured. Thankfully it didn’t, and only aches a bit now.
I accomplished just a bit today, but both sessions were stoking and I’m anxious to go again tomorrow (though I’ll probably wake to some pretty tight pains).
I spent just half an hour in a local parking lot working on pop shove-its and kickflips. Again, my kickflip attempts were poor, as I’m still trying to land them while rolling and can’t quite stomp that landing.
David and Dylan met me in South Jordan after I finished with meetings and grading to spend an hour at the skatepark. This was our first time to South Jordan’s skatepark, which features a giant kidney bowl with gnarly pool coping. It was too advanced for me–indeed, much of the park was too big for my meagre skills–and crowded to boot. So I spent most of my time practising ollies onto the box, ollies across the gap, and bs 180 disasters.
I hit the American Fork skatepark with cousin David and his friend Dylan. It was a great evening for skating, though the park was pretty crowded with kids taking in the last few days of summer break.
I worked on ollie manuals onto the box above the bank, 5-0s on the big quarter pipe, rock-n-rolls. It was a great time, and I look forward to skating again tomorrow night now that evenings are starting to cool down a bit.
I spent just over half an hour at a local parking lot breaking in my new board and working on kickflips. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t seem to even approximate a kickflip tonight. “Landed” only 1/20.
I picked up a new 8″ Element Muska deck today after checking prices and finding this on sale at the Vans store for $39 + free grip:
