11/8/20
I met up with Mark at the New Britain park this morning. It’s been unseasonably warm over the past few days, so we wanted to take advantage of the weather… that, and he’s moving to Seattle at the end of the month. All the more reason to hold a board meeting.
Kind of bummed to be losing a shredding partner, but pretty sick that he’s following the call to move west.
I took the surf adapters off my American Nomad deck because I wanted to try it out in the bowl. I also swapped out the Slimeballs for the slightly harder, 98A set of Ojiis that I had on there originally. Softer than the wheels I have on my popsicle stick, but much harder than the Slimeballs.
It’s been a while since I rode in the bowl, or skated at the park in general. At first I chalked it up to being out of practice… but I was going slowww in the bowl. Wasn’t able to carry as much speed around as I had been weeks prior.
The big board with relatively soft wheels felt sluggish, I just couldn’t get it moving. After a bit of that, I swapped boards. It was definitely the wheel hardness.
Dropped in on the other board and almost scared myself with how much faster I was going. Pretty wild. I was definitely more comfortable on the regular shaped deck, and after a bit started going for slash grinds on the coping of the bowl.
I haven’t been practicing them for a while, I think its been over two weeks since I was last doing them at the Newington Park. My goal was always to carry them over to the bowl at New Britain, but I didn’t actually try until today.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get it. The combination of the slightly higher ramp and the much faster speed was getting in my head. Every time I’d get to the coping I would hit the eject button.
Whether I got it or not, it felt good to get back to the park and enjoy the warm weather while it lasted. It was also good to hang with Mark for a bit before he leaves. We hit up a coffee shop afterwards with Nia and talked about his impending move. Will definitely get out to visit him one day, and hopefully be signed up for the LBS at Mt. Baker with him one year.
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