Snowy, but not too cold (35) I brought Ollie and his buddy Cooper to Red Curbs.  I was pretty sore and tired, but really want to get the new trucks broke in and there’s no better way to do that then to skate.  I skated ok.  Definitely mellow like I do a lot when I’m with Ollie.  My highlights were some good back 50s, almost getting a manny back shove out, ollieing the rock, ollieing a somewhat tall piece of styrofoam, some ok front tails and getting close to some kicky back tails.  Cooper is starting to finally get ollies good enough to get up curbs most the time.  Sick.  He even got a couple manuals.  But he would slam really hard sometimes.  Ollie skated well.  He can’t ollie as well yet, but he looks really natural and does some stuff that floors me sometimes.  Tricks like slappy front 50s, halfcabs off a curb and little pull up manuals.  He did his first back 180.  Rad.  We skated about an hour and it was really fun.

As I mentioned in my last entry I broke my board.  Time for a new board and since it was gonna be the new mall grab I figured I’d go the whole 9 yards and setup the new trucks I’ve had laying around for awhile and some new wheels.  Basically a new complete!  I post the trucks so that I can search and see how long they lasted when I move on.  The last ones lasted almost 7 months.  The new ones are more Thunders, this time Malto lights high.  Maybe I’ll be able to skate like him now.  Ha.  Anyways, I didn’t have very high expectations for the day since I had a new complete except for the same bearings I’ve had for two years (ceramics rule!)Jason and Neil met and my house and we picked up Nate and Jack on the way out of town to Longmont.  We met up with Fuzz, Brian and Carleigh at SOL where I sold some boards and we all waited around for Fuzz to set the record for amount of time to pick out a board.  Seriously took him like 2 hours.We wanted to check out this flatbar/kicker spot we saw from the road, but ended up trying to skate a big tree stump on the way.  The stump wasn’t really happening, but there ended up being a ton of stuff nearby.  Jack gapped out to crooks on the post office rail.  Nate front board popped out the downhill ledge to hill bomb.  Fuzz ollied a gap to hill bomb.  Neil almost got a quick up to wallride.  Fuzz quick upped then ollied a tall pole.  Jason back 180’d some sidewalk sections.  Carleigh took some photos.  Birthday boy tried the quick up wallride too.  Jack and Nate had some weird manuals on the median.  We eventually left due to some concerned citizens calling the cops.Next up we hit a new parking lot in the industrial area.  It had a good double sided ledge and a unique loading dock with some cool ollie in/out options.  It really stoked me out to watch everyone arrive at a new spot, check it out and start trying their own stuff.  Jack basically put on a demo.  Some of the best I’ve ever seen him skate.  Bluntslides on the ledge, gap out to loading dock ride, gap to manual to kickflip over a curb to drop and this was just the warm up.  Jason was doing some really long boardslides with a popout.  Neil was doing some good lines and hyped me up to finally ollie the stupid curb to drop.  Carleigh started slow, but started pounding out the ollie up the curb, ollie over the curb to drop combo. Nate dedicated a front hurricane on the ledge to me and landed it perfect.  Had he dedicated it to anyone else I’m sure he would have bailed.  Yeah right.   Birthday Boy was doing boardslides and setup a wood crate to give the place some tranny.  Fuzz was murdering too.  Fakie ollie the loading dock where the drop was large, ollie a trash can, nosebonk the trash can, and trying to show me up by kickflip manualling where I could only kickflip up.  I was having a good time and the trucks were breaking in.  Highlights for me where the crooks on the ledge first try, kickflip up the curb, ollie the curb to drop, ollie the gap then front 180 the drop, front board first try and just ollieing the gap over the curb thing.  Gotta work on those ollie kid!  Ha.After awhile Brian, Neil, me and eventually Jason decided to do 38 tricks over some super mellow concrete hip in honor of Brian’s birthday.  I was going to try and list all 38 tricks, but that’s just not possible.  It was a blast though.  While we were in the middle of trying them Fuzz was basically telling Jack to do different tricks and Jack would do them much to all of our amazement.  We started to near 38 tricks and held out at 37 until Brian got an impossible which only took about 38 tries.  I guess that’s perfect right?  I had been trying nollie tres too, but never landed and rode away.After that the session was mostly done, but Jason, Carleigh, Nate and Jack were still skating the ledge and had pulled the pallet for some weird combos.  Nate got quick up to front 50.  Jack got back 50 ollie in, back 50 front 180 in, back 50 front 180 nose man into the pallet, blunstslide popin to the pallet (ridiculous).  Nate ended the night with a manny up the pallet to front 5-0 on the ledge.  Pretty ridiculous.  really fun day.  Still completely hyped on how everyone went to the same spot and skated it completely different while all having fun.

After a tough night with the wife I met up with Nate to skate campus for a bit.  It was pretty cold again and we met at the brick plaza with the weird short benches.  We both got some basics down right away.  Nate even beat me to a backside noseslide which is funny because he normally can’t do that trick.  There was a pile of snow about 20 feet from the backside approach and we would ollie it on the way to the ledge.  Nate put a couple sick runs down.  Front 180 then halfcab noseslide.  Back 180 then switch front board.  I got an ollie and then a crooks and then was trying tons of front 180 nosegrinds, but never quite got one.  Argh.  Frontside Nate had a few really good front tails.  I tried front tails, but never really even got into it.  We moved on after awhile to some new flat gaps which were about 6 feet long.  On the way I took too long to land a tiny gap off a ledge with about a two foot gap.  Yeah that’s it and yeah I suck at gaps.  We got to the flat gaps and Nate ollied two in a row and I just went with ollie to axle stall.  Fun though.  Next up we were gonna skate the mini bank to ledge but a cop rolled up before much of anything went down.  I wanted to try a front pivot back shove out.  The cops rolled by so we played dumb then headed up to the hill to watch the end of the Nuggets game after I cracked my board over doing a front lip attempt on a curb.  Decent night.  Nuggets killed the Lakers too.