Took a couple days off after St Louis and did lots of icing the knee. Went for a short hike with Liz in the morning and my knee was still feeling weird. Not painful, but numb and weird. Max and I met up with Bernie and Crew, Dean and the Crisis crew at a new spot in Longmont. There was a sick looking gap that I didn’t touch at all. There was a mini bank to ledge and Fuzz and I played a game of SKATE on it. In the end I think he won it, but it was a fun filled game of basics, slams and a few tricks we can be hyped on. At one point I did the funniest slam I’ve done in awhile which is saying a lot. Ha. I tried a kickflip pivot, but went a little over, shot out, kind of rolled my ankle, landed on my side on the ledge and was stuck there for awhile looking like an idiot before I could recover. Whew. The last trick that got me was a fakie pivot. Kudos Fuzz.

We rolled to Loveland. We skated a ledge spot. My knee was feeling pretty good. Maybe from icing it, maybe from the hike or maybe from starting with a mellow bank to ledge session. Anyways I pretty much did a line of noseslide on a tall ledge, 3 flip on flat, boardslide a 3 stair hubba. Max was hyped on it somehow and insisted he film me. Poor guy didn’t know it would be an hour before I could do it again and I had given up on 3 flips and settled for heelflips. Filming freaks me out, even though Max put no pressure on me whatsoever my legs were shaking. I managed the noseslide, heelflip, boardslide decent. Typical Glen speed and the heelflip was not popped. Oh well, decent line for me. Thanks Max. Other people were killing it. Fuzz had a sick long boardslide into the kink. Conor did a varial heel then back 50 into the kink. Chad was doing kickflip noseslides and nosebonks (until I went to film him later). Max did a rad boardslide popout transfer thing. I was filming Chad at this point and everyone else went over to look at a big six stair. I guess Max tried hardflipping it for awhile and when we got there he looked really tired and sore. We all dorked around on the playground for awhile. Justin did a rad kickflip into the downhill then boardslide to fakie on the slide. I dropped in on the frog.

Then we went to the skatepark and it was 20 minutes of everyone skating the whole time. It was awesome. I mostly skated the ramp as did Fuzz and Dean. Mellow ramps with small coping like that are weird. Fuzz had a gnarly slam on a front 5-0. Dean had the longest run I’ve seen him do with some moves like fakie pop to disaster. I didn’t do much, but was hyped on a front d. Max and Chad were killing everything. Chad skated the ramp super good. Huge kickflip to fakie was bangin. At the very end I attempted to do nose manuals and setup for nollie treflip out. Yeah right. Fun day, hyped I could skate without knee pain even if it feels really weird still.

Had another long day of work couped up in the basement of a building installing software. Followed with a late dinner and desert and I got back to my hotel around 9pm. I did a few stretches and hit the streets again. The knee wasn’t feeling so good and the first attempt at an ollie up a curb hurt super bad. Ugh. I rolled around aimlessly for awhile thinking I should probably not be skating because of my knee. But it was my last night in St Louis and I had been thinking about a spot all day.

Oh yeah, this thing was across from my hotel. Pretty gnarly, not a lot of run up, but pretty much perfect. Too big for me.

I ended up here for a boardslide which hurt really bad. Ugh, I thought I would stop skating, but pushing didn’t hurt so I just rolled around into sketchy areas that I probably shouldn’t have been.

This is one of those handrails that my friends would probably say “Hey Glen I bet you could boardslide that rail” and I totally wouldn’t be able to.

After quite a bit more pushing and not seeing anything fun I ended up at a good window sill ledge. I reminded me of the famous PJ Boston spot, but it didn’t grind so I moved on. Seriously St Louis skaters must either be lazy or there are so many other ledges that they just don’t care. Next I ended up at the little curb cut kicker above. My knee wasn’t hurting too bad at this point. Ollie’ing it was harder than I thought it would be because of cracks. I lined it out with some Oyola feeling lines with some faster than normal (for me) kickflips up the curb then ollie from cut to cut then got one with a bad back 180 off another curb cut. It was fun though. Next I ended up at the AT&T place again which is where I was working so I didn’t stay long. It was vacant and creepy. I tried a line of ollie up a curb to quick ollie down 3 then then crooks the perfect marble ledge, but it stuck. Argh St Louis, a 200 foot marble ledge that is perfect, not a bust, and no one skates it? Some old man with not very many teeth asked me if I was a professional after I ollied the three stair, so maybe there just aren’t any skaters in St Louis? I mean clearly I don’t resemble a pro skater ever.

This spot was crazy too. Lots of good ledges, no recent marks on them. Maybe I was just having the luck of the century and not getting booted? I manualled this thing which took longer than it should.

As I was walking/rolling to the next area I snapped this photo. There were three ladies nearby taking photos too and one of asked if it was the state capitol. I said “No, it’s the old courthouse”. One of them said “Oh, we don’t live here” I said “Me either I’m just staying near it” and then one of them said “We’ll clearly your a better person then us”. Ha ha wtf?

I wish this spot wasn’t a quick bust and I wish the homeless lady wasn’t sleeping at the other end of it. I didn’t get to skate this spot really at all.

This is the spot I was thinking of all day. It starts here, but behind where the photo was taken. Ollie up the curb, ollie up the two, lots of good flatground then the following set of stairs.

A totally epic spot. All day at work I had thought about my dream lines there and was saying to myself that I’d skate until 4am if I had to to get every line I thought of. Well, maybe I should have taken into account my knee acting up again. That and I did the first line first try and it felt so good I almost didn’t want to touch it. Ollie up 1, ollie up two, fast kickflip on flat, ollie the 4, front 180 off the curb. Sure they are all basics, but it felt really cool to do a line that spanned a block. Once again someone asked if I was a professional. So weird. I really wanted to go with ollie up curb, kickflip up two, no comply 180, fakie flip, front shove down the 4, but I didn’t. I gave up and called it a night. Part of it was the bum sleeping near the 4 stair, part of it was doing that line first try, part of it was too much solo skating, being tired, etc, but most of it was my knee and me wondering if I was damaging it. It had swelled up pretty crazy. Ugh. I’m super stoked I had the motivation to skate in St Louis though. Skating the city was a blast. I can’t believe I didn’t see one other skater though and I can’t believe how many spots there are that no one appears to skate. Weird town.