First and foremost, read a well written and great review here on the Westword site (where the above photo is from). I was more nervous for this show then I have been for any show in a long time. It was like the perfect storm of anxiety and I was a mess leading up to this show. So as soon as Liz and I hit the Goosetown Tavern for dinner the beer started flowing. We met up with some homies (Tom, Fuzz, John, Chad, CJ, Darin) and pre-partied until about the time the opening band went on stage. Turns out Shearwater pretty good. It’s always nice having a decent opening act.

Then came Dinosaur Jr. Gulp. They opened with See It On Your Side which is the last song on Sky. It was rad, but the sound was weird. They didn’t really get the sound fixed all night. They didn’t sound as awesome as normal, but they were actually playing pretty awesome. The Bluebird sound guy sucked it up. With all that said it was still an awesome show. They played six songs off the new album and a slew of Dinosaur classics including Sludgefeast which is my favorite live song ever. I probably drank too much. It seemed whenever I was almost finished with a beer someone (normally Fuzz) would hand me a beer and say “It’s your night man enjoy!” So awesome. Thanks to everyone for making it such a fun night and if you didn’t already know Dinosaur Jr is the greatest band of all time.

Not so bad, dude looks like he’s having fun at least.

Got an invite from Colby the night before to hit Arvada park. Alright, I haven’t hit a park in a long time. Sure. I got there and it was crowded, but not crazy crowded. The little kid area (funnest part) was pretty vacant so we skated there. Warming up was kinda fun actually. Did some boardslide popouts on the round blue ledge, carves on the jersey barriers, some dorky stuff on the edge of one of the blue kickers. Colby and his homies were ripping and having fun, but seemed to have to leave right after I got there. Doh. So I had a couple hours to kill with no money to go bowling with my friends or skate the park. I skated the park. At times I even had fun and seemed motivated. Had a fun line starting above the little bowl carving around at the start of the snake run to axle stall on the weird qp on top of the platform, brief f/s 5-0 on the little cement qp entering the kid section, b/s ollie on the hip, boardslide the marble rounded flatbar. That was fun. It was around then that I noticed the pivot cup had completely blown out and was missing from my back truck. This made for some really awkward turning and started to weird me out. I tried a run for awhile of ollie over the marble flat bar, ride over the little blue kicker to rock then front 50 the stupid super low hubba that is long. I got into it, but ollieing onto something that low is weird. I ollied into it a couple times at least. I went through a long phase of trying feeble stall kickflips out on the tiny qp under the snakerun. Actually got kind of close a couple times. Then I went up to the little qp above the snakerun that is pretty fun. Did a few basics, but really started to feel blah. Went into the snakerun a few times, didn’t carve up the monster qp very high. Only felt weightless once. Pretty much left after that. Went home and tried to replace the pivot cup, but the darn kingpin bolt/nut is so worn down that I couldn’t get it back on. I guess it’s new trucks time, been almost a year so not too bad.