Rampy upgrade is done! Well, kind of. I finished cleaning up the garage and applied another layer of Salba sauce then helped Ollie with his math homework so he could come skate Rampy. I was super nervous that the coping would stick out too far or break (after seeing the chunks out at the Launch ramp I was extra scared). Sometimes I’m an ok dad and I let him have the first drop in. He seemed pretty hyped. And he had some good runs doing his basics which are rock fakies, tail stall, fakie ollies, body varials and coffins (yes he gets back up somehow). He also got one little scratch grind. My first run was pretty fun. I mostly just did a few backside grinds. It’s sticker then the steel coping obviously and it’s a big change. The coping didn’t stick out too far although I wish it would have been in a little more. Oh well. I did have a couple grinds through two tiles that felt awesome. Everything felt more fun actually. Front Ds were way harder though. Unfortunately after awhile the coping started chipping in ways that I didn’t want to keep skating. I think I’ll get some of that industrial curb paint and cover the coping in it to help protect it a little. I’m hyped though, Rampy might be even a little harder to skate now, but grinding concrete is way funner then steel. Just gotta get that coping a little protected.

Finished the decks last night and Salba Sauced the coping. This photo is from the laundry room so you can see that I added onto the deck a little. Gonna be weird having room to stand on that side now too. Just gotta clean up and maybe add some grout under the coping where it meets the masonite. But it’s skateable. Might hit it tonight ..

Picked up Fuzz then met Skelly, Fuller and Chadman at the Northglenn park. It was in the mid 30s, but it felt even colder. Must have been some humidity in the air. There was 3 other people at the park, some other Team Pain park builders and an Arvada ATF machine. Warming up was straight up embarrassing with those dudes there. It was cool having to park to just 8 people, but everyone else was ripping so hard it was hard to find the will to warm up. But it happened. Fuzz did his first ollie in months over the cheese wedge gap right away. Skelly says he was just cruising, but I saw him ripping all over the place. Chadman did a huge back 180 over the hip as well as a bolts biggie heel. I’ll skip ahead to the goods. Everyone but Dave, Chad and I started skating the pool. They were all ripping when I would look over and Skelly had DRI/Slayer cranking out of his boom box. Dave and I tried the cheese wedge gap for awhile, but couldn’t commit. Chadman tried to hype us with a hardflip, but he couldn’t get it. We all skated the bowl after awhile. The Team Painers left. Dave, Skelly and Jack were still killing the bowl so we joined them. Chadman slid out and slammed into the vert wall. Ouch. Fuzz did a fakie tail stall to sal flip back to tail. So sick! Chadman left. Dave and I were the only ones cruising the street area and I was finally feeling warmed up and having a blast. I got a line with a bigflip on the flat bank and then came back around and noseslid the big hubba. I’ve never tried that one before so I was really hyped. Also got a kickflip to fakie and a fakie flip on the flat bank. Fuller was doing some rad lines where he would manual the pyramid up top, ollie up the step up, do some grind on the little qps and then tried back lip to fakie on the weird qp. I also forced myself to do some ollies both ways over the hip. They were bad, but at least I finally tried some. Then the lights shut off. First time at a park in awhile, should probably do that more often. Fun crew too.

I got some free pool coping awhile ago and couldn’t resist the urge to make little Rampy even harder to skate. Skelly, Carleigh, Ollie and Jake helped us get close to finishing the upgrade on Sunday.

It was fun learning this process and doing the grouting between tiles. I just have to finish the decks and get some Salba Sauce on the coping.

After a fun afternoon of working on Rampy (photos soon) we hit Southern Hills as it started getting dark and a nasty wind kicked in. The crew was Jake, Carleigh and I. The temperature was below freezing, and way colder when the gusts would hit. There were patches of ice on some of the benches. Brrrr. But we skated and everyone seemed to be excited about it. Carleigh mostly worked on back 180s on flat or into the little bank. She also did some noseslides and got into 180 nose grinds. I was kind of all over the place. When we built Rampy the first time we also took a break at Southern Hills. Although Jason was along for that one. Argh. I really like that spot. I mostly just cruised around for awhile and did some basics and enjoyed the pop a new board brings. I got a couple lines I was pretty happy with. First one was ollie over the corner of a bench, noseslide to fakie, fakie varial flip, heelflip, bail a crook. Other one was front 50 front shove out, halfcab flip, front noseslide (landed so bad!). God a good feeling crooks too. Came close to front 5-0 shove out on the bench too, but it got too dark and windy for us to stand it. Jake keeps getting better. His kickflips were looking good and he had some nice noseslides and halfcab noseslides. He kept almost slamming on front 50s so started doing front tails instead. That’s sicker anyway and he had a nice one or two to fakie as well. Fun session even though it was so cold.

Was pretty uninspired, but feeling fat and figured I should hit the ramp for a bit. It wasn’t fun. I think I was looking too forward to the pool coping that would be put on it over the weekend. At one point I told myself I needed to do 10 frontside tricks. I got to 8 and was trying frontside feebles, got close on the first one then kept getting further and further away so decided to stop skating.

Was gonna run some errands, grab some beer and then sit around and watch basketball. But when I went to leave I felt fatter then normal from a pot luck at work and decided I should skate a little. After hitting Target I hit the Valmont ledge. I wasn’t all that inspired, but I kept at it. I’m not sure if it’s my age, my arthritis, or both, but that ledge seems taller now. I can’t believe I have front 50’d the 3rd tier of it before. I could barely front 50 the 2nd tier, but eventually did and got shove and front 180s out. Did a bunch of noseslides. A couple tiny front tailslides, sorry attempts at kick back noseslide, a bunch of slow treflips where I put my hand down in the landing, and some other stuff not worthy of writing about.

Picked up Carleigh then met Dave and eventually Fuzz at the Wells Fargo quarter pipe. Carleigh and Fuzz chatted for awhile while I just kind of rolled around and did some basics to get warmed up. Fuzz showed up shortly after. Everyone was kinda doing their own thing and the vibe was pretty awesome. Carleigh learned back smiths and back tails. Fuzz hasn’t skated much lately and liked to pretend he couldn’t ollie anymore, but he still ollied into noseblunts first try and did lots of other tricks like fakie nose blunt, switch pivot fakie and learned a new trick, front 270 nose pick come out forward (maybe there is a name for this?). Dave did a bunch of old man tricks I was jealous of and don’t know the names of too well. Crailtaps, seran wraps, etc. He also went on to learn back noseblunts! Wow. I was starting most things out by kickflipping up the curb and landed most of them. Slammed hard on a front tail shove and can incredibly close to front smith kickflip out. Landed on it a few times, but would either get wheel bite or hit a crack or just fall off for no reason. So much fun. Oh yeah, Dave got $5 from a drunk dude who thanked him for “putting on a good show” at one point. Shortly after that Dave did a couple really smooth boneless tail taps on a black pillar that also resulted in cheers from a pedestrian, but no money this time. Doh. He tried to teach Fuzz and I to do that trick too and we got it, Fuzz’s was probably even smooth.

We rolled over to the little curb/granite ledge thing in the brick alley. Fuzz wasn’t really feeling it. Carleigh did some front tails. Dave had a crooks to fakie. I got a sloppy kick back 5-0 pivot thing that was intended to be a kick back tail and a front tail shove out that surprised me. We went around the corner to a large rock and tried some wallrides for a bit. It was hard to navigate around a bench to hit it right and the last part of the rock ride was really weird. Unfortunately for Dave he is goofy footed so he had to ride it frontside. Didn’t stop him from getting it first though. Trying to get his back I hung up midway and dove to the ground in pile of hurt. I got up quick though and luckily no damage to the ribs or wrist. Fuzz landed the rockride shortly after and we moved on to the yellow curb parking garage nearby. Fuzz mostly chilled. Carleigh did some long slappy noseslides. Dave had some cool manual combos over the medians like front 180 nose manny 180 out and back 180 nose manny. I did some front 50s, nose mannies and locked into a perfect back tail, bailed, then did a few crappy kick back tails that just barely scraped the tail. Doh. Super fun night though.

Feeling much better today. It was even a bit warmer out. I picked Carleigh up and randomly decided to check out a manny pad at the new CU research center by her house. It ended up being a little weirder then we thought it would be and we had to push an out house out of the landing. Turns out there was a perfect looking ledge right around the corner (above). Jason showed up with Lindy. Carleigh had a little wax and we started making the ledge a little slicker. We got a few basics on it. Carleigh did some noseslides and maybe even a noseslide shove. I tried to line things out. Got kickflip up the curb, crooks the ledge, but not the manual after. Coming the other way got ollie over a manhole, front 50 the ledge, kickflip off a curb. Any spot that has a manhole to do tricks over and curbs to go up/down rules. Jack showed up and had more wax so we waxed it enough to make PRod proud. Mad shit started going down. Mostly by Jack, but it ended up being one of those sessions were everyone was stoked and pushing themselves. Jason and Lindy didn’t stay too long, but they got to see Jack do a lot of tricks like back tail, back tail shove, crooks, ollie onto the bench and wallride so crazy. When Jack was doing that I was working on kickflip back noseslides. I was going hella slow, but did get his back with what technically was a make. I need to keep trying it though because I think it could work. It’s remotely possible I’ve done this trick about as poorly before, but it was years ago and probably worse actually. We kept skating. Jason probably left around now. Carleigh was lining things out with back 180s and frontside halfcabs and trying some of the first front noses I’ve seen her try. Going the other way she was doing front 180 nosegrinds to forward and we have document proof of the make. So sick. I have no idea how many more tricks Jack did. He learned back tail front 270 out, did front tail back 270 out, learned kickflip noseslides and accidently did kickflip front crooks so went ahead and just learned that one too. I haven’t seen Jack smile like that skating in awhile. So good to see. He killed it all day. I had a blast myself. Did front 50 shove, some of the better crooks I’ve done, back 50s, back 50 shove!, crooks to fakie, front nose to bad landing. Tried a bunch of noseslide 270 shoves, but never got very close. Kickflipped a manhole a few times. Pushed switch mongo. Ha, this session was seriously awesome. Carleigh didn’t quite get a front 50 which would have made it a little better though. We ended it on the long manny pad where I got a manny quick and couldn’t quite get a nose manual. Jack almost did kickflip manny up to manny. We basically skated the same spot for four hours and it ruled. Jack and Carleigh you rule. And thanks for hanging out and smiling with us Jason! This session was everything I love about skateboarding. Look for a few photos and Jack and Carleigh’s blog in the distant future.

I guess I’m not built to grind. I had actually got these Thunder trucks from Meta the day before the Indy’s from Crisis. For some reason I thought I would like the Indys more and I’d just return the Thunders. Nope. Friday night I went to sleep super early feeling pretty good and was looking forward to a full day of skating on Saturday. I ended up waking up around 3am and coughing like crazy for a couple hours. Ugh. Guess my cold caught up with me. So after attempting to sleep it off I got up and Nugget helped me set up some trucks I would hopefully like more. Thunders with a Budweiser graphic. I like Budweiser and I like Thunder. Perfect. Got a bunch of calls to go skate and was thinking of piling in with TF to go skate somewhere, but I was still feeling rotten and decided to bail. Instead I sat around and watched some skate videos (5 Boro, Think and the Phili video This Time Tomorrow), took a nap and recruited Ollie to come skate for a bit.

We went to the area around Valmont & Foothills. We didn’t cover a lot of ground, but hit some fun stuff. I was feeling pretty tired and stiff for obvious reasons (I’m sick for those who can’t remember the paragraph right above this). First thing I remember was trying to ollie a little median and I told ollie if he ollied up on the sidewalk and 180’d off I’d do it. I did. Ollie rules. We found a nice two sided curb nearby (not the one in the photo) which I did my first grinds on the new trucks on. Tried a few front lip transfers, but failed. I have been scared of that trick forever and committing to it on a ledge that doesn’t end was the hard part for me. Ollie had a couple little boardslides. Then we went across the street and ended up at the area above that had another double sided curb that was fun to slappy up. Ollie grind it pretty far too. We went back to the previous area and hit a little manny pad for a bit where I couldn’t front 180 nose manual. Ollie was laughing a bunch though. We hit a two stair area, but I started to feel extra tired and wanted to bail. Ollie started skating harder at that point, trying shove it’s and stuff and said he wanted to skate a little more. Maybe tomorrow kid. Ha. Oh, notice no complaining about the trucks? I guess I’m not old or good enough for Indys.