After driving home from the mountains in some sketchy snow I took a brief break, watched Sabotage 3 then headed out to Valmont for a solo session in the night after such a warm day. I haven’t been here in awhile, but this spot is still amazing. I wanted to mostly skate the ledge and that’s what I did. Nothing came easy at all. I kept skating though. I only got a few tricks even though I skated almost 3 hours. Front 50, front 50 front 180 out, front 50 front shove out, front nose, front nose to fakie, halfcab back nose, back crooks, back nose, back nose fakie, crooks and back 50 (which was way too hard). Could not do front tail, came close to kick back 50. My favorite thing was going fast and ollieing up onto the ledge where the grate is then doing a front shove off about half way up. Although even that took a long time. I tried a bunch of flat ground. Nollie flips, nollie heels, nollie tres, none were even close. I got into a phase of trying fakie front 50 and when I would not land it I’d turn around and try varial heels. I landed on a couple of those that might count in a few months when I’m 40, but I’m not 40 yet. The fakie 50 took me forever, but when I got it I did f/s halfcab out, did a flatground heel then did the ollie up/front shove off thing. That made me feel good. I got a few 3 flips, b/s flips, fakie flips, heelflips, etc. I skated like crap, but I skated hard so I felt good when I went home.

Had to get out early to hit Community then off to the mountains to visit my mom. Went to Arvada park before Community and ended up skating for almost three hours and had a blast. When I got there Brian was still doing skate lessons. I cruised around for awhile just kind of hitting everything, but nothing serious. Brian joined after awhile. We didn’t land tricks on the tiny pool coping qp at the top of the park then moved down near the jersey barriers. We had some fun runs starting with the little noping qp, the pump bumps, the elevated qp, then back. Brian killed it with a b/s ollie, front rock, front tail. I tried to copy him, but couldn’t get the front tail. I was hyped to front rock that qp though. Brian had to leave for a Square State event, but was willing for a quick photo op for Instagram (above).

I skated solo for awhile and was having fun. I carved around the smaller of the two bowls at the top. At one point I went to get out and stepped right over the spine and flipped into the vert bowl. Ha. The other dudes at the top didn’t even seem to notice. Today was supposed to be more of a tranny day so I went over to the miniramp area. I felt pretty good and ended up landing quite a few of my tricks. The really surprising part to me was how good the ventures felt. I thought it would be awkward skating tranny with them, but to be honest they felt way better than Thunders. A big crew of tools with one wheel things mounted on their shoes came over to the miniramp section which was my queue to bail out of there. I was playing with the Pier 7 thing when Jake showed up. Whoa! The one wheeled dorks left and we skated the mini for awhile. Jake has a big bag. I was able to do runs with front d and fakie back smith to fakie in them so I felt ok. Then we hit the street section. We tried lines of frontside ollies on the mellow bank over the rail then boardslide the long concrete ledge. Neither of us got them together, but Jake was able to do the ollie really easy. It took me awhile and the one I got I bonked it hard. I decided to change up the line. Trick on the pool coping qp at the top of the park, 50 the marble ledge up top, come down and somehow turn enough to make the boardslide. I came close, but ended up just giving up and do the boardslide on it’s own. So fun. Then Jake made fun of me not being able to manual the pier 7 ledge for awhile. I did get into kick 50 on it though and manage a kickflip up the euro. I did quite a bit of flatground near the starting point too. I was like 5/7 on treflips so I started trying bigflips for the heck of it. I didn’t get close. Oh well, had to bail out quick and get off to the mountains. Super fun session.