Null day! First in awhile. Carleigh, Jack, Max, Blaine and I met Chad at this new manny pad spot in Denver. It’s still under construction and will soon have a handrail around it we’re certain. But on this day the only obstacle was human crap on the far side right where you’d want to land/ollie. It sucked. Jack found a car floor mat we put over most of it to at least by us some comfort. Jack and Max were pulling some moves quick. Carleigh and I were doing accidental wallies up. Chad was struggling for reasons unknown to him. I was trying nose mannies at one point, slammed and looked up to see if Jack was laughing at me, but he was nowhere to be found. Turned out he had rolled his ankle yet again wallieing off an orange cone. He’s been on a bad streak lately and it’s tough to see. He went Tommy Gunz though and kept skating. It was crazy. Unfortunately he got pretty bummed and ended up tweaking it again. Argh mang. I never ended up getting a nose manual, but got a few manuals. One of which was right after Jack got up from rolling his ankle and casually manualed it like it was nothing. I also got kickflip up back 180 off, kickflip up no comply 180 off, front 180 up f/s halfcab off, a few things that kept me from being too bummed. Carleigh was hucking nollie back 3s off (aka helipops aka Romars) and getting pretty close in my book. Blaine killed it filming. Max got a sick line and a funny clip where his board shot out into traffic and got run over. That spot gave off all kinds of weird vibes. Between the hipsters and homeless people walking by it was non-stop weirdness. The homeless guy ranting about the rebar being dangerous got old the after the fifth time he walked by.

Then we ended up at the Church of Scientology. There was a fun downhill alley with a few little bumps and a tall backside ledge for regular footers. Blaine was doing some rad lines with tricks into the hills. Halfcabs, back 180s, no comply 180’s etc. Carleigh too. Chad was trying front 180 nosegrind and got close. I was doing some nollies that felt taller then my normal nose scrapes then noseslides, but a car parked in the way. I ended up getting a couple fun feeling lines. Kickflip into a mini bump, noseslide the ledge, back 180 off a curb cut. Pop shove the little bump, noseslide to fakie, switch front 180 off the curb cut. I was hyped. At that point some obnoxious car pulled up and said we were on private property and asked us to leave. I didn’t actually hear it, but it sounded really annoying and I’m sure I would have been a smart ass. Pretty weird day. My legs felt pretty numb and arthritic.

We hung at Crisis again drinking some beers and watching skate videos. John showed up and after awhile called out the Broomfield park so we did it. It was only open for 30 more minutes. John, Fuzz and I played a game of O-L-D on the quartapotty. John is super good at tranny, but somehow was the first out. He can’t do front disasters? So funny. He can do pivots to fakie, but not a front D. Crazy! Fuzz did a sex change disaster which I’ve maybe done on a qp once like 10 years ago. Maybe longer. First one was close. We were playing loose rules and I was able to get it a few tries later. Pretty hyped actually. Then the lights shut off. There was a little light in the corner and John and I tried some switch noseslide variations. The John Brandow patent tricks. They are basically slappies, but man they are fun. Fun session. I haven’t skated with a few beers in me in a long long time and it was honestly pretty fun. Felt great to see my friends so much this weekend.

My NB+ shoes were in need of repairs and when I took the ol’ glue gun there was some weird reaction to the tech layer and it kinda mutated into some weird bubble that I didn’t want to skate. So I showed up at SOL on a rainy friday afternoon in my new Lakai Guys. I’ve had these shoes before and loved them. After today I think I’m sold on Lakai XLKs from here on out. When I got to SOL there was a few people playing foosball and I joined in for a bit then we skated. My new shoes felt much better on tranny right out of the gate. Much better board feel. I didn’t rip by any means, but I didn’t skate as bad as I normally do there. Lots of Longmont locals came in and out of there. Chad, Uriel, a few younger kids that were ripping, a dude that just moved to Longmont that was destroying it. Dude was seriously slaying it. Front 180 fakie 5-0 to fakie, back smith over the extension, back 5-0 to fakie over it, hurricanes to fakie, etc. All fast and powerful. I got to the point where I would land more then one trick besides axle stalls in a run so I was happy. Had one with front rock, front d and fakie back smith to fakie in it. I left feeling really happy and went to Crisis for the Fallen premiere.

After the Fallen premiere we were hanging out and Blaine starts messing around with some slappies. Before long it turned into a full on session. The crew was Fuzz, Blaine, Carleigh (in a skirt!), Jack and I and we skated for a pretty long time. I was skating Fuzz’s board. Jack was doing lots of fast grinds which aren’t easy on that waxless curb. As you can see from the videos there were a lot of boneless style tricks, slappies and a front pivot kickflip out. I had tried that on Fuzz’s board a few times and he said I should land it. So I did. Whoa. Not even that many tries. It kicked off an hour long frenzy for Fuzz to get one too. Which he did perfect. Not the funny one above, he got one bolts. Carleigh was getting into legit backside slappies which is pretty hard on that square curb. If it was waxed I’d be willing to bet some would have been landed. Blaine was kinda all over too trying a bunch of random tricks. Jack had a pretty epic slam sliding out and shooting his board breaking a table leg, but somehow not breaking the window. Whew. He had another one with the board getting caught in his feet and he almost hit his head on the Lowcard toilet. Ha ha. There were a lot of silly boneless tricks and powerslide noseslides. So fun. A couple of my favorites were the f/s 270 slide to tail and boneless 270 to tail. What a fun night. I drove home late feeling some of the best physically and mentally I’ve felt in awhile. The rain had stopped and driving down the hill into Boulder I could see patches of fog hovering over the city. It was beautiful. Pissed Jeans was cranked on the stereo. Awesome.