Got a promotion and raise at work today so I was feeling pretty good. Ate dinner with the family and they all went to see a kid movie. Liz recommended I go skate so we didn’t spend the extra $20 since I have to get a huge tub of popcorn when I go to the movies. Anyways, I chilled out for a bit, listened to some music and loaded the KOTC clip below then went skating at Southern Hills. Why don’t I skate there more? It’s almost perfect. I started off really slow as usual, but had some weird kind of drive to skate faster and try hard lines. I waxed up one of the ledge in the back that hasn’t been waxed before for some weird reason. I was still using the first batch of graNULLa bar wax and it was soft and getting everywhere. Ugh. It didn’t grind or slide well, but the ledge is in perfect shape so I kept at it. I eventually got a great run for me. Front shove into the downhill part of the sidewalk at the top of the lot, kickflip into the handicap ramp, front board pop out a ledge, crooks the ledge I waxed, then almost a nollie flip. So close! Coming the other way I struggled with front 50s as they would stick so bad. But I had to get on them perfect and stick with it so I guess it was good for me to keep trying them. I got a slow front 50, heelflip, crooks, slam ollieing up the 2 stair. I tried another line of front shove up the curb again, treflip into the bank, ollie up a ledge then ollie off past a crack. I slammed so many times on the front shove and treflip. Hard slams. Slams I don’t normally take because I was actually moving. I was hyped on skating so hard and the slams didn’t hurt much other than my wrist. It eventually got dark so I gave up on the line and just ollied onto/off the bench then did some flatground. Treflip, b/s flip, fakie flip, f/s halfcab flip, treflip primo slide SLAM call it a day.

It’s been a few years since Rich has done this. Email John Doe Zine if you want to enter. It’s seriously a blast. Below is the Null clip from the 2004 contest. It’s the first clip I ever edited. You can tell I filmed it too because it’s super shaky. Awesome.

Didn’t have a whole lot of energy left after all the swimming and roller coasters the day before.  After work and playing some baseball with Ollie I went to the manny pad.  There was a big puddle from the sprinkler system (good thing it was running considering how much it rained earlier) which ended up being fun to ollie as a setup for the manny pad.  Oh yeah, I had a new deck and shoes.  Another Null deck.  Geez.  And another set of the eS La Brea shoes.  This time an ugly green.  Everything felt pretty good though.  I like when I’m sitting on a stack of decks for awhile and take the one off the bottom of the stack so it’s all flat.  Love it.  Anyways, I couldn’t get a manual to start, but I got nose mannies evertime.  I did a little line of nose man, ollie the puddle, ollie up the curb to quick up the next curb.  I was happy the quick up didn’t take 10 tries like last time.  I also got that with a back 180 up eventually.  I put a box in the puddle to ollie and managed to land every ollie I tried over it until the end of the session when it got dark.  Even when I turned the box upright so it was taller.  I really didn’t land much for mannies other than a manual front 180 out and nose manny front 180 out with a little back wheel bonk action.  I got a few nollie front shoves up the curb, but couldn’t land in manual.  Carleigh met up for a minute, but was stressing over moving her washer/dryer so she was too preoccupied to lay down a kickflip nose man nollie tre out.  She left and I killed some time seeing if I was gonna get the washer/dryer by exploring around Sunflower grocery store area.  I ended up in front of Rocky Mountain Kids and spent way too much time trying to get a quick ollie over a rug followed by an ollie up onto a planter then 180 off.  There was like 4 cracks right in front of the planter then two more on top of it.  After quite a few failed attempts I figured I was just being dumb and moved on.  I cruised around a bit, but didn’t really do much.  No wonder spots appeared over night or anything and Carleigh gave her nice washer/dryer away to someone else.  I went home and set up some new wheels since it sucked having everything else new with old wheels.  Am I officially a whiny bitch when it comes to decks/wheels/shoes yet?  Man I hope so.

Took the day off work and surprised the kids with an action packed day consisting of swimming at the Bay, eating out for dinner and then Lakeside in the evening.  I was beyond exhausted and sick by the end of the night.  Such a fun day.

Kinda sore and tired, but skated flat for awhile in front of the house.  Was gonna hang with the kids, but they were just watching a movie so after no good tricks I left to Valmont.  There was a big puddle there from the rain earlier.  I waxed up the ledge real good anyway because now the spot was like a gap over ledge.  I started trying mostly noseslides popped up to crooks, but never got one up into crooks.  I got a few front 50s over but struggled.  Out of nowhere I tried a nollie flip and landed it.  WTF?!?!?!  I giggled for a bit super hyped and almost landed the next one too.  That’s either the 3rd or 4th nollie flip I’ve landed and the last one was on Campus by the banked manny pad when I was skating with Nate and Jack a few years ago.  I started trying a line of a fast kickflip (that left me with enough speed to do a trick on the curb on the far north side of the parking lot without pushing) followed by a back pivot then front 50 over the water.  I think I got that once or twice.I was pretty beat, but Nate ended up being able to skate late so I couldn’t pass up skating with him again.  I went and picked him up and we went back to Valmont.  Nate of course front 50d the water like it was nothing.  He tried a bunch of noseslide nollie heels out.  Some were close.  Pretty good considering he can barely do noseslides.  We played a no holds barred game of SKATE which means Nate can do nollie and switch tricks.  Things started out bad when Nate missed the first kickflip and the double or nothing.  He made a bit of a comeback, but missed a lot of his tricks and will have to live with that loss for a long time in Portland.  Ha.  After SKATE Nate and I kept trying noseslide variation.  He was trying nollie heel out and I was trying to go into crooks.  At one point I got a first try 2mph front tail on the low part and Nate back 50d over the water.  Nate also landed his first ever switch front big heel.  Ridiculous.  Since I had landed a very rare nollie flip I went for the trifecta of nollie flip tricks I can do.  I tried nollie varial flip for awhile before getting a bad one.  Then I tried nollie treflip forever while Nate tried switch treflip.  Kind of appropriate considering we both learned those tricks at the same time.  After a good 20 minutes I finally got the nollie tre and Nate pretty much got my back with a switch tre.  Sick!  I was super exhausted, but man what a fun session and wow I will miss Nate.

John Elway cracked the first Coors and formed the Colorado River!

Met up pretty late with Carleigh on a hot night.  After some cruising around we ended up at the Wells Fargo qp and were warming up when some hippy dude came up to Carleigh and said, “You have big tits for a skater chick.”  Pretty funny.  We left that area pretty quickly.  Not because of the hippy dude, but because we felt like we were gonna shoot our boards into a window.  We ended up at a dumb little double sided curb that we waxed up with the first attempt at GraNULLa wax (way too oily).  Carleigh got quick up to boardslide.  I got manual to front board and quick up to slappy lip that didn’t slide, but I’m still counting it.  After some more dorking around we ended up at the popout ledge and skated it for a long time.  Carleigh got some good noseslides.  I did the best front board popout I’ve ever done then one of the funnest lines I’ve ever done.  Sw front 180 off the curb across the street, kickflip up the curb, crook, roll into the street then put down the easiest treflip I’ve ever done.  I giggled like crazy when I landed it.  It sent a jolt of happiness through my body I can’t describe in words.  Never have I done a 360 flip that felt that easy.  I almost wanted to quit skating right there, but instead struggled with some pop shoves up the curb.  This really tall dude Max met up with us for awhile and skated with a ton of energy and creativity.  Drop down nose manual across the street, axle stall kickflip back to axle stall (wtf?), lots of fun tricks.  After that we headed to Mountain Sun and had a few beers.  We even stole a couple from a table that didn’t drink theirs.  Awesome.

Super exhausted from the long day of skating / premiere before.  I skated in shorts for the first time in awhile just doing flatground.  I was skating a bit faster than normal which probably explains why I didn’t land much.  I struggled with heelflips, 360 flips and frontside halfcab flips while landing my first in awhile nollie varial flip.  I was barely moving for that one of course.

This might very well be the last skate session with Nate as he’s moving to Portland.  He’s been one of my favorite skate homies ever and a great friend.  Best of luck in Portland Nate, can’t wait to skate with you again.Ok, now that your eyes are all teary lets move on to the skating.  It seemed like things took forever to get organized, but eventually Jason, Carleigh, Nate, Neil and I headed to Broomfield to get warmed up.  Before we left I had skated the curb in my back yard for a bit and did a front smith stall kickflip out.  Nice.  Anyways Broomfield wasn’t very crowded and the weather was much cooler than normal.  We ended up all skating pretty hard for about an hour.  It seemed like everyone was landing new stuff.  I don’t really remember what everyone was doing.  I remember Nate trying nollie big back heel to fakie nose manual.  He didn’t get too close, but even just getting that close is ridiculous.  I found a new wallie angle at the bottom of the wallride bank that hyped me up.  I came close to kickflip manuals on the blue box.  I really don’t remember what we all landed, but we were all skating non-stop and having fun.The first place we ended up was this weird alley spot. Above is Nate doing a 5-0. Peep Carleigh’s site for more photos. This spot is way harder to skate than it looks. The air conditioning units get in the way and there are cracks everywhere and it’s downhill. But it’s so fun. John, Chris Jones and Daryl met us here. It took a long time for the older ones (Chris and Daryl not included) to land anything. I only got front 50 and 5-0 (but the 5-0 was intended to be a 50). I also did a couple rock stall funny turn arounds on other stuff. John got front 50 and sw back nose and a crazy quick up to front 50 against the window. Jason did a bunch of good front 50s and ended it with a sick front nose to fakie. Chris dorked around mostly and did some crazy stuff. Daryl pretended to be the pro oh his shoes (Pappalardo) and ollied up the crazy tall loading dock. Nate did everything. Front 5-0, front 50, front nosegrind, front 5-0 back 180, front nosegrind back 180, nose manny the wood ledge, he officially owned it. Carleigh didn’t skate it at first but started working on noseslides and shut the session down with an accidental 180 nosegrind to fakie. Sick!Next was the taller white ledge in the alley near Civic park.  Nate wanted to get a line with a kick back tail.  While he warmed up I ended up getting a decent run for me.  Good for me halfcab flip, noseslide, treflip.  The halfcab flip felt really good.  I slammed pretty hard trying to front 50 it.  Jason got a good front board pop out, back noseslides, front nose.  I filmed Nate for awhile try a line of nollie tre then kick back tail.  He put the best nollie tres down, but never got the kick back tail.  Doh.After a couple wallies out of the grate wallie dock and a quick kick out at the art center we went out for dinner then to the Transworld Hallelujah premiere.  It was pretty crowded and hard to see, but it was fun.  Tyler Bledsoe’s back tail for 20 feet to b/s flip out is ridiculous.  Taylor Bingaman skates coping  really well wether it’s down stairs or on tranny.  Pete Eldridge was in the crowd and looking sharp.  Denver is well represented in the montage which totally rules.  Ryan Decenzo does some crazy ass tricks.  Torey Pudwill does so many NBDs it’s ridiculous.  There was some controversy after the video finished in that Nate and I liked the NBD part the best, Fuzz and John liked the coping dancer the best.  But we agreed to disagree and everything was fine.  Seems like it’ll be a great video to watch over and over.After the premiere we went to a 24 hour diner filled with typical late night diner folks.  It was awesome.  I was exhausted.

Had a long day at work, my phone wasn’t working well, and I was tired when I got off work.  Before eating dinner Carleigh rolled up and after a stop to Meta we met up with Neil and Brian at Broomfield.  I started off sucking and kept a right on sucking until almost the end.  I did nothing remotely decent until “10 min and we’re out” when I finally got a front feeb on the little qpipe and backed it up with a 2 mph kick back tail on the blue ledge.  Carleigh skated pretty well.  She did lots of front 50s on the black ledge and boardslides down the little rail.  Brian has front baords on lock down the little rail, skated a lot of the pool and did a front feeble to fakie for his first trick while complaining it wasn’t a pivot.  Neil rips that place.  The front slash on the wallride to ollie over the little rail line is my favorite.  Max and Davis were there ripping too.  Max ollied up the euro ledge without the kicker.  Ridiculous.   Those kids rip.  I mostly skated like poo and was depressed about until the very end.  I guess it’s better late then never.