Got up super early to meet up with everyone at Arvada park. I was the last one there and I arrived at 7:15. Geez. The park had quite a few people already. I joined Chad, Fuzz, Carleigh and Jack in the big snake run. I guess the mindset was to skate the scariest thing first to warm up. It ended up being really fun. It’s pretty much impossible to describe in words who carved where, but everyone seemed to go fast and push themselves. Fuzz had a couple gnarly slams. Jack too. Chad could carve into the upper left corner. The new stuff for me was to do a rock ‘n roll on the pool coping qp on the top right then roll ever a big hump. Ha. Carleigh was getting pretty high on the big vert wall.

Then a few of us skated the smaller bowl. I had some fun back 50s down the little escalator, but wussed out of a front d in a corner. Doh. Jack was rolling into it from anywhere and doing back ds on the weird bank extension. Fuzz had nice long front 5-0s. Rob cruised it good.

Then Rob and I ollied up the tall platform and Neil couldn’t??? What is the world coming to? Neil! Fuzz of course did it too.

Then came session on the little weird qp to ledge thing up near the drinking fountains. Neil did a bunch of back disasters. Jack did pivot fakie and then died on a bigspin pivot attempt. Shook it off then did it next try. Gnarly. Fuzz did switch pivot fakie, switch blunt and front noseblunt. Whoa. Rob had some rad crail stalls and front d. Blake had some sick slappy front 50s. I thought what Blake was doing was sick so tried it and got a few slappy back 50s on it, but couldn’t get crooks.

I think we did an uphill boardslide session next on the long concrete double sided ledge. Fuzz did boardslide fakie and halfcab boardslide. Gnarly! Jack did boardslide to feeble, boardslide 270 to primo (ha!), boardslide 270 shove. Rob did boardslide transfer and Neil was doing boardslide to fakie all easy. Blake was trying boardslide shove. I got last place with a boardslide.

Some of went over for flippers on the mellow blue chip which is my favorite thing to skate at Arvada. It started off pretty good for me with kickflips b/s and f/s, a bigflip, but then I got stuck on halfcab flip and even more stuck on treflip to fakie. Rob came up big with a biggee front heel. Wow! Fuzz took the longest to get kickflip to fakie (two whole tries ha), had the record for most non-flip tricks (some good ones in there!) and had a halfcab flip easy. He bailed a f/s halfcab flip though after saying “If I bail this one I owe you a cider”. He bailed. Pay up holmes! Blake had some weird front shove revert thing and back heel. Everyone left and I kept trying 360 flips to fakie, eventually just giving up. Ugh.

After some lunch and hanging at Crisis for awhile we accumulated Fullertron and went to this spot. Pretty sick spot. I was so sore/tired though that just rolling into the banks hurt initially. I struggled through it being the stubborn idiot I am and had a couple fun bonelesses and a bunch of no slide tailslide(s). I wanted to do kickflip to fakie, but didn’t. Blake did his front shove revert trick again. Neil sat. Rob was skating good and locked into some good front tails, had a sick no comply boneless all easy and steezy (sorry), b/s flip, crail stalls. Dave killed it in typical Dave fashion. Mini handplants, crail stall variations, front tailslides, boneless, fakie shove, but couldn’t get the back tailslide to fakie. Fun, long day that was done by 2:30pm.

After work I picked up Matt and we met Jack at the Mikes Camera manny pad. I managed my two manny tricks kinda quick for me. Kickflip manual and nose manual shove. Matt slammed pretty hard on a kickflip up. Ouch. He had a nice halfcab manual going fast, nollie manual and tried treflip manuals. Jack had fakie bigspin manual back 180 out and probably a few more tricks. We went over to the ledge for a bit too. I was intimidated by the 2 sided part of the ledge and barely got a front 50. Ugh. Got crooks and boardslide pop out the other way. Matt had some fast front 50, 5-0, smith, tailslide, back 50, back tail. Wowsers. Jack had swtich crooks, front lip, switch hurricane (so good), back 5-0 and a bunch more. Fun quick session before I went and celebrated 16 years of marriage with The Mighty LZA.

Went to Lafayette park after dinner feeling pretty unmotivated and antisocial, but wanted to cruise around mellow. I arrived to a pretty normal Lafayette scene. A few skaters, bikers, scooters. I had done a few laps around the park when carload after carload of older rollerbladers showed up. Dudes with beards on rollerblades? Yeah, like 20 of them. That pretty much killed any desire I had left. Especially when they posted up on pretty much everything. I skated for about 45 minutes and can’t think of a single highlight.

After a busy day at work and then busy day with kids Matt picked me up and we met up with everyone at Broomfield park. And I literally mean everyone. Eric, Blake, Neil, Rob, Fuzz, Carleigh, Jack, Darin and more. The park was crowded with youngin’s too. I was about to go into ‘stand around and watch at a busy skatepark’ mode, but ended up skating. Matt was doing good stuff on the ledges already. I went up up and ran into the steep bank a few times to get warmed up. Fuzz too. It’s really hard to know what all everyone else was doing because there was so much going on. Rob did a rock ‘n roll on the steep bank which I’ve never even see him try before. Fuzz did some steezy decked rocks and front rocks. I had dropped in on a taller part of the pool coping in the flow bowl hoping that I would get over the fear of dropping into the pool. I then said if I land a front rock on the steep bank I’d drop in. Landed the front rock. Doh. But ended up dropping in fine into the shallow end. That was enough tranny skating for me! Ha. Then a black ledge session went down. I didn’t really skate it. But I saw a lot go down. Matt back tail, fakie 5-0. Fuzz lipslide, front nosegrind and bluntslide to scorpion. Rob and Neil crooks. Neil front nosegrind. Darin lots. I took a long time to nose manual the blue box, but did it. Blake was trying noseslide transfers onto the brown ledge. I got a super rare front nosegrind. Stoked! Then played with Darin for awhile on Kickflip, heelflip, treflip all together. Felt good on the kickflips and heelflips, but treflips were elusive. I landed a few with hands down, but that’s an over 50 make and I’m not 50 quite yet. Matt did that quick. And fakie too I think. I ollied the six stair in a couple tries. Felt great. Really fun. I should ollie more stairs and should have tried the double set. Jack was all over the park killing it the way he does. He is not a stock skater and it rules. He hyped me up for the six stair. Matt and I posed a couple kickflips down it, but never got close to committing. Carleigh got a couple back d’s on the brick qp as time was winding down. Fun night. My flatground game was off, but dropping into the pool, ollie’ing the six and getting a front nosegrind made the night fun for me.

Skated flat in front of the house for awhile trying to break in some new shoes Liz got me for my birthday. They are a little small, but seem like great shoes. I started off slow and doing lots of the basics. The goal was to land a new flip trick since I hadn’t gotten a new trick for April yet. It started to rain so I had to chill for awhile. Went back out about 15 minutes later since it’s CO and it was dry. Pretty much settled into only trying tricks I’ve never done. Nollie f/s flip one way and fakie double flip the other. Didn’t get either. Not even close on the nollie f/s flip. Very close on the fakie dubs though. Argh. I randomly thought about a trick I’ve wanted to do before. I don’t think I’ve done it, but if I did it was only once or something. Fakie varial flip revert. Got it like 3rd try. Was hyped. Did it a few more times and called it a success. I had done a few varial flip reverts first to get the feeling down and had never really done those either.

Had a slow start to the day after a great night/morning date with Liz. Ollie and I met up with Matt, Rob, Blake and Neil at the research center ledge. Not Ollie’s fav spot. Those guys skated it and Ollie and I went to the other side of the building and skated the long set of 1 stairs. Ollie had fun. Rode down all the stairs and manualed the last one. I did the same, with a switch front 180 down the two stair above to start. I was feeling pretty coordinated and not sore. Weird. Then we went back to the ledge. Saw Neil do front lip and crooks shove then had a horrendous slam hitting a rock right before popping a halfcab. Saw Blake slam on a front 50, then do crooks shove. Rob nose manualled the hill, almost got crooks, did front 50, manualled everything too. Matt didn’t stay long, but landed a lot of tricks all solid like he normally does. Back tail, back smith, switch tre, tres, etc. My flip trick game was not on point. I blame Liz for making me lazy. I did have some fun crooks, a front board pop out that felt great, back 50 that took forever.

Then we went to Red Curbs as the rain started. Man that place rules. Ollie didn’t skate too long, but he had lots of manuals, front 180s and a couple front boards too. Rob owns Red Curbs. Back 180 fakie 50, fakie back nosegrind!!!!, fakie nosegrind 180, I’m not remembering them all, but he killed it. Blake had some front 50s to manual, front 50 front 180 on the curb to median. Ride on back 50s with some variation out I can’t remember right now. I took a long time to get a back 5-0, a bunch of slappy crooks, did a kick back tail that was worse then the one in my Off The Couch part, but at least I followed it up with a very bad nollie varial flip. I was pretty sore, but at the end went into a ride on front 50 rage with a bunch of tricks out; no comply shove, boneless and boneless 180. Fun. Rob and Blake ended the session with some rad ride on back 50s and pushed while grinding.

Met up with Rob, Neil, Fuzz, Jack, Carleigh after work at the Louisville park on another nice spring day.  I got their first and cruised around the park avoiding ollies.  Rob showed, Carleigh, Jack.  Then Neil, Fuzz, Lazer.  No one was skating great.  Some other dudes showed that Fuzz indicated were lame and well, he was right.  As an example I skated by one of them as he bailed a switch front 50 on a ledge and he looked at me dead serious and said “THAT WAS SWITCH!”.  Yikes.  I saw Carleigh trying noseslides down the hubba and thought it would be fun to try double noseslides with her.  But that backfired and she went into one of her pouty moods.  Jack and I tried doubles for a bit with him nosesliding the rail, but he didn’t feel like the slams were worth it.  Understood.  Rob had some nice b/s ollies on the hip and almost a feeble grind on the bank to ledge.

We left for a nearby ditch.  It was fun!  Fuzz killed a back blunt, Carleigh got a back 50 grind, Neil b/s ollies and no comply to tail on a rock, Rob was getting used to it, Jack did back d and front pivot on the taller part, I landed a couple basics and had a fun b/s flip on the bank.  Then we got the boot.  Ugh.

Ended up at the basketball court park and it was a blast.  Rob had a really sick line of ollie up one curb, back 180 off then halfcab back 50 on the next curb.  Neil worked on halfcab manuals and did lots of standard Neil tricks (which rule). Carleigh was there, doing back 50s and avoiding everyone. Fuzz got ups. He was ollieing onto the top ledge super easy and almost tried to manual it. Also had a cool front 180 up the curb and switch back 180 off. I had to work really hard to get up that ledge, but I managed a few time. Tried front shove off and technically landed it with lots of wheel bite and toe drag so I cam to a halt. Still really hyped on that. Jack slayed. Boardslide a half handrail at a nearby house. Ollie up the right side of the ledge, gap to manual over the stairs, up the ledge then nollie flip and hardflip off. Geez. Jack and I finished with a super fun game of SKATE. He held back on the obvious tricks I can’t do, but we got most of our other tricks. I lost on a cab which is ok because I cannot do that trick. I had landed a 360 flip and a nollie 360 flip so that pretty much made me super happy.

On a super nice day I met up with Jack and Carleigh after work at the “Goodtimes Barrier”.  Carleigh had gotten close to wallie’ing over it recently and wanted to go back and get it.  When I got there she was already in celebration mode having done it a few times.  Sick!  We stayed there awhile.  Jack was skating flat a lot and doing some barrier tricks like wallie, wallie front 180, back pivot some other cool stuff.  I started hucking kickflip wallride and it seemed pretty realistic.  Omi showed up and did a few wallrides.  I ended up getting a couple kickflip wallrides.  They weren’t great or very high on the barrier, but they were fun and put me in a good mood.

Then we had a good meal at Wahoos and chilled with Fuzz at Crisis for a bit.  I played with some slappy noseslide tricks like noseslide to fakie revert back to forward.  Jack did it too, but much better and included a crook.  I also did a silly switch nose to forward then lift back up to front lip.  Fun.  Off to the Broomfield park we went.  I waited too long to write this entry so I don’t remember a whole lot of the session.  Carleigh and I started in the flow bowl which was fun until a bunch of people showed up there.  Then carleigh skated the pool and I skated the steep bank with Fuzz and Jack.  Jack did pivot fakie.  Fuzz did front slash and something else I can’t remember right now.  I got a front rock.  Neil was cruising all over.  I played a game of SKATE with Neil, Darin and Fuzz that Darin won.  I was skating pretty well, but kept getting stuck at treflip.  Skated the slanted brown ledge.  Fuzz was doing board transfer 180 and halfcab off.  Sick.  Jack did noseslide shove to nose manual.  I did boardslide transfer to manual (hyped me up!) and almost got it with a front 180 out.  Carleigh battled back disasters on the brick qp.  Most people finished on the quartapotty or trying to ollie a trash can, but I tried more kickflips on the hump then front 50 the pier 7 ledge.  I kind of got the line.  Fun day.

April snow is the worst. It was about 28 degrees out and snowing. I went out to Rampy pretty motivated, but nothing much happened. I somehow did a fakie front smith on one of my first runs which is a trick I can almost never do. That was cool. Flatground was ok. Got a second try treflip then tried switch varial flips for awhile and called it a day after banging my shins a bunch.

Another beautiful day. Went two hours of India’s dances and had an early dinner. Then after a nap I went out in front of the house for about 30 minutes. I had put a hole in the bottom of my Lakai’s so it was time for new shoes. Or, another pair of not-skated-til-death shoes from my stockpile. I pulled out some Emerica Provost shoes. They have one of the worst shapes in a skate shoe I’ve ever skated. But they are somewhat ok shoes and I am on a vulc kick so they seem like the ones for now. I didn’t skated great. My mom came out to watch for a bit so that was embarrassing. I showed her what a kickflip is and she clapped. Yeap, at 41 that is the first kickflip my mom has watched me do. I struggled at halfcab flips and fakie bigflips. Those have gotten much harder on the bigger setup. I got a 3 flip first try though which always puts a smile on my face. Glad I skated a little.