I had a really long day at work and got home a little before 7. Jake hit me up saying he was having a rough day and would love to skate Rampy. So after some indoor basketball with Ollie Jake showed up and we hit the ramp. Second run it was clear Jake wanted to skate hard and I guess it rubbed off on me. We both went deep into our bags. I got my first fakie pivot fakie in awhile, a good front feeble that grinded, front d to fakie, fakie hurricane, fakie joe hamilton, back smith stalls, front tails, fakie front scratch to fakie, and came close to a windshield wiper. Jake struggled with back blunts and never got one, but he landed nearly everything else. Blunt to back 50, pivot fakie, front feebs, hurricanes both ways, front nosepick, front 5-0 270 out, and some really long runs.

Headed to Denver on a snowy/cold day that was supposed to be in the lower 50s. By the time we got to Denver the sun was coming out and the temperature warming up the sunny areas. We were to meet the Crisis dudes around Tabor Center. We parked pretty far away and had a mostly downhill skate to it. I was still feeling pretty arthritic and stiff. I hit a rock and bailed and Neil went right past my board. Ha. Matt did like three treflips before we even got to a spot. Geez. We met the dudes at Tabor and they were chillin’ on the other side waiting for Chris to get a line. We went over and skated the Connor ledges while we waited. Man they are tall. Not for Matt apparently though. He did front/back 50s, front tail, back noseslide all easy. Neil was motivated briefly. Had some cool pop shoves off a curb and no comply tricks. Fuzz and I god a line of back 50 on a curb, ollie off a curb cut, kickflip, noseslide. I eventually got another line of slappy crooks, back 180 off the curb cut, halfcab flip on flat then a really bad noseslide. Ro popped over a fire hydrant like it was nothing and slappy noeslid the ledge? So crazy.

We moved on to a couple other random spots while the Crisis dudes stayed put. Hit a little manual pad for a bit, got kicked out. Got kicked out of the 2 stair black area. Skated a crappy marble ledge for a bit. Headed back to the car to go to Denver Art Museum area with the crisis dudes. They were all skating the fun bump to wallride that I skated with Nate and Chad recently. I didn’t want to get in on the session. Matt and I played a game of SKATE that I ended up winning. That’s 2-0 against this under 30! We hit the Denver Art Museum for a minute and got the boot in literally a minute. Then we got kicked out of a rock area that Matt gap to manualled and lastly a two stair that I failed to kickflip before getting the boot. Lots of kick outs! I look forward to warmer temps and less arthritis hopefully some day.

After a really frustrating morning waiting forever for the furnace guy to show and then spending a fortune I met up with Neil and Blake on a cold afternoon. My arthritis was in effect. Wind and cold makes it bad. Ugh.  I was there first.  I didn’t think I’d be able to even Ollie at first. I messed around with slappy noseslide variations and that seemed to loosen me up. When Blake and Neil showed I was able to skate somewhat OK.  Neil charged it for awhile. Front lip, switch board slide, back 180 over a little box. He was done quickly. Blake almost heelflipped the box, front nosed the tall ledge and when chad and Daryl showed had the most crazy slam. His foot went under the fence and when trying to pull himself up the heavy bar on the top of the fence came loose and hit him in the head.  Hard. It was sketchy, although quite hilarious looking. I had brief moments of being able to skate OK. Had lots of back 50s which I’ve struggled with for quite some time. Tried some lines. Got one long one.  Front 180 a puddle, switch 180 another one, front 5-0, noseslide the tall ledge, Ollie the corner of a grate, Ollie up onto the ledge and ride off, bs flip on flat.  Whew!  Struggled with fakie bigflips. Got one slow kick back 50, kind of some front smiths, halfcab flips felt good.  Daryl is so fun to watch.  He skates fast and powerful. He boardslid the 5 stair rail, lots of fast grinds on the ledges, a nollie heel noseslide, skated his dog around the parking lot. Chadman has stee  on flippers. He did lines down the little hill most of the time. He also messed around with switch inward heel noseslides.  It looked so rad.  Then  we chilled at crisis for awhile.  Fun fun.

After a very late night at the Old man jam at Launch and then a full day of work I stopped by the “rollerblade” skatepark that’s right by IBM. I was motivated to try flip tricks by Pat’s BATB 7 entry. It was cold and windy and I had new shoes. Another pair of the NB+ Stratfords. It’s nice not changing shoes every pair anymore. There were two young kids there. One was super obnoxious and annoying, the other other was chill and nice. One had a skateboard and one had a scooter. It should be pretty easy to figure out which was which. Anyways it became pretty clear that I was too tired/sore to skate worth a shit right away. But my stubbornness is strong and I kept at it, skated slow, did 10 flip tricks, ollied the flat bar, front 50’d the ledge and called it.

First and foremost, the old man nights at Launch are the best. It rules meeting up with people that have put in so many years on their boards. There is so much passion and good vibes in the air. I rolled up with a couple of my favorites Brian and Fuzz and we arrived at a relatively crowded session. We met Nate’s friend Matt. Carleigh was there with crew. Skelly, Mike, Andy and tons of others. The ramp was heated and crowded so I stayed away and started on the new qp and bank. Matt and Andy stayed there for the most part too as well as a few others. The qp was the main attraction initially. I got a front feeble and did my first ever boneless on transition. It felt rad. Gotta work on putting my foot up on the coping though. Andy had hurricane, front rocks (which are apparently new for him). Matt had nice ollies and more tricks then Nate said he would. Front d, back d, front t, back t. Then we put a little ledge on the bank. It was textbook perfect, but somehow hard to skate. Matt did a million tricks on it. I struggled with kickflips into it and only got kickflip axle stall. Also got hurricane and a bunch of front smiths while setting up to try a kickflip on the qp. I eventually got a bad one.

People were going nuts on the ramp. I saw Carleigh get rock to fakie on the over vert. Fuzz do an effortless sugarcane. Brian front rocked the over vert so steezy and had a run that appeared to last forever and contain every crazy trick he does. Andy, Skelly, Matt and I played a game of SKATE. I played horrible, but still lasted longer then young guy Matt. I think Skelly won it on a 360 back no comply. We skated the bank/qp some more. Matt did kickflip fakie, nollie flip fakie, 3 flip fakie. I did halfcab flip sketchy. We skated the parking block for awhile. I managed a little crook stall on the qp followed by a slappy crooks on the parking block. Fun. I was so tired that I wouldn’t bail the slappy crooks and sometimes some funny/weird willy grind/something variations came out of it. Made me laugh.

By now, the ramp session had died down so I finally went up there. Carleigh was ripping. Mike was trying some crazy carve lines. Skelly rules. My second run was probably the best run I’ve had on that ramp. It had a front d, back nosegrind scratcher, front rock and some fun carves in it. Later I would add back scratch grind revert, fakie back smiths, a really fun corner grind and a bunch of failed front smiths. Carleigh slammed to flat on a front d. Matt had some back 50s and a nice frontside ollie. Skelly did a rad fakie boardslide transfer into the ramp thing that was crazy. Mike got his crazy trick of flyout of the corner to rock fakie on the little qp on the deck. So sick. Epic night.

Had to bring India to ballet after school and since Liz wasn’t home from Florida quite yet Ollie had to come with. He wanted to play basketball, but we didn’t have a ball. I had brought his skateboard though and was able to talk him into the scooter park since we were in north boulder anyway. He was pretty bummed after a bad day at school and for the most part just sat around. He did some more of the flyouts to grass rides, kickflips while holding onto the bike racks, front 180s, lots of intentional falls into the grass. I kind of went flipper nuts on the miniature bank below Ollie. Just squint harder, it’s there. I had a fun little line of f/s flip then b/s flip on the “hip” below. Got fakie bigspin, halfcab flip, kickflips to fakie (with f/s or b/s spins), then started trying 360 flips. Not the varial flip ones, but the full 360 flip in a b/s ollie. It took a long time and Ollie was really wanting to go so I gave it a 5 count. On the 4th one I landed it. But it was really bad. Hands down, not quite rotated all the way. Ollie said “over 40 make!” Since I had one last try anyway I went for it and somehow came up gravy with a fully rotated 360 flip. It’s cool because it’s slightly over 360 flip. It felt great.

On my final night of being Mr Mom I was growing agitated by my lack of freedom and needed to skate. Not that I didn’t get to skate over the weekend, but it was limited and not skating at night is hard for me. So I hit Rampy. The winds were howling which effects my arthritis. It’s a pain. I started by skating the ramp. I was doing ok, but a string of failed back 50s almost resulted in a temper fit. I wanted to do a front tail revert. But I only got a couple front tails. Oh well. I was having fun on flatground too. Got kickflips, treflip and had a loop with a bunch of tricks back to back that hyped me up. I felt like doing flippers and I felt like skating the ramp. And then it hit me, why the hell don’t I do both? So I tried a b/s flip below the coping for quite some time before getting one. I was really hyped. It was well below the coping, but still hard because of how tight Rampy is and how hard setting up is.

In the midst of my Mr Mom week I took off to Southern Hills for a quick hour on a gorgeous morning. It was 60 degrees. Or so I thought, right after getting there some wind started. For the most part there was only a few strong gusts that messed with me and it was mostly fine. My arthritis was bad. It took me a long time to even be able to ollie. I ended up sticking with it though and eventually did some things I was hype on. Front 50, front 50 shove, front 50 front 180 out, front 5-0 front shove out (over 50 make), lots of back crooks that felt good, halfcab noseslide and the worst back 50 that could be landed. I wish these ledges were a little lower, but man it feels good to land tricks on them.

Then we went to Denver and dropped India off at the Colorado Ballet which is one block from the Denver Art Museum aka one of the best spots in Denver. Before going there Ollie and I cruised around for awhile and checked stuff out. I showed him Civic park. We hit a couple things. Stayed at this spot for awhile. I was still feeing crazy arthritic and was scared to ollie off this thing initially. So bad. Ollie rode off it. I ollied and took forever to front 180 off it. It was embarrassing.

Then we hit the art museum. The wind had picked up some. It was a consistent wind rather then gusts. Ollie did lots of manuals like above. He set his board up on the ledge and would do that. He seemed rather hyped doing it and it was cool seeing him push mongo all fast around the spot. My legs let me skate somewhat. It’s weird to say, but the little drop before that we skated seemed to warm them up better then anything else. I had a couple ollies up onto ledges then gap to manual like Ollie was doing. I ollied over the narrow ledge that can be boardslid. I also did a really dumb line of ollie onto the wide ledge, drop down them immediately boardslide the narrow ledge. Lastly a really fun first try manual around most of that near the end where it gets taller. India had a good audition and we ate Wahoos after. Fun times with the kids!

On a day where the forecasted high was 62 with 40mph winds I went to Southern Hills while it was 39 and not windy. Way to go weatherman. I had been entertaining Ollie all morning and then picked up India then brought Ollie to a friends and got to Southern Hills around 3pm. Carleigh, Neil and Blake would meet up after I arrived. I was feeling very arthritic and sore, but very motivated to skate. It helped that they had swept up the school and there weren’t a ton of little pebbles everywhere. I started ollie’ing off the little narrow ledge at the top for a warm up and it graduated into one of the funnest and longest runs I’ve done. Ollie onto the narrow longer ledge, push (I’m not good enough to ollie onto it fast enough to have speed byt the end), front 180 off, halfcab flip, kickflip into the handicap ramp, crooks a bench. I was sincerely stoked. Carleigh showed up around now. She was cruising around warming up and I tried another line starting at the long narrow ledge. Ollie on, kickflip off, back 180 down the two stair, something else. But I never got the back 180. It was weird kickflipping off the ledge because it’s so narrow. My kickflips felt weird. They felt way more popped then normal, but kind of out of control. I guess I normally use some angle. Anyway I eventually landed bad and cracked the tail to the point where it couldn’t be popped. Doh. Neil and Blake arrived. I lost a lot of motivation having to ride my board backwards. I tried some kickflips into the handicap ramp followed by front noseslides on the bench, but that was about it. Carleigh had a lot of back 180’s into the handicap ramp and came real close to a b/s flip. Neil ripped harder then I’ve seen in awhile once he got warmed up. Long lines. Ollie onto the bench in the far corner, ollie north off, noseslide the ledge, back 180 out of the handicap ramp. Switch front 180, kickflip into the handicap ramp, front 50 one foot out the bench. Blake did such a cool trick. Ollie from the top of the two stair onto the middle stair then front shove off. It reminded me of Suciu and his 3 flip onto the stair in Sabotage 3. Jack was supposed to meet up, but I had to bolt because India was stressing over a ballet audition. It felt good to get out and skate, but man I could have gone without breaking my board.

Liz is in Florida with her family. India has a sleepover at some friends. So my Valentines Day was going skating with Ollie and then shooting nerf guns at each other and watching Dumb and Dumber. In other words, it was epic. Since this is a skate journal I’ll spare the excited for Dumb and Dumber To and talk about how fun Louisville park was. First, we haven’t been there in forever and upon arrival it seemed to have a much better vibe then normal. There were several skaters there. Somewhat older skaters in their 20s and they were super positive and having fun. They reminded me of the Fremont crew and that is a huge complement. I’m not sure why, but I felt really natural and fluid when we first started. I did the best no comply 360 of my life and those dudes asked me to show them how to do that trick. I couldn’t do it again, but whatevs. Ollie and I cruised around. He had some really good frontside carves in the snake run and man, he looks so natural sometimes. He rode under the rainbow rail and then manualled the rough crete to the street. How does he think of lines like that? Ollie constantly stokes me out skating. He also had some lofty front 180’s off the ledge and some boardslides on the curb into grass. I think he was more excited to land in the grass then on concrete. The only complaint I have on the night is how tight my trucks were. It was colder then we thought it would be and with the harder venom bushings I was surprised at how hard it was to turn a few times. I tried a run of boardlside the curb, front 50 the tiny ledge above the bowl, ride off the other ledge, then front 50 the tall ledge, but I can’t seem to ollie that high anymore. Other tricks I did were front d in the snake run, crooks the ledge, kick back sloppy 50-50 the ledge. Ollie and I skated the bank to ledge. He did nose tap to fakie, nose tap 180 and a rock ‘n roll on it. So sick. I took way too long to do back 50, but got front 50 and front smith quick. I would do flatground on the way back. Got a good b/s flip. Posed other tricks. Last trick was a boneless over the hip where I almost died multiple times setting up with a back 50 around the corner. That park was way fun. Maybe I felt extra lucky just to be skating when I’m Mr Mom’ing it.