Fuzz and I were first at the park and we started with the gnarliest tranny at the park. Just look at how blurry it is? We had to haul ass to get all the way to the top! The best part though, is that we started on the tiny part on the far left of it. Stalls, pivots, etc. It was funny. Front tail transfers over the hip. I did a front blunt transfer which sounds so cool, but it’s just a glorified kickturn on a curb. We did line it out with tricks on the tight qp too. I couldn’t do backside 50 so went front 50 instead. Fuzz had a nice back pivot. We started to step it up to the “extension” on the tiny qp above and it got gnar. Brett and Dave showed up and we stepped it up to the double extension, aka the rock. Fuzz and Dave killed it. Fuzz did front tail transfer on the rock and front pivot. Dave did back tail transfer. Oh yeah, first though. Dave slammed skating from his car to the park. Seriously! It was funny! Brett did some cool blunt variations on the qp and almost killed me shooting the board out. Luckily my board took the brunt of it. We skated the main wallie rock for awhile too and I managed a front rock on it that hyped me up. Mitchell did a flyout of the bowl to tail on the rock. Pretty nuts. I think Dave and Fuzz stayed in that area all night. Brett and I played elsewhere at times. The mini bowl for awhile. The ledge area for awhile. Kind of whatever. We both tried to skate the pier 7 triplica (3 times taller then pier 7), but didn’t do anything on it. We skated the ledge down in the flat area that never gets skated. It’s a tall ledge that is normally just passed by on the way to flyouts. It’s pretty tall. We did boardslides and noseslides. I managed a back crooks. It felt awesome because the granite is like new. It felt like we were skating a perfect marble ledge downtown somewhere. We were also doing some little nose stalls on the side of the hubba when Brett leaned back a lot too far and off the tail went. Doh. I worked on a line for awhile. Ollie the 3, noseslide the hubba then kickflip to fakie on the bank. It took a really long time. Jack and Carleigh showed up. Carleigh was in on noseslides for awhile and apparently bruised her leg on a slam on the tall bump to ledge. Doh. Jack was all over the park and I saw Tranny Jack in action a few times. He killed the rock. Back sugarcane (accident maybe?), texas plan and a bunch more. I ended with lines to no comply attempts on the almost tranny bank by the mountain sculpture. Got a few weak no complies and a knee buckle scare that ended up being fine. My favorite line was the roll in to the little 3 foot section, ollie out of it, ollie on the manhole bump, then no comply. I did a few flip tricks too, but failed on treflips and cracked the board so much worse that it became unskateable. The lights shut off and we sat, had a beer and laughed. Good times, great oldies.

Headed up to Launch in the afternoon with Dave and Jake and met up with birthday boy Neil. We skated Launch for awhile. Well, Neil didn’t really, he was conserving his energy. He is 40 now after all. As usual Dave killed the ramp. There was a couple tricks in there I hadn’t really seen before. No “aerials” though. Ha ha. Jake too. Those guys are too good. I look so lame skating with them. Chadman showed up eventually. He skates that thing pretty well even though he makes fun of himself the whole time. My best was a run that had a back scratch grind revert, front d and fakie back smith to fakie in it. Mike was there killing it in his own unique way. The layback hurricane was sick. Wannabe old guy Justin was there ripping and putting in more energy on every trick then I would in multiple runs. I think he had 3 walls in a row involving 540s. So sick. Mullen photo was there too. Super nice dude. Super good at skateboarding. Go figure, it’s Fort Collins for you.

Then we went to Northside where Jason and Lindy met us. Sooo stoked! Chad and I chatted with Jason for awhile then headed into the park. Chadman seemed to stay at the ledge the whole time. He was trying to learn fakie backside nosegrinds, but couldn’t get it. He did post up the sick front crooks in the photo though. The rest of us were kinda all over the place. I saw birthday boy lipslide the ledge and get a boardslide on the jersey barrier. Jake had some nice manuals across the ledge. I was able to get on the ledge for awhile before I got tired and it became too high. Got a front 50 and 5-0 , front nose to fakie, front nose back 270 out (it’s really just a dumb pivot – just imagine me looking really old and slow and you’ll get the picture). Then I kinda just skated the main area for awhile and didn’t really see what others were doing. Oh, Jake did a front blunt on the weird big bank. That was crazy. I had a line of wallie the corner of the jersey barrier, front tail stall on the china bank, axle stall on the bank to ledge, back 5-0 on the china bank, slappy 50 the hump. Fun. Got a kickflip on the weird big bank which felt really good. Wallied over the low part of the barrier, front 50 on the bank to ledge. I did a lot of crooks on the ledge too. They were really fun. That ledge leaves a mark every time. Chad and I played a game of SKATE. He made me look bad with nollie flip, sw flip and sw heel quick. But my dumb tricks like fakie varial flip started adding up and I got him to SKAT. I tried treflip for awhile and just couldn’t get it. I had enough tries, but he eventually took me out with switch front heel and nollie f/s flip. Dave and Jake played on the big qp wall for awhile. I guess they did pivot to fakie followed by fakie flips. sick. Jake and I played another game of SKATE. Again I got him to SKAT, but couldn’t land a treflip for a long time even when Jason towed me in. Luckily Jake was missing tricks so I eventually got it and won the game. Then we had a good dinner at La Luz and some laughs. Good times.

I met up with Blaine, Bernie, Scotty, Dean, Trent and a dude named Josh at the Sugar Mill spot. Trent, Scotty and Josh were trying stuff on the bank and Blaine and I were just kinda looking at stuff when the cops came. Luckily we didn’t get any trespassing tickets, but it took awhile to go through all our IDs. Next we went to the spot above. In the foreground of the photo above is Blaine filming. Blaine rules. Bernie got a good trick. Trent got a couple good tricks. I was kind of able to ollie and happy about that. I manualed the small pads, took forever to nose manny it, slammed trying to ollie up a curb and managed a horrible over 40 ollie over the gap. It’s harder then it looks only because there isn’t much setup and not much landing. I didn’t skate well, but I was happy that ollies were somewhat doable.

After some lunch/dinner we went to one of my favorite spots in all of Colorado. Rocky Mountain Elementary. Bernie waxed the ledge all crazy and it was on immediately. I got a lot of my ledge tricks quickly. Boardslide popouts both ways, front nose to fakie, back noseslide, front 50, front 5-0, front 50 front 180, front nose back 270 out, back crooks, kickflip back 50 (couldn’t do reg back 50). It was awesome! I seriously love that place. Some of the tricks were in lines. Backside I did a few lines with dropin on the kinked brick bank, kickflip up the curb, crooks, then not land a 360 flip. Frontside I had a couple slow lines with manual a curb, ollie onto the ledge, ollie the 2″ gap, drop off, heelflip on flat, front 50 to front board. Bernie was destroying it and almost got an ender line. Blaine filmed it soooo good too. If only Bernie would have got the last trick. He was close, he’ll get it. Blaine had a blast rolling into the dirt section. Metal Matt, Shaun and another dude showed up. It was great to see them. Shaun was of course ripping. Bluntslide pop to fakie on the ledge, kickflip out of the bank over the curb. Matt was chillin’ for the most part. Then darkness hit. I had tried a few kickflip noseslides and didn’t get very close. And never got a treflip, but it was still a fun session. Love that spot, need to skate it more.

After a super late night at the drive-in with the family in Fort Collins I woke up at noon and bolted out quickly to meet up with Blaine and Nullers in Denver. We met at the “only spot in Denver” aka the hill spot. Blaine and I rode / firecrackerd all the 2 stairs before anyone else showed. Then Connor, Cody, Max and eventually Chadman showed. My legs were done. So done. My arthritis was sucking. It basically makes my legs move super slow. I struggled with kickflips. They literally were super hard. I would try as hard to do them as I could and barely get them around. Ugh. So I just mostly did powerslides down the hill and little ollies/180s up/off curbs. Blaine rules and filmed Connor almost get a line and Chadman get a line which I get partial credit for (I thought of the first trick!). We cruised around a little, got kicked out of some spots and then ended up in a fun alley. Max got a sick line here with the back smith. I somewhat came to life. Had some tiny noseslides on that flat bar, a weird ride on a chunk of concrete then a few front 50 variations on a little angle iron ledge. That was pretty much the day. Stoked that Blaine is down to film, but which my knees wouldn’t have felt so bad.

Fullertron, Fuzz, Rob, Blaine and I headed to Denver on another nice night. We intended to start at the bank to curb behind the church and ended up at the Greyhound parking garage hill bomb. Rob had never been there and did the whole thing proper first try. No warm up, no speed checks. So sick. He had some speed wobbles at the bottom, but he pulled it off fine. We were all pretty amazed. The rest of the older dudes speed checked in some form or another. Fuzz carved, I powerslid, Dave foot dragged a little. Blaine went in hard with filmer wheels filming it. So sick. It was a great way to start the session. Powerslides and flying through traffic. We didn’t go far after as there was a great slappy curb in the main depot area that we got quite a bit of time on. It was this rad little angled yellow curb. Everyone got their slappies on it. There was also some little medians that got some love too. I saw Rob nosebonk and no comply one. I tried to lipslide one, but never quite got it. My legs were feeling pretty bad. Fuzz had some rad slappies that her turned around the corner on. Dave killed slappy tails. Blaine is young, but the age of the crew he was with must have rubbed off and he got some slappies too.

We pushed over to the Chase bank yellow curb garage that is oh so fun. It had gotten waxed up in a few sections. We were all doing our own thing. Fuzz and I went betweeen a couple and did front and back 50s. He had 4 in a row I think. Next was Tabor for awhile. It’s the marble hip/bank area in the photo above. We all skated this thing for awhile. Fuzz did a bunch of transfer tricks over the corner like front tail to fakie, front board, etc. Dave rode over the handrail which is so gnarly. Feeling the Ron Allen inspiration I learned boneless to wallride. Although the bank isn’t much of a “wallride” it still felt amazing and maybe my favorite new trick in awhile. I tried to line it out with a flatground kickflip and a front 180 down the 3, but we got booted about the time Blaine went to film Fuzz.

Not sure where we went after this. We did chinese nollie manuals, Dave fire crackered a long 4 stair. I failed at 3 flips. We got some liquid. We were exhausted after. Everyone looked beat. We ended up at the metal grate inside manny pad. Fuzz almost got smoked trying to manual it. I tried bonks into it then front board transfers out. Got close. Dave did no complies and almost switch no complies. Rob and Blaine chilled. After we got the boot I went across the street to a granite section and skated by myself for a bit. Tried a line with ollie onto the bench then ollie the little hole to manual, no comply 180, fakie bigflip into a slight bank. Kinda got it. Met up with the rest of the crew at some fun red curbs and a white ledge into a garage that Fuzz did some sick front 50s on.

We kinda chilled at the end of the 16th St mall for awhile. Rob and Dave were doing some boneless stall/slids on the granite blocks. I tried 360 flips over and over and crooks on the granite blocks (got a few of each). Then Rob called out a rad bump to bump from the fountain to a curb cut. Fuzz ollied it all sick. Blaine hauled ass and basically cleared it without much of an ollie. So scary! I couldn’t get out that far. Dave put his board after the bump and I ended up having a super fun run of ollie out of the fountain over Dave’s board and pushed across the street, front 180 up the two, sw 180 on flat, ollie the 4 stair as security was chasing me. Landing the four stair hurt. My legs were done at that point. Ugh. Fuzz got a sick line ollie’ing the fountain to the curb cut then a 900mph manual through some scaffolding across the street. What a fun, late night.

Headed to Lafayette by noon. Ollie and I were gonna skate for awhile then head to 303 to sell some boards. It was warm out, but there were thunder clouds moving in. Steve V was there as was Sam from 303 and Ollie and I joined them on the bank to curb section. That area is a blast. Doing the line on the waxed bank then going through the pumps at the start of the snakerun is fun. Warming up went ok. I could tell I had skated a lot of days in a row. Nothing really stood out for me until later. Ollie and I were skating the same area again. He got the little front slash that’s hard for him. I almost had a line of hurricane, pump and turn, scratch grind on the tight corner qp then front tailslide, but someone got in my way. We skated the pier 7 ledge are for awhile. Jake had shown up and did a bunch of front tails on the double sided ledge. Squeeks was there and back tail and back lipped it. Kia and I did back to back boardslides. I took a bunch of tries to back 50 the granite ledge. Treflips on flat were going good. Then we went over to the blue bank area and Ollie started a trend of bouncing his board off the rubber section to start his line. It was hilarious. Parris had joined us too and there were 5 grown men trying to bounce their boards and land on them. Ollie was pretty hyped. Jake and Squeeks ollied up the 3 stair easy. I couldn’t. Parris had some rad back tails and boneless combos on the banks. We tried a bunch of flippers on the blue bank at the end. I had halfcab flip and bigflip. Tried treflip to fakie and fell on my board and rode down it on my butt backwards. So funny and the end of the day. Ollie finished with a sick ride up the bank to manual the blue manny pad. So good!

Another hot morning. I met up with Jack, Bernie and Garret at Meta, avoided a parking ticket and we rolled to Bear Creek Elementary. The railing thing I was thinking would be cool to do tricks over wasn’t really skateable so we just dorked around on a 2 block in the back. My legs were feeling very stiff and sore. Jack did a bunch of no complies and boneless tricks. I was barely able to ollie up one of them. Bernie and Garret just kinda lurked and talked about how they skated in the heat the day before too. I did do a drop down manual that was so stiff and awkward.

After looking at another spot we came to this which I’ve drove by a million times picking up India from ballet at the rec center. It ended up being pretty rad. I skated horribly and did a 2mph front 180 onto it and switch 90 off. Luckily I went to filmer duty and Jack came through with a good clip and Bernie got another manual with a kickflip out. Ha ha, it was sick though.

Next we ended up at Basemar where I immediately shot my new board into the creek. Doh. Luckily it was hot so it dried out quick and seemed fine. Jack did a wallie back 5-0 and Garret tried a million front noseslides. I skated after Jack got his trick. I was having fun doing some kickflips on the bank and some powerslides down the hill. Jack wanted to film it and on the first try hung up on a rock and slammed so hard. Doh! Then we started skating the kicker while Garret tried front noses. Jack did some impossibles. Connor and Blaine showed and Connor did every variation of 180. Carleigh got kickflip. I got a couple backside flips where I landed 90 degrees then turned it. I tried to get a clean one, but it didn’t happen. Garret eventually got rained out after several close tries on the front nose. Doh.

After some pizza we ended up at the ledge spot on the edge of campus. Before turning into filmer Glen I was skating pretty good for me. I’ve tried lines of crooks then kick back 50 several times when I’ve been there in the past, but this time it worked out and I got it a couple times. Stoked. Was also hyped to front 50 the tallest waxed ledge and front 50 shove out the regular one. I filmed Connor get a good line as thunder was looming then minutes later chaos ensued and we watched the hail storm from the covered area. So gnarly.

One of these days where I should have rested and taken the day off, but instead I forced a session when I was tired and it was really hot. Like really hot, 97 hot. I couldn’t skate flat on the street because it was all soggy and melted. I didn’t have much time or I would have gone somewhere like Wilville. Instead I tried to find something redeemable at the school with the roughest driveway ever. I found a section of yellow curb that hadn’t been totally destroyed by school busses and was able to do some 50s on it. Then tried a couple lines. Back 180 off the curb, fakie flip then fakie 50. The fakie flip never happened because I would lose my balance in the roughness everytime. Going the other way I tried front 5-0 front 180 out, switch 180 up the curb, treflip. Didn’t get that either. Kind of a wasted session, sometimes I should just not skate. Oh yeah I had tried putting the thick lunarlon insole in the Nikes, but those things are ridiculously thick and dumb so about mid session I switched back to some thinner Lakai insoles. Lakai!

Another really hot and sunny day approaching triple digits. Got home from work and watched Men In Black with the kids and had popcorn for dinner. So awesome. Then it was sunset and I felt like skating and Ollie wanted in. He wanted to go back to Lafayette park. I was pretty sore and tired and that park is fun to just cruise so it seemed perfect. We got in about an hour before the lights shut off. I spent the first half of it literally bailing everything and being amazed how little juice my legs had. By the end I felt decent though. I was doing some frontside ollies on the manhole hump that felt great. Rolled-in in a new spot above the mid sized bowl. Had a few flip tricks. Ollied the 3 stair. Noseslid the little hubba. Front lip and front 50 around some of the corner in the little bowl. My new 10 Year deck felt good. Mostly just had fun and enjoyed being able to skate with Ollie again. He got really close to kickflips. Did a fakie pop shove on a bank. Frontside ollie on the bank, took a run into the snake run and looked comfortable rolling at the speed. Got heckled by a dork for not wearing a helmet. Got a super clean manual in the longer flat section in the upper part of the snake run. This took him a bunch of tries and he kept saying he really wanted to land it clean. Awesome. Skating with him is so fun.

Woke up feeling the best I’ve felt in a while. Worked at home on a hot day. Was planning on rolling to Lafayette park with Jake to meet Rob, Dave and Fuzz. Right before leaving Ollie expressed some interest and after some deliberating finally decided on joining us. We arrived to a pretty crowded park as tuesday nights are old man night. There were a couple others there with kids, but they mostly stuck to the big bowl. I kind of stuck with Ollie initially as his shyness was weirded out by the crowded park. We hit the middle of the park. Shortly a session on the tight qp at the entrance started up. Fullertron and Salmon were going off. Fuller did long front 5-0s, boardslides and front lip. Ridiculous. Jake was banging out tricks too. Front d and front blunt! Rob was steezing out back smiths. I got a back hurricane which I’ve never done there before and way hyped on. Couldn’t get the front feeble though. Ollie was cruising the little section and then doing some frontside ollies on the little curb cut rock thing by all of us. Ollie and I started skating the “street” area a bit as no one else was skating it. I hung up getting into a noseslide down the small hubba and dove to flat. That wasn’t so fun. Ollie was trying lots of fly out pop shoves and back 180’s. He didn’t get the pop shove. I was breaking in the Nikes with flip tricks still, halfcab flips worked, kickflips worked, treflips not so much. Fuzz showed. We skated a steep bank for a bit. He crushed it pretty quick with rock’s both ways and an axle stall. The best part of that park is that there are endless ways to skate it. I got a kickflip to fakie on a bank that felt great. After awhile I saw Dave doing this sick bluntslide out of a little quarter pipe to bank and joined him. He got a couple ridiculous bluntslides. I got a sketchy front tail and an ok front tail. Fuzz worked on front noseblunts. Rob did some rad crail airs. Ric destroyed the middle bowl and lipslid the bank all in one run. He kills it so hard! Jake apparently redid Jason’s noseblunt trick from Off The Couch, but without the Sammy Davis Jr clip after. Rob and I skated the mid sized bowl for awhile. It’s a fun one. I was happy that I got most (if not all) of the back 50s I tried. Need to get some more tricks in there though. The best part of the night for me was that Ollie was skating for real. He wasn’t glued to my side. He was skating all over the park, finding his own lines and loosening up with my friends. At one point Ollie did a back 180 off the manual pad and Rob said “Nice Ollie” so Ollie bowed. It was hilarious. Also if Ollie and I crossed paths through the park he would give me a salute like a soldier. Man it was funny. He did have some really good back 180s and he almost had some ollies up onto the manual pad. He did several ollies up to rock then pull up which is a good start. The rest of the crew was sessioning the smaller narrow white qp while Ollie and I just cruised around doing whatever. Other then a 3 flip with a bit of speed nothing stands out so much for me. I was just cruising and landing a few tricks. Almost noseslide the tall bump to ledge. Failed miserably at a few carves in the vert bowl. Fuller was killing it. Got a doubles line with Ollie where I did a frontside wallride on the bank to rock and he did a b/s wallride on it. Wallies off the corner of the rock into the hip are the funnest thing ever and Ollie did it first try. Geez. Fuzz and Dave did some crazy switch pivots/feebles on the narrow white qp. All in all one of my favorite nights because Ollie skated hard and seemed to be flowing at the park and not needing to be right by my side allowing me to hang with my friends a little more. Thanks dudes for being cool to Ollie. Summer rules. We hung out after the lights shut off for awhile and I kept saying we had to leave to get Ollie to bed. But Fuzz came through with a quote that made me laugh. Fuzz, “Ollie do you have school tomorrow?” Ollie, “No”. Fuzz, “Then tell your dad to chill out”. Ha ha awesome. Oh yeah, I cracked my board really bad on a 3 flip so I’ll be setting up a new one and at the gas station on the way home they were giving away donuts so lucky Ollie took 4 of them. That’s one stoked kid!