What a long day. Had to get up at 4:00am to bring my mom to the hospital for a minor surgery. Everything went well and while she napped in the afternoon I was to run up to MRKT and sell some boards and maybe skate a little. The hospital is in Loveland and I just kind of drove north on the rode I was on not really knowing where it went. Low and behold I ended up on Lemay and there was Fossil Creek on the left. Decided I should give that a try. My body was in worse shape then I had imagined. Not sure if it was lack of sleep, arthritis or both, but I had nothing. No confidence and no coordination. I did have some decent crook grinds going though. At one point I tried a line with back 50 on the curb high ledge over the brick section, crook on the ledge then tried a nollie treflip since that is the exact spot I hucked my first one and started thinking it would be possible. That was about the only brief time period where I skated remotely ok. I did a few other tricks, but really didn’t have much of anything. I tried quite a few things that I would have been proud of. Hucked a bunch of kickflip noseslides that went in perfect, but I’m not sure what would happen if I committed both feet to it. Also almost got front tailslide over the little brick section under the curb ledge. I skated, it wasn’t pretty or even that fun, but I skated and sometimes that’s all that matters.

Whew. Had a long day. Have the early shift at work so got off work at 3:30, drove to 303 in Denver to sell boards, grabbed some pizza nearby, hit Wax Trax to pickup The Thermals “Blood, Body, Machine” on vinyl (I’ve wanted this for so long!) then drove to Lafayette to meet Neil, Jake, John, Blake and whoever else was there. The park was pretty vacant when we first arrived. I kind of followed Neil around for awhile and tried to at least touch my tail as many times as he did. His ollies were always way higher, further, steezier and better. Blake said he was working on front 180 up fakie big off the manny pad and did it first try I saw. I managed to manual it. Cruising around that park is really fun when it’s not crowded. Neil and I started dorking around trying to front board up the last bit of the round rail. He did some good ones. Around now John showed up and joined in. We had a fun little front tail going on the manhole cover as a setup to turn around at. I got a tiny bonk one. John hates front boards so tried switch noseslides instead (wtf?). I hucked a few kick front boards, but got nowhere close. John did a Madollie to tail kind of thing and it looked fun so I tried and got one too. Not sure I’ll ever be able to bring that anywhere else. Blake did a crooks bonk coming up and Neil got a front nosegrind bonk up. So sick. Jake showed up and the next game was flatground trick, ledge trick, trick on the small horsetooth quarterpipe. Jake did kickflip, manual scrape, pivot fakie first try. Wow. John had a ton of flippers like treflip, nollie flip, front shove, etc. Neil had front shove, front lip, front ollie. I couldn’t land a flip trick and when I got to the qp I wanted to try front pivot. Got close enough you could tell what it was, that was about it. Next we played in the flow bowl. Asian Jeff and another dude were slaying it. Crail blocks, smiths, everything. Jake was killing it of course. John too. I had my favorite session on trannie taller then Rampy in awhile. Eventually got a run with a front d and a back 50 in it. Yippee. Carving that thing is fun. Most people went over to the fish bowl after that, but I was kind of all over in the street area. Not sure how, because I didn’t do much. I wussed out of trying the noseslide down the 3 stair. Played a game of SKATE with John and Jake that took awhile. Struggled with 3 flip, fakie bigflip, fakie var flip. Ugh, it’s funny how rarely I land tricks. I did manage to win it though and somehow pulled out a f/s flip when I was at SKAT. It was fun though and overall the night was awesome.

I went to skate flat in front of the house for a bit, but there was a lot of traffic and I didn’t feel like dodging it. So I brought a broom and went behind the school with Ollie. He shot hoops while I skated. I had put some new super 52s on for multiple reasons. First, the wheels were old, second, my bearings sucked and I replaced most of them with some old ceramics I had, and third, the new graphics are gonna ship this week so I best get rid of the old ones. Ha. Anyways I was sucking for a long time. Struggling so bad and feeling that arthritis hot pocket feeling a lot. I was trying to set a record for the most tricks not landed when Liz came to join Ollie playing basketball. Maybe just the presence of her awesomeness made me start landing stuff. I still struggled a bit, but my bag of landed tricks got pretty deep. Kickflip, fakie flip, back shove, front shove, f/s halfcab bigspin, heelflip, halfcab flip, f/s halfcab flip, treflip, fakie bigflip, b/s flip and nollie treflip. I hucked quite a few other tricks too like sw f/s flip and sw flip that I didn’t get very close to, but had fun trying.

It was Fuzz’s bachelor party day! As people gathered at Crisis John and I skated a parking block in front of the store for about an hour. It was really fun. John did some crazy stuff like bean plants, no comply to tail the far curb to disaster the parking block and kind of learned slappy crooks. I did a few slappy crooks to shove out, a quick slappy front crook fakie, the best bean plant to primo land I could do (ha we were laughing so hard when I went down). We did a lot of tricks and had fun goofing around.

After the Coors tour we hit a mini ramp for a bit. I’m not sure if the crowds or the beers I’d drank kept me off the ramp more, but after a couple failed axle stalls I bailed out. Brian, Neil, Dean, John and Fuzz killed it.

Last was a session at the Nederland park. I was clearly too intoxicated to skate well and was probably risking it skating at all. Not sure how Fuzz can shred so hard after so many beers. But he did. Front tail over the flyout, front carve over the love seat, a bunch more. Brian had the craziest trick of the day with a weird 270 slide on the helmet to crazy sideways roll in that ruled. Dean carved over the love seat. Chad ollied up the step up. Jack did a bunch of pole jams. John slayed it and had a gnarly pivot fakie at the end of the session. I mostly just dorked around and at the end did the weird drop in into the step up that everyone else was doing followed by a b/s flip on the bank. Pretty fun. Off to camping. Read/see more on Jack’s blog here.

UPDATE ** I should probably go into a bit more details of how fun it was to skate with everyone at Nederland. Skating with TF is too infrequent these days, but when we do it’s a blast. I should also mention that camping was also a blast and to check Jack’s blog for proof of the awesomeness.

Got out of work at a decent time on Friday and picked up Ollie as he said he was down to go skating. He’s about a once every two weeks kinda skater know. Better then nothing, but he sure has a blast when he does it. We went to “Stonehenge”. I had a new board!

Love it. Ollie and I did rock ‘n rolls first try. Then he did a rock fakie. So impossible there as the ground is really rough and I’m too heavy and get caught in the holes (great excuse eh?). I couldn’t do a back 50 for like 5 tries. It was almost bumming me out so I just started rattling off other basics and it all worked out. Ollie also did a few front rocks (seen at the top of dis here blog entry). We also kind of lined it out and did some tricks from the loading dock into mini bank and came around to the bank to curb. Ollie tried switch front 180s for a bit, but couldn’t quite get it. Good thing since that trick took me forever to learn some ~20 years ago (wow).

We hit the back loading dock area too. Ollie did some ollies and got a back 180 off. I did some ollies too over a little gap and weed and a switch front 180 that took a few tries. We goofed off quite a bit and had lots of fun.

After work I helped Liz clean awhile then pick up India from ballet and we all ate dinner. We were supposed to finish watching the 80s movie Labyrinth after, but India had too much homework. She said she might be able to finish in 30 minutes or so and I wanted to skate. Rather then just walk to Rampy I wanted to get out and enjoy the first long sleeved session of they year. I went to a real close shopping center (Basemar) and kind of tooled around for awhile. Tried this dumb little manny to quick up, but just slammed a bunch. Did a front rock on a bench in front of Egg & I. Got a front shove down the 2 stair by the Goodwill. Then felt kind of Quikish with a fast ollie up a curb to ollie over another curb to little gap in front of Taco Bell. My knees were not feeling so good, but I was able to skate it seemed. Around then I got a text from home saying India still had too much homework so I bailed out of that shopping center.

I almost drove to the Arvada park, but remembered that I drove from FedEx earlier in the day and noticed that I have never skated at the shopping center near Arapahoe & 55th. So I went there. A few things looked fun, but there was either cars or Ball Aerospace security cars parked at them. I found this little yellow curb spot below.

This photo kinda sucks and doesn’t really show the spot at all. It’s only covered over the curb and there is way more around it. Manny pads, gaps, these weird yellow kickers and more. I started at the weird yellow kicker and did a weird kickflip off the kicker onto the narrow ending of it. It was really dumb, hard and since it was street skating it felt totally awesome. Around then I noticed my board was totally cracked down the middle which hyped me up knowing I could go home and set up a new board after the session. I kept skating though and had a blast. I did a lot of lines/tricks.

One line started ollie’ing this little gap that the photo doesn’t show very well. It’s tiny of course, I guess the photo is just showing how bad the landing was. But I ollied that, front 50s a curb at speed then ollied up a curb to little weird wallie tailslide. I also tried ollie’ing the gap past the sign, but it was way too big for me. Did kick back tail (no slide) then ollie the cone. One ridiculously slow, wanna be tech line of sw 180 front 50 “nollie” back 180 out, back 180 onto the slanted curb to fakie grind pivot out (?) then a switch slappy noseslide 270 out. Ha it was so ridiculous and fun. I can’t have that much fun at parks. Other tricks I did were nose manny the taller manny pad which was hard because it’s so short in distance that it felt like a nosebonk (which I can’t do), 180 nose manny, almost front 5-0 kickflip out, some more fun stuff. Oh and the whole time I had the new completely amazing and epic Dinosaur Jr album blasting in my ears. Awesome.

Had a few minutes while the kids were finishing up homework before we were gonna play hide ‘n seek so I went out to Rampy. I had to break in some new shoes. Forte Mids by Fallen. Fallen makes a darn good shoe. Anyways I started out kind of doing whatever and ended up trying a f/s halfcab to rock ‘n roll for awhile. Didn’t really get it, but got one with a front truck bash instead of full rock. Oh well, then I did some basics and ended it with a couple first try tricks like front 50 and fakie hurricane as it was time to go hide in closets that I’m too big to hide in.

Went to Broomfield park pretty much right after work with the rain threatening. Got in a few warm up tricks with John Brandow before the rain kicked in and we went our separate ways. I went to Crisis and met up with Fuzz and Dave and we went to one of the funnest garages ever, Yellow Curbs. Things started slow, but they do for us these days. One of the first tricks that was tried by all was nollie back tail for Jason. I guess I’m the only one that landed one, but it’s a stretch calling what I did a nollie back tail. More like a backside powerslide with a little tail scrape. Fuzz was slamming pretty hard. Dave would slide out all casually. Lots of slappys on the shortest curb went down. Dave learned slappy crooks in under 5 tries much to Fuzz’s disapproval. Ha, the one trick he can’t do. Fuzz and I had a little kickflip challenge up, off, up, off some curbs that he won although I went for b/s flip when I got to the end. Havine the smaller board was nice for kickflips again. I could actually get up the curb when I wanted to. I came pretty close to kickflip up and treflip off. I put both feet on a couple times, but didn’t ride away. Either way hyped I tried that at least. Fuzz tried to get a “Kick back T first T for a B” (translation: kickflip back Tail first Try for a Beer), but didn’t and ended up getting a kick back 5-0 a few tries later. Dave had some smooth grinds, a rad ollie up, back 180 the hard way out of a curb cut. All in all a really fun session with a fun crew. Oh yeah, the only bummer was my knees are pretty arthritic lately and ollie’ing any higher then a curb seems pretty impossible. I pretty much did accidental wallies over parking blocks every time I tried to ollie over one.

Feeling kind of sick and lazy I finally headed out as I was supposed to meet up with Bernie and bring Connor to the old Thornton park for a contest. After lots of driving we arrived and the park was a mess. We thought it was a game of SKATE done by Commission, but it was a full on city event. I dorked around a little but when that horribly popular Submlime song “Santa Ria” or whatever came on I had to get out of there. We did. We ended up at Thornton High. I messed around and did some slappys on a curb and a couple flippers. Then we went to a school nearby with a mellow bank and that was about it. We all dorked around on the bank. I was feeling a little odd on my skateboard. Tried kick front tail and didn’t get close. Also couldn’t do no comply bigspin. Next up was 18th & Welton in Denver. Connor got a line while Bernie filmed and I dorked around before Denver Shop, 98% and more crews showed up. It was rad. We went up the hill to the fun manny pad to ledge spot. I sucked. Connor and Bernie were getting close to wanting to film, but we got the boot. We then went to the US Bank brick bank spot. I continued sucking. Connor did some neat stuff and probably felt bummed he has to hang with us sometimes. Ha. Bernie was trying a trick he could do easy normally. Manaual to wallride to manual, but he couldn’t get it. He started betting Scotty who was just chilling. First it started with a beer, then two beers, 3, six pack, 12 pack, 30 pack, 30 pack a handle of tequila, 30 pack and handle and carton of cigs, etc. This escalated to the point where Bernie had to get Scotty escorts, limo rides and hire Jimmy Hendrix to play a private show. It was funny. He did eventually get it.

After dinner Connor and I met up with Fuzz and Dean at the Broomfield park. The Fort Collins dudes were there. Always so rad to see them. I was super tired/sore so kept it really mellow on just the blue ledge all night. Came close, really close to halfcab flip noseslide. That would have made my year. I guess I can say I’m happy to be on a smaller board and hucking tricks I’ll never land. Dean almost had boardslide to fakie on the brown ledge. Fuzz was skating really good again and had some good slams to go along with it. Fun night.

Had a few minutes before going out to dinner with India and Liz and took advantage of the cooler weather with some flatground in front of the house. It’s amazing how foreign a skateboard feels when I try to start out with ollies/flip tricks. But I did warm up and get a few. Loving the little board. Got one 3 flip, still struggling with that trick. Hucked some sw f/s flips that felt close. Came close to nollie tre and nollie big flip. Then went to dinner.