Jake and I rolled to Lafayette and met Fuzz, Neil, John and the Old Man Army was there too. Upon arrival the park was crowded with the things that make skateparks lame. Lurkers, bikers, scooters, etc etc etc. Fuzz and I almost bailed on it, but we stuck around. People started with a flyout ollie over a rock. I wasn’t in for that and just dorked around the park for awhile not landing anything. I couldn’t even do a fakie flip on a mellow bank or front 50 the bump to ledge. I got in the snakerun action after awhile. Everyone else was doing ollies over the rounded hip. I did a kickflip to the upper bank. Kind of a kickflip wallride, but it’s too mellow to call it a wallride I think. Then it started raining and a short intermission was taken. After that John and Fuzz played pivot to fakie. Jake, Neil and I played on the tight bank at the entrance of the park. Neil was trying front 50s, but not so lucky. Jake did back blunt which is ridiculous and attempted a few front blunts. I got a few basics and added front feeble and front pivot. I was really hyped on the pivot. I was also doing some little b/s flips n the mountain bank. Fun. Everyone went over to the little qp and I stuck at the entrance. I kind of got a line of wallie up the qp, 360 flip on flat, turn around, ollie off the qp, b/s flip on the bank then front 50. I was going for front pivot and the 3 flip had a 3 point landing. Tight. My board was driving me nuts though. It felt so small when I would ollie off the qp and kickflips were feeling weird. Maybe I’ve finally got my board control back enough that I want a bigger board again. I went over to the little bowl. Did a couple tricks like hurricane and front feeble. Neil snaked everyone. John rips. Jake did a back blunt. Fuzz did back 5-0 to back d and a bunch of other steez. Then we had a couple beers at a nearby bar and called it a night.

Got out of work pretty early, wasn’t really feeling up to street skating after a nap and it was raining anyway. So I dug Rampy out of the garage sale mess and found different homes for a bunch of unwanted junk. I was super hyped. It’s been since the end of February since it’s been skated. Warming up went ok. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Tricks that felt good to do again where fakie pivot fakie, fakie Joe Hamilton, front disasters almost every try. If I bailed on a setup trick I would attempt nollie flips in flat (none were remotely close). After awhile I was bummed on bailing the basics and started posing tricks. I wanted to do front 50 to front lip for whatever reason. Gave up on that one. Then thought of kickflip front disasters and posed about 20 straight. None close, but they felt doable on something mellower. I figured I should try at least one old man trick too so I tried those frontside lein to tail things with a the front foot on the deck. Riley does them hella good. I don’t know what they are called. I ended up getting one where the tail never left the deck so I’m claimnig I did a sweeper. I was really hyped though. I have never tried anything like that. I got another one but my board was kind of in the air and it went really slow. Still, it was at least a trick I don’t normally try and something that might show my age a little. By the end I was a sweaty mess, it was super hot in there. Fun though!

Another super hot day. Carleigh is still on IR, but said she wanted to hang and film. So John and I decided on the gnarliest 2 stair/curb spot in town. It took us awhile to warm up and the wax was like a puddle on the curb it was so hot. John had some slappy tailslides early. I got one fsng on the curb and backed it with a really bad no comply 180 off the “2” (2 is in quotes because it’s the smallest 2 stair ever). This is the first nosegrind I’ve done on cement and not at a skatepark. Neat! We started doing lines up too. John was doing front 180 up, halfcab flip, but struggling with the halfcab flip. I posed a couple kick back tails to see if I could get close and ended landing one of the three in my life that actually locked in and slid. The camera came out, but I had a feeling I had already landed my good one. John did get a line, but I’m not sure how hyped on it he was. I had trouble with the kickflip up, had a few heelflips to back it, got really close to kick back tail, but never close enough. John slammed super bad (above) and we decided to move on.

After some Xing Tea and a break we ended up at this bank spot. John and I each got boardslides. John almost got a crazy feeble grind. I kind of landed a crook/nosepick without a grab, but definitely slammed (above). Fun day, frustrating that we could film that much and not land what we wanted to, but oh well. We skated hard and had fun. Thanks for filming Carleigh!

Had to work the late shift which gets me out of work at 6. My hands/knees/body have been feeling some unwanted arthritis pain. Enough that I was scared to lift weights at the gym because my hands might lose their grip. Ugh. I met John at a Chipotle in Longmont and we headed up to MRKT. We had planned on meeting Andy and Mike to skate wherever. Nate, Jacoby and Jake joined us. This is the only city where people just kinda gather at shop closing and go out and skate together. Whoever is around, no cameras, just go skate. It’s amazing. We dprked at a weird little bank spot initially then moved on to some curbs. Well, Andy, John and I skated these, but everyone else moved onto some taller curbs. This was a fun warm up. The curbs where low enough frontside and backside slappies went down. John even did back 50. Unheard of. I was struggling to feel my board, but having fun. Andy was ripping. One of the best styles around for his age. We moved on and joined the rest of the crew at some more curbs. This spot has been around forever and just recently painted again. It’s one of the few spots I actually remember skating back in 93/94 in college. Nate did a sick crooky on it. Jacoby had a sick halfcab noseslide. Andy had a good boardslide transfer. Mike did some 20 foot long boardslides. John and I were trying lines with boardslide, flip trick then ollie the gap over the curb and grass onto the sidewalk. He did it pretty quick. I wouldn’t to do boardslide transfer, but the transfer part wasn’t working. Everyone else moved on to the 2 up 2 down, but I wanted to keep trying for that line. I got a slow/tiny switch boardslide transfer, kickflip then ollie the gap to 90 degree stop. Oh well. The 2 up 2 down has been around for a long time too and I remember some great sessions with JP in the late 90s. It was at this spot that my arthritis really seemed to take hold. I struggled ollieing up the two, never got manual, took a long time to get kickflip up and when I finally did I was too close to the handrail and jammed my thumb on it so bad. The pain was insane, but luckily mostly temporary. Oh and I was apparently uncoordinated enough that I cracked my tail ollieing up the two. That takes special skills. John had a quick manual, learned firecrackers and tried for front 180 up, halfcab flip on flat, back 180 off. Mike manualled it, manualled to firecracker and manualled all the way to the street. So sick. Andy had manual easy, kickflips up easy. Nate, Jake and Jacoby left for food. We moved on, got some water in the student center and ended up at the Clark building. We started out on the hip side. John almost died trying to ollie down the 3 above the other 3. Mike ollied the 5. I did a few tricks over the hip including a b/s flip which might be the only trick all night I was actually hyped on. We skated a nearby rock for awhile. Mike and I dropped in on it. Andy almost did wallride to fakie on it. Then we hit the 2 stair with a 3 above it area. Andy had a sick manual at speed. I did a bad ollie up the 2, front 50 the bottom of the 3. Front 180 up 2 and kinda close to f/s halfcab flip off (homage to JP circa 93). Mike did switch firecracker down the 3 then 2. So sick. Hyped me up enough to try regular firecracker down both. That was pretty much the end of the night. We walked back to the car. Good times, great old guys. Ha ha.

Feeling a little better I was ordered to play basketball with Ollie after dinner again. It exhausted me even though it was pretty fun. It also blew out my shoe as you can see above. That is my switch foot so none of that came from skateboarding, the suede tore from the sole. So that meant new shoes. The Lakai Carlo shoes in the background. I have had then before and they are some mighty fine shoes. Jake came over and then we picked up Carleigh and Jack. Carleigh was hurt so just wanted to hang out and shoot photos. Like this one:

Jake had suggested a bump in a newly redone parking lot near Wahoos. The bump ended up not being so great, but we found some other fun stuff around. Jack was the first to front board the front of the tractor. Then he did all kinds of stuff on it like nosebonk, nosebonk front 180, all kinds of stuff. I managed some weird front boards on it, but I was happy about it.

We hit this too. Jake mannied it in a line with a kickflip. I got lucky and mannied it first try so started a night long battle with nose mannies. The slight downhill and metal grate was messing with me. Jack was ripping. Doing long lines, cruising around looking like he was having a blast. It was awesome to see. Jake suggested a new spot when I was mid battle with the nose manny then beamed me until I landed it. After that we played a game of SKATE that was nobody’s finest. It was fun though. Jack won. I blame the new shoes.

Again with the super exhausted thing and I’m not sure why. After tiring myself out even more I dropped by Meta right before they closed so I could pick up a flash drive and leave some wheels for Max. After chatting with John for awhile I went over to the slappy curb. About 10 slappy crooks later it started raining so I went home kind of excited that I would hopefully be getting some good rest.

I’m not sure what got into me, but I was super tired over the weekend. I got plenty of sleep and didn’t drink beers so I have no idea what caused it. All day I sat around, trying to get motivated. Finally Ollie said he wanted to skate so I knew I had to. We went to little arvada after stopping by and watching a bit of street league at Crisis. When we first got there the park was empty. Amazing. Ollie was cruising around with a huge grin doing little kickturns/grinds and genuinely looking like he was having a blast. I was sucking. Struggling with everything. Then some dudes came that were decent skaters, but they were just super loud and obnoxious and oblivious to the fact that there were kids (families at the playground a few feet away) around. It definitely bummed out Ollie and me. But we skated. I don’t think either of us did much. The only new thing I did there was a crooks on the steep bank. I got a rock ‘n roll on the shallow pool corner too, but I think I’ve done that before. Ollie did some rock ‘n rolls both ways on the little qp at the top, I got front feeb and smith on it and we called it a night.

Met up with Steve V (college buddy I haven’t seen in a couple years) at Crisis. Did some Null business, shot the shit with Fuzz, Dean, Conor and Blaine for awhile then headed over to the park. Almost no one was there. We skated the bowl to start. Deano was in the mix. Connor lost interest in about 2 seconds. We carved around, did some 50s, that was about it. I was surprised to get back 50 on the pool coping first try. We hit the street section for awhile and it was apparent quickly that I wasn’t on my A game. We kinda played on the quartapotty, blue ledge and that was about it. Steve is mostly a trannie skater so he was hyped ollieing onto the blue ledge. Dean was trying halfcab manuals and getting every halfcab up. That was sick. I had a couple no comply 270 to back tails, a few kickflips, then we went back to the pool. We couldnt drop in, but we carved around which was fun. I got a little tile in the shallow which hyped me up, but man that pool is hard to skate. Back to the bowl. If it wasn’t for my contacts being so dry and almost falling out mid runs I would have had a blast. Had a few tiny ollies, faster carves, rock ‘n roll, back 50s, front slash. Steve had a good time too, that’s him above. Then we went and hung out for awhile at Fuzz’s. Fun times.

So this blog was supposed to be more then it is. It was supposed to be video clips all the time, Colorado skate news galore, Dinosaur Jr news and my skate journal. Well thanks to Four, Null, family, work, etc lately it’s only been my skate journal. Sure it’s a little weird writing about my own skating all the time, but I’m doing this for me. I don’t want to forget these awesome days I am so lucky to have and I want to be able to read about days like this 20 years from now. Anyways, with that said, I had a horrible day at work and decided I would rather go skate with my headphones cranked up then drive to a ramp I’ve never been to before and watch Lifeblood/wizards rip. I was right. The kids were gone and Liz realized I needed some space as I watched the new Almost video (pretty good) then Quik (totally amazing) yet again then got on my bike and rolled to campus. I should almost call this entry “Dumb shit that only I would skate”, but there might be like two other people out there that would be down. Probably people that read this. Ha.

Lately I’ve been in this slappy noseslides for warm up mode and this little ledge peaked my interest. First try was a switch noselide which worked. Then front nose fakie. That worked too. Slappy front tail took a few tries, but got it. Noseslide to fakie up. This ledge slid a little, but not really. Front tail down. Front 5-0. Switch boardslide down (whoa!) and finally a front tail shove that slid. Good warm up for me! I should mention that there is no runway really for this, only what you can see there. One push.

Then I got some water in the engineering building and cruised downhill cracking little ollies and powerslides til I ended up here. Did wallride, rock ‘n roll slide, feeble and several treflips on flat. I started trying crooks since I can slappy them on curbs now and a few tries later got one. It even grinded. Might be cool to film that for Off The Couch 2 With A Vengeance sometime.

Now for the quick feet training part of the evening. Got quick ups and ollie down the 2 front 180 off the 1 which was way harder than I thought would be.

I walked up to this area next which is one of my favorite areas. I started wanting to do 360 flip into the first “bank” (it’s downhill, but it’s definitely not steep), kickflip into the next then manual one of the benches below. I got the treflip second try, bailed the kickflip then thought I would be able to get this quick. Nope, the next treflip took forever. Forever. And when I got it I bailed the kickflip again. Luckily I got another tre, got the kickflip, but didn’t have the juice to ollie up the bench well and had to settle for a crappy ollie to ride to fall off the ledge. Neat. Everytime I went back to the top I would try a random flip trick. At one point I felt like switch b/s flips were doable. Silly me. Next I tried kick back tails on the little ledge at the top of this photo. I got one, but it took forever and I was going ultra slow even for me. Oh well, kick back tail!

I took about 20 tries to ollie up this bench, then ollie onto the ledge, but it was fun when I got it.

This is the trick that surprised me the most, I ollied over this. Didn’t even take many tries.

Then I walked back to my bike and rolled home. Isn’t it funny how the reflection of the flash looks like I have ballin’ ass glowing rims? I gotta say it was a good day. Ha, seriously though this day was a favorite of mine and reminds me of when I was skating around St Louis all by myself skating whatever I felt like. Skateboarding rules.

Such an awesome night. I had to sell some boards to SOL after work so I went there, met up with Dean and waited for Trick Factory to show up in the Square State bus. They took so long that I was actually able to beat Allan in a game of foosball (granted I lost about 10 games). Then we hit the road to Fort Collins for the BBQ/demo. When we arrived it wasn’t that crowded, but that didn’t stop Jack and I from not skating the park. It quickly turned to chaos and any chance I had of skating the park was crushed. I watched for awhile. The Lifebloods and Blood Wizards were killing it. Especially this dude. The Fort Collins locals were shredding too. Watching skating is awesome and all, but it was super nice out and there was a perfectly good parking lot to be skated. I think I played four or five games of SKATE total. All with Jack, some with others included. I could go into tedious details, but I wont. I felt great. Arthritis was nowhere to be found, I had energy, etc. Super happy about that. Jack could have easily won all the games had he done tricks like switch heel, switch flip, etc. But he’s nice like that and would limit the tricks I couldn’t do to a couple a game. I think I landed almost every flipper I’ve ever done. Including a nollie tre and nollie varial flip in the same game. Fuzz had the three basic fakie heelflip tricks and the halfcab back heel took out everyone. It was a blast skating like this. I landed on several fakie tres and b/s flips, but never got either of those tricks. Only got one treflip too. But yeah, so much fun. At the end I started doing slappy crooks on a curb and one of the bigwigs at Lifeblood gave me a shirt. I’d like to think it was because he was hyped on the slappy crooks, but who knows, he probably just felt sorry for me. I did a few kickflips at this point that felt like the best kickflips I’ve done. Happy times. I tried to teach Conor how to do slappy crooks and rumor has it he landed one, but it sure took him a long time. Ha. A bunch of Bloods piled in the bus on the way home. Bonus.