It was India’s birthday party. So we had to prepare for lots of middle school girls coming over and then total chaos for a few hours. It ended up not being quite as dramatic as I would have thought, but that allowed us adults so sip a few beers in the backyard and eat cake. I had taken a quick nap, but was still feeling pretty bad from the beer, birthday cake when I went to the manual pad as the sun had started to set. It took Carleigh awhile to show up, but I was having fun just doing the basics. I didn’t do much. I failed at kickflip manual and nose manual front shove out as well as fakie bigspin manul. I kind of tried nose manual nollie tre out, but that will never happen. I don’t think I really landed anything. See Fuzz, I just try tricks, I don’t land them. I tried a few 360 flips up the curb, but failed at that too. Carleigh had some good kickflips and got a manny. We didn’t have long, it was fun though.

It sure gets dark early now. After work Ollie and I went across the street to the school. It was totally vacant so we finally started skating the new yellow curb. It’s sick, and even gets tall at some points that it can be called a ledge (at least in my book). Even though I was super tired I managed to skate pretty good. Maybe it’s because I had some new shoes I was breaking in:

Lakai Manchesters. I have had a couple pairs of these shoes before, they are awesome. We rode down the handicap ramp and ollied off the tall part of the curb onto the slick parking lot. They just re-tarred it so it’s insanely slippery. Both Ollie and I slid out on some back 180s. His are so good. Riding down the handicap ramp switch and doing a fakie ollie off the ledge was fun. Then I started trying the 5 stair I’ve been staring at since it was built. A few tries in and I landed it. This would be because Ollie set his board at the bottom and jumped down onto it which got me really hyped. It’s not a long 5, but it is 5. I should ollie it often to get comfortable with stairs again. It’s probably bigger then the 6 at Broomfield. Anyways, we had a blast. I also got kickflip and front shove off the ledge after rolling down the handicap ramp. Then we went over to the long two stair area. Ollie did his drop to quick back 180 the second stair. So sick. I got front 180, but I had to go slow. Then I ollied the gap from the short two onto the asphalt. Fun. Then we ate pizza and watched Ghostbusters. That movie rules.

Met up with Josh, Max and Dean at Meta to do some filming on campus. The goal was to just roll into campus without any real plans and just film lines of Josh and Max. They didn’t disappoint. I rode my cruiser from spot to spot, did some manuals while they were warming up, fire crackered some stairs, etc. At the end of the night Josh slammed super hard on a gap to manny that went bad. Ouch. All was good though and after we went to Carleigh’s and had a celebratory beer. Neat.

Broomfield park again? Crazy. I met Jake, Carleigh, Fuzz, Brian and Neil there. Max was already there and then Josh Steele and crew showed up too. So awesome. Warming up was a couple kickturns on the quarta potty then a game of SKATE with Jake. Without much warmup I thought I would skate horribly, but it worked out pretty good. I landed a lot of my tricks and even lots of Jake’s tricks. The ones I was hyped on were 3 flip, fakie bigflip, b/s flip. After that Fuzz challenged me to another one and Brian joined. Brian skates Indys so he was out first. I think Fuzz had me at SK and he had nothing when I saw this scooter kid slam super hard trying to get up onto the blue ledge. For whatever reason I thought I should imitate it and I bailed out of my ollie and dove onto the blue ledge. Fuzz caught on immediately and was laughing so hard. Brian caught on too. Before we could resume the game the scooter kid went again, got on the ledge this time and then slammed hard diving off of it. So I imitated that slam too. I got a good shinner, but it was worth it seeing Brian, Fuzz and Neil laughing so hard they could barely stand. I have to admit I was pretty proud of my efforts. The game of SKATE was over at that point, but my humor wasn’t. Fuzz wanted to work on a trick and he said “You’re better then me at trying new tricks, lets try something”. Naturally I replied with “That’s because I never actually land them.” HA! (Gren voice) Fuzz wanted back tails. He did a bunch of really good ones. I wanted kick back tails or kick back 5-0. I got a kick back 50 then started trying to tail. Fuzz had moved on to back lips. We ended up getting them back to back. Tight! Jake was over on the black ledge doing bluntslides. Carleigh was in the pool. Neil was sitting. Max and Josh were destroying the place. Josh did front noseblunt 180 in the hard way on the steep bank. Wow. Max did a line with switch heel switch manny, halfcab heel manny back 180 out, 360 flip manual front 180 out. Yes, one line. It was insane. He also did fakie nosegrind on the brown ledge to fakie nose manual down the ledge. Ridiculous. Fuzz and I worked on front noseslides for awhile. We landed them, but they weren’t up to par yet. We will keep at it. We’ll make Jason proud. After a bit of chilling and watching Max do funny manual dance tricks I thought it would be fun to do 1/3 of one of his tricks. He had tried front 180 fakie manual fakie front bigspin out. So Fuzz, Jake and I tried it without the manual part. So I guess that’s 2/3? YES! Fuzz was of course first to land it. He got a couple. They weren’t perfect, but way better then the straight legged ass in the air one that I landed. Then Fuzz and I tried kickflip up b/s flip off. Once again, Fuzz landed a couple. I didn’t. I was close, but the lights went out. Josh was almost getting nollie front 180 heel sw manual. Geez. Another fun night in Broomfield.

Jake called me right after dinner and said he had his mom’s car and wanted to drive somewhere to skate. I had to take advantage of Jake driving! So he picked me up and we went to Broomfield park. We were warming up on the quartapotty when Sean showed up too. Rad. The quartapotty session was pretty sick. Jake rattled through his tricks quick. Pivot fakie first try, hurricanes both ways. Killing it. I struggled a bit to get a regular back pivot which I haven’t done in awhile then started trying more stuff. Front feebles there are my favorite trick. I got a b/s hurricane pretty quick which I’ve never done there before. Then I started trying f/s hurricanes which I have never done anywhere other then the six inch bank at Lafayette. It was way harder here, but I eventually got a couple. I was trying a line with front 5-0 on the blue ledge, front hurricane on the qp, back 5-0. Never got all of them together. There was not many people at the park. Darren was there and we had an old guy crook run. I got mine first, Darren second, Jake third. Tight. Then Sean ollied up the stepup super easy to manual without even flinching his arms. Jake had never ollied up it so we both went for it too. I was trying a run with kickflip into the bank, manual the black ledge, axle stall the brick qp then ollie up. Never got them all and the ollie up took forever for me. Ugh. There was a rainbow ledge session that went down for a bit. Sean did the smoothest back nosegrind back 180 out in history. It left Jake and I speechless. Jack was working on front lip and eventually got it. I was trying back 5-0 shove on the blue ledge which I eventually got. Rad, haven’t done that in forever. I also did a kickflip back 50 and was gonna fall, but took my front foot off and no complied out. Technically that’s a new trick for me even though I wasn’t trying it. My last tricks of the day were to front lip the blue box and nollie tre. Neither came quick, but I got them both. Really fun session.

Sean Flaherty Nose Bonk. Photo by Dean Barnes.

Chadman front 180 up switch heel over. Photo by Dean Barnes.

Man I was so tired. I drove down from my mom’s place early. The drive wasn’t bad, but 3 hours is a bit regardless. A big crew had sounded interested, but when it came meeting time it quickly fell apart. We still went to Denver though. It was Bernie, Chad and I in my car. Dean, Max, Sean and Jack in Dean’s car. First spot was overrun with Broncos traffic so we went way out to Centennial to one of the sickest spots ever. I didn’t even warm up before the filming started. Some really cool stuff went down and some not so cool stuff. After the kids were ready to move on for food I wanted to skate. Chad stuck around and we skated a bit more. I had troubles ollie’ing up the two stair due to a crack that messed with my head, but ended up getting it. Ollieing off a little two stair that had another two right away was tough for me too. I was sucking. Chad was doing 100mph kickflip manuals up the two. There is a somewhat tall ledge off the two stair and I wanted to noseslide it. I got a kickflip out of the handicap bump then got the noseslide. Sweet.

After some food we went to the Centennial park. It was crowded when we got there and I was still feeling stiff and awkward. Max was destroying the place. Sean too. Chad skates so rad. Just kinda doing random stuff then will do such a crazy trick perfect. Dean ollied a rail on the bank. I was trying to ollie into the bank over the rail, but took forever to do it. I got it though. Max treflipped over it and ollied over it out of a manual. Yeah, I suck. I also did a tailslide on the bank, front shove off a little kicker and almost got treflip flyout for the brohs. One of the front shove misses hurt my foot. These little Lakais are gonna be done real quick. They already hurt too much. Pretty weird day. Too much driving.

It was super nice out. I had a half day as I was leaving for my Mom’s house after work and didn’t want to drive later on when it’s supposed to be snowing in the mountains. I went to St Julien where I was supposed to meet Carleigh. I wasn’t feeling that spot, but I kept “skating” it since I was waiting for Carleigh. People kept standing near the ledge on their phones on work breaks so I felt weird skating by them. I tried a bunch of kick back tails and never got close uphill, manuals downhill and never did that either. Carleigh showed up, but wasn’t able to skate as she had some stuff to deal with. When she took off so did I. I was feeling burnt and tired. I rolled through a couple alleys and saw nothing. I was walking back to the car and saw a sick curb cut to downhill parking lot bomb and had to do it. It wasn’t too fast, but by the end I had to cut left to avoid a parked car making it fun. I was struggling with kickflips, but managed a couple into it that made the skate day worth it for me.

A pretty cool night. I got to the park and started out with just a long sleeve, but had to add the hoodie as the wind was really cold. No beanie of course. I’m doing my best to not wear one this year as they remind me of cold. Maybe I should rock one in the summer like Jack and Fuzz then it would remind me of summer. If only it were that simple. Anyways, some dude was posted up in dropin on the quartapotty for a good solid 15 minutes. A big dude with big DC shoes on just trying to get up the courage to dropin on that huge two foot quarter pipe. He eventually just gave up. Matt and Shaun were beat from a whole day of skating, but they still shredded. Back to back back 180s down the back to back 3 sets. Matt had a nice back smith on the unhappy ledge. I skated ok. Flip tricks were coming easy. 3 flip, frontside halfcab flip. Front feeble on the quartapotty is one of my favs. I could not nose manual the blue ledge. I tried a bunch of kick back tails and failed. Carleigh arrived and was super tired, but in a good mood. She ended up staying til the end even though she didn’t want to. Matt, Shaun and Rich left a little early and most of the park cleared out. I tried to ollie up onto the happy ledge and bs flip off, but my ollie’s haven’t been on point since my knee pain and I struggled at it. Had a good time.

Oh man. Such as amazing day. I was so sore the next day that even my upper body was sore. Wowsers. And that was before helping Carleigh move. Anyways, back to Monday, epic skate day. It started early for me as I had to drive to work, drop off my work phone, bring orders to Fed Ex and make a trip to the post office before meeting at Crisis at 9am. No one was there at 9. We left around 10:30. Not so bad. We were all piled in the Square State bus and made the trek to Roxborough skatepark. We stopped at a gas station nearby and I got some coffee. Yeah coffee! I had taken a few sips when we got to the skatepark. I cruised down the sidewalk to the park thinking to myself this was kind of fast for first thing in the morning, but it was fun. I was just cruising taking little carves when all of a sudden SLAM. Threw my coffee, slammed my knee into the ground, ate shit, ruined some new pants. Turns out there was a new section of concrete that had some weird layer of ice on it. Sweet. I hadn’t even made it into the park before slamming. It really didn’t bum me out though.

Everyone cruised around getting warmed up. Eventually people settled into some tricks and areas of the park. Jack and I skated the ledge for awhile and had a blast. Fuzz and Brian rolled in on the crazy extension thing. Gordon was skating. Actually skating. Hyped to see it. The ledge session that Jack and I had going was pretty amazing. He did nollie heel noseslide, crooks 3 shove, wallie 50, wallie blunt, front tail shove, so much more. I had a few crooks, front 5-0s, front 5-0 shove and some bad back 50s. It was really fun. We would try lining things out with the little qp. Well, we tried before Neil joined and disrupted the flow by always going. Ha. I think I managed front 5-0, front d, crooks. Also had a couple 3 flips on flat in there too.

While Jack and I were finishing up destroying the ledge people had started skating the pool at the back of the park. I joined. I sucked it up, but dropped into the shallow which hyped me up. I guess I got tile on one carve, but that was it. Fuzz, Chad, Brian, Gordon were killing it. Neil couldn’t drop in, but would still manage some good runs. Dean was in the mix too. Gordon skated hard and it was epic to watch. Front 5-0 the qp above the pool, roll in (so gnarly!) and follow it up with a run going over the stairs frontside and backside. Tranny killer. Brian was going for hurricane over the stairs and almost put it down. Fuzz struggled for front tail? Unheard of. Toward the end of this session I filmed Jack do a kicky back tail:

Then played around on the tranny solo for awhile. It was fun, but depressing. I tried a bunch of frontside ollies on this little hump. Maybe a few of them left the ground. I bailed a lot more axle stalls then I wanted to. But I had fun and managed a couple tricks that made me feel remotely ok.

Next we drove to the new Arvada skatepark that isn’t open yet. Neil had said we had an invite to skate it, but it sure didn’t seem like it when we got there. It was a weird vibe. Some skated, others sat in the bus. Jack and Brian dropped in on the monster 13 foot wall of death. Some Team Pain dude later rolled in on as his first thing on the board for the day. So gnarly. Brian grinded over the door first try. So sick. Jack did a sick late shove transfer. Neil was able to drop in into the mini bowl. Skelly joined us for a bit. Ripping. The park looks fun, I’ll wait til it’s done to go back though.

Last spot of the day was Rock Creek. Rock Creek! Gordon played a game of SKATE! He ripped it too. It was Jack, Gordon, some kid named Zeb I think and me. I was out quick. Gordon was out second, but ripped it with tricks I’ve never seen him do (not saying much though because I’ve never seen him skate flat before). Zeb had tricks like double dolphin flips so him and Jack were fun to watch do crazy tricks. I skated the ramp with others for awhile. Didn’t do much, but had fun. Gordon ripped the ramp. Every combo ever. So good. Fuzz was ripping. Brian slammed pretty hard, but still ripped it. My highlights were actually landing flatground tricks after the ramp session. Lots of treflips, a couple nollie tres, etc. It was really fun.

The day as a whole though, wow, so insanely fun. Days like this are hard to top and I was so sore I could hardly walk the next day.

Jake came over and we played Add-A-Trick in my street for awhile before leaving for Lafayette. It was a blast even though there was too much traffic from a CU game. The first line got pretty long. Something like powerslide, sweeper, no comply 180, fakie flip, sw 180, nollie back 180. I don’t even remember, Jake was the only one to get it. We had another shorter one then tried a few 3 flips before heading out. I managed to get 3 out of 10 or something like that. Not so bad for me as of late. Lafayette was pretty dead. Jake and I got there way before anyone else and skated the flow bowl for awhile. Jake killed it. I didn’t try many tricks, just tried to skate faster and get a little scratch grind on the pool coping. Others started showing up in waves. The total crew in order of arrival was Neil, Bernie, Brian, Gordon, Sandy, Dean, Crisis crew, Jack and Carleigh. Bernie and I played on the manual pad a bit. He did halfcab flip manual so easy. I never manualled it. For some reason I hate that slab of marble. Gordon, Brian, Kyle skated the pro bowl. I dropped in on it once, made one kick turn then slipped out. After that it was pretty much non stop playing on the little tight qp at the entrance of the park. Lots of stuff went down. Brian and Jake did a million tricks. I had troubles with axle stalls initially, but ended up getting quite a few tricks. Back feeble, front rock, front axle stall, back smith, front feebs. I still owe Jake a tall can of Modelo for a race we had going. He was trying pivot fakie and I was trying back smith. We both got him, obviously he was first if I owe him a beer. Bernie did a front tailslide on it which was ridiculous. Carleigh did a Heavy rock to fakie, Heavy axle stall and a Heavy feeble to fakie. Jack did lots of neat stuff too. Back D first T. Jack was doing tricks down the drop like back foot flip, nollie flip etc and started trying nollie tres. I went for kickflip asking what he’d do if I did it first try. He offered a Vitamin Water so I went for it. It was so close that some kid asked if I was trying a Lazer Flip. Totally dude. Jack ended up extending the offer for three tries and after he put down a perfect nollie tre I put down a totally hideous kickflip. Last thing I did was an ollie up the curb, axle stall on the qp, then kickflip off the curb. Pretty sketchy, but fun. Then we went to Crisis to setup for the art show and Jack had a Vitamin Water there waiting for me. Amazing! It ended up being an incredibly fun night. Congrats Fuzz! Crisis is the bomb!