Right after work I picked up Sean and Max, then met Chad, Josh, Carleigh and Dean at this new bikepath ledge spot.  Everyone got the warm up on.  Some better (Max) than others (Me).  Sean was killing some fun looking lines doing the basics perfect.  Chad was working on his Josh Steele ollies next to Josh Steele.  I had new shoes.  Adidas Campus Vulcs.   Sorry, it’s basically the only option I had at the time and I like to get my shoes broken in ahead of skating.  Anyways, they have a great sole it seems like, but overall I think I the shoe feels really large like I’m wearing a size 12 or something.  It took me forever to get a basic line done horrible.  Kickflip, noseslide, back 50.  The spot is ridiculous.  It wasn’t long before I turned into filmer Glen.  Max got a bangin’ line and trick.  Josh got a couple lines and almost a bangin’ trick.  Dean got some amazing photos.  Then we drove to this spot where I’ve been hoping someone would quick up ollie over the pole for years.  Josh finally manned up.  It wasn’t easy for even him, but he did it.  I was soooo blown away.  I wish I would have filmed it better though.  Max was going bonkers around this time and skating all over the place with tons of energy.  It was epic.  We filmed a line using my $2 LED flashlight that came out amazing.  So hyped.

After the Null kids killed it I tried to go skate.  This was after 10pm.  I got out of the car and realized I was so hungry the stomach acid was going crazy.  I tried to skate.  It didn’t work though.  Partly the new shoes, mostly the hunger.  After playing spot tag with some bikers I went behind UMC and did a few flippers.  The only ok one was some bad frontside flips.  But in my head they felt as cool as the ones Josh had done in a line earlier.  That’s all that matters.  Ha.

Forever ago on a filming mission for Soup D’Jour we had one of the most epic filming and skating days in Fort Morgan, CO. We’ve been back a couple times since with various crews. The initial crew was Bernie, Eric Napolitano, Tyler’s brother Josh and me. This time around it was Jack, Derek, Bernie, Dean and I. We got a really early start and were pulling into drive by coffee around 11am. It was hilarious because we were in rural Colorado and when Dean and his English accent ordered an “English Breakfast” the lady just stared at him. Then we went to the skatepark. Everyone started at the miniramp. Jack killed it, the rest of us struggled. Derek was sore from the day before. Me and Dean aren’t the best skaters. I’m not sure what Bernie’s excuse was. Ha. Apparently we missed an amazing slam as Jack tried to manual from high to low and drop into front disaster and missed. He had some really steezey front 5-0’s to fakie the Strubing way, no comply tailslides and more slams. I can’t skate anything but Rampy it seems. I worked up to front ds, smiths and that’s about it. Mellow ramps are so hard to skate.

Then we hit the crack ridden main area of the park. We played a game of SKATE that Bernie or Jack won. Then I kinda tried a few lines. I did boardslide the flatbar, f/s ollie on the flatbank, rock ‘n roll on the tight qp, kickflip over a crack then early grab melon/method/whatever happened off the launch ramp. So fun. I got another run with front 50 on the ledge, b/s flip on the flatbank then another launcher. Jack was kind of on fire everywhere. He back 50’d the ridiculous 5 stair rail and back salad’ it. Back 270 front lip on the flat bar. Derek did nose manny nollie back 180 out on the ledge that took me forever to manual. Next we hit the tennis court wallride where Jack went so high we filmed a line to it.

Then we went to the nearby school where Jack went nuts and hippy jumped the bar in no time. Then we skated the manny pad for awhile. Bernie got close to halfcab manual b/s flip out while I struggled to get manual and nose manual. Then I went to work filming for awhile. Lets just say Jack got a bangin’ line and Bernie almost got a rad manual trick. We drove around for awhile, found a rail, harassed an old lady, filmed Jack dropin on something, posed on a flatbars, and ended up at a gap to rail that Jack manned up to. Last spot of the day was a downhill manny pad where everyone but Derek had fun. Ha. Derek was so tired and worked so hard to do a front 180 nose manual. Bernie slammed harder than possible on a curb, but got back up and kick nose mannied it. Jack got nollie heel manual. Dean filmed while I felt about as old as I could possibly feel. I had managed to manual it pretty quickly, but could not kickflip up the curb to save my life ugh.

Oh, and I didn’t bitch about my shoes enough.  As you can see above the stupid red dye in the soles of the Supras messed up the rubber and it all just rubs off right away.  It’s so bad in the ollie area that there is no grip after a few ollies.  I have been on a serious shoe slump lately.  Luckily, Jack gave me permission to retire the Supras as we sat at Taco John’s before leaving Ft Morgan.  Those shoes sucked.

Ollie got some new wheels for his birthday and he asked me to set them up in the morning. Right after that we went over to the school for a bit and broke in the new long two stair. Ollie was doing drop down manuals all steezey. I got a few too and was trying to follow it up with a quick ollie over the black plastic that was up for landscaping efforts. It took awhile and it was a horrible ollie. We went around the rest of the school. Nothing special went down. Ollie manualled across the US painting all easy. We ollied off the tall 3 stair into grass a few times and rolled around. Pretty fun. I also got a kickflip up a curb and tried to noseslide the lower level of a handrail.

After that was Ollie’s birthday party which was a lot of swimming and giving kids “surfboard” rides as I swam along the bottom of the pool with one standing on my back. Pretty fun, but tiring. Later on I could have gone skating, but was hungry, tired and sick of it being cold outside. Luckily I have an indoor ramp that people like to skate so Carleigh, Derek, Nate and Dean rolled over and we shredded for a couple hours. It was fun. Everyone was in good spirits. Carleigh maybe higher than the rest. Ha. She had her best first line ever that went all the way to a kickflip rock attempt. Nate got used to Rampy pretty quick and did lots of good tricks like front feeble, back tail, back d, back d to sugarcane and more. Derek of course killed it. He was keeping it kinda mellow, but managed a bigspin back tail in there. Ridiculous. Dean is taller than me and doesn’t skate ramp a whole lot. So he had some troubles earlier but worked it out and got the basics. I actually had a pretty good session. I got most of tricks. Actually pretty much all of them except hurricane. Even a front 50 yank out and a back rock decked on the short side of the deck. Thanks for coming over guys, it really cheered me up.

Not sure if this day would count if I were going for 300 again, but it was cold and snowing and we were hanging out at Crisis and the banana board came out.  Fuzz did some steezey basics like shove and no comply shove.  I flailed around like an old buffoon for an hour before landing two kickflips in a row.  I couldn’t even hardly stand comfortably on it.  Ugh.  CJ ended up getting a nollie flip.  We watched the old Meta video Recess.  It was rad.  Jam and Fuzz have parts in it.  It sure is nice having a dvd of the video.  Where you at with Lumber Jockeys Sam?????????

Got home from work and had less time to skate than I had thought.  Liz and were going to dinner, then the Always Sunny premiere, then J Mascis!  So I skated flat for about 30 min.  I was horrible.  I’m not sure why all of a sudden everything feels so awkward.  I was trying a run of no comply 180, fakie flip then f/s halfcab flip.  I think I got to the f/s halfcab flip twice.  Ugh.  I would land half of the no complys completely straight legged and borderline shooting out.  Fakie flips were 1/20.  So bummed.  Going the other way I managed a halfcab flip, heelflip, treflip run.  All tricks being horrible.  I had some fakie bigflips going 2mph.  I attempted quite a few nollie tres and didn’t get them.  I did get a few treflips.  All landed with Jason’s patented 20 stair landing steez.  Another line was heelflip then b/s flip landed in a way that would only count on defense in a game of over 50 SKATE.  I started hucking tricks I can’t do just to feel better about not landing tricks anyway.  Rick flips were surprisingly close.  I landed on one, but had stopped.  Still happy I skated though

Had one crazy evening. Got home to a completely messy house and a daughter that was screaming out of control about not being able to finish her homework in time for the talent show. Then I sat through two hours of elementary school “performances”. Two Justin Bieber songs, one Green Day song, blah blah. A couple kids could sing pretty good, but for the most part it was pretty rough. India was of course awesome for me to see and the ender was her whole 5th grade class doing the dance for Thriller. That was pretty amazing actually.

Oh wait, this is a skate journal huh? So yeah, after all that and then doing dishes and eating I went out to roll up the street to the strip mall by my house, but it was raining now. Ugh! Instead of baling on the whole thing I decided to hit Red Curbs. I pulled in and noticed a bunch of people skating. Whoa. Turns out that Satellite and Public Eye dudes had decided to skate there too. It was like a crowded skatepark. Ha, ok, so not crowded. Since I spent all of Monday sleeping off back pain my body was really out of it. I felt way more uncoordinated than normal and it showed. I struggled at everything from ollies to kickflips and in between (as if there is something in between ollies and kickflips). After awhile everyone else left. I don’t remember having actually landed anything by that point anyways. I started trying a line of halfcab flip, nose manual, kickflip back tail. I got all three, but not in a line. The kick back t was a good one for me and it slid about a foot. The weirdest thing happened though I heard someone yell really loud mid slide and it scared the death out of me. I never did figure out where it came from. Pretty weird. I tried a few nose manual nollie tres and did not get close. I tried a few front 5-0 kickflips out and did not get close. Maybe that list is a little unrealistic, but I guess I have two years to get them. Ok, enough babble about a curb session.

As I headed over to skate a new manual pad Neil said him and Brian were skating Lafayette.  I skated the manny pad for awhile since Carleigh was gonna meet up and was feeling pretty weird.  I had woken up with back spasms and did my best to sleep them off.  I was super tired and out of it, but it felt good to be on a real board again (a Null of course!).  I kinda wanted to go to Lafayette to meet up with them, but was so lazy.  I did try starting trying nose manual nollie treflip out.  I have gotten nowhere near close to that trick, but it still feels possible and I’m starting to be able to setup my back foot for the flick better.  I don’t know if I’ll ever land it, but hucking it is fun either way.  Carleigh showed up kinda bumming because of school.  We had a mellow session.  Nothing special went down and it started sprinkling after awhile.

Seriously, it was snowing in the morning.  April 23rd, and it’s snowing.  Ugh, Colorado can be so lame sometimes.  It killed filming plans.  I spent the time trying to make a new Null teaser which was for the most part very productive.  But sitting down for so long killed my legs.  I attempted to go skate at Southern Hills.  I had told Carleigh and Neil to come meet me and they both sounded interested.  I warmed up ok.  But had a couple weird falls that I blame on that Creature board.  I seriously hate that board.  It felt wider than it was long.  The tail was so short I would miss ollies non stop.  Anyways the one thing I did I was happy with was a kickflip over the little crack thing followed by a crooks on the bench.  I’ve wanted to try that for awhile and it came quick.  After that I started thinking about trying the bench to bench gap.  I figured a good warm up would be to ollie off the two stair with speed.  I ended up falling super awkward and in my head just could not deal with that board anymore.  I got up and focused the shit out of that board.  One stomp.  One pissed off stomp that went through that board so easy I hurt my heel on the concrete.  Session over.  Board done.  Good riddance.

Carleigh and I rolled to CO Springs to meet up with Bernie, Sam, Mikey and Derek.  After hitting Proper we went and met up with the dudes at a somewhat famous rail.  Derek was the only one to get on it even with a boardslide.  Pretty gnarly spot.  The rest of us just kinda skated around.  I did a dumb run of front smith stall on a wood ledge, followed by a nosestall on a ledge, then ollie a 4 stair then back 180 right away over a crack in the sidewalk.  After some driving around we decided to just skate around downtown Springs.  Not a whole lot went down for awhile.  We ended up at the City Hall or something which had a nice ledge down a 5 stair.  Mikey was able to nose manual it, Derek back 50’d it.  I tried to noseslide it.  But it felt like it was time to move on.  We ended up at a downtown park with this bank:

Bernie and I skated while others investigated the nearby spots.  I beat Bernie to a back smith, front rock, but he did ollie up to front 50 like it was nothing to prove he is better.  Ha.  We had fun though.  The front slash above was super fun.  Sometimes doing a basic trick first try feels the best.  I didn’t go much beyond this.  Mikey kinda killed it.  Blunt to pivot, nosepick.  Derek did front blunt easy, back disaster, almost pivot fakie.  Then we took a long skate back to the car.  On the way the funnest thing I did was a wallride on a jersey barrier.

Next we went to a school we had peeped earlier.  It was basically a long three stair where each step was about 3 feet long and about 40 feet long and curved.  It looked insanely fun and we (at least I) had a blast.  Bernie and Derek kinda messed around and did some sick manual tricks from one stair up to the next and back down etc.  Bernie did manual kickflip up to the next level and almost fakie manual up to fakie nose manual which would have been of the chains.  There were gaps off the second and third levels.  Carleigh did a front 180 off the second one into the parking lot.  Mike almost nollie nose mannied the lower level and slammed a lot trying flippers off the second level.  I kinda somehow found the drive and skated about as well as I could.  After I got kickflip up the first then manual the second in only a couple tries I had a lot to work with.  Coming the other way I wallied up to the second level, kickflipped on flat then back 180’d the gap to the parking lot.  Coming the other way I got kickflip up the first level, ollie up on, ollie up one, front 180 off the 3rd level.  And the line I worked up to which made me so happy was wallie up the two, kickflip up onto the third then ollie to axle stall the curb into the parking lot.  It was one of the best feeling lines I’ve ever done.  Not only was every trick good for me, but I did them good and I seemed to have a fluid motion throughout.  The wallie up felt super good.  Popped above the ledge and floaty feeling.  Seriously felt awesome. One of my favorite lines I’ve ever done.  Next we went to the dream spot bank school where I failed at back 50s and Bernie failed at kickflip front 50s.  Derek had fun playing Bball skate.  Mikey had a nice front blunt.  After filming we played a loose game of flat bank SKATE that deteriorated into a game of HORSE with a flat basketball that Bernie won.  Then was dinner.  Fun day.  Had a blast at that 3 stair spot.  Still hate that board though.  On the way home Mikey joined a very tired Carleigh and a slightly intoxicated me for a Pissed Jeans music fest on the way home.  I obviously loved it.  That band is the best.

Met up with Max, Connor, Derek, Nate, Aaron, Carleigh, Matt, Justin and eventually Fuzz in Broomfield after work.  We started at the Safeway ledges.  No filming went down yet.  Max had the best switch back tails that spanned at least 2 mm of distance.  I had nothing either.  Connor was the only one that skated worth a crap there.  It was a good warm up though.  I really hate this Creature board.  Then we went and looked at the nearby bank spot.  Derek contemplated a gnarly ollie in, but didn’t want to pull the trigger.  Max got in the zone and started trying block long downhill lines and I started filming and he got two banger lines.  Derek almost got a sick line too, but had to go and slammed super hard trying to fakie flip into the bank in the photo above.  Next up we went to the Hobby Lobby manny pad spot.  A truck kind of messed with it, but it was still fun to skate.  I did some filming, but skated after.  I could not get that board to nose manual nor could I ollie up a curb comfortably.  Ugh.  I did manage to manual the two stair part, but that was about it.  Fuzz showed up, but not much more went down other than Matt, Max, Fuzz and I trying to nose manny out of a tailstall to the car.  Max went around the block with it while the rest of us struggled to get to the first line.  Matt did to it fakie though.  Decent day.  Hate this board.  More photos on Carleigh’s blog here.