We got it pretty good weatherwise in CO, but the last couple weeks have been rough.  I haven’t skated outside since Jan 27th.  Wow.  It hit 40 today and it felt super nice out. I left work early, picked up Carleigh and we attempted to find somewhere dry to skate. After a couple nothing spots we ended up at a smooth new parking lot that had a narrow strip without too much sand from snow removal. There was a section of snow we could ollie and a chunk of ice to do tricks over too. Nothing too special, but it was sunny and it felt nice.As I mentioned in the last entry I broke my board trying to ollie a cone.  My shoes were getting really flat and soggy so I didn’t want to do the new board / old shoes thing.  I’m sitting on some shoes right now so I busted out my third pair of eS Square Two’s in a row.  Love these shoes.  To add to the mix I had some new 52mm supernullethane.  This is partly because I’ve had the same wheels forever and partly because I wanted new wheels before SF in 3 weeks, but not brand new wheels in SF.  Aight, so now that I’ve posed out long enough it’s time to talk about skating.After some warming up I settled on a couple runs.  One way no comply 180, f/s halfcab flip, treflip.  Other way ollie the snow, kickflip the ice, nollie treflip.  I never got either line although I did get close.  I gave up at one point and did back 180 a small section of the ice, halfcab flip (horrible) then heelflip (new boards and heelflips are a match made in heaven).  I had landed a couple treflips at one point and even landed with some of both feet on a switch flip.  Carleigh worked on some runs too and was ollieing the snow pile really good.  She bailed a lot of kickflips which bummer her out, but did a line of ollie the snow, ollie the ice, pop shove, front 180, fakie pop shove.  Sick.  She also did ollie the snow then pop shove the ice.  Both of us were having more problems ollie’ing the snow then we thought we should.  Carleigh also through down a few heelflip attempts.  She should do those more.  Or maybe I’ll just go the direct route.  Carleigh, please do more heelflips, you got those.  Pretty fun session.  Nice to be outside.  Warm weather on the way.  Melt snow melt!

Just couldn’t take not pushing anymore. NoLove and Rampy are a blast, but I was really missing pushing around, doing ollies, flatground, etc. So around 8pm I parked on 9th next to the back stair entrance and walked down to the bottom level avoiding any security sightings. Sweet. It was still super cold down there though and there were cars or puddles by every skateable blue curb. After pushing around for a few minutes I started skating some flat which felt pretty foreign. I found an orange cone after awhile and set it up to ollie over. It was one of those medium height ones, so not super easy for me, but not tall. I ollied it a bunch of times and tried to get some good lines with it. My favorite being the sw front 180, kickflip and then ollie over the cone with more speed than normal. I think I also did a halfcab flip then front 180 over it. I was trying a line of ollie over the cone, treflip, nollie treflip, but never got close. Mainly because I sketched one of the ollies and landed in the middle of the board and put my foot through it. Doh. Happy to have skated and looking forward to a new board, shoes and wheels. Ha.

Another cold day. This winter is sucking. I put the space heater on and Carleigh came over and we skated pretty hard. I had worked all night the night before so was still pretty out of it. Carleigh raised the bar pretty early on trying a line of back 50, feeble, feeble fakie, fakie disaster, some setups, a front d and almost once added a kickflip rock to fakie in there too. I tried to keep pace and tried a line of 5-0 to fakie, fakie pivot to fakie, fakie pivot to fakie (frontside). I got it, but it was horrible. I skated decent. Did most of my tricks pretty quick, had some longer lines and ended it with a front tail that didn’t take 500 tries.

Pretty much exhausted and not that motivated to skate so just went out to Rampy on another super cold day. Carleigh joined and we had a pretty uneventful session. Carleigh actually skated pretty good and she learned fakie disasters. I failed at front feebles and front 5-0s to fakie, but finally did a fully decked rock ‘n roll on the short deck side. Not as hard as I thought it would be.

The snow almost held off long enough to skate outside, but it didn’t. I picked up Jack, Max, Davis and Jacob at Meta and we went to Red Curbs. The snow had blown in and things were pretty wet so it wasn’t as open and awesome as normal. The nice thing about skating with young’ins is they don’t really care. Everyone skated kinda slow and tried to stay on the dry patches. Davis rattled off a bunch of ledge tricks on the taller curb. Jacob did manuals and dorked around as I guess he was really tired. Max tried a bunch of crazy tricks. Jack was hyped to skate again as it’s been awhile and he had the excited skater steez. The line with the fakie hurricane was awesome. I skated decent. Especially considering the last night. Tricks I was hyped on were kick back 50, fakie nosegrind on the ledge, crooks pretty consistently on the ledge, slappy lipslide that took a long time, front lip pulled to fakie on accident (for once I didn’t go over the corner to get into the lip). Fun session. Later on we went to the No Love clubhouse. I didn’t skate though, just watched Bernie’s video premiere then people rip the place.

After dinner and before going to Pete’s to see Black Dot’s (John’s band) I hit the garage for a bit before Brian showed up. I was landing my Rampy tricks pretty quickly and when I would bail I would try a different flip trick. Rarely landing any of the flippers, but having fun. Brian showed up about the time I had settled into trying front 5-0s to fakie. I’ve never done it before. Brian was dressed in a cute sweater and didn’t want to get it dirty so he was playing it conservative. It’s weird seeing Brian bail tricks instead of falling on his hip. He skated and had fun and encouraged me to finally get the front 5-0 to fakie before leaving. Rad!I wish I would have taken photos at Pete’s. The show was super fun and we raged hard.

Jeff has been trying to get me to the No Love warehouse for quite some time. I guess it took another night of -10F to make it happen. After work I took a quick nap and piled in the TF bus with Neil, Brian, Carleigh, John and Fuzz (oh and it’s possible a kid named Kyle joined us). Can you believe it, TF out on a week night? Awesome. We arrived all frozen from the lack of working heat in the bus to a somewhat crowded session. Warming up for me never really happened. At times I felt ok, but for the most part I felt awkward and disconnected from my board the entire night. Fuzz on the other hand killed it out of the gates. Stalefish from the flat bank to the wall qp, sugarcanes on the smaller qp, front tail on the electric box above the flat bank and front tail front 180 out which was ridiculous. Neil had his moves down quick. Carleigh skated about as good as I’ve ever seen her. She got a sick line of wallride, back 50 on the qp then back noseslide shove on the ledge. People were hyped and the ladies drinking on the sidelines were so hyped they were throwing peoples boards. Brian had some monster frontside alley oop wallrides, sick qp skills and an insane one footed frontside wallride. John ripped it. The no comply 270 back tail is a crowd pleaser everytime. Jeff was there destroying. He can do everything. Mikey went for two tricks over 4 hours and eventually got them. They were gnarly at least. Nollie b/s bigpsin and frontside flip from the flat bank into the wallride qp. There were some other dudes there ripping too. Like I said I felt awkward, but I still had a blast. I’m pretty happy that my fear of crowds doesn’t prevent me from at least trying to skate anymore. I got a b/s flip on the flat bank that took way longer than it should have, but in all honesty the narrowness of the flat bank made it pretty hard. I also got some kickturns on the wall, a little backside grind to fakie on the qp and almost a front feeble grind on the qp.Once again, Carleigh took a bunch of photos so go here and check them out.I was also very excited to finally meet Andrew from No Love. We had a good time chatting about running companies and how we respect what each other is doing and how awesome skateboarding is. What a fun night and I can’t believe the TF was out past midnight.

Before dinner I put the space heater out on Rampy to battle the freezing cold (-10 F).  I think the space heater was fighting a losing battle, but it probably helped it from being below freezing in there.  After dinner Ollie and I went out there for a bit.  I sucked it up again really bad.  I even slammed super hard on a front 50 that hung up and had the board hit me in the head after.  Awesome.  To add insult to injury Ollie beat me to rock ‘n rolls both ways and got another frontside scratch grind.  He also felt more like skating the flat bottom (or lack there of) and did pop shoves and fakie pop shoves.  Sometimes he would end up on the tranny a bit so then he started intentionally trying pop shoves to fakie.  He got one.  He wasn’t up the tranny very much, but then again he is related to me and you will see a photo of a Glen ollie in about two paragraphs.Ollie and I went in and still no one else had shown.  I put the space heater on again and almost fell asleep reading the new Transworld magazine.  Eventually Lazer showed up and we hung out reading magazines while Ollie played Nirvana songs on Itunes.  Fun.  Eventually Chad and Carleigh arrived and it was time to get our shred on.  Lazer killed it out of the gates once again.  This was Chad’s first time skating Rampy and it showed.  He had a lot of trouble getting used to it, but would eventually lay down some sick stuff.  Carleigh had another night of skating good.  She did her main bag of tricks quickly, laid down another kickflip rock fakie and came close to fakie shove disasters.  Wow.  I was skating decent finally.  It only took two hours of warming up I guess.  I did most of my tricks like front feeble, hurricane, fakie hurricane, fakie pivot fakie, front lip and more boring tricks.  Near the end Carleigh took some photos.Chad was doing huge ollies to fakie by the end of the night.I’ve been working on my ollies and clearly it shows. Just look at the height on this one! I mean clearly, Carleigh blew it taking the photo. Had she taken it at the peak I’m sure it would have looked more like:Yeah, watch out Fuzz.Anyways.  The end of the session was Chad trying frontside flips until he got a good one and me failing kickflip pivots until Chad landed his trick and we could call it a night.Go to Carleigh’s blog for many more photos of striped sweaters.

Worked at home all day to avoid driving in the snow. Was gonna have Nullers over for more filming on the Rampy montage, but Liz ended up being busy so I needed to play dad. Right after I got off work I put the space heater out in the garage and Carleigh showed up for a short session. Carleigh almost did all her tricks on her first run. I on the other hand, was sucking. Bad. I guess I can blame it on my neck, but it wasn’t really hurting too bad. It was still depressing. I basically took the whole session to land a front tail. Which, although I had tried it 100 times it was first try on camera (I jokingly asked Carleigh to film it so she stood there pretending to hold a camera so it was first T once it started counting. Oh and to make it even funnier she was using both hands like she was holding a bowling ball or something. Geez). Anyways, Carleigh ripped it. She even did her patented kickflip rock fakie.

I attempted to skate, but the neck was still wrecked and I mostly just filmed.  The only things I did were cali grind at this manny pad spot, back and front rocks at the jersey barrier spot.  Click the photo to go to Carleigh’s blog and see lots of neat photos.