Went to Meta to sell some null goods and give product to nondeserving jerks (ha ha ha sorry Jack you know you are sooooo deserving) and then meet up with Carreigh and Fuzzual Adams to skate campus. Fuzz and Sam vented for awhile about shop life. Ok, a long while. Carleigh worked out some anger too. Geez, I think even I vented about maybe losing my job soon. We avoided the temptation of avoiding skating all together at the bar and went around the corner and under the bridge to work our aggression out via a super fun slappy session on the banked curb on the bikepath. Carreigh got her first ever slappy. I did my first slappy Helmstetters (back smith). Fuzz did some slappy blunts to Neil out. We also lined out some stuff from the bench area. Fuzz switch 180’d the bench to bikepath gap. I did a little boardslide to manual to tail drop. Near the end I was “working” on front blunts. In other words about 1/4 I would get into the slide and then just shoot out. Fuzz was trying switch bluntslides and called “five more tries” landing it on the 5th try. So rad. I ollied the “big two”, posed some kick back tails and then we headed up to the hill for a couple beers at our favorite intoxicated college student joint. Fun times. Fun crew (Oh wait, did Max’s crew patent that name?).

Still playing Mr Mom. India was at a friends, but Ollie had said he would go skateboarding with me once i was done pretending do work (at home). His friend Sam was over though and that kid was not in a good mood. He’s the youngest teenager ever. Anyways, after Ollie and I ate some nachos he bailed on wanting to skate and got upset with me for not wanting to play basketball. The compromise was to play basketball for awhile then I would skate flat in front of the house. You might think this is good parenting, but really I was just thinking it would be good for warming up my legs. It failed two fold though. First, Ollie was bummed once I left the basketball court. Second, I was one uncoordinated idiot. I had thought of treflips and how I didn’t do one for some reason when I skated flat for hours on Saturday. So I was like “I wonder how many I can do in a row?” The answer, never more than 1. Actually, I only landed one. I could not do a treflip to save my life. UGH. I tried a bunch of nollie treflips too. Everyone of them felt good, but I never rode away. Ugh, I’m approaching a year closer to 40 and feeling it.

Went out to Rampy after putting the kids to bed. Actually had a blast. Tricks didn’t take too long. I didn’t skate for too long, but did some front and back smiths and tried back smith revert. I did one, but I’m not sure if I was in a real smith. Probably not knowing me. I started getting tired quickly and called it when two ollies in a row did not leave the ground. I kinda miss forcing myself to skate everyday. Glad I went out there.

This whole Mr Mom thing is tougher than I thought. It’s one thing for a day or two. But a week deep I’m exhausted. Anways, on Saturday I got up early, got India going to some DI thing, collected Ollie’s friend, drove to the wrong school to see India’s performance, played basketball with other dad’s while waiting, ate pizza with several other parents then was responsible for Ollie and his buddy Sam. They used to like skateboarding, but now they just want to play legos, lego star wars on the wii or basketball. Ugh. And they don’t even want me along for the basketball part anymore. So I skated flatground in front of the house. I was kinda unmotivated and it was sunny and hot which I wasn’t used to so I downloaded some silly “skate dice” app to my phone (since I lost 1/4 of the read dice) and failed a bunch of tricks. I would try tricks I’ve never landed 10 times just for the heck of it. Tricks I’ve never done that I got close to were front 180 heel and nollie frontside flip. Tricks I did that I haven’t done in forever were halfcab heel, fakie treflip and frontside flip. The only new trick i did was nollie cab. And boy was it a bad one. After awhile Derek and Carleigh stopped by since Derek wanted a board. We did some more skate dice and then I beat Derek in SKATE. Sick! At that point it also became apparent that both my kids would be having sleepovers elsewhere. Awesome! Carleigh mentioned that Black Dots were playing Petes in Denver so I was down. I had to bring boards to Community on the way. So around 8:30 we started skating. First spot was a buddist temple or something that had a no runup 4 stair to brick landing. Normally not so bad, but warming up is hard for me. Carleigh did it in a few tries. I took a bit longer, but on the first commit I went down hard. So hard. I guess my board shot out, but I certainly wasn’t expecting it. Ouch. That threw me for a loop to say the least. We walked by Petes and saw John. He was hyped and wanted to show us a ledge he saw nearby:

John killed it pretty quick. Some long front 50s and front 50 front 180 into the bank. Carleigh killed the noseslides and then went noseslide shove bolts. I however was sucking. It took like 20 tries to land a front 50, but once I did things got better. Powerslides down the parking garage was a blast. The funnest thing I did was an ollie onto the ledge then ollie somewhat farther down into the bank. Soooo fun. Carleigh was almost landing 180 nosegrinds. I got a front 50 front 180 out and then we went to Petes and enjoyed the show.

Today was the first day of being Mr Mom for a week as Liz is in SF. So I’m coming home from work early to get the kids when they get out of school. The stars aligned and both kinds went to friends houses so I went skating for about 40 minutes. I went to ballparks where I was to meet Carleigh after awhile. My warming up was bad and lasted until about the time Carleigh showed up. She was a wreck again. Man, I hope things get better for her soon. I ended up having a decent time. Last time I was in the Springs with Null kids I did a noseslide at Harrison and for whatever reason hucked a bigspin out. It wasn’t close and didn’t resemble a bigspin, but it triggered a thought to try it again. Somehow I finally remembered. I actually got super close. Even kind of landed one where I came to a hault at 90 degrees. I know I skate like I’m 12, but surprisingly I’ve never really tried that trick before. I also got some front 50s, accidental front 5-0s and some mediocre flip tricks. I hope I land that trick sometime. Seems possible. Carleigh got some noseslides, but mostly looked out of it and bummed. Doh.

Skated flat for about 15 minutes in front of the house. It was pretty windy. I failed a bunch of nollie flips again, but managed a run of halfcab flip, heelflip then treflip. Ollie took the blurry photo above of a heelflip after coming out to tell me dinner was ready. What do you know? I rocket those too. Oh and I put a hole in my sock as I blew through the suede already and forgot to fix them. Afgh.

Met up with Carleigh, then Neil, then Kyle, Keenan, Justin and Fuzz at St Julien. Carleigh and I had walked/skated there and I had done a couple manuals. Everyone did their warmup thing. I had a few front 50s and back crooks that felt really fun. I haven’t really skated with the Crisis kids too much so it was a pleasant surprise to see them smiling and skating the whole time. Not that I would expect anything less from anyone associated with Fuzz. I think my favorite trick was a manual to nosebonk that Justin did. I had gotten in the line zone and actually did a couple I was hyped on. Kickflip over the tiny part of the ledge, no comply 180, halfcab flip, front 180 over the bigger part of the ledge, fakie flip. The fakie flip was a noseskid sketch where I almost shot my board into a very obese lady. Fat people must hate skaters. Carleigh landed some good kickflips on flat and over the ledge. Neil was ripping as always. Anyways, the next line was switch 180 over the tiny part of the ledge, 360 flip then back 180 over the bigger part of the ledge. I am horrible at back 180s and this one was sketchy, but I’ve never done it there before so cool. Last line was the killer. Back 180 over the little part of the ledge, fakie bigflip, back pop shove, kickflip over the bigger part of the ledge. I never got the kickflip. I was probably about 50% on the fakie bigflip and you know I can’t land anything else very consistent so when I actually got the opportunity to try the kickflip I would blow it over and over. I landed on a couple and shot out for no reason, but other then that the main problem was I couldn’t even pop over the stupid 3″ tall ledge. UGH. Neil and Crisis had headed over to Canyon Center and we rejoined with them after I ended up giving up on the kickflip. I was so beat. We walked up as Justin did a really sick blunt to fakie. Fuzz was ripping and did a switch pivot to fakie. Keenan some how did a really good pivot which i tried to do and ended up stretching my foot again and left me hurting. I was really frustrated. Before leaving we watched as Keenan and Justin did silly little kid grinds on the angled flatbar end and it really stoked me out. I love watching people skate like kids. Love it.

This photo pretty much sums up my skating as of late. We started the day at Southern Hills. Max ollied a huge trashcan and I pretended to follow him, but swerved around it and hit a hole and slammed. Ugh. Bernie was nursing a rolled ankle and skating lightly. Neil started off yelling, but calmed down and almost put together a great line of pop shove into the handicap ramp, nose manny a bench, wallride then front lip shove. He came really close. Sam rolled around for awhile, but then chilled. Zack was there chilling mostly. Carleigh had some noseslides. Max was ripping of course. He can ollie up onto the benches like it’s nothing. He got me to 50 up the handrail. Well it’s true. The lowest part of the handicap rail that starts off about 2″ off the ground. I was trying a line of noseslide, crooks, 50 on the rail again. Never got them all. Was feeling like the photo above.

Next we went to Longmont to the checkboard manny pad and I didn’t think I’d be able to skate I was so sore, but I got a manual and a nose manual and came remotely close to nose manual shove before turning into Filmer Glen. Bernie seemed a bit looser and was trying halfcab manual treflip out. Max was trying a bunch, but almost got kickflip nose manual nollie treflip out but some jock in a pickup sweated us hard and we left.

We went to some ledges at Longmont High that were actually really good. Like super good. I didn’t do much before I turned into filmer Glen. It was worth it though as Max came through with like 4 clips. He was ripping so hard. Bernie’s ankle was bothering him and he couldn’t land a nosegrind to start his line. Carleigh did a million boardslides and several noseslides.

Lots more photos on Carleigh’s blog.

Still sore from the hike the day before, but not as tired. I had to drive up to Silverthorne and back in the morning to pick up my kids from my parents. I got back, ate some grapes then met Jason and Carleigh at the Mikes Camera manny pad. Carleigh took awhile to show and it took Jason and I forever to land manuals. We were all pretty mellow and it was not a heated session at all. When it was all over I guess I had actually done a decent number of tricks for me. I think I may have touched on a few of these, but they were close enough for me to say they counted. Manual front 180 out, nose manny shove (3 of these), kickflip manual, sw front 180 manual and a couple horrible b/s flips up the curb. Came close to nollie flips on flat. The new trucks were being weird again. Carleigh and Jason also got manuals.

Jason has been fighting a bad back for a long time now and didn’t want to skate anything with impact so we agreed on Stonehenge. I’m not sure what happened to Carleigh on the way, but she got all moody on us and wouldn’t even try to skate the bank to curb. Jason and I had a decent time on it. Besides the basics I got a few kickflip back tails. Jason was having trouble popping frontside and kept landing before the curb. It was funny. After that we went to campus because I wanted to do something silly for the Crisis best trick contest and this was all I could think of doing.

For those of you not in the know, Fuzz and I have been having some fun dissing on each other’s trucks of choice. He likes Indy and I prefer Thunder so here is yet another jab in the saga of two dorks battling over supreme truck company. Make sure you watch that clip with the sound on. Ha. In all seriousness though the whole “Thunder” part of this wasn’t the intention at all. I just figured it would be rad to support Fuzz and try a trick I’ve thought of for awhile. Jason was kind enough to film and throw something at me. While I was trying it Carleigh was doing nollie, fakie and switch front shoves on flat. Radical. As we were walking back to the car I saw a 4 stair with angle iron off the side and cali grinded off it. Felt pretty neat.

Another day where I felt run down and tired. To help out my tiredness Liz and I went on a super long hike. It was all smooth, but it wore me out. After hitting Community and some slacking I picked up Carleigh and we went up to MRKT. Fort Collins rules and as always a large crew went out to skate. The Sunny Daze crew was in effect. MRKT heads were in effect. Fun in the making. I was way more sore then I thought I would be though. We started out at the 3 flat 2 flat 2 flat 1 flat 2 flat 2 flat 2 flat 2 flat 2 flat 4. I made it most of the way down but start filming Chris Jones. He got a sick line (well, maybe it’s not “sick”, but it makes me want to go skate). Mudget did some crazy stuff too like first try fire cracker every stair. Carleigh wanted to land them and was getting so close over and over then did all of them so easy it didn’t look hard at all. Mike showed up and got all of them too. Some crazy stuff was going down at a 7 stair when I got filming. Carleigh was trying pop shove. Daryl was trying a line with switch back 180. CJ had apparently 50’d the kinked rail. Bonner was trying a line. Chad was filming it. I saw that Skelly was solo’ing it over at the double manual pad and joined him. The only thing I got was a manual on the top one. Ugh. Skelly had a good fakie back tail. Chris joined us for a minute and did the double manual super easy. It got dark and Sean and I headed over to a long pipe that people were skating. It was sick and we heard that Carleigh got her pop shove and Daryl got his line. Rad. Eric Likewise was there doing nollie back lips. AJ had some long boardslides and almost popped over. Mudget had ruined his hand. Mike and I did slides from the crack. Carleigh got some long slides too. After that we got some good grub. I was so tired. Carleigh ripped it.