Stayed up kinda late watching the lunar ecliplse so I ended up sleeping in real late.  In a hurry I got up, did some pushups then some Christmas shopping.  The plan had been to skate Denver, but once I got going I was hoping it didn’t go down, and it didn’t.  Unfortunately Jack said his ankle was too wrecked, but on a dreary and chilly day Fuzz, Greg, Jake, Bernie, Ollie and I met at Meta and planned on skating campus.  It ended up being a blast.  One of the joke goals for 2011 is to not skate a skatepark for a year.  As awesome as street skating is, I don’t think that would be too fun.  Especially with how meeting at a skatepark is the norm.  Anyways, back to today.  I get hyped on cloudy days.  They remind me of east coast skating and I always get the Mudhoney lyrics “Gray skies feel good today” stuck in my head.  We dorked around the hill ledges for a minute before diving into campus.  The first stop was right away at the Education building.  I saw Greg and Bernie do drop down then manuals to drop.  Jake may have dropped in from the top of the steep handicap ramp.  Fuzz and I wallied up the curb to sidewalk gap.  Fuzz did one followed by a 540 kickturn then maybe an ollie to front pivot on the curb.  I got a run with wallie up the gap, dumb ass nose pivot on the curb, front pivot 180 on the curb.  Jake almost ollied from a far crack into the curb tranny.  Then we watched Greg and Bernie entertain some tall manny drops nearby.  Bernie did a manual drop drop all easy that was pretty ridiculous.Next up was one of the many highlights of the day.  Greg ollied an 8 stair rail then we skated a sidewalk for about half an hour.  Initially the goal was to do as many tricks as possible down this stretch of sidewalk.  Greg probably did the most with a line that had something like fakie flip, halfcab flip, heelfip, kickflip, geez I don’t know.  No one was that on point, but we were having fun.  I had a line of something like kickflip, back 180, halfcab flip, varial flip, front shove, bailed tre.  I landed all the tricks horrible and I was going slow.  So what.  Then it turned to manuals.  Greg, Bernie and Fuzz were initially happy doing about a block, but they kept going farther until Bernie brought tears to all our eyes by manualling most of campus.  He went around a building and if he would have come out the other side still manually I probably would have lost my mind.  I got about half of the first section which I was still kinda hyped on.  Bernie, Greg and Fuzz went up the hill and came manualling down trying to go even further.  It was soooo funny.  They weren’t going all that fast so it just looked like three dudes standing swinging their arms for no apparent reason.  It ruled though.  At this point Ollie finally started to loosen up and started ollie’ing every crack.  I think Jake and I counted about 28 ollies over cracks.  So funny.Next up we ended up behind the library.  I took a bunch of tries to ollie off a dumb drop, Fuzz did a couple of the steeziest boneless combos ever, I landed a 360 flip on flat and then Fuzz ollie the long 7.  Seeing that spot gives me new respect for Max’s line in the Meta video with the ollie down the 7 then front board the back part of a bench.  So sick.  We went and peeped Jack’s dropin ollie from Null and Void then ended up skating the area above it for at least an hour.  It was epic.  Everyone did something.  Greg and Fuzz caveman’d a 4 stair rail.  Jake ollied this cool sideways gap near a three stair.  I boardslid the three stair ledge.  Bernie manualled something I’m sure.  Ollie back 180’d off a lower ledge and ollied the three stair.  We hit the stage area for a bit.  Greg wallied down the tall stage like it was nothing.  Fuzz, Jake and I found any excuse possible to not ollie off it.  Back to the stair area so much went down.  Fuzz ollied a ledge and manualled the 3 stair ledge.  Everyone ollied up the three stair.  Well, except Ollie.  That kid needs to work on his pop.  Ha.  Jake and I took a few tries, while people like Fuzz and Greg did it first try.  Bernie almost kickflipped up it. This is the kinda skating I love though.  Just go street skating and skate whatever you find.  It rules.  We had such a blast.We peeped a big handrail for a minute.  Ollie back 180’d a crack ridden two stair.  I love how kids don’t care about cracks.  We ended up near the stadium for a bit.  Some ollies and whatnot.  Then we peeped game over at the ledge that Fuzz kickflip manualled in Cut Me Loose.  Greg spotted a cool gap above it even and lined out an ollie over it then followed it up with a super nonchalant manual the ledge.  Soooo sick.  Across the street I had fun ollieing up a 3, turning around and ollieing down it.  Bernie did a sick quick up to manual ollie a gap.  We were gonna play a game of SKATE in front of the art building, but there was some dudes skating with a little box so we hit that for awhile instead.  Jake learned back 5-0s and I did maybe my second back 50 front 180 out.  Heading out we went by the UMC and I tried one attempt at my recent line there, but bailed the back 180.  Last thing was the drop down ledge near the hill that I like to drop down to then front 180 off.  Did it, but the 180 was horrible.Such a blast of a day.  Everyone skated good and hard and had a blast.  Thanks everyone for being cool about Ollie being around.  It means a lot to me and it allows me to be able to skate more.  He’s a quite kid, but he said he had a blast too.

After a pretty chill day at work I left, picked up Jack and we headed up to Fort Collins to sell some boards then skate.  Initially the crew was Jack, Chris, AJ and me.  Chad quickly met up though.  After pushing basically all the way down Laurel we hit a rock wallie spot.  I stepped in dog crap right away.  So bummed.  Jack nosebonked a pretty tall rock, AJ ollied one and then we moved on.  Pretty quickly we ended up at a banked ledge spot by the dorm towers.  I’m not sure why they aren’t waxed up more because they are perfect.   Chris and Jack were ripping it pretty quick.  Jack went mostly the non-wallie route with some solid front 50, front 5-o, front tailslides but slammed so hard on a front 5-0 front 180 out.  Jack was wallieing into anything pretty quick.  Wallie bluntslide, wallie back tail shove, wallie back lip almost.  AJ had some good wallies then got close to about 500 wallie 50s but never landed one.  I wasn’t skating too well.  I tried a line of crooks a ledge, wallie, wallie boardslide.  The crooks were my rare weird undercrooks and the wallies were really bad, low and I would land primo sometimes and slam.  Fun.  After awhile Greg, Eric and Jacoby showed up, but a nearby cop lurking weirded us out so we moved on.  Some dorking around and we ended up at the new lot by the gym with the rocks and kicker.  I was skating sooo bad at this point and was so sore and old feeling.  Wah.  Skelly joined up for a minute but was too sore/tired to skate really.  AJ starting throwing some gnarly hardflips over the kicker and put down a good one.  Greg was trying to nosebonk the pole and came close.  I tried a couple slow kickflips and just gave up.  Chad had tied a banner to the pole and was holding it up to do tricks over.  5 tries later I was able to ollie it low.  Not hyped on how hard and scary it was for me, but hyped that I didn’t give up on it.  Jack started trying this really crazy ollie back foot kick out over the pole and I went and played a game of SKATE with Greg that didn’t last long.  I did land a treflip and a heeflip which felt good though.  I also finally manualled down the kickder and to the lot.  Greg was doing the funniest manuals.  He would manual and take his front foot off and pretend like he was falling then go back into manual.  It was really funny.  Jack tried the crazy trick for awhile and ended up kinda wrecking his ankle again.  Doh.  After this we went to Chipotle where there was a soda cup that said “Welcome to the office Glen” on it.  Jack spotted it.  So funny.  They normally don’t even have Glen keychains at gift shops.  Even though I didn’t skate well it was a fun time and a fun crew.

After skating / filming yesterday we had a blast watching some skate videos and ate at Petes.  I’m not sure if it was the Petes or the kids being sick last week, but I got sick.  I didn’t quite puke, but it was close and I felt horrible.  Perfect time to push the filming board for a couple hours in Longmont ditch.  More quality footage was collected.  Stoked.

Woke up still bummed from the night before.  Redid the Null board wall (photos soon) then went outside for some flatground waiting for some Nullers to show.  I ended up skating really good for me.  Way faster than normal which I know isn’t saying much.  Real quick I did a line of front shove, kickflip then nollie tre.  The thing that hyped me up the most was I actually did the kickflip fast enough that I was a bit scared with the speed I still had going into the nollie tre.  No biggee though, I stomped it.  Ask Busenitz.  Greg showed up and we played a decent game of SKATE.  Greg won as usual, I got him with a fakie bigflip and I think that was it.  Doh.  We left for Willville and Nullers were warmed up quick and wanting to film stuff before I was ready to go into film mode.  I posed a few ollies over the six stair and told Derek when he kickflips it I’ll get his back.  A few (ok, several, he struggled) tries later he lands the kickflip and I went for it.  I know it’s only a six stair, but I have never rode away from a bigger set.  I landed it first commit and it felt seriously awesome.  Then I went on to film all kinds of amazing stuff.  I’m getting so excited for the next Null video.Oh yeah, I had a brand new Lung deck and it felt amazing.

Had a good night of sleep or something and felt good all day.  Was good about standing, jumping around, stretching at work and felt great when I left work after a longer than usual day.  The family had already eaten and was occupied doing homework and whatnot so I boxed up a Null order and delivered it to Fedex then stopped by Savers for something silly for my work White Elephant.  Then I drove to campus for some skating.  It was humid as it had rained (yes it’s mid december and it rained instead of snowed) earlier in the day and there was still some puddles on asphalt.  For whatever reason I had been thinking about a line all day.  Ollie up the UMC two stair, back 180 off, sw 180, ollie the 4, front 180 the 3 so I was hoping to warm up to that.  After some fast pushing and cruising I ended up new big Visual Arts building where I did a few slow kickflips to get warmed up.  I played on the weird long bench with all the sections missing to stop skating.  I ollied onto one section then would try to ollie to the next section, etc.  It was way hard and I didn’t feel like trying it much longer so I went up to the UMC ready to battle my line I had been thinking of.  Unfortunately there was a bunch of dudes standing on top of the two stair so I went back to the fountain area.  I tried some fast (for me) pop shoves followed by ollieing onto the 5 stair ledge, off then ollie down the 3.  I was having problems on the pop shove and my board took off toward the two stair so I just left and the cancer stickers were gone.  The ollie up the two is weird because you have to ollie early because of a big crack.  It ended up not being so hard after a few tries.  I would have thought the back 180 would have been really hard, but I guess the ollie up the two set me up perfect for my cheater angle and within a couple I was riding away from those, even going past the crack.  And I gotta say that was probably the highlight for me.  I normally suck at back 180s and I was landing them almost every try.  Now for some stupid reason as I would turn around and head to the 4 stair I would get a weird nervous feeling and stop before the 4 stair.  I’m not sure what that was about so I finally just ollied the 4 on it’s own and finally the butterfly was gone.  A few tries later I landed all but the last front 180 of the line.  Sweet, next couple tries!  Well, maybe not quite as the back 180 was troublesome for a bit, but I ended up getting the whole line.  Ollie up the two, back 180 off two, horrible sw 180, ollie the 4, horrible front 180 the 3.  That set me up going downhill on a bikepath so I tried a halfcab flip and bailed.  I decided I wanted to do the line better and get the halfcab flip too.  Next try.  Ollie up felt good, best back 180 I’ve ever done, sw 180, ollie 4, decent front 180, halfcab flip, kickflip, lots of pushes, powerslide, kickflip a crack, bail a treflip.  I was so hyped.  Not sure I’ve ever done 8 tricks in a row before.  Anyways this set me back up to the weird long bench with the missing sections to ollie over.  Obviously a lot more warmed up, but somewhat sore from so many stairs (ha ha ha) I did the quick up and ollied 3 missing sections and ollied out first try feeling on top of the world.  It was still pretty warm out (seriously, I was sweating) so I decided to skate awhile longer and line out some more stuff.  I wanted to do the quick ollies on the ledge then a treflip.  That took awhile as both of those tricks were so hard for me.  At one point I noticed I had cracked my board really bad at some point that night.  It still had pop, but the crack was 4 layers.  Ah well.  Coming the other way I would try a fast (again it’s me so imagine me going about 1/10 the speed of Busenitz) ollie over some cracks then kickflip a crack gap.  I ended up getting the lines both ways and the temperature had just started to drop quickly so I went home.  Totally spent, but super hyped.  One of the funner days of skating I’ve had this year.  I love skating by myself once or twice a week.  I would say it gives me a chance to land more stuff, but really, it just gives me a chance to land stuff I’m too embarrassed to do around others.

I work til 6 this week which isn’t that bad, but it pretty much ends any chance of skating with most of TF as their bed times are 8pm and I normally check in with the family before I go skate. As soon as I got home Ollie said “Hi ya Pop, want to go play basketball?” Impossible to say no to that. So we went over to the school and shot on a poorly lit low hoop for awhile. It was a blast. My favorite is when he misses and I jump up for the rebound and dunk it. 8 foot rims rule! Anyways, it was super warm so I left after awhile and picked up Jason to meet Lazer, Fuzz, Neil, Brian and Skelly at the newly opened Lafayette park. Apparently it wasn’t crowded by grand opening standards. The park is pretty big so it does get spread out and not so bad. Unfortunately Lazer, Fuzz and Neil had already called it a night. Brian was there skating with the Ft Collins crew in the rock section. They all seemed to be ripping pretty hard. I tooled around for awhile looking at the goods. The park is pretty amazing. As typical of skateparks it seems they went a little over the top with quite a few things, but oh well. Jason and I started out at the manual pad which can really only be hit frontside comfortabely. If there is granite somewhere under all that coating I couldn’t tell yet, it’s like grinding on ice. I got a few front 50, front 5-0 and back 50 having to come up the bank first.  I’ve been skating steet a lot lately and it was weird skating such a smooth spot.  It doesn’t even feel like your skating really.   I know that sounds dumb, but it’s weird not having any cracks or anything with brand new wheels.  Just feels like floating.  A sketchy backside landing lands you in the 12 foot bowl. So lame. I really hate how 99% of skateparks put great ledges in shitty spots. And to know that Team Pain is a bunch of skaters makes it even worse. I basically took the rest of the session to get boardslide down the rail followed by back noseslide down the hubba. That was really fun for sure. The added touch is the lights shut off as I landed the noseslide. Well I guess that isn’t even cool at all considering it was 8:45. WTF? Come on Lafayette you spend that much money on a skatepark and the lights shut off before my 8 year old goes to bed? Jason got the boardslide / noseslide run too and came close to front nose down.   So sick.  Some of the lights stayed on near the parking lot.  I dorked around for a bit on the rock section that I hadn’t even looked at really.  It seems aight, not as fun as CO Springs rock section.  Some young kid told me to look out as he rolled his bike through.  That was funny.

Woke up early after a fabulous night with The Mighty LZA.  Was back from the grocery store by 9:30 am.  Yeah, crazy early.  Then started to feel pretty blah and some basketball and a nap didn’t help.  Ollie and Sam wanted to go skating though so obviously I was gonna go skate.  They wanted to go to Stonehenge.  My legs were feeling so horrible.  I have no idea why.  Ollie did a few of the basics right away on the bank to curb.  Rock fakie, rock ‘n roll and was going for back axle stall.  He did some willy stalls and a couple with the back truck almost in axle.  So sick.  He almost beat me to it.  I was skating so bad it took literally 8 tries to do a front pivot.  Ugh.  We skated the manny pad for a bit where I suprisingly manualled it second try.  Ollie and Sam did some ollies off the tall part.  I hadn’t seen Sam ollie off that big of a drop before.  Back to the bank to curb as Jason showed up for a bit.  We rattled off a few more basics.  I posed some front smith kickflips out.  Jason did some front lips.  Then we kinda skated it different while the boys played around on some jersey barriers.  I tried to do a flip trick then ollie the corner of the fence into the bank.  Didn’t come easy.  I had some kickflips, pop shoves and halfcab flips.  Even a bad heelflip, ollie into fence into the bank, kickflip flyout.  Jason had some good ollies into the bank.  We both did back tail stalls on the fence and Jason ended it with a back lip.Next we went to another nearby bank spot.  Max kills this spot in multiple Meta videos.  I didn’t do much more than some grinds as shown above and some frontside ollies.  Ollie took the above photo then I took a few of him and Sam.  Ollie skated this spot really good though.  Ollie to fakie, backside ollie, side rock (just learned that one day ago), etc.  Sam had some mean kickturns.Ollie side rock.Sam kickturnThe smile man, the smile.  Ollie’s always smiling and it rules.  Drop in.I hope Ollie doesn’t get stuck with my ollies.  This photo isn’t really taken early, it’s just his ollies are kinda like mine.Ollie show off hat tip to fakie.  Sam indy 900.Next up we went to another nearby spot with a little banked curb and other random funness.  I kept with my theme of the day and struggled.  Only decent things were kickflip up a curb, quick up ollie a tiny gap and that’s about it.  Ollie almost beat me to boardslide transfer and my halfcab transfer took forever.  Ollie ripped this spot.  Back 180s out of curb cuts, slappy back 50s, boardslide transfer (and yes he actually slid it) and he’s still got that buttery mongo push.  Sam surprised me with slappy back 50 and transferred the curb without sliding.  We took a few photos at this spot too.Sam slappy back 50Ollie back 50Not sure why we laughed so hard at this photo, but we did.  Boardslideout.Ollie boardslide transfer.  Rock Creek!Dorko the Dad halfcab boardslide transfer.  20 more years of skating then Ollie and the only difference between our tricks is I went in fakie.  Ugh.  Photo by my son who will soon be better at skateboarding than me.

My 300 day reward – new shoes.  Es Square Twos.The Lafayette skatepark opened today and there was a big grand opening party.  I am not a fan of crowded skateparks, or even a fan of crowds really.  Luckily there are some who agree with me.  Jack called, Jason called and Mikey and Jeff wanted to meet up in Denver.  I brought Ollie along and we met up at the Commerce City skatepark around 1 or so.  It was cold.  Colder than it felt like it should be.  And the park has some weird new glaze of slickness on it.  Jason slammed right away and retired to the car for the rest of the day.  Jack and I started out with a game of SKATE on the banked curb surrounding a tree.  I doubt they ever intended anyone to skate it, but we do everytime we’re there.  It’s pretty dumb.  Jack of course won with a bunch of good tricks like blunt shove to nosepick, pivot fakie, etc.  I landed some tricks though that made me happy like front blunt (no pivot!), kickflip onto the curb, boardslide.  It was fun.  Ollie seemed to be having a good time and digging the park.  He did some drop down to manual down one stair to ride down another then ollie off the third.  Some little ollies over the pump bump too.  And always a smile.  Love it.  Mikey was ripping.  I saw switch heel the long three stair, back 5-0 the long three ledge and a smile.  Jeff, always ripping.  Nollie back 180 into the bank, powerslide on the icecrete, halfcab crooks.  Jack had did a nosebonk to manual front 180 off the drop.  Ollies from the top of the park into the little bank no problem.  Funny back 50 to 90 onto a curb to ollie out.  Toward the end people were trying lines ollieing over the two benches.  Jeff almost got a switch b/s flip up one, mikey almost sw heeled one.  I ollied in the small spots.  I guess the quest to learn how to ollie is officially on.  It’s really embarrassing.The sun came out and we rolled to a loading dock kicker that Mikey wanted to bust before they put a rail on it (will probably happen this week).  Ollie and I dorked around for a bit, I did a gap to boardslide down a parking block.  Jeff chilled and proved that he has no kid filter around Ollie.  Jason read.  Mikey ollied the kicker to get warmed up then felt out a few tricks.  Jack starting trying bigger spins and was getting super close.  Unfortunately disaster struck and he rolled his ankle bad.  Doh.  Mikey went for treflips for awhile, but the wind, cold and Jeff wanting to leave didn’t help.We left for Crisis to sell some Null and see Fuzz, but on the way we hit up the nearby handicap double bank spot.  Just me and Ollie skated.  It was real cold.  I guess the new shoes had been doing pretty good as I hadn’t really noticed before this spot that I had new shoes on.  I dorked around for awhile.  Felt out the trick I want to film there sometime (side rock kickflip out to manual down) but wasn’t feeling that.  Then settled for a run of kickflip, no comply 180, fakie ollie on one bank, f/s ollie on another bank.  That came remotely easy.  Well, if you count what I did as ollies.  Since that came pretty quick and I wasn’t really feeling like anything else I went for the same line some more, but tried fakie flip on the bank instead.  I eventually got it.  I’m sure I did it all pretty horribly, but it was fun.  Ollie wasn’t complaining about the cold at all.  He rules to skate with.  Smiles the entire time, never complains, never takes it series, and always learns something.  He saw me do a side rock on the bank and I think he did one within two tries.  So rad.  I wish Jack and Jason could have skated there too, oh well.  We went to Crisis and hung out for awhile, ate some pizza, watched the new Toy Machine video and everyone made sure to drop several F Bombs.  It sure is weird being a father sometimes.

What a weird day.  I worked from home as we needed to take the Hyundai in to get the power steering fixed.  So at any point I could have technically ran out of the house and done a few kickflips to start the 300 session.  But I waited.  Right before dark I was finally off work.  I watched the OG PJ Ladd video then skated in the street for a bit waiting for Ollie to join me and Jason to show up.  Liz was stoked for me and cheered for a few minutes as day 300 was under way and official.  It felt pretty cool honestly.  I had some new 52mm superthanes as the old wheels were flat spotted and they felt good.  I did quite a few kickflips, 180s and felt like fun was going to be had.  Ollie finally came out and we went behind the school where I ran into rocks and fell down for 5 minutes straight.  It bummed me out.  It felt so anticlimatic and it reminded me that although I’ve skated 300 days this year, I really haven’t gotten any better at skateboarding.  In fact it seemed like half the time I was too sore and tired to skate up to my norm.  Oh well, I don’t have to skate every single day any more!  Ollie did some cool slashes in the mini ditch, some ollies, etc.  His board is shot though because him and his friends think it’s cool to throw boards around.  Stupid skate video influence!  Jason showed up after awhile and Ollie would not let us leave until it was totally dark.Jason drove and we headed over to Carleigh’s to meet Carleigh (duh), Chad and Neil.  For whatever reason on the way there I was feeling really down.  That changed quickly when we got to Carleigh’s though:So rad.  Thanks so much Carleigh and Chad.  They had even put my Off The Couch part on, but queued it to Eye Of The Tiger.  Pretty funny.  Then Jason put it on A-B loop and everytime it started he would say “Hey look, it’s Glen’s part!”  Cracked me up.  You guys all rule.  Read more at Carleigh’s blog.And then we were off.  Carleigh was on her bike initially as her foot was still hurting and she didn’t want to start things off by pushing for 8 blocks.  Poser.  Ha.  We started performing stunts around the bus station on the little manny pad.  After I heard Neil yell real loud I figured we’d get booted quick so I headed over to a different manny pad with the two stair ledge nearby.  Everyone else stayed there for a bit so I don’t know what went down.  It’s insanely crazy how much faster the superthane is.  It kept throwing me off.  I got kinda used to it by the end of the night, but wow.  I had a couple manuals, nose manuals and squeeked out a little boardslide on the ledge above the two.  Neil was trying wallies.  Jason was manualling and having an off day.  Chad was killing it with huge flat gap ollies, fast as hell manuals and kickflipping at high speeds.  So sick. Carleigh shot a few photos, but wasn’t really able to skate since she felt weird about her foot.  Bummer, I really wish she could have skated full tilt with us.Jason without the BroomMe nose mannyNeil 180 nose manny.Shortly we ended up at the brick area and started a game of SKATE between Neil, Chad and I.  It was cut short by the police so we moved on towards St Julien since Jason was already there with his broom.  Yes, did I mention he carried a broom all the way with us?  So funny, it hasn’t snowed yes so there really wasn’t much need.  But I guess we were prepared at least.  On the way we hit the ledge banks things.  Chad ruled it with quick up ollie to fakie.  Neil and I were just hyped to drop in.Chadman quick up ollie to fakie with some dumbass BGPsPretty dumb.We saw the police lurking so we headed once again toward St Julien only to get distracted by some wood benches we’ve never really skated before.  At this point Carleigh tried to skate, but instead decided to jump over the bench into the bush.  Her foot was not good.  Ugh.  Neil ollied on to one which was way sick.  Chad manualled it.  I did nothing but boardslide it.On to St Julien.  Jason kinda disappeared as soon as we got there.  I wasn’t sure why, maybe the lurking police?  Anyways Neil skated for a bit, did a sick crooks shove, some manual on the narrow sidewalk against the rock and some wallrides.  Then he was done for the night.  I was struggling with crooks because it was too dark.  Plus I’m used to doing them down big rails, not tiny ledges.  I pieced together a line of suck with a manual on the narrow sidewalk, sketchy 3 flip then a silly boardslide on the ledge to avoid it from being a Zero line.  Chad went on a nose bonking spree on the black posts.  He tried a bunch while Carleigh tried to shoot photos, but the timing never worked out.  Still so sick though.  Next we hit the ledge Jason and I have been looking at for awhile.  Jason and I both took way too long to get back 50s.  We did front 50s too.  I did one with a kickflip beforehand.  I tired to do the kickflip fast enough to still have speed for a front 50.  That’s my goal next year.  Learn how to skate faster.  That and learn how to ollie, but I’ve been trying that for awhile and I’m pretty sure I never will have pop.Chad ollied this a bunch of times and even nose bonked it a few times.  The nollie heel at speed for setup was dope sauce.Next years goal, learn how to ollie now that I’m almost 40.Ultra tech back 50The highlight of the evening was next though.  I saw Chad ollie a little flat gap then bomb into the St Julien parking garage.  I tried it too.  The first time though a car was coming up as I started to pick up speed so I bailed out.  Next time I went for it.  It was way faster then I remembered from a year ago and I almost pulled the bail trigger but I stuck it out and made it around the gates.  So f’ing fun.  As I was coming up Chad was bombing it switch.  Ridiculous.Next up the taller slide ledge along 9th/Pearl.  I was kinda sucking and everyone else but Chad was done, but Chad hiked up 9th to bomb the hill.  I got a crappy run of switch front 180 up the curb, front board the ledge (executed horribly) then a kickflip off the curb.  Also got kickflip up the curb and took a long time to get a silly boardslide popout.  On the way to Petes we went by the white ledge building and found a new little ledge out front.  I tried a couple kickflip back tails.  Got one to suski on accident, then did one to back T.  Chad did a mach 10 hardflip on flat for fun.  Jason was still having an off night, but got a good back noseslide on the white ledge.  I got a crooks.  Chad manualled the downhill ledge.  Chad and I dropped in on the A structure and powerslid into the wall.  Well, I slid into the wall, Chad gracefully slid before it.  I guess the 80 pounds I have on him came through for me.  An ollie up the two, front 180 off later and we were at Petes to celebrate.  Best burritos in town and we had a few drinks to celebrate.  Then it was off to Carleigh’s to watch Sasquatch once again.  Thank you guys for ruling it.Cory Kennedy did what?Wow that’s crazyPlease go to Carleigh’s blog for more photos, words and hit and runs.  Thanks again!

You would think that on day 299 I would be more hyped.  The fact is I felt super burnt out, sore, and not motivated to skate.  I was however, very happy to finally get to skate with John after weeks of conflicting schedules.  We met at Meta then rolled down into campus.  First stop was the angled curb parking lot.  Not as fun the 4th time.  We both tried the narrow ledge drop to ollie back up and failed.  The death factor was a little high for me that early on in the session.  Some more rolling around, a John kickflip slam and we ended up at the two stair in front of the crowded UMC.  There was a lot of stressed out students finishing up finals.  I don’t miss that part of college at all.  We tried to manual the two stair for awhile and both came close (John was way closer) before a group of students came out and smoked cigarettes on the stairs.  Smoking sucks.  We were supposed to ollie the four stair on the way out like it was nothing, but I failed.  Three times.  I was really feeling the motivation issues.  Ugh.  I finally got it and we hit the well lit area nearby for a game of SKATE.  The last time we played SKATE it lasted for about three hours.  This time, not so bad.  John got me with front shove (ugh), fakie flip (ugh ugh), treflip (ugh), nollie flip (ok with that one) and switch flip (considering I’ve only landed it once i don’t mind losing on that one).  Next up was the banked manny pad.  Or in our case, a bank.  John looked at it and all it’s cracks in disapproval, but after I layed down a couple Gillinghammers first try he accepted the spot for what it was.  I did front rock, front tail and a front tail backside revert.  Maybe even a manual to rock ‘n roll manual out with a few tilts.  John did front tail, almost a rad sal flip and then we both ollied and took off to the round stairs.  John ollied it huge first try and I layed into a long powerslide which turned my cheap wheels into rectangles.  Ugh.  John did some good back 180s off the 3, I did some bad ones off the two and that was it.  Day 299 done.  So hyped on not having to skate every day anymore.  Gonna take a day off before the big 300 so I’m more motivated and enjoy it more.