My side spasms were subsiding a little, but still painful.  Neil, Brian, Cooper, Ollie and I met up with Bernie and Sam at the mellow bank to way too tall ledge because Bernie wanted to do a manny trick in a line (fakie manual fakie flip out).  I skated for awhile before chilling out and getting out the new camera.  I didn’t skate hard, but took it easy to not make the side worse.  I got nose stall to fakie and crook stall.  It was cool that Ollie and Cooper came along.  They were having fun.Sam, Bernie and Ollie.  My favorite photo of the day.  Ollie and Cooper had a lot of fun watching Bernie try his line.  F/s flip on flat, fakie manual fakie flip out.Brian had the funniest quote regarding Neil’s outfit.  “So what are you going to wear to church tomorrow now that you wore your church outfit today?”  So funny.Neil church clothes nose manny.Brian dark side wallride.As I said before.  I gotta lot of learning to do on this photography thing.  Cooper no tail ollie taken way to early.  But to my credit I’m not sure his tail got any higher then that.Before you complain about this photo being too early too let the truth be told.  He missed the grab.  Ha.More funny faced antics from my kid.  When is he gonna grow up and take everything seriously like me?I promise I’ll get better at taking photos.  That was day one and I seriously don’t understand Fstop, ISO, etc.  It’s totally new to me.

Had the day off work and ran around to several shops selling a couple boards before picking Max up and heading to Longmont to meet Bernie and Sam.  We got to a nice looking C ledge, but my side was worse off then I thought.  I tried dorking around, but couldn’t skate.  We went to a bump to weird ledge nearby where I mostly filmed Bernie, but also tried some pivots to fakie on the bank to crack.  That was it for skating until later on when I dropped in on a bank a couple times.  It’s been awhile since I’ve had these spasms.  Ugh.  At least I filmed Max and Bernie get banging manny tricks.

Didn’t have much time since we were leaving for an early show at the Ogden.  Pavement!  Anyways Ollie and I went over to the school for a bit.  It was a pretty weak session.  I landed a treflip in skier stance with my front heel on top of my back toes.  That’s a new one for me.  I like inventing new ways for my style to suck even more than it already does.  I started encouraging Ollie to stop pushing mongo more than normal.  I even told him that if he finally loses mongo he can get a new complete.  He seemed to like that motivation.  As we were leaving I tried to kickflip over Florida (on the USA map that’s painted on the ground) and totally ate shit and bashing my left heel into the ground really hard.  Ugh ..

Late evening short session at Valmont.  We skated the manny pads the whole time.  Carleigh got a manny pretty quick on one of the shorter ones and I managed a couple on the longer one.  Then Carleigh proceeded to land 20/22 kickflips or something.  So sick.  She was also trying slappy nose mannies and getting somewhat close.  I was trying heelflip up one, then nollie shove up the next, but only landed one or two heelflips up.  Coming the other way I tried to manny, drop down to manny, then pop up to nose manny.  Never got close.  Other then that I did lots of ollies around and managed a kickflip manual.  Fun little session.

Believe it or not it was my idea to go skate a ramp.  We hadn’t been to Dave’s ramp in a long time and I had been thinking about it.  I picked up Jake and Lazer and headed to Meta where we met Jason and I got a quick tutorial on DSLRs.  Off to Longmont we picked up Brian and went to Dave’s.  Oh yeah, we drove through a bunch of smoke from the wildfire going on and at times it was snowing ash on us.  Anyways, the session started slow.  I was really sucking, but surprisingly Lazer and Brian were having troubles too.  Brian took the worst slam I’ve ever seen him take (which is saying a lot).  He was trying front axle stall to fakie and dove from the coping onto his back all the way to the flat.  It was epic.  The fact that he was able to laugh it off is beyond me.Things eventually got going.  Jake was ripping as usual.  Brian was throwing down trick after trick, Lazer was ripping, Dave was holding his daughter, Jason was downloading music and I finally landed some Rampy tricks elsewhere.  I got a fakie pivot fakie, fakie front axle to rock ‘n roll to got heckled, crooks on parking block side, front ds felt pretty easy, etc.  We dorked around for awhile and I ended up getting Brian’s trick the front tough guy to front rock.  It was bad, sloppy and fun.  After awhile I held Dave’s daughter so he could skate.  That was pretty fun.  Allan had showed up and was calling out tricks for everyone to do.After awhile Jake and I went out front to play of SKATE which was going pretty slow and was ended abruptly by a drunk neighbor that tried to fight us and threw rocks in the street.  That dude sucked.

Another hot and sunny day.  I took Ollie and his buddy Sam to the new Arvada park.  When we got there the park was almost empty.  Just one other skater.  I had a goal of trying the euro to manual and tried it kinda out of the blue and got it first try.  Whoa, that’s rare.  I also had a goal of doing a rock ‘n roll on the shallow end, but never got it.  I was trying a few lines.  Flip trick then rock ‘n roll in the shallow.  Never got the rock.  Later on I did manager a layback f/s rock and dropped in too.  I got a line with back 50 the ledge, front feeble little qp, front 50 front shove out the ledge that hyped me up.  I tried a run with front 50 or front d on the top qp, ollie on the twinkie, then kickflip the euro but managed to never ride out of that somehow.  Ugh.  Ollie was cruising around with his mongo steez.  He did a cool line of kickturn on the twinkie bank then ollie out of the curb cut.  He also rolled in the tiny qpipe easily and even ollied into it (but cleared the tranny).  Sam learned rock ‘n rolls on the little qp.  Some BMXers came that were some of the best I’ve seen.  It’s still annoying sharing a little park with dudes going that fast and worrying about collisions with your kid, but they did a bunch of cool slide on their tires tricks I’ve never seen before.

It was another mid 90 degree day and I wasn’t ready for it.  I met Jason at the manny pad where I struggled badly.  10 tries to even land a manual.  I was skating so horribly.  Jason seemed to be doing better and trying some new tricks.  Neither of us landed much.  I managed to get my first nose manny nollie back shove out in a long time.  Came close to heelflip manny.We left for the ledge area and my legs had nothing.  I could boardslide and crooks it, but ollies up into 50 was so hard.  Jason was ripping through.  Back 50s, front board pop out.  Brian and Lazer met up for some skating and complaining.  We went over to the bank to curb area nearby.  Jason and Lazer threw down a bunch of tricks.  Tail blocks, crails, stuff like that.  Brian sat and debated quitting skateboarding.  I tried back pivot shove outs until I got one that met my requirement for a clean landing ( < 3 tic tacs).  I had to leave to get to a BBQ at Zachs.  Fun.  Not the best day of skating.

Was totally gonna take a sick day as I didn’t think I had much desire to skate and I was super sore.  It’s approaching a month of skating every day.  Anyways I got home from work and the house was all to myself with a new Thermals record waiting for me.  I cranked it up, lounged for awhile and drifted in and out of sleep.  There was some light left in the night and I thought it would be a sin to not go skate at least a bit since it was so nice outside.  I grabbed my board rolled to the street and popped an ollie that actually felt good.  I a few no complies later and I noticed our trash can hadn’t been put away yet.  I’ve wanted to ollie it forever so I set it down and posed a couple ollies over it before landing one with a bonk.  Pretty hyped on that, but wanting more I kept going back to setup and would nollie a pine cone.  Even that felt fun.  A few tries later I put down a clean ollie that felt great.

*** OH NO ** I forgot to mention a trick that Brian did a few days prior at the last Broomfield session.  Alley oop one foot back lip from low to high first try.  Can’t believe I forgot that.   Whew.I pulled in behind Brian being obnoxious and trying to swerve around his bike.  He looked unphased.  The park wasn’t super crowded and after a few nothing laps we ended up at the little qpipe to play a game of two trick SKATE.  Flatground then qpipe.  It became apparent real quick that neither of us had this kind of energy so we just skated.  John showed up in awhile and added a real nice nose manual dive to flat into the mix.  Brian was hyping me up on trying low to high tricks.  I posed some front tails and got into a few rock fakies but never committed to landing them.  Brian did a bunch of tricks of which I promised to blog, but I’m forgetting exactly which ones they are.  Access to the internet all day at work has killed my memory.  Anyways, I think he did low to high blunt fakie, low to high front rock, a few more and tried low to high front pivot, but couldn’t put it down.  I was not having much luck ollieing as I would pretty much accidentely wallie into anything I tried.  It was scary.Oh I should mention that it was cool out.  Long sleeve weather even.  Felt good. The park had kinda cleared out so we skated the little hump above the pocket in the flow bowl.  John was killing the pivots to fakie on nothing.  Brian managed to front lip and front 50 nothing.  John also put down front tails, no comply sal flips or whatever you call them, alley oop fakie 50s on nothing, front biggee, kickflip fakie.  I took way more tries then needed to do f/s flips and backed them up by doing nothing in the middle of the park.  Brian would do tricks on the hump then kill the brick qp, then do some crazy wallride up the wallride bank.  So sick.  Near the end I was doing boardslides down the rail and messing around and some dude in the biggest shoes ever kept doing what I was trying and beaming me after.  There was definitely a point when I felt like punching that dude.  Oh well, he had a much cooler dress shirt then me so he must be tough.  I managed a few no comply pole jams finally.  Skating the top area was pretty fun even if we kept getting in the way of the double set.  John front 50’d the hubba at the end and we both flailed some 3 flips.  John landed most, I barely landed one.  Then the lights shut off and the cops rolled up quickly making sure everyone leaves immediately.  They wouldn’t want skaters hanging out after the park is closed you know.  They do bad things.

Wow.