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.

Worked late and had such a frustrating day I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.  Watched a couple episodes of Leave It To Beaver with the family then felt like skating a manual pad.  On the way to Valmont I had all these one – two tricks in my head to do on the back to back manny pads.  When I got there I landed every warm up manny and I thought it was on.  Then a truck came and parked in front of one of the pads.  Doh.  I still tried a bunch of lines and pretty much never landed anything other then a manny and nose manny.  I tried a run to a nose manual 180 out.  Couldn’t even get that.  I tried a line to 180 nose manny.  Couldn’t get that either.  Ugh.  The saving grace was all the tricks I got up the various curbs there.  180s, sw front 180, kickflip, pop shove, fakie bigspin, heelflip and a very rare frontside halfcab.  I tried a few 3 flips up, but never got close.  I left bummed although I was happy with how hard I skated.  I just wish I would actually land tricks sometimes.

Didn’t have much time as I wanted to get to Fuzz’s kinda soon to work on his website before the premiere.  So I just skated flat for about 30 min.  Nothing special went down.  It took several tries to get a slow treflip.  The new trucks are still a bit stiff.  I tried a line for awhile of halfcab flip, heelflip, treflip and never came close.  I skated pretty hard at least and it was fun.Later on Fuzz, John and I went to the Stay Gold premiere.  We got there kinda late so we missed the Meta teaser.  Doh.  After a bunch of good teasers Stay Gold started.  Without ruining it too much I’ll just say that the video starts off super good with Westgate and Herman before going into a bunch of handrails for awhile, Suski, more handrails then ends with epic parts from Leo and Reynolds.  At one point during Leo’s part Fuzz said to me “Are we watching Misled Youth?”  Pretty much nailed it right there.  Reynolds part is completely epic though.  He makes hammers look good and he’s 30 something?  Not sure I’m gonna buy this video, but I really liked the 5 parts I mentioned so I probably will.

Was gonna go for a quick Valmont session, but Foothills Pkwy was closed so I just pulled in near Viking liquor, parked and tried to find something to skate.  It was creepy as hell since there was no one around and these bunnies kept running in front of me.  After some pushing / walking around I found an area with a dim manual pad and little gap.  After landing the manny pad I went up to the gap which was a parking lot to parking lot gap over a curb.  It normally would be even easy for me, but the light sucked and after shooting my brand new setup into water I finally landed the biggest part of it.  I wasn’t happy it took 10 tries, but oh well.  I moved on and ended up at Viking for a few rounds at the dropped down driveway.  I ollied over the curb then up the curb and came back and dropped down then 180’d over.  Last part of the night was spent doing some flatground in a poorly lit rough parking lot.  Still fun though.  I’d highly recommend not skating this area at night as there really isn’t much to skate and half of it is too dark at night.

Woke up in a good mood, early on a Sunday.  This not drinking beers thing rules.  After getting stuff organized Bernie, Jack and I headed to Broomfield where we met up with Brian, Neil, Fuzz, Matt, Jam, Rich, Jim.  I was kinda mellow for some reason.  I didn’t skate all that good, but I’ll blame it on all the hoopla that was about to happen and a new setup I’m not used to yet.  The only good things I did were a 360 flip on flat and front feebs on the little qpipe.  Jack killed as usual.  Front 5-0 back shove out, ollie the wallride hip, lots of stuff I missed.  Bernie came close to manualling up the weird pad to b/s flip out.  Matt slayed everthing.  Brian did first try alley oop back d from low to high on the qpipe to hubba.  Neil put down his moves.After some grocery shopping for hot dogs/buns we arrived to a very crowded Arvada park.  Everyone was there.  There is no way I can come remotely close to documenting what went down so I’ll just go the sentimental route.  I was totally blown away that so many people came to the bbq/demo.  It was such a fun time with such a great vibe.  I’d really like to thank all the Nullers for everything they do and TF for being such good friends and so supportive.  I feel like the luckiest guy on earth.  Even the wife and kids showed up.  Seriously everyone, thank you for everything, you all rule.Above is a little clip put together by Rich at John Doe.  Pretty awesome.  He even put Dinosaur Jr to it.  Ha.

Another hot day, kinda getting sick of the heat.  Since everyone was kinda slacking on getting to a ramp jam in Denver I decided to take the kids to Southern Hills while I waited.  It ended up being so fun that we just kept skating.  I was still pretty sore and unmotivated at the start, but was able to ollie up stuff pretty easily for a change.  I came remotely close to ollieing the gap between benches which I’ve still never done.  It’s on my list of tricks I need to do before I die.  Ha.  That and manual at Willville.  Two boulder staple tricks that I have still yet to do.  Anyways, Ollie was ripping.  Fast ollies off the two stair, manuals down the handicap ramp, cali grinds, and still a mean mongo push.  Sam is getting better too.  After awhile I started trying the ol’ John Brandow Challenge at Southern Hills.  Trick on bench, trick on bench, ollie up two stair, ollie onto narrow ledge, ollie 4 stair, trick on bench.  I was trying manual the first bench (never got it, but just an ollie up is enough for this so I’d take it), noseslide the second bench, ollie, ollie, the 4 stair is really weird dude to the crack and the fact that there is a wall 8 feet after you land, and then a front board on the last ledge.  The hardest part for me was once again, ollieing onto the narrow ledge.  Once I got that there was no way I was gonna bail the 4 stair which ended up being easier than I thought and a sketchy front board to end made me really happy.  I skated around a bit more, but somewhere in that mess I cracked my tail really bad.  The kids new it was broke so they wanted to try focusing it.  Silly kids they would land on the bolts expecting it to break.  Ollie eventually made it crack more, but it was funny.  So back home to setup a new board.Well actually, back home to setup a new complete.  And what’s a new complete without new shoes?  The I-Paths were sick, but starting to get holes in the bottom.  So yeap, I’m poser #1 with new everything.  My new setup consists of: The brand new ‘Nothing Beats A Null’ deck, Bones Reds bearings, Thunder Titanium Lights, Super Nullethane 52mms and some new eS First Blood shoes.After setting up the board I wanted to skate a ledge bad.  I like watching the graphics get scratched off a new deck.  We went out to Valmont where apparently all of a sudden I could no longer ollie and took like 8 tries to get a front 50. Oh yeah, I can blame the new complete!  Ha.  Ollie ollied (ugh) off the escalator part of the loading dock from almost the top and did a really cool hippy walk over a couple chairs.  Then we hit the nearby buildings.  I did mostly ollies everywhere trying to get used to my new setup.  Had a run with ollie the little grass gap, ollie the little median, ollie out of the bank over the curb, run into a wall and get laughed at by Ollie and Sam.  Ha.  Ollie was ripping way more then he ever has.  He was doing these ollies out of a little kicker and skating really fast.  Sam started riding off curbs for the first time so he was hyped.  Around the corner to the next area where there is a two stair followed by a curb.  Ollie and I both tried to drop down into manual and the little guy beat me.  Oh boy.  We had fun in that area for awhile.  I tried a run of sw fs 180 manny (never got it  without scraping), ollie a median, then manny drop manny on the weird curbs under the two stair.  On the second go of it I slammed on the manny manny and kinda rolled my ankle.  It turned out to not be so bad and we kept skating.  On to the next building where there is a two stair that’s waxed up.  I tried a few grinds, but it wouldn’t go and then ollie started trying boardslides on it.  It was so sick because you had to ollie over the first stair to get on the second.  He totally did it too.  Not a long boarslide, but wow.  We finally headed back to the original spot where Sam and Ollie did lots ollieing off curbs and manual attemps.  I did a chinese nollie manual at one point so Ollie tried it and learned it just like that doing the next few like it was nothing.  To end it I made myself do 5 kickflips in a row which was harder than expected, but I and blame tired legs and a new complete on that.  Awesome day.  I can’t describe how amazing it is to really skate with your son.  It’s insane.