Carleigh and I rolled up around 8 on a really nice night. The park wasn’t too crowded, but everyone that was there was skating. Or I guess biking. I really don’t understand why people would bike at a skate plaza with low ledges anyways, but whatever. I wanted to warm up in the bowl with a grind on the little qp on the top, then a grind around the corner after. This took a long time and pissed me off. Then I continued sucking in the street course. Carleigh seemed to be skating decent. 50s, boardslides on the black ledge all easy. Almost front shoves out of the bank. I started trying the step up for the first time and it’s really awkward. It took about 7 tries for me to finally land it. It was funny because somebody gave me a sympathy “yeah” and Carleigh said I looked so bummed so she laughed. Ha. After that things got better for me though. I got a run with boardslide down the ledge, back 50 the black ledge (haven’t landed that before there) followed by front 50 front shove out on the black ledge. I made myself ollie over the tiny rail into the bank again. It took a bunch of tries and I still can’t land in the bank with enough angle to not run into the grass. I came close to getting front smith on the black ledge too. Carleigh was working on kickflips into the bank and came close to a bunch of them. I started skating the lower area after making myself ollie the six stair. It took a couple bails this time before I put it down. Carleigh ollied the double set like it was nothing then went on to pop shove. I got a line on the lower part that hyped me up. Manual down the angled blue ledge (never done that before), front feeble the qp, back 5-0 the blue ledge then nollie treflip shuffle (counts!). Carleigh put down the pop shove all sick. I started trying kickflips over the tiny rail, but the high school kids took over and started lighting the rail up with deodorant and being generally annoying. I might have actually committed to that, but who knows. At the very end I finally ollied over the tall part of the rust ledge and into the bank. I’ve wanted to do that for awhile. All in all it ended up being really fun, I just wish I could warm up faster sometimes.

Oh and yes, he’s an 8 year old kid.  Show boat nosegrab.  Makes me laugh so hard.Ollie wants to learn about the camera too.  I guess he doesn’t know about the “make old people look younger” filter yet.

Had a totally awesome morning.  Watched PJ Ladd own it in SKATE, spent some quality time with India and even snuck in a nap.  In the late afternoon Carleigh showed up, we picked up Neil in Broomfield then hit downtown Denver.  Traffic was horrible and we ended up kinda on the far side of downtown on the outskirts of where we’ve skated before.  We tried to hit a manny pad initially, but an upset tenant wasn’t feeling it.  We dorked around at this narrow manny pad and two stair.  Well, Neil actually skated it, I posed at it (too narrow for me) and Carleigh tried some flippers on the sidewalk.  I was feeling rusty as I haven’t skated for real in awhile.  Next up we ended up at chain to ollie.  My first few chain ollies were horrible.  They felt so out of control and bad.  We all ollied it and then started working on more.  Carleigh and I tried kickflips, Neil pop shoves.  It took a bit, but the men got their moves.  Neil backed his up with a 100 foot long manny.  Sick.  Carleigh came real close to the kickflip.  I did it a couple times, but the first one was super slow and sketchy.  Second one felt great, but I didn’t have anything on that manny pad.  My new trucks felt weird.  Neil put down some sick no complies over it too while I got some weak 180s both ways.  We left to the weird round brick plaza area.  At first Neil and I ollied in the f/s one which I haven’t done before.  It’s a little ledge drop into a little bank.  Then we turned around and ollied onto the ledge.  I got one with ollie up then ollie into the b/s bank.  That felt awesome.  Carleigh ollied in both b/s and f/s.  Neil was trying to ollie out of the bank over the tall ledge.  I started trying to ollie over the f/s ledge into the bank.  Neil saw it and got it first try and eventually backed it up with a four wheel bonk over the tall ledge which was so sick.  I also got the ollie over the ledge into the bank.  Hyped on that.A quick kick out of the Wells Fargo C ledge we ended up at a parking garage with crappy gritty concrete that somehow ended up being a blast.  I got a couple lines that I was very hyped on.  Ollie a curb cut, kickflip up a curb, nose slide a brick planter off a stair.  Which was hard because it was sooooo sticky.  Also got a kickflip over a curb, 360 flip on flat, manual then front 180 down the 2 stair that came up real quick.  So fun!  Carleigh put down a bunch of kickflips and tried to manual the long pad.  Neil did some good nose manuals and got a good run of pop shove over a curb, 360 no comply (backside), nose manual, one foot off the two stair.  We checked out this kinda bank to ledge and rail spot, but Carleigh and Neil left to get some drink while I tried to ollie a little retainer wall.  When I finally got it I almost backed it up with a front nose to fakie on the bank to ledge.  On the way to meet Neil and Carleigh at Wahoos I hit this little manny pad then ollie over a curb to drop onto a super mellow bank.  That took more tries then it should.Those guys ate and we all stocked up on water for the last few minutes of daylight.  We hit this weird mellow hip that was soooo hard to skate.  It was almost too small to skate it as a hip, but it was good for it.  Neil sat it out.  Carleigh did some good f/s ollies then spent a long time on kickflips.  She eventually landed a good one with a rad surfy ride out.  I had given up on ollieing big out of the hip and was trying flippers over it.  I came close to b/s flips, but never got a good one.  I hucked f/s flips for awhile and never came close.  Then I tried a f/s halfcab flip over the hip and was surprised to get it in three tries.  After that I started trying 3 flips and after Carleigh put down a pop shove I got her back with the tre bomb.  Ha.  It felt great though.  That was basically the end of the day.  Such a great session.I shot the photo above after we were done and got back to the car.  Gotta at least try and shoot a photo everyday or I’m never gonna learn this stuff.

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.