Super nice evening in the upper 70s.  Ollie and I rolled up to a very crowded park.  It’s always weird for me being at a crowded park with Ollie because I gotta keep a closer eye on him.  Anyways, Joe and Dan were there ripping and skating the street area.  Ollie was intimidated by the crowd so we went into the snake run section where Dan joined us and we had a good ol’ time.  Dan did a switch polejam on a fence to start an epic run but bailed rolling in.  Ha.  I was kinda sucking but having fun rolling in.  At one point Ollie rolled in too.  It’s funny because he tried it earlier and I was kinda scared and made sure he knew it’s different than dropping in.  He ended up doing it a few more times, but not where the qp was as tall.  So sick.  Joe joined us for a bit, ripped it, but then we went back to the street course.  Ollie ripped some rock to fakies on the weird bank to curb and followed them with ollie nosegrabs off the curb.  Joe skated the tall ledge like a man.  Front smiths!  Dan was trying over willys on the tall flat bar.  I was kinda dorking around.  Got some back 50s on the little ledge and front 50s on the main ledge.  Tried a few frontside halfcab flips on the flat bank and failed.  Rolled into the top qpipe.  That park is so fun.  Toward the end a kid broke his arm and it kinda freaked out Ollie a bit so we took off.  Fun session though.  The Fremont crew never disappoints.

Neil, Fuzz, Jason, Carleigh and I headed up to the Loveland park to meet up with the MRKT dudes who were hosting a little demo of sorts.  When we got there it was really hot out and really crowded.  Neil started killing it right out the gates.  No comply tailslides, wallrides, no comply up the 3 stair.  It amazed me as I posed on the deck without wanting to embarrass myself with my bad skating.  Fuzz started killing it too.  Jason and I eventually moved up to the bowl and carved around that while people destroyed the main area.After awhile I went down and noticed Fuzz pacing around by himself.  I thought he was just angry at skating, but it turned out to be way more serious and he thought his heart was having some problems.  Not cool at all.  We all piled in my car and went to a nearby hospital per Fuzz’s request.  He didn’t actually go in, but we hung out there for awhile to make sure he was doing ok.  Things came back to normal and after a smoke and some water we returned to the Loveland park.When we returned there was a best trick contest going on down the 12 stair.  Dudes were hucking themselves.  I didn’t see anything actually get landed, but one dude came close to a heelflip and another dude was trying 3 flips over the 12 stair rail.  So gnarly.  Anyways, Fuzz and everyone started skating again and I went and played a game of SKATE with Chris in the hockey rink.  It was a pretty rough game for both of us.  He kept trying fakie heels and slamming.  I had him at SKA before I had any letters with dumb tricks like fakie flip, pop shove and halfcab flip.  He came back quick with stock tricks like nollie flip, sw heel and sw flip that I can never land.  I added a fakie bigflip and he did a varial heel to tie it up at SKAT.  He landed a fakie heel which i miraculously landed on my second try then I finished him off with a 360 flip that took awhile.  Awesome.  I skated the bowl some more with Neil and Jason and we were having fun while Fuzz murdered the street area and Carleigh landed her first every downhill park rail.  Rad.After that we ended up going to the nearby high school that has the weird bank spot.  Jason had hurt his hip so he was out.  Carleigh skated it way better then last time and did ollie over the curb onto the platform then ollie into the bank lickety split.  She followed that with a ollie over the curb then front 180 into the bank.  Even though Fuzz had cracked his board at the park he was still ripping.  I don’t remember the tricks so much, but sometimes you can really see why he was a pro skater years ago.  Neil was killing it and skating hard.  Toward the end he did a bluntslide followed by a quick ollie over the handrail to shut down the session.  Shortly before that I had done a b/s flip into the bank that had taken 100 tries.  I was skating hard, but didn’t land much of anything until pretty much the end of the session.  I got that b/s flip which felt really good.  I did a smith pop in on the ledge, ollie up, turn around ollie in, 3 flip on flat, ollied the 4 stair nearby.  After Neil shut the session down we lurked for a minute and I noticed a little ledge to ollie over with a drop on the other side.  I tried it a few times before Neil laughed and did it super easy.  Ha.  A few more tries and I landed it.  Felt good as it was pretty scary to me.  We lurked awhile longer and Jason dropped in on the ledge and rolled between two poles.  So gnarly.  FUN DAY.

After dinner and some football tossing with Ollie we headed out to Valmont shortly before sunset.  When we got there Ollie said he’d wanted to skate that spot after seeing it in the Null videos.  Awesome.  I had a new Nulltron board complete with round 2 of the old man griptape idea.  All this stuff was supposed to be on the last one, but I ended up liking the old man too much by himself.  It’s obviously a complete exaggeration of the jockish things I feel like I need to do to skate without groin pain and to prevent other injuries.  Note that I couldn’t put a checkmark next to the ‘no beer’ one which I tried to hide anyway and is obviously not really on my checklist.Starting out was rough for me as my groin was feeling really sore.  It hurt to ollie.  I wasn’t sure I should be skating, but I kept at it mellow for awhile and the sharp pains went away.  The first part of the session was pretty bad for me and I skated slower than normal and just tried to get my body working.  I did a few basics on the ledge like front 50, front tail, front nose, back nose, back crooks, back 50.  Ollie was ripping.  He was having so much fun cruising up the escalator and ollie’ing off higher each time.  He got about half way up which seemed pretty tall for him.  He likes doing halfcabs a lot and tries some halfcab noseslides.  He kinda landed one, but it was more of a halfcab with a jib in the middle.  He tried some boardslides too and landed one to fakie with a bit of a lunch break.  Still sick though.  He had this little run going where he would ride through this little gutter that I’m sure no one else will ever skate, ollie the metal grate then front board (stall) 270 out then ollie off the loading docl.  So sick.  I was trying lots of flippers and failing so I started trying flippers I can’t normally land because it doesn’t fail as bad not landing something you shouldn’t land.  I’m good at run on sentences.  Anyways I ended up getting insanely close to switch flips.  There was a couple that I thought I was gonna ride away from.  Nollie flips and switch heels weren’t too far away either.  Near the end I started trying front 180s over a little crack gap followed by f/s halfcab noseslides.  I eventually got a really bad one and we called it at that.Next up we went across the street to explore and it ended up being a blast.  There were a bunch of manual pads, a 2 stair, a loading dock with a 4 stair on one side, some more bigger drops, etc.  Ollie ollie’d (damn it once again I never thought about how weird it would be to have a son named Ollie) the loading dock and did nose grabs off the 2 stair.  The 2 stair had another stair about 10 feet after it and I tried to ollie up then ollie up the 2 which I did.  But it was weird because of the downhill before the curb.  Ugh.  Anyways after awhile I started trying a run of a nose manual, ollie up the loading dock, then manual a sidewalk that drops to another sidewalk.  I got the first two almost everytime, but couldn’t get the manual manual.  Doh.  I blame it on the new board that feels huge and has more kicktail than normal.  Anyways I was having a blast.  Ollie was cruising around smiling having a blast and then after a few tries put down a legit back 180 off a curb.  Session done!  Super fun night.

Worked the late shift again at work then went home and was the babysitter for India and two of her friends.  Ollie was elsewhere and Liz went with Carleigh to go see the Black Keys.  I had about 40 minutes of sunlight left probably.  I started off dorking out trying to learn ollie body varials so I could be as cool as Short Bus Jack and landed one bad enough that I figured I should count it.  I worked into some basics and was stoked on how kickflips were feeling.  Unfortunately heelflips and treflips didn’t feel so good.  I never landed a tre and eventually ended up cracking the tail super bad with a front shove.  Doh.  The board was cracked pretty bad already so oh well.  Time for a new deck ..

Was super sore from the last so many days of skating and kinda wanted to take the night off.  Instead after going to Meta to sell boards I stopped by the Boulder park.  Jake and Max were there as well as some other Boulder heads that are fun to skate with.  I really didn’t do much the whole time but carve around a little.  For a bit I tried to back tailslide up the nibble bump thing, but never actually slid it.  I posed a couple frontside flips over the pyramid that I should have just landed.  Oh well, it was mellow which I needed and my legs were happy not trying tricks.

After a long day of wishing I wasn’t at work and pancakes for dinner John and Carleigh came over and we headed to Brighton on a cloudy, but nice evening.  We got there around 8:30 and there were less than 10 people skating.  Cool.  John and I cruised around for a bit then skated the mellower bowl while Carleigh skated the bump to bar.  John had a mesh hat on backwards and skated like it.  Lots of slasher grinds and front rocks while keeping his speed and flowing good.  I was trying some back 50s around a corner and never got it mostly due to the coping being deathly fast instead of me just being a pansy.  Actually not joking for once.After a bit John and I headed over to the street area with Carleigh.  She was almost landing front 180 nosegrinds on the bump to bar.  Ridiculous.  John was ripping everything too.  Ollies everywhere.  I was skating ok, just kinda dorking.  Took me a few tries to get the boardslide on the ledge yank up into the downhill ledge thing.  After that John and I tried doing f/s board transfers.  I eventually got one after kickflipping up the ledge to setup.  That little line stoked me out enough to keep a smile going regardless of how bad I skated the rest of the night.  The three of us had a kickflip race up the euro that John won.  Caleigh landed it which is pretty good for a girl.  Ha, that’s what the dude said that was posing kickflips and not even getting close.  Carleigh went on to also land a perfect heelflip up and a front shove.  Sick.  I failed at b/s flips as well as manualling the tall pier 7 replica.  I tried ollieing into all 3 of the banks on the downhill section and did the scariest tail scrape ollie into the third one.  I thought I was gonna die.After the lights shut off we played SKATE in the parking lot.  John won the first game.  I could not land a 3 flip at all.  Argh.  In the second game John hit a rock and bailed and came up so angry he almost focused his brand new board.  Doh!  I think the second game just fizzled out and we left to get some gummi bears and sugar tea and drive home.  Yum.

After a gruesome Memorial Day drive down the mountains I met up with Nate.  Feeling a little sad about not going to Co Springs with the Factory I didn’t think anyone would be around.  Not that the family vacation wasn’t totally awesome, but passing on a skate trip with the bros aint easy.  Nate had just gotten back from Portland and was willing to take some time off work for a hour or so session so I met him at google.  I had new shoes:Supra Sports aka the Tom Penny shoe.  I’ve had these shoes before and they blew out quick.  This time I super glued the stitching though.  Anyways, I met Nate and we went to the KGNU manny pad.  Nate killed it out of the gates.  I think he did 5 different manual tricks before I landed a nose manny (which I had to resort to because I couldn’t land a regular manual).  Nate did so many tricks.  Halfcab manual back 180 out, halfcab nose manual nollie b/s 180 out, f/s nollie 180 noseman, nollie nose man, so many more.  The one that got away from him was the nollie back 180 nose man 180 out.  He came close though.  I was hyped to get a sw front 180 manny (with heel drag) and kickflip manny heel drag.  Came close to nose manny shove and then out of the blue did a slow nollie front shove manny 3rd try.  That trick made my day.  It was hot and we sweated and it was fun.

On the way to the hot springs we stopped by the park for a 15 minutes max session.  Out the gate I sucked.  Out the gate Ollie ripped.  Enough that the mongo pushing old dudes that couldn’t ollie just watched him rip and and me flail it.  Ollie ollie’d off the pyramid like it was nothing, took runs on the ramp, did rock fakies while making funny faces, etc.  I sucked though.  I spent most of my time trying front tails on the 3 foot qp and landed one well after Liz had honked the horn indicating the 15 minute timer.  Ugh for me, but pretty rad to see Ollie skate so good.

On the way up to my parents house we stopped in Fairplay so Ollie and I could skate the park for awhile.  It was windy, I had just eaten, and I had skated til almost midnight the night before so I was not running short on the excuses. When we first showed up there was all these high school seniors in graduation gowns cruising around the park.  It was pretty weird, but funny and they were nice.  They left shortly and Ollie and I mostly had the park to ourselves save for a few mongo pushing helmet bearers and the wind.  I skated like crap.  I tried carving the bowls and really wanted to at least carve over the love seat, but I couldn’t keep my speed (can’t blame the wind for this one) and failed at that.  I wanted to boardslide or noseslide the jersey barrier but failed at that too.  The wind gets partial blame for that one though.  The only things I was remotely proud of was carving over the rock in the corner, manually down the kicker, and a first try ollie up the ledge , ollie over the gap.  Although every try after that was ridiculously lame.  I got front tails on the bank to brick coping and bank to curb.  Ollie was having fun.  Ollieing off the kicker, doing rock to fakies, etc.  Nothing crazy new to report with him, but he smiles more than anyone and looks so natural on a board.