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.

Jason, Carleigh, Jake and I headed down to Denver before 7pm on a warm Friday night. I needed to bring a bunch of boards to 303 so after that we parked in the Civic Park area and started out. After some sidewalk pushing and downhill traffic action we ended up at the Denver Library and skated the metal grate wallie drop thing. Everyone got the wallie out. Took me the longest of course. Jake did it front 180 out too. Oh yeah, as I mentioned previously I had had enough of the thick I-Path shoes so was skating the old DC’s again. Anyways, they felt better. We ollied over some low ledges then went to meet Jeff a few blocks away.First stop with Jeff was a downhill ollie bump.  Jeff and his buddy Sebastian went first and did some fast and huge ollies.  Jake and I kinda looked at each other and laughed.  I said, “This is gonna be embarrassing”.  I went and did a better ollie than I thought I would, but compared to those two it was nothing.  A failed kickflip and a few Jeff wallrides later and we got the boot.  We ended up at a poorly lit flatbar that could be pretty epic.  Jeff got some front 50s, but the rest of us just kinda skated the parking lot which was fun too.  I got a front 180 up onto a sidewalk downhill bank.  Then Jake, Jason and I tried to ollie the flatbar.  Jake got it first.  Jason second.  Me in a very distant 3rd.  Next we ended up at this random 3 stair and weird bank spot.  Carleigh and I skated, Jason hurt his back, Jeff and Sebastian peaced out and Jake chilled.  Carleigh and I just kinda did nothing trying to make something out of the spot.  Eventually we ollied the 3 stair and I ollied onto the 2nd stair then front 180’d off.  Pretty dumb.We ended up at this spot on Colfax I’ve looked at pretty much before or after every show I’ve gone to in Denver.  The little curb up, curb up then a drop.  Jack had a cool manny late shove there forever ago.  We skate it for a long ass time, but didn’t land much.  Jake got manual the first pad, ollie up, ollie up, nollie off a grip of times.  He tried to add a treflip to it, but never got it.  Gnarly Carleigh ollied the flat gap, then slammed super hard trying it again.  I got manny, ollie up, ollie up, kickflip off.  The kickflip took sooo many tries.  One time I just went for an ollie and hit a hole and dove into the pole.  Fun.  My last run was manny, ollie up, kickflip up, front 180 bail to cops pointing at me saying time to go.  Fun night even if we didn’t skate the best downtown spots.

It finally feels like summer has arrived. With a temperature pushing 90 degrees I rolled over to creekside with Ollie and Sam. We went to the back where I tried a few flippers and the kids skated like 8 year olds. I tried a few lines and struggled at flip tricks. I landed a couple 3 flips, but they were horrible. I almost destroyed my ankle on one too. Ugh. Kickflips were rocketed. I would land tricks not knowing I was landing them. Totally over the I-Paths. Good bye thick cupsoles. I was almost bummed enough go get vulcs. Instead I got fake vulcs though ..

I picked up Rick, then John, then Carleigh and we headed out on a nice evening for a kinda late night Brighton session. On the way there it was sprinkling and it looked like there was thunderstorms where we were going. Well, there was. We finally got there and the park was kinda dry. John and I had a few warm up runs on the halfpipe area, but then it started raining. We hung out in the gazebo for awhile and attempted to wait it out. Apparently this was going on nearby. After awhile the rain stopped and we started shuffling around looking for something to dry the halfpipe area with. Finally John donated his shirt and it dried off in a few minutes. John was rewarded for his good behavior by ripping it up and then taking a super bad slam. He skated more, but I’m sure he’s done for a few days with a bad hipper. He had good ollies both ways, blunt back ds, slasher reverts, everything. Rick killed it of course. Lots of tricks I don’t know the names of, slashes, ripping and everything that makes Rick so rad. Carleigh put down most of her basics pretty quick and beat me to front d. I did most of my easier tricks and threw in a front d at the very end. It was fun. Wish it could have been a longer session though.

Met Nate up at Meta.  After peeping some footage we rolled out.  My shoes were feeling especially thick and awkward and I was more tired than I thought so everything felt off.  After a few minutes at the slappy curbs and a few basic tricks each we ended up in front of the theater and noticed the ledge off the 5 stair is waxed now.  After a fast ollie up ollie off Nate went and front 50’d it.  He had to do it a few times though because it took me forever to just land the ollie on ollie off.  I was bummed on that, but at the same time it’s about a 6 stair drop and that’s been awhile for me.  We cruised around a bit, stopped at the student center, got some water and then ended up at the steep wallride area near the weird curved 1 – 7 stair.  On the way there I did what felt like the best nollie back 180 I’ve ever done.  Rad.  While we were attempting to skate the loading dock nearby Carleigh rolled up.  Nate was trying back 50s and I was trying noseslides.  We told Carleigh this was a great warmup ledge.  Ha.  Then we skated the wallride.  I got a really bad backside wallride pretty quick then started trying frontside.  I eventually put one down.  So hyped.  I’ve never rode out of that trick before.  Feels so weird.  I had some kind of weird groin pains throughout this part of the session which worried me, but it seemed ok after all.  Nate and Carleigh worked on backside wallrides for a long time and both got them.  I also got a little fakie wallride and a silly no comply f/s wallride.  We went over to the super mellow bank to 2″ curb.  Carleigh got front and back pivots.  I got a kick back pivot, back tail, and then Nate and I tried kickflip front pivots.  I put down a kickflip front 50 quickly that was intended to be a bail.  Ha.  I put down another kick front pivot which was more of just a f/s flip scratch on the curb.  I finally got a decent one.  Hyped!  Two new tricks in one night.  Nate was trying f/s flips on flat and did the most awkward thing ever.  I’m not sure how he did it, but he almost broke his back ankle.  He only turned 30 degrees at the most.  It was the oddest thing, but that was pretty much the end of the session and we cruised/walked back up the hill.  Nate wasn’t hurt, but it freaked him out and he had to get going to soccer anyways so we finished up.

After dinner I went swimming for a couple hours with the kids then immediately picked up Jake and Jason and headed to Valmont.  While Jason waxed before testing Jake and I did a couple laps around trying to manual every possible manny pad on the way.  That’s 9 each way.  So hard.  I think we each got about 3 of them total, but hey we were just warming up.  A little ways into the ledge session Jason slammed and got a shinner.  Not, just any old shinner, but a horrendous and horrible shinner.  Click here to see the blood.  Not for the weak at heart.Anyways, Jake and I skated for a bit longer while Jason laid down with his leg elevated.  I was actually skating better than I have been lately.  The new shoes don’t have very good feel though and I’m kinda all over the place.  Jake and I both did runs with ollies up the ledge, kickflips on flat then front 180’s off the dock.  I tried another one with sw front 180 up the ledge, no comply shove on flat then front shove off the loading dock, but I didn’t commit.  Felt like it was possible at least.  Jake had some good front tails.  We tried to race to 3 3 flips, but neither of us got there.  I landed two of them, but they were both so bad I think it adds up to less than one.  I was feeling pretty good on energy and trying lots of flippers in between ledge bails.  I really didn’t land much, but it felt great to skate hard finally.  All this swimming has really helped the groin.  The ledge tricks I got were back noseslide, back board pop out, front board pop out, front noseslide to fakie, weak front tail (but I suck at that trick so yeah!), front 50s, crooks, back 50 and came close to front 50 shove and front 50 to front board popout.Right before leaving we had a little kicker session off the low part of the escalator.  Jake got nollie and halfcab.  I got kickflip and close to front shove.  I did a few kickflips, but they all felt rocketd.  Ugh.  I blame it on the bright blue shoes.

Nursing a hangover and not that motivated to skate I needed to bring Ollie to SOL to pickup a new sweatshirt as we had promised him awhile ago.  After he picked out the most expensive Spitfire hoodie we went to one of the metal parks there.  I skated like crap as I expected.  The only thing I did that came easier then I thought was boardsliding the flat bar across the table top.  I also boardslid off the taller ledge on the other pyramid. I spent a long time trying front tails on the smaller qp and failed.  Ugh.  I blame the new shoes.   Ollie was skating pretty well.  He did rock fakies on the 4 foot like it was nothing.  Lots of cannonball cali grinds with huge smiles too.  He’s so fun to skate with.