Tired from a fun show the night before and being a dad of a girl in 4H club I met up with Nate and Carleigh at the Mikes Camera manny pad.  I started off pretty good with some mannys and nose mannys first try.  But I wasn’t feeling too on my game and I was solo for awhile.  I did a few ollies over snow and whatnot and started feeling better.  Nate showed up right as I gapped over some snow to manny.  I looked cool for a second.  Ha.  It was rad, Nate was hungover.  He said he drank a ton of beers the night before.  That a boy Nate!  Carleigh showed up after awhile too.  Nate quickly proved that he is younger and did some neat tricks.  Front 180 nose manual.  Nollie front 180 nose manny.  He’s good.  Carleigh hasn’t spent much time trying mannys before.  She never quite got one, but she definitely seemed to get the hang of how to manual by the end of the session.  She was also landing kickflips pretty much every try.  Good ones too.  We skated for about an hour total.  Nate did some pretty crazy stuff like fakie manual, half cab nose manual, and quite a bit more that I can’t remember right now.  He came close to fakie manual fakie 3 shove out.  Ridiculous.  He also got most of his flippers back on the bigger board.  I saw perfect tres and nollie b/s heels go down.  Sick.  I didn’t really skate all that hot, but I did a few things I was proud of.  Kickflip manny which took a ton of tries and my first ever fakie bigspin manual.  I’d be more hyped, but I did it so bad.  I landed at 90 and lost all my speed, but somehow managed to manny all the way to the end.  Argh.  I also did a 360 flip up the curb (easier then varial flip up) and a line with a fast nose manual followed by a nollie treflip on flat.  All in all a pretty fun session.

Had a horrible week at work and Friday was the worst day yet.  Got home from work early feeling very cranky, tired and sore.  I took a short nap and woke up feeling slightly better.  I put on PJ Ladd’s part in WHL (best part ever) then ran out of my house with my board, pushed as fast as I could to the bikepath down the street.  When I got there I pushed as fast as I could down it.  It’s not steep or anything, but if you push fast enough the last couple corners before it ends can be scary.  The feeling of flying down a hill rules.  I need to do it more.  My flatspotted wheels were making so much noise, my trucks were wobbling, I was scared and man, it was fun.  After the first one I felt sooooo much better about life.  I skated back slow doing a couple kickflips/shove its and talking on the phone.  I got back to the top and did the same thing again, except even faster.  I walked back and did it a final time somehow going even faster.  Fast enough that I barely made the corner under Moorhead.  I came so close to jumping into the creek.  That would have been so cold!  To finish the run I did a kickflip going kinda fast and laughed for awhile about how fun something as simple as pushing down a hill can be.  Yeah skateboarding!

My second time reaching 20 days of skating in a row this year. I really wanted to just sit on the couch with the family and watch the Lindbergh movie they were watching, but my legs felt decent and it was kinda warm out (35f). When I left my house I felt better than I have in awhile though and I ran the 5 feet to the car. I guess I had more hip in my hop or something.I pulled into Red Curbs at the same time Nate biked in.  It was mostly wet again.  All we could really skate is the manny pad, the ledge and a curb.  Wow, sounds awesome!  I had some motivational issues early on, but put them to rest and tried to skate hard.  I ended up skating harder than I have in awhile.  I would try manual tricks with a flipper after.  I think my best little run was probably a manual disaster then a 270 flip tic tac.  Ha.  Nate was getting his ledge tricks on and basic mannies back since he’s still getting used to the man sized setup.  I had the most fun trying trick up, trick off the manny pad.  I got kickflip up kickflip off, pop shove up kickflip off and a new one for me, pop shove up varial flip off.  I don’t think I’ve done varial flip off.  Maybe?  Oh well.  I tried to do it up the curb for awhile, but failed.  I also got backside 90 flip and fakie bigspin up the curb.  Pretty fun night.

Ok, there’s been too many amazing Rampy sessions to say one is the best, but this one was one of my favorites for sure.  The crew was Brian, Kurt, Dave and I initially.  After awhile Lazer and Carleigh showed up and after awhile longer Nate showed up.  Jake also stopped by briefly to say hi.  Good seeing him.  Jason was also in attendance for awhile, but just to watch.I was pretty tired/sore so it took me awhile to get going.  Dave and Brian were killing it pretty much out of the gates.  It was Dave’s first Rampy session and he seemed to take an interest in the short deck side.  Trying to fakie rock fully decked, manuals, etc.  Anyways, this session is going to be pretty much impossible to fully document.  Everyone was ripping.Lazer and Carliegh get their own little section since they left before the camera came out.  Carleigh and I played tag with front Ds.  We can’t seem to both land them, only one of us has them at a time.  Carleigh also put down feebs to fakies easy and came real close to her patented kickflip rock fakie.  Lazer was Lazer killing everything.  I don’t remember any new tricks.  But when you have a bag that deep it doesn’t matter.  Front tail block, f/s airs, back lips, millions of rad tricks.Gonna start with Kurt.  He is in town from Austin, TX visiting his girlfiend.  He started out ripping quickly and finding new and dangerous ways to fall and scare everyone on the deck.  Don’t get me wrong, the dude is rad and rips hard, but as I’m sure he’ll say he’s got kind of a reckless style and goes for broke.  Dude gave Jason a run for the money on longest grinds on Rampy and took away Nate’s title of scariest shoot out potential at the same time.    Nate takes better photos than me – Kurt front lip.Kurt Front Rock – photo by NateBrian got so tech we had to put the camera in movie mode.  Brian helped make this session as amazing as it was.  Lots of laughter, tons of great skating and non stop fart jokes.  He even landed a front blunt.  Ok, well he landed it well enough to make it into an older Zero video.  Tons of one foot combos.  One foot tough guy, one foot cross over front rock, one foot tail on his first run, I don’t even know how many more.Dave Fuller is a legend in my book.  Over 40 years old and amazing style.  He did so many tricks I didn’t even know the name of.  Backside no comply 5-0, backside chink chinks, the best back disasters ever,   layback nosepicks, indy nosepick, 5-0s to fakie, back tail reverts, backside & frontside sweepers, bonelesses, so many rad tricks.  On top of all that he showed us you can be over 40 and learn new tricks.  So sick.  This photo is a layback grind to tail or something.  Who knows.Dave front bonelessNate Front Tail.  Nate was killing it.  His sketchiness has gone away a bit and he’s got the basics down better.  His new tricks were fakie front pivot to rock fakie and lien to tails.  But my favorite was when he got up onto the deck right in between Brian and I who were clearly having a fart off.  Who gets up onto the deck between two grown men aiming their asses at each other?  Ha, Nate took it in stride.  My other favorite trick of his was the fakie pivot to shifty out.  He’ll never do that again.  Other than that he did most of his tricks pretty quick.Saving the best for last.  Ha ha yeah right!  Here’s Brian giving me the thumbs down for bailing a front feeble.  Like I said, I started off super slow because I was tired from skating so much lately, but we ended up skating over three hours and it was a total blast.  I landed close to every trick I’ve landed on Rampy.  Fakie pivots to fakie were coming easy for a change, but front disasters were lost to Carleigh for most of the session.  My new trick for the day was front tail revert landed with enough speed to almost get to the tranny all the way on the other side of the ramp.  Other tricks I was hyped on were front feebles, the front tough guy to front rock combo, back 50s to fakie and backside crooks.Me fakie pivot fakie.  Photo by the man formerly known as the sketchiest skater on Rampy.My favorite new trick – front feeble.  Love this photo.  I actually like how the trick looks, Brian has some awesome BGPs and Nate Dog took it.  It’s good all around.

I work the early shift this week which means I have to be at work by 7:00am.  That’s wayyyy too early for me.  The one advantage is I get out early, but half the time I act old and go home and take a nap.  This time I picked John up and we went over near the bikepath bank.  We were skating the parking lot for awhile.  John was ripping out of the gates.  I was sucking.  BAD.  John ollied the parking block gap all easy and then we skated this huge snow gap.  Ok, so it was tiny.  John back 180’d it and followed it up with a sick run that included ollieing the parking block gap and a treflip.  I kickflipped the snow gap.  But it wasn’t no ordinary kickflip.  I took off too late so the nose hit the snow and it went flying.  Somehow I still landed the kickflip and it may go down as one of my favorites ever.  As John said, it was like a kickflip with fireworks.  We ended up getting kicked out so we moved over to the bank where Nate met us shortly.This is where I got real pissed.  The most pissed I’ve been at skating since the days of the kick back fail.  I don’t know what happened, but I could not even do ollies at all.  I was tripping.  Wanting to focus my board.  Being a drama queen.  It sucked.  Nate and John were ripping.  I eventually kinda got over it and just skated mellow, but man, I was bumming.  I think it was one of those I’ve-been-skating-too-much-and-I-am-burnt-out moments.  John did a bunch of 270 no complies onto the bank, frontside 270 ollies onto it, back 180 onto it, f/s ollies, f/s crailslide, amazing backside ollies and a nollie shove he stole from Nate.  Rad.  Nate did some ollies then moved on to pop shove fakie, nollie shove, nollie 270s, f/s ollie over some snow then ollie back onto the bikepath etc.  My finest moment was a 2mph pop shove onto the bank only because I’ve never done it before and I did it pretty good.  I did have fun carving over some snow too.  My other tricks that took way too long were ollie up over some snow to f/s ollie back to the bikepath, f/s 180 onto the bank and ride in to fakie, kickflip over some snow onto the bank and b/s and f/s ollies.  Man, somedays I really suck on a skateboard.

Another frigid winter night.  About 8 degrees.  UGH.  Nate and I wanted to do something different so we drove downtown and parked next to the side entrance to the St Julien parking garage.  We went down the side stairs unnoticed and found a mostly dry cooling parking garage with tons of parking blocks for us to shralp.  I say “cooling parking garage” because it seemed to get colder by the minute.  It started off pretty warm, but by the time we left we could see our breath.  The parking garage was also covered in at least a quarter of an inch of dust.  Yuck.We ended up at a group of oddly arranged blue parking blocks.  You couldn’t really grind or slide them too easily because the ends either ran into puddles or pillars.  But they were fun to try stuff over in lines which we did for awhile.  I can’t remember all that went down at that point, we were mostly just kinda dorking around.  At one point I tried to sw front 180 a puddle then kickflip a parking block that was right after it (by “right after it” I mean 20 feet which isn’t much setup when your old and slow like me) and I got it.  I even pushed switch before the 180.  I think Nate did a nollie shove over one followed by a no comply on another.  He’s got good no complys.  He said it’s the old man 8″ board that allows him to do old man tricks so well.  We settled in on trying stuff over a parking block for awhile.  Nate put down a ton of tricks of course.  Nollie, nollie shove, nollie 180s, 180s, halfcabs both ways and a banger at the end – nollie flip.  I struggled with kickflips, but got some as well as 180s, a sketchy pop shove, sw front 180 and a horrible backside flip.  But it’s definitely the first backside flip I’ve done over something and after the sketchy one I was getting close to doing a good one.  Nate started doing the little dump truck tricks where you ride into a curb and put the nose on then transfer to the other side.  After a couple regular ones he ended up doing all kinds of variations.  180s both ways, shoves both ways and attempts at nollie b/s flip out and more.  It was rad.  I couldn’t do the regular transfer, but after tons of tries I got a nollie back shove transfer.  Felt really fun.  We left the frigid garage after ollieing onto a very narrow sidewalk going down the hill of one of the exit ramps.  SUPER fun and sketchy.  It’s about a foot wide with a wall next so it feels like your going to hang up at any second and go flying.  By the end your going fast.  We both did it first try though and it was a great ender on a fun evening.

Ollie had been skating Rampy basically all Saturday and Sunday with his friends. After dinner I decided I should get a little session in and he joined me to show off his new moves. He did lots of halfcab rock fakies, willy grind, fakie ollies, body varial (at the top of the tranny now), fakie b/s pivots, backside slasher grind and started trying back 50s. He never got one, but he was close to back feebles. I was hurting from a rager of a night with the Might LZA and didn’t expect much from myself. I managed a couple front feebles and front tails amongst some other tricks I should be able to do better.

Cold and snowy on a Saturday. UGH! So sick of winter. Anyways I got up kinda early feeling better than the last few days. Ollie had been bugging me for a new deck and showing me his totally chipped deck. I told him he had to land a new trick on Rampy before I’d give him a board. We went out there and he was ripping. He’s done rock ‘n rolls elsewhere, but not Rampy. He did a few of those, learned willy grinds and did a bunch of half cab rocks. Guess he earned the new board. I wasn’t skating too well, but had fun. Got a front feeble or too and came close to hurricanes.Later on we hit Red Curbs. As soon as we got there it seemed much colder than we thought. Not only that, but the snow was blowing in and half the parking lot was wet. Ugh. The crew was Neil, Brian, Cheyenne Matt and the Daggers. Aka a mixture of Satellite/Meta dudes that happened to show up at the same time as us. Jason came and drank coffee, but said it was too cold to skate.Much to Brian’s delight the manny pad was one of the few dry obstacles. I don’t think anyone skated that great. Neil was in a t-shirt and yelling at his skateboard alot. Brian was standing around complaining about the cold. I would have liked to see him land that impossible lipslide. Matt was taking it easy and laying down some casual manuals. The Daggers were ripping. I was getting warmed up about the time we left. I’ve never quite got kickflip manuals across the whole pad. Still no. Winter sucks.

More crappy snow.  So sick of it.  What is it, winter or something?  Anyways, I worked at home because India had been throwing up that night and I didn’t feel great.  I didn’t want to get other sick.  By the end of the work day and a nap I felt ok.  I went to pick up Jake and go to Meta then Circuit City, but Jake wasn’t at his house.  After some phone tag it turned out he thought I’d be later.  Luckily Nate works about 20 feet from Circuit City and he was able to skate.  Although he was having some troubles getting used to a wider and longer board as well as changing from Indys to Thunders.  We started out doing some basic tricks over puddles.  Unfortunately it didn’t take Nate long to totally slam on a kickflip and kind of roll his ankle.  He was out quit.  Before he left I told him ‘this one is for you Nate’ and I put down the illest front shove ever backed with a treflip over a puddle to size of a ballin’ Hummer SUV.  Ah ok, you all know I’m joking.  I did a 2 mph front shove, some tic tacs then a slow 360 flip over a foot foot long puddle.  It was fun though.  I left after that too.  But before the last run some of the other stuff I had done was varial flip over a puddle, fakie bigspin and a run of pop shove, nollie front shove, front shove.  My legs actually felt pretty good.  So sick of the snow.   Adios.

Tired and sore from yesterday’s marathon session. Nate showed up on a snowy night and we went to it. I was understandably lacking in the energy department and it showed. Nate was getting used to his new board and really hyped. Pretty early on he took the best spill on Rampy yet. Fakie tail stall to dive backwards over the short deck and into my wall. He cut up his hand a bit, but other than that he was fine. Whew. Right after that Nate got a front disaster revert which he had never done before. It was one of his patented “I’m not quite on this trick perfect so I’ll throw in a revert” moments and it was awesome. I did most of my tricks, but I was tired and they took more tries than normal. I got a couple more front feebles which felt awesome. Nate got a couple more tricks he’s never done before we called it quits. Front tail front revert and fakie front pivot to rock ‘n roll. Rad. Nate seems to be doing fine on the new 8″ board. I should probably take a day off from skating, but oh well.