Was planning on going into work early then leaving for Colorado Springs with John and Bernie around 11, but I felt all sick the night before and hardly slept at all.  So instead I just got up late, ate breakfast and rolled out when John and Bernie showed up.  First stop was the CO Springs park which was mostly clear of snow.  Bernie had never been there before.  Bernie and I started out in the backyard pool and did a few carves before we all skated the flat bank for awhile.  John was killing it quickly.  Back smith, back smith fakie, blunt pivot, back blunt, blunt back tail, etc.  It was ridiculous.  We moved over to the somewhat crowded street area for awhile.  John was ripping there too.  He got me to roll in on the steep area up top which was fun.  I was skating so bad that after awhile I just went up to the little one foot tall spine by myself and ended up having some fun there.  I got a line with like front D on the little q-pipe then front feeble to backsmith revert transfer over the spine.  John and Bernie ended up joining me and once again John killed it.  Fun powerslides over the pump bumbs, blunt back ts on the flat bank, rock ‘n roll on the little extension, etc.   Next we all tried some lines on some hips.  I was trying manual down the downhill manny pad then kickflip back tail over the hip.  Bernie was doing kickflip manual then double backside flip.  John was doing 180 into the downhill pad then switch b/s flip over the hip.  I don’t think anyone got their line perfect, but Bernie got close and I got a really bad kick back tail over the hip.  I was still kinda hyped though because I’ve never done it over a hip like that.  Before leaving we all ollied the longer 3 stair and it took John 1 try, Bernie 3 tries and me 4 tries.  Imagine that, me sucking.After hitting a few shops, selling some things, eating some food and more driving we ended up at Parker shortly after 7 pm.  It was supposed to be a quick session.  This dude Mike was there that John knew filming some really crazy stuff.  Nollie back big front board fakie.  None of us had even seen that trick attempted before.  He also switch front big heeled the big gap.  So sick.  Bernie and I skated the tall Pier 7 replica.  I wanted to manny it, but never got it.  That didn’t stop me from dropping off it a bunch and making me really sore.  Bernie did a switch nose manny first try and followed it with a halfcab nose manual next try.  Wow.  John got one of his patented moves, front shove front nose on the bank to ledge.  We cruised around a bit too and played a game of SKATE that was to end the session.  I was the first one out.  Landing a 3 flip in the cold somewhat negated getting a letter on a front shove, but I was still bummed.I went over the ledge and skated it while Bernie and John finished the game.  I ended up having a blast on the ledge.  I got tricks like front 5-0, front 50 back 180 out, back 50, back crooks and more first try.  I went on to get quite a few of my ledge tricks.  Front smith, front 50 to front board (aka the Joe Hamilton), back 50 back shove out, back crooks to fakie, halfcab boardslide.  I also got a back 50 to front 180 out.  But I use so much angle to get into back 50s that Bernie coined it the “90 in 90 out”.  Pretty funny.  Bernie and John ended up joining in on the ledge session that went on for at least an hour.  John relearned front 5-0s and did all kinds of cool slappy noseslide variations.  Bernie tried front 5-0 kickflip out and fakie 5-0 kickflip out, but never landed them.  He also tried front smith kickflip out for awhile.  I struggled with an old staple of mine – the front 5-0 shove it for quite a while before landing a really bad one.  It was getting really cold though.  We left around 9:30.  Wow.  Lots of skating.  The ledge session at the end was my favorite.  Does it really take me all day to warm up now?

I got home from work and the females left for India’s ballet practice leaving Ollie and I to do whatever awesome dude things we want to do.  We chose the best possible options – playing skateboarding on the Wii.  Ha, no, we went skating over at the school across the street.  It was still kinda light out at first and Ollie was cruising around all over the back of the school with the biggest grin ever.  Ollieing over little piles of snow, the state of Florida (on the big painted map), body varials over cracks, ollieing into grass, totally being a kid.  I was taking it kinda mellow other than ollieing one of the sections of a four square game.  It measures out to a little over a six foot flat gap which aint easy for me.  Although i guess nothing but paint to clear makes it pretty easy.  I messed around with some wallrides at one point and Ollie started trying them too.  A couple tries later he rides away from one.  Then pretty much everytime he does them.  They aren’t full on legit wallrides.  He turns on the wall with his front wheels and pops it out somehow.  But he does them high enough that his back wheels are off the ground too.  He was so stoked on those.  So was I.  Before leaving I wanted to do 5 flippers real quick.  It wasn’t super quick , but I got kickflip, fakie flip, b/s flip and f/s and b/s halfcab flips and we rolled out.

Hurting from an awesome Valentines night with the Mighty LZA and a long day at work I didn’t feel much like skating.  Luckily Nate did.  It was pretty cold (upper teens) so we opted for Rampy.  Somehow both of us started pretty good and we moved into our harder tricks pretty quickly.  I got lots of tricks that aren’t normally first try tricks first try.  Yippee.  Front D, back hurricane, fakie front axle to rock ‘n roll.  Nate was doing front 5-0 fakie, fakie smith 270 out, fakie smith fakie, front D.  We were ripping for us.  I moved onto front feebles pretty quick and was trying them in a not so easy run for me.  Back 50, boardslide fakie, front smith, fakie front axle to rock ‘n roll, fakie pivot fakie then front feeble.  Never got them all and never managed to not throw in a few rock fakie/tail stall additions into that line.  But I did get the front feeble.  A couple of them.  And I was really hyped.  After that I tried blunt to pivots, but never got a good one.  I got tired pretty quick.  Nate was still ripping and worked his way up to feebles to fakie.  It took him a bit to put one down, but once he did I think he did like 5 in a row.  Fun session.  I’ll give some credit in my confidence to the DC’s.  I hate to admit it, but they are some of the best shoes ever.

It snowed a couple inches overnight, but it melted off and the street in front of my house was dry.  Jake came over and we got a little session going.  When we started it was cloudy and cold and neither of us started off too well.  I was feeling very old and stiff.  I was somehow landing some tricks, but they were really bad.  We eventually got things going pretty good and the sun had come out.  Other than almost getting hit by some lady who made a point to drive within inches of me it turned into an awesome session.  We each got a couple treflips which were harder than normal.  I blame the frozen bushings.  Not the lack of skating flatground lately.  I spent some time trying a line of 3 flip, heelflip, nollie 3 flip.  Never got the nollie 3 flip, but came kinda close.  Another line I tried for a long time was 180 no comply, fakie flip, fakie treflip.  The first few fakie flips were sooooo bad for some reason.  After awhile they were flowing ok though and I was committing to the fakie tres, but not landing them.  Jake battled the frontside flip for awhile and came up victorious.  We did quite a bit more than it sounds here.  It was fun.  Toward the end Jake was trying nollie fs bigspins and I was posing hardflips.  I say posing because I never truly committed although the board did flip right a few times.  Fun session.  Let’s do it again soon Jake.

I guess skating so much yesterday took it’s toll.  That and my new shoes seem to fit smaller than the last pair and I’m getting blisters on my pinky toes.  Yeah, I said pinky toes.  We started out at Southern Hills and it was super nice out.  Maybe close to 50 degrees and sunny.  That changed quickly and the clouds came in.  Ollie seemed really excited to skate.  He’s been way more into ever since we got that SKATE game for the Wii.  He ollied the 2 stair like nothing and tried a bunch of pop shove its.  He came surprisingly close.  I was sucking and sore.  The insane amount of rocks they put down in the last snow didn’t help my motivation either.  While ollie tried shove it’s I the back area with the bench up to picnic table.  I was skating so slow it was pathetic.  I managed an ollie up the ledge to front tail stall on the bench of the picnic table.  It was horrible.  I also managed a really basic line of front 180 off a ledge over some snow, back shove, kickflip into the wheelchair ramp, back board a ledge, varial flip and then halfcab flip.  All were horrible.We left for the Louisville park because Ollie wanted to go there.  After a quick lame session in the hockey rink we went to the bowl where Ollie didn’t want to skate after all when he saw another little kid there skating good.  It’s weird though.  This kid could do 10 minute runs of axle stall, roll in, axle stall, roll in, etc.  It looked robotic.  It’s funny that there are bowl robots too.Next we went to the little manny pad behind Mikes Camera.  I was so sore by then.  I wanted to try some more manual shoves out.  I was skating 2 mph tops and came close to a few.  It was cold and I wanted to stop skating, but Ollie started ripping like I’ve never seen before.  He normally can’t ollie up a curb, but he was and he was trying front 180s off.  I’ve never even seen him try front 180s before and he landed on his first one off a curb.  He also manualed a long section all easy.  It was so rad seeing him skate so good.  He was blasting ollies off the curbs like it was nothing (well I guess it’s not for an old fart, but damn, he’s 7) and smiling non stop.  He is is fun to skate with.  If it wasn’t for a first try kickflip manual there I would probably have left super bummed on my skating.  But I didn’t and the fact that Ollie skated so well made me think of nothing but amazing sessions for the future.  Skating with your kid is crazy.

Had the day off work and was planning on hitting a couple shops in Denver.  Nate wanted to join so we headed out early to Parker.  There was some snow, but most of the park was skateable.  We started in the bowl section which wasn’t as well off, but there was a path from the roll in over the pyramid into the big steep flat bank and back.  We both wanted to grind the top of the flat bank, but couldn’t get our back trucks up there.  Instead we both settled with lines of backside tough guy (or in our case it was more like backside wuss guy) then roll ins into the tranny of the pyramid.  Pretty fun.After that it was mostly ledges for the next couple of hours.  My new shoes were feeling really good.  It’s funny how much I like these DC shoes.  The Crew seriously rule.  My calf had been hurting pretty bad from the night before, but the pain seemed to be going away with every push rather than getting worse.  Anyways really early on Nate slammed hard trying to do a front nosegrind pop out.  We both were kinda doing our own little lines.  I know we both did front 50s on the Pier 7 way-to-tall-to-be-a-real replica, Nate was doing front Ds on the little q-pipe, I was ollieing into the tranny (well, the end of the tranny anyway), etc.  Ledge tricks were going ok.  I got lots of crooks, a crooks to fakie, didn’t get crooks shove, back 50, bad back 50  back 180, front 5-o, front 50 front 180 and of course a super sick 2 foot long boardslide that started it.  Nate had quite of course.  Back 5-0, back nosegrind and ended up getting a few back 5-0 front shove’s out.  SICK!  At one point we both did a super fun line of ollie from the bank up onto the 2 block then ollie the 2 block.  That was my highlight of the session.  Nate was giving me crap for not getting front D’s on the qpipe so I forced myself to do them.  But I didn’t just do the same ol’ boring disaster, I thought it would be cool to add tic tacs to everyone of them.  Fun.  I was trying a back 50 then ollie a snowpile that was right away in the landing, but ended up totally slamming and thinking I sprained my wrist really bad.  It ended up being ok.  Took some of the wind out of me for sure.  Towards the end of the session Nate and I were basically each trying our own thing.  He was doing lipslides from the bank onto the 2 block.  I was trying to ollie up the first ledge, front 50 the second then pop down into lipslide on the lower ledge.  I came really close.  Close enough that Nate thought I landed it.  So if we use his opinion where he looked away right before I fell off, I landed it.  Ha.At the very end we skated the kids mini bowl.  Nate was worked up to some really good frontside ollies over the hip.  I did some really bad front ollies and got a couple back 50s around the hip the hard way.  Fun!  Nate was just dorking after an ollie and did a super easy fakie front 5-0 to fakie.  He lands new tricks just like that.  I wanted front 5-0 270 in, but ended up just going with front tail 180 which I’ve never done before.  We left for Continuum feeling completely exhausted and cold.About an hour later we arrived at the Aurora park which had way more snow.  Ugh.  We ended up skating a tiny mellow q-pipe for about an hour and it ruled.  We both did a few of our not-so-basics quickly and starting trying new stuff.  For some reason I chose front feebles and I battled it for quite a long time, but eventually put a couple mediocre ones down before doing a legit one with a grind.  So hyped.  Nate started trying frontside nosegrind pop outs.  Whoa.  He would also eventually get a couple.  Such a ridiculous trick.  I had moved on to kick back pivot attempts (never done this on real tranny before) when someone else joined us and did it first try.  Both Nate and I were cracking up like WTF?  It ended up being really funny and the dude was really nice saying he didn’t see me try it before that.  Either that or I was so far away that it didn’t resemble it.  Ha.  I kept trying it though and ended up getting a kickflip to back smith lunch break.  Rad.  Then me and the guy that totally showed me up (who ended up being a super nice guy) tried kick back tails for awhile.  We both got kinda close, but no where near a make.  Before leaving I wanted another front feebs and did my best one yet second try.  Absolutely perfect way to end a great day of skating.  Then it was off to 303 then race home to bring India to 4H club.  Yippee!

Got out of work and it’s still light out.  Awesome!  Doesn’t mean it was warm though.  Met Jason and Nate at the 30th & Iris ledge.  One of my least favorite ledges only because I totally suck at downhill spots.   Nate was doing good back  50s and front 50s before Jason or I even touched the ledge.  As usual it took me about 10 tries just to get on a 2mph front 50.  Pretty early on Jason slammed really hard on a back 50 and bounced his tailbone on the ledge.  Ouch!  After that him and I skated down the hill of the bike path.  I was trying to get some slides in and hit the ledge.  The sidewalk isn’t very smooth so slides destroyed our wheels.  Jason didn’t care as his setup is pretty old.  My wheels are only a few days old though.  I had been trying kickflips into the downhill then two power slides before trying a front 50 on the ledge.  But I didn’t get it until I skipped the first slide and just did a longer slide (with all my weight directly on my front left wheel) and got the front 50.  I was pretty hyped for sure.  Granted the powerslide slowed me down too much and I flatspotted my wheel really bad, but it was still a blast.  Jason took off after this as his back was shot.  Nate was getting tech.  He got front smith, front tail, fakie nosegrind and probably more.  I don’t really like to skate that ledge stand alone very much because it bums me out.  I found a little pile of snow about the height of a curb and a foot long or so and would start lines out by kickflipping over it.  I think I may have done one of my best kickflips ever at one point.  Felt so good.  I got a few runs.  Something like kickflip over the snow, front 50, varial flip.  Kickflip over the snow, front 50 shove, bail.  I almost got one line with a front 5-0 and then 3 flip, but bailed the 3 flip.  Coming backside I did lots of halfcab flips that felt good, some bad crooks and hucked some kick back tails.  It ended up being a fun session although I hurt my calf in my back leg while pushing.  I decided that would be my last session on the floppy Herman 2s as pushing shouldn’t hurt.

Another cold and still snowy day so I’m not sure why not so many people showed up. Maybe it was because the last session was so crowded. Either way it was mostly just Brian, Rick and I. Carleigh showed up later on after I cursed her name for not being able to land front disasters anymore. Ha.All three of us seemed to skate pretty well. I probably had my best run on Rampy ever at one point. I think I did a front smith, fakie front 50 to rock ‘n roll, back 50 fakie, front tail and 30 rock fakies. Sweet.  I also tried a few blunt to pivots which I should have just done to fakie, but I ended up just getting a blunt to sloppy axle stall.  Rick shredded as usual and did the first ever fully decked fakie rock (or fakie hangup). Proper back smiths, front smiths, slasher lipslides, knee slides, back 5-0s, etc all done like he’s skating a backyard pool. Brian jocked out and broke some records. First he did the most frontside tough guys in a row at 14. Topping Jakes record of 10. Then he totally out grinded me in a longest fakie smith grind contest. Carleigh had shown up by then and participated in the contest, but instead did fakie crooks which disqualified her because that trick is actually legit. The longest grind marks are up there for anyone to take at this point. Brian would like it to be known that he is the current champion. He also pulled out one of the gnarliest tricks I’ve ever seen on Rampy first try. We couldn’t even figure out what to call it. It was something like fakie hurricane to fakie. His body did a full 360. Maybe he’ll do it again some day and we can actually figure out what it is. Carleigh arrived and quickly showed me how easy front disasters are. She also showed why skateboards aren’t designed to be jumped onto upside down in the middle of the coping by trying a kickflip to rock and landing bolts on an upside down board. SNAP! Rampy’s first broken board. Pretty fun session even if I did lose that fakie smith contest to Brian. Oh well, maybe next week.

Rampy again.  Solo this time.  Wasn’t really too motivated to skate and it showed.  I sucked it up for a few songs then decided I had two songs to learn back Ds.  I got closer, but still didn’t land one.  I about went inside, but instead decided to skate like a 10 year old and try stationary manual shove’s out.  Got a few and it was fun.  Tried a few stationary manuals to kickflip out too.  Didn’t even get remotely close.  If I were to ever land that trick I sure would be a happy camper.

PJ from Excess sent me a link to this clip early in the day and it got me really hyped to skate Rampy.  Then Jake called me and reserved an 8pm skate date and I got even more hyped.  Then Jake and I were standing on the deck of Rampy about to begin the session I won a Rho Sham Bo and the session was on.  I was all hyped to try tons of weird new tricks, but ended up taking forever to warmup.  Ugh.  Early on I had some long-for-me boardslides to fakie.  Jake seemed to be ripping outta the gate.  He did a couple tricks I’ve never seen him do, but I forget what they are right now.  He started working on a line of switch back 50 (or maybe fakie back 50 to fakie), tail stall, back 5-0 to fakie, tail stall, back feeble 270 out.  He slammed really hard on one of the first switch 50s, but stuck with it and got the line. I was kinda all over the place for awhile.  I got most of my tough tricks.  Ones that stuck out were fakie f/s axle to rock ‘n roll first try and the best front tail I’ve ever done.  I couldn’t get a hurricane though.  At then end I started trying blunts to axle stall, but they started going pivot so I went with it and landed my first ever blunt to pivot anywhere other then a curb or Honey’s Hole.  Radical.  Fun night.  I think the funnest trick may have been the Matrix like dodge of the coping I did on a failed blunt stall.  It was all slow motion and I just kinda bent my body out of the way of coping.