My 36th B-day.  Yeah.  Had a fun day doing the Easter thing with the family, but was messed up from eating so much candy and fatty food.  I kinda wanted to just go out for a beer, but Nate and Jason wanted red curbs (it was raining).  So there we go.  Started about 8:30 and Jake met us too.  I could hardly kickflip to save my life and Nate was having the candy problem too, but it was fun.  Jake landed a front lip.  Jason landed some back tailslides!  New trick for him so hyped.  Nate tried to ollie a 5 foot cone.  My highlight was a nose manual followed by an ollie over the rock gap.  I’ve never ollied it before, just wallied the rock.  Later on I got a fakie bigspin up the curb and Jason got my back with a full cab up.  WTF?  He’s never even done that trick before.  Nate was killing the back 5-0 shoves grinding the whole curb.  At the end I started hucking fakie front crooks and landed one where I didn’t grind at all.  Does it even count if your going 2 miles an hour on a curb?

My last day of being 35.  I’m feeling pretty old these days, but Jason is older than me so I have no excuses.  We went to the long metal ledge that is really good frontside.  Warming up sucked as usual and I was pretty frustrated at times, but kept skating.  I got front 50 shove in a crappy run, a few back crooks and came close but never landed a bunch more like front 50 kickflip out which I haven’t done in forever.  Nate and Jason did front lips all good.  Next we went to the US Bank brick bank spot.  It’s kinda like LA High, but steeper, taller and not as good.  Either way it was still a blast.  Nate and Jason killed that place.  They both got super long back boardslides.  Jason did a pivot to fakie for crying out loud as well as back tailslides over a hip.  So ridiculous.  I started slow but managed to start having a blast and got a few tricks.  Back boardslide (only a few inches compared to the multiple feet Nate and Jason were doing them), back feeble over the edge, back nosepick, back axle to fakie, ollie to frontside wallride trying to be all Grant Taylor but it wasn’t at all, and ended with back smith stall.  Super fun session.  Jason and Nate killed it.

Met Nate on a nice Friday aftern0on and we decided to hit campus.  We parked over by Silvermine subs since we don’t normally skate that part of campus.  We ended up hitting the curved ledge thing that is insanely hard to skate.  No setup, downhill runway, uphill ledge.  We ended up getting noseslides and crooks and Nate added back 50s to the mix.  Then we went under the tunnel and were surprised to find a whole section of new ledges just waiting to be waxed and skated which we did.  Not the best ledges, but we couldn’t believe they weren’t skated yet.  I was full on sucking and that’s how my whole session went.  I can’t ever seem to skate right after work and downhill runways bug the hell out of me.  We got three different sections to grind really good and I put together a horrible looking slow run.  Front 50, back board, front 50 front 180.  Yippee.  We played a pretty bad game of SKATE where I lost on a switch front shove then decided to kickflip into the bikepath hill.  I ended up slamming multiple times on the kickflip then focused my board.  Such a horrible way to end an ok session.  At least my board was dead.

Jason and I hit up Valmont for about an hour and we were both pretty tired.   At first I couldn’t even ollie worth a crap.  I was pretty sore from jumping over that ash tray a ton the night before.  The ledge was pretty wrecked too.  Looks like it got hit by a truck and a chunk is missing from the lower part.  Ugh.  After awhile I was almost skating decent.  It helped that I had “When We Were Alive” stuck in my head.  That song hyped me up so much that I would sometimes push too fast to hit the ledge.  This is me we’re talking about, so it was probably 7 miles an hour instead of 5, but it was fast for me.  I didn’t land much but I ollied up onto the ledge at the last set of cracks which is almost a board length tall and I did some fast front 50s.  Fun night, wish I had more energy.

Pretty nice evening and I went out for what I thought would be a solo session at the Steelyards.  I had the new Thermals album loaded on my mp3 player and I was playing it pretty loud.  I thought it would be a mostly flip trick day, but my legs weren’t performing well and I kind 0f just tried to do difficult tricks like ollieing up a curb at speed.  After awhile I put an ash tray after the curb and tried to ollie it about 100 times.  I was just about to finally commit when the wind kicked in and messed with the speed.  Ugh.  I was at my car getting water and Nate called and showed up quickly.  I finally ollied it after a few more tries.  Yippee.  I should be able to ollie stuff like that quicker.  Either way though I’ve been working on my ollies and it felt good to get over something.  I was working on switch front 180 manuals and fakie bigspins up the curb when the fuzz rolled up and gave us the boot.  Doh.

Can you tell I’m sick of the cold? Early April is always the worst time of the year for me as it seems March is always warmer. And well, my birthday is almost here and I’m almost another year older. 36. That’s now “upper 30s”. I think I’ve been pretty bummed on how I’ve been skating lately, but my foot is feeling better and I finally have no excuses. Anways, enough bitchng. Best session I’ve had since I hurt my foot. Nate and I went straight to business and we were landing tricks we don’t normally do right out of the gates and trying new tricks. Nate was doing really good switch front boards on the ledge and put together an all switch run: switch front board, switch heel, switch front 5-0 the curb. SO SICK! I didn’t put any runs together but managed a few weaksauce fakie nosegrinds on the ledge and grinded a few fakie 5-0s on the curb. Oh and I did the two best front tailslides I’ve ever done. After awhile we went to the heated Circuit City parking garage where we had a slow starting game of SKATE that ended as the cops rolled up. We didn’t get kicked out, but it was our cue to leave. Finally, I skated better than horrible.

On another cold and snowy day everyone went to SOL, but I was feeling really lame and tired so went back to sleep. We went and got Ollie some new skate shoes (DC) and he wanted to use them so we went to Red Curbs. Ollie rules. He has the biggest smile on his face of anyone ever when he skates. He had a few ollies up small curbs and pushed really fast and had a blast. I took awhile to get warmed up but started having a good time. Still trying to skate faster and pop more, but when it’s cold it’s tough. I tried a few fakie 5-0s and didn’t get close. I did get into them though and I’m not sure if I’ve ever done that before. A pretty fun session considering the cold and how unmotivated and tired I felt.

Nate, Josh and I left for Denver on a cool morning that was supposed to be super warm. Right out of the gates Josh was ripping and I was sucking. I ended up continuing to suck and having problems ollieing a tiny flat gap or attempting anything on the benches. The saving grace was a decent front board on the bench and doing ok in a game of SKATE.We met up with Mikey and went to a gap that I think I filmed decent enough, but Mikey didn’t get his trizzle tre on the ground.Next I filed Jeffrey jump over a bush and filmed it kinda mediocre. Although there was no filming that would do it justice unless he would have done it multiple times so we could get more angles.Next was a pretty much epic session for others at an abandoned hotel with a very tight pool and a bunch of crackhead squaters. I wanted to skate the pool, but a few dudes were lurking with us and talking incoherently and I had my camera backback and didn’t want to leave it’s side. Josh killed it with a carve over the lightbox, Jeff, Greg, Nate and Mikey killed it too. The locals we’re straight trippin’ when Mikey ollied into the pool. I would have loved to film that, but I should be happy that my camera is still my camera.Then we ended up at a curb going down a long 5 stair and after about 50 tries Nate and I boardslid it. It was super scary to me showing I guess, just how bad I am at skateboarding. Mikey, Josh and Jeff we’re doing whatever they wanted on it. I also almost cali grinded it too, but ate shit instead. All in all it was a fun day even though I skated horribly. I just have to remind myself I was injured for awhile and am getting back in to it.

Tired, but Ollie wanted to skate. But once I started getting warmed up Ollie wanted to kick a soccer ball. Oh well, I wasn’t skating good anyways.

Somewhat chilly night in the 30s Nate and I hit red curbs around 9pm.  Man I love being able to actually skate again and not have my foot killing me.  I was definitely still skating like crap, but it was fun.  We skated mostly the curbs and I felt like I was relearning 50s and crooks.  I couldn’t lay into a crooks on the 2 stair ledge to save my life although I would somehow land it almost everytime.  I can jib a crook everytime but I hate it.  Trying to grind it doesn’t seem to work for me.  I just pop right out everytime. Argh.  We tried some other stuff too.  I’m really trying to learn how to ollie so I went around ollieing the yellow flat bars over and over then tried to ollie a orange thing that was kinda tall.  Never got it.  Came close though before getting too tired.  I ended up ollieing it off the curb which is still somewhat hard because of the quick setup.  I suck at ollies.  Nate was killing back 180 fakie 50s, but had wrecked himself trying the ol’ front 50 back 180.  It got real cold come leaving time.  Skating ist rad.