Insanely tired and sore from a long day of skating on Saturday followed by late night beer drinking Chief and I set off for some downtown Boulder action.  We met up with Nate and Jake at St Julien and got things rolling.  I didn’t expect much of myself, but when Chief is in town you can’t be lazy.St Julien was a fun warmup.  Chief nailed some no complys over the curb thing and we cruised it for awhile.  I put together a little run with a front 50, ollie a small box, then no comply 270 back tail the ledge.Next up we hit the rock parking garage area with the rock ride, manual pad, and other stuff.  We were there for awhile and it was fun.  I got a run with a kickflip up the curb, manual then varial flip into the bank.  The kickflip up the curb was fun because it was into the curb cut so it felt kinda neat.  We all did some more tricks into the bank.  Chief got a fast as lighting pop shove, kickflip and no comply.  Maybe more.  Nate did a switch flip to raise the tech gnar factor.  Jake may have just recently learned kickflips, but he put that down.  I got a frontside halfcab flip after about 50 tries and a first try fakie bigflip.From there Jake bailed out and the three of us hit the little Wells Fargo banks for my favorite part of the evening.  I started off sucking but got lucky on a back 5-0 fakie and a horrible and lucky first try back hurricane.  After that I just started trying new stuff and somehow landed them.  I got a first try back nosegrind.  Probably the best back nosegrind I’ve ever done.  I got a bluntside to pivot kind of too and a front 180 nosegrind 180.  Although I didn’t grind it.  Before leaving I got my first ever back tail on tranny.  HYPED!  Nate and Chief were up in the session too.  Nate perfected the back 5-0 to fakie and Chief drilled out a bunch of alley oop fakie 50s.  So sick.  Pretty fun night for how tired I was.

Man, I don’t even know where to start on this one, so many awesome things aligned for this Saturday.  First, it was sunny.  It’s seriously been a minute since we’ve had a sunny Saturday.  Next the lineup for the crew was pretty out of this world.  Chris Jones was in town with Kit to do some photo essay on how skateboarding keeps you young and wanted to take photos of me all day.  Next up my homie Chief was coming to town who I haven’t seen in a couple years.  Hyped!  And in other rare appearances GABE (who’s name will be all caps throughout this update since he states that he reads these updates daily) was gonna be in town for one day too.  Sick!Things got startes with a Rampy sesh with Chris, Kit, Chief and I.  A good warmup that got the sweat flowing.  After playing in the street we headed to a new pool near Boulder we had heard about.  The crew at this point was John, Neil, Rob, Chris, Kit, Chief, Jason and me.  Rolling deep, and it would get deeper.So I’ve never skated a realy legit backyard pool before.  We had to bail it out and everything.  Super fun.  The whole thing was fun.  We skated it for a couple hours.  The shallow is wide with two main corners that are really tight and a deepend with even tighter corners.  While the deep end dried up we mostly just carved the shallow corners.  Super fun.  Neils of Fire straight killed it with lots of carves over akward lights and stuff.  Chief was having a blast.  Jason killed the shallow carves.  Chris was shredding the whole time too and he ended up getting a few bangers.  Boneless in the deep end, front rock in the deep and ollied into the waterfall.  So sick.We left to go to a game of SKATE at the boulder park, but were too late.  Next up was the Neil ledges with an even larger crew.  We added Fuzz, Lazer, Bernie, GABE, Jake, Nate and Squeeks to the crew.  Maybe even more.  I didn’t really skate well and no one was super into the ledges.  We played a couple large game of SKATE in which I was quickly eliminated.  I got a 3 flip first try though so I can’t really complain much.  Chief and Bernie had to take off and then we all went to Rock Creek.  Some serious shredding went down there by people other than me.  It’s pathetic bad I am at skating anything other than rampy.  It was fun though and I can’t even begin to document all the ripping that Chris, Fuzz, GABE, Lazer, Jason, Squeeks and John laid down.  I ended my Rock Creek time by trying boardslide to feeble attempts with Nate on the flat bar.  I came close to a couple and Nate landed it.Exhausted beyond belief we had to skate Rampy for a minute because GABE has wanted to skate it forever.  It was Just GABE, Kit, John, Chris and I.  GABE went off and did so many of his rad tricks.  All his cool rock fakie willy things.  What are they called?  So many tricks.  My favorite was the blunt to staple gun.  Day over.  Finally.  Beer drinking at Lazer’s went down.  Fun fun fun day.

Was gonna hopefully go meet up with Bernie and crew at the Longmont park later on, but it looked like rain.  Stopped at Valmont for a minute and it was wet.  Skated across the street and it was dry.  Skated around for a bit trying to do a bunch of ollies and sucked as much as humanly possible.  I’m not sure why I can’t even ollie these days but it was horrible horrible horrible.  A nearby flash of lighting scared me enough to bolt to red curbs and continue sucking.  But the good thing was I now had a fresh sheet of grip tape so I knew that at any minute I could just focus my board and be done.  I didn’t last long.

Was having a blast playing tennis with Ollie and got a call from Jake while walking home wanting to skate Rampy.  Word!  After only about 10 months of owning Rampy I finally started quickly like I’ve skated it before.  Got lots of my tricks real quick and had a good time.  At the end of the session Jake and I raced for gummy bears to tricks we were working on.  He was trying front feeble.  I was trying fakie back pivot to fakie.  He got his first try after making the deal.  It took me about 10 more tries.  I owe Jake gummy bears.  Yeah!

Haven’t been able to really skate in awhile and decided a solo red curbs session was in order.  As much as I sucked it up, it didn’t disappoint.  For whatever reason I went there thinking about a couple dumb little lines.  Like kickflip up and off the manny pad, ollie over a yellow bar and then 180 it without pushing, and finally a kickflip front 50 on the curb followed by a lipslide.  A parked scooter made the kick front 50 not an option so that line was out immediately.I started off real slow.  Insanely slow.  It took me at least 10 minutes before I could try a kickflip.  It was rough.  I eventually got into somewhat of a groove and landed a few things like front tails on the taller curb (yes, I call it the taller curb because it’s like 2 inches taller than the other curb and therefore tall), nose manny the manny pad, kick back tail the low curb etc.  I then kinda tried a few lines over and over.  One was crooks the ledge, back 50 the tall curb then kick back tail the low curb.  Never got all three.  I got the ollie over the yellow bar followed by 180 over it pretty quick.  Toward the end I was beat, but wanted to try some flippers.  So I did the kickflip up the taller side of the manny pad and kickflip off.  Tried to back it with a 360 flip but never got close.  Tried a bunch of nollie flips and never got those.  No surprise.  The other line I was trying was no comply 180, fakie flip, fakie big flip, fakie bigspin up the manny pad, front shove off.  Got it all but the front shove off.  And they all looked horrible.  Pretty hyped.  Didn’t really skate that well, but I skated really hard and needed a solo session to get my skate going again.

Super tired, fighting a cold and haven’t really skated in days.  Perfect recipe for sucking which is exactly what I did.  I met Nate at St Julien for a late night downtown boulder session.  The lights there don’t work as well as they used to.  I didn’t even really have energy to try flip tricks and just tried front tails on the ledge.  I may have landed 1 or 2 slow ones.  Nate killed a bunch of good ones.  Next up we did flippers into a downhill parking ramp which ended up being pretty fun.  Nate did good tricks like nollie f/s flip, switch front heel.  I did slow-moving-no-pop tricks like varial flip, halfcabl flip and fakie flip.  The powerslide at the end of the ramp was the funnest part of the night.  We left after that, but not before skating a real jersey barrier (aka, no tranny at the bottom).  I did a couple wallrides and a wallride to fakie.  Nate went crazy and did a rock fakie on it.  So sick.  Gotta skate downtown on Sunday nights more often, it was dead.  Kinda like me.

My brother was in town with his family and decided to try and remember what skateboarding was.  It took him a bit but he got rock ‘n rolls, rock fakie, tail stall and a little scratch grind.  Rad.  I got most of my tricks and it was a fun little session.

Had about half an hour free so went over to the school with Ollie. He wasn’t really into it, but I was trying all the basic stall tricks on the no setup curb. Did a back tail which is very rare for me.  Bummed Ollie wasn’t feeling it, but hyped that my new shoes felt good.  I’ve worn them around for a few weeks now and their good and broken in.  Skated flat in front of the house after that and landed a lot of tricks quickly including a 360 flip.  Yippee.

Neil, Nate, Fuzz, Jason and I went out to the Lafayette Tech Center area after the rain dried up on a gloomy memorial day.  We started at the bird bank which is a kind of weird spot.  The bank is steep with some rocks before it and the asphalt isn’t that good.  We put some weird metal tubes down for a bit and skated them for a second.  Nate was the only one to skate them well.  Fuzz, Neil and Nate ollied a cinder block like it’s nothing.  I guess it should be easy for me too, but it wasn’t.  The best part of this session was trying tricks over a 2 x 6 that Jason put out.  So awesome.  Neil, Fuzz and Nate nollied it.  I got a kickflip over it first try.  Fuzz ended up doing a lot over it.  No surprise there.  At the end I finally ollied the cinder block and Jason almost cabbed the 2 x 6.Next we went to this crack infested are that has some chunky ledges and stairs.  Ended up being a total blast.  There was a euro gap up a two stair, a four stair, a weird ledge, all kinds of stuff.  Nate and Jason almost front boarded this rad ledge.  Fuzz front lipped it.  I took several tries too long to kickflip up the two stair, but had a blast trying lines later on.  Ollie up a somewhat tall ledge, ollie or front 180 the four stair, chinese nollie a big crack, pose kickflips down the two stair.  The rain came in before I could get it.  Cupsoles rule.  My feet weren’t even sore and I jumped down the 4 stair at least 10 times.

Thunder storms were looming, but we hit it for about an hour before the rain kicked in.  We all started slow, but by the end were all skating pretty good.  It took me about 40 tries to get one slow back 50 which was the only real bummer.  Those ledges are weird.  At the end I was trying to manual the first one, then kickflip off the second.  I never put the two together but kickflipping off was super fun.  Brian tried some hurricanes at the end in the rain and hurt his foot trying to kick his board.  It may be the best slam ever if my camera didn’t eat the tape.