Jake picked me up around 8:30pm and we met Nate at St Julien.  I pretty much didn’t land anything other then a crooks and a really slow front tail.  Seeing as how I’m horrible at front tails this still put a smile on my face.  Next up we started skating a weird rock by the Canyon rail.  You know, just to get warmed up for the rail.  Nate got some sick side rock ‘n roll things and Jake and I got some rockride stuff too.  I got wallride fakie, fakie wallride and front wallride.  Pretty fun considering how narrow the rock is.  Then we started trying different lines with the nearby little manny pad.  I got a couple that made me happy.  I’m sure if they were filmed though I would be completely disgusted with them.  The first one was back 180 up the curb, halfcab flip then 180 nose manual.  Second one was kickflip up the curb, rockride to fakie, nose manual, heelflip, turn around then do a 180 nose manual.  I’m pretty sure the nose manual was the only trick bearable on the eyes.  Anyways, it was a blast.  Next up was the mini quarterpipes at Wells Fargo where Jake learned and mastered the back 5-0 to fakie.  We all did them, but Jake’s were proper.  Mine had the lame late revert thing I like to do.  I also did a hurricane grind for the first time ever.  I dedicated it to Brian’s knee healing it up so he should be out skating soon.  Last up was a two stair manny pad thing where I completely blew a fun evening by sucking incredibly bad.  I believe I fell at least 5 times ollieing up the 2 stair.  And no, this aint no big 2.  Minus the 2 stair session the evening was a blast.

Finally a nice day.  The sun was so bright that the snow melted off the street by noon.  I skated flat for a bit in front of my house while waiting for people to show up.  I felt really old and stiff.  Ugh.  I eventually landed some of the basics, but it was not pretty.  Then we went to Longmont.  Jason and I were in my car and Fuzz, Brian, Neil and Lazer were on their bikes following us to a little skatepark in Longmont.  For some reason those dudes were driving really slow and we lost them.  While turning around to wait for them I remembered a bank to curb spot and Jason and I got out to check it out.  It’s got a bad crack at the bottom, but it’s a really quick bank to curb that would be epic if that crack was bondoed (sp?).  Anyways we skated it for awhile and had fun.  We even ollie a little gap over a curb down a drop.  Well, Jason ollied it, I ollied half of it.  Then we met up with those dudes at the little cement park in town.  It’s way smaller than I remember, but it was a blast.  Neil, Fuzz and Lazer killed the ollie grabs over the hip.  Everyone was skating pretty hard except Brian who decided to just take his bruised knee and huck down the rail.  He slappy boardslid it somehow and almost front boarded it too.  Jason killed the front boards.  I had fun.  My ‘highlights’ (and that’s a term I use loosely when I refer to my skating) were nosesliding down the curbed hubba, ollieing up the tall ledge, boardslide around the c ledge (so insanely fun), and wow, I can’t think of anything else.  Next we went to a little manny pad spot where, surprise surprise, Fuzz killed it.  Jason and I skated too, but I didn’t really land anything.  Last up was the OG junk spot.  I say ‘OG’ because it was the first place we started filming for Off The Couch.  Jason and I were playing a game of SKATE on the bank to curb thing when Brian went down real hard trying a wallride.  Real hard.  And he sat all weird on his knee.  He’s gonna be out for awhile.  Bummer.  Jason and I tried nosesliding the ledge over the gap for awhile.  Jason was actually going fast enough to do it, but couldn’t lock in.  I was going too slow to ever make the gap, but it was kinda fun trying.

Another weekend, another blizzard.  UGH.  Ollie and I skated Rampy for about half an hour.  I was really motivated to skate and Ollie was feeling it too.  He did most of his normal stuff, but added frontside kickturns out of the blue.  He did them every try.  I got lucky with a few first try tricks like feeble fakie and front disaster.  Although I had troubles with feeble fakie after that.  At the end I started trying blunt to pivots and landed a bunch of them, but had put my hand on the wall.  Still counts right?  So hyped to have Rampy.

Brian and I med up with Bernie, Matt and some Cheyenne heads at the Louisville park. We were warming up there a bit. I didn’t do much, but I got a bigflip and a no comply big spin on the flat bank. My legs actually felt good. Then we went to Honey’s Hole where I haven’t been since Fuzz freaked out on the home owner that lives a few feet away from the ditch. Brian was kind enough to ask the guy if we could skate there and he was super nice about it and the guy was really cool. It was a pretty mellow session. Brian, Bernie and Matt did some cool stuff. I slammed on a feeble fakie pose.

Jason picked me up before 9 and we raced the lights shutting off at the park for about an hour. At first there was some really annoying kids there throwing stuff at their car and acting there age and all that. Geez, don’t they know skateparks are for old people that don’t like loud noises. Ha. Anyways after awhile there was just about 5 of us and the other dudes were rad. Jason started off in bad shape. He couldn’t even get onto a backside boardslide on the low part of the flatbar. It was kinda funny, but he got it going quickly. I wasn’t exactly skating great either. Jason and I ollied a cone on flat. Jason 2nd try. Me 5 or 6 tries. Felt really good though. We mostly skated the ledge. I finally landed some crooks again. Did a few to fakie. Got a few back 50s and almost one with a shove out. Tried a bunch of front 50 back 180s and finally landed one after like 50 tries. Couldn’t get a 5-0 shove so started just trying 50 shoves and kept slamming. Then the lights shut off.

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.