Picked up Jason and met Nate at the Rainbow ledge after work.  It was too early to warm up at the manny pad because it was still business hours.  Jason and I started off with slappies for awhile.  Warming up sucks and it gets worse the older you get.  At least that’s one of the several excuses I’m using these days.  We eventually started attempting real tricks.  The session wasn’t great, but not horrible.  We need to skate ledges way more than we do.  Here’s what I landed: back board pop out, back noseslide, front 50, front 50 front 180, back crooks, front 50 front shove, front 5-0, back 50 (wost one ever done) and I came close to front 50 back 180 out and halfcab back board.  Another one of my excuses for the day was my trucks were so loose whenever I’d setup for the ledge my trucks would turn a little.  Super annoying.  I was so lazy though that I didn’t skate the 50 feet to my car to get a skate tool and tighten them.  Our friend Darin showed up at the end of the session and Nate, Darin and I played a really bad game of SKATE.  The highlight would have to be me attempting a 360 flip and my wheel shooting off since the axle nut had come loose.  Oh wait, the real highlight is that I somehow won a legit game for the first time in awhile.  It wasn’t just Nate having to quite because his knee hurt too much.  Ha.  One of these days I’ll have energy to skate and wont be super sore.  Can’t wait.

Jason and I headed over to Nate’s to pick him up.  While waiting we found a remotely fun bank to curb.  By bank to curb I mean there was a bank up to a curb.  It’s only a curb high.  Jason almost got back tailslide on it.  I tried a few front 50 back 180s and back 5-0s to fakie, but the crack at the bottom was too much.  Then we drove to Longmont and met up with Bernie and Riley at a curb high manny pad that had more to offer than just a straight manny pad.  Riley murdered it.  Fakie flip fakie manual, sw heel and switch flip to switch nose manual, nollie heel nose man, etc.  Rad.  I was sucking and I’m gonna blame my shoes.  I got some $6 Vans Geoff Rowley Shambles and they suck.  Well, they were good for about a week, and now I’m on week two.  Over them.  All I got was a manual, a front shove and kickflip over the gap.  Yippee.  Next we wet to a pole jam spot that Riley had made.  I cruised around sucking at ollies for awhile until I fell back and my neck started acting up again then skated the pole jam.  For a long time it was bent all weird so there was about a 6 inches of vertical before it bent to an angle.  Riley murdered it as well.  Switch polejam front 180.  Wow.  We got rid of the bend so it was a straight pole jam.  Steeper, but straight.  It was sick.  I got one no comply pole jam and Nate learned pole jam front 180s.  So sick.  Fun night, I need to skate better though.

Probably shouldn’t have skated at all due to a really sore neck, but I did.  Mostly in front of the house or across the street at the school with Ollie.  I really didn’t land anything special, but have been trying to skate faster and that aint easy to do with a stiff neck.  The weirdest thing is nollie and switch flips flip really well with the 8″ board.  Now I just need to put my feet on them.

Wow, Greg wasn’t joking when he said that Ben Raybourn rips.

Took Ollie and a buddy to Stonehenge in the morning ( aka the bank to curb spot ). They wanted to go to a skatepark, but I didn’t feel like watching over two kids worrying that some stupid BMXer would run into them or something. Plus my take on kids at skateparks is that you should be able to skate before you go to them. The session was actually quite fun. I got a front smith fakie which I haven’t done in forever. I also put a rock after the loading dock and would move it out further everytime I landed an ollie. I got out about 5 feet which is pretty weaksauce. Whatevs though, it was fun.I setup a new deck that the kids decorated for me then went out again around 8pm since it was so nice outside. I ended up at this weird/stupid area that has a tall bench surrounded by cracks and some crack ridden manny pads. I was trying to piece together some lines, but ended up getting kicked out. Oh well, sleepy sleep sounds good.

Fuzz, in Crocs.  Wow.  And yes, it’s a joke.  Hopefully anyway.After a pretty long wait to get the crew together we met at Brighton park with some decent cloud cover. Some were ripping, but I officially could not skate for shit. I wasn’t the only one though.  At one point Lloyd and I tried to play a game of SKATE and gave up after 4 failed kickflips. I had to fight back the urge to focus my board constantly.Next we went to a bank spot that needed to be swept and waxed up. It was a frustrating session to say the least. No one was really feeling it. It was kinda weird because half the crew didn’t even skate which surprised me. It’s a mellow bank, who doesn’t want to at least give it a try? The only thing I did was land a couple back 5-0s to fakie that were horrible.Next we went to the infamous boob spot. So hard to skate. Fuzz, Lloyd and Neil were killing it immediately. Melons, stales, anything they wanted. I was still fighting the urge to focus my board. I eventually landed a wallride and a smile finally emerged on my face that I couldn’t hold back. Wow, I was having fun! About time. I failed at several other tricks then went back to the wallride. Skelly was working on wallies and bet me a beer for whoever landed it first. I pulled through somehow. A few tries later and Sean got taken out with a horribly bad rolled ankle. Ouch. Lloyd slayed that spot. Wallie front 180 into the bank. So sick. Felt great to skate a full day again even if the first 3/4 sucked miserably.Lloyd trick of the day.  Wallie front 180.

Pretty much just hung out with the kids all evening, but skated flatground on the street for awhile while Ollie and his buddy Cooper skated the sidewalk.  It actually went kind of ok for me.  I mostly just tried the basics but going faster than I normally do, which isn’t saying much.  Ollie ollied (I’m gonna have to change his name) a skate deck which kinda hyped me up.  I got lots of kickflips with a bit of speed and shove its.  Sounds weak, but somehow it was fun.  Been trying lots of nollie flips again lately too.

Legs were dead, tried to skate the ramp.  Didn’t go so well.  Not wanting to fall on my hip combined with lack of skating lately equals lack of skills for me.  Fun crew though.  Worst journal update yet.   By far.  I should at least list some tricks or something.  Nah, even Jason was struggling on the ramp and he owns ramp.

I tried to get the kids to play basketball or baseball or something other than skateboarding, but Ollie was insistent that we go skating.  We went to the school across the street.  India rode her scooter and Ollie rode his skateboard.  Behind the school there is a little drainage ditch that is about 2 feet long with grass on one side.  Ollie tried over and over to ollie it.  Pretty rad, he was actually snapping his tail pretty hard.  My legs were dead once again, but I joked around and did a front shove and kickflip over it into the grass.  It’s so fun skating with Ollie because I can totally just goof around and try tricks I’d normally be too embarrassed about.  Ollie ended up doing a halfcab ollie into the little ditch.  It was quite rad actually.  He started asking me how to do shove it’s and kickflips as well.  I told him to get his ollies down first so he doesn’t end up like me.  Ha.  I spent at least 10 minutes trying flatground manuals with back shoves out.  Never got one.  Decent time for what it was and how sore my legs were.

Met Nate at the little manny pad.  Pretty tired.  Pretty sore.  Took me about 10 tries to get a manual.  Almost over it, but kept going.  Nate shows up and does manny, nose manny and front 180 nose manny first try.  Kids these days.  I ended up just trying kickflip mannys over and over and ended up getting a couple.  Other than that I put down a few flippers I haven’t since before the hip.  Ok session.