Solo mission to the Basemar shopping center which is only about a mile from my house.  There is a weak little bank along a bikepath that I started out on dorking a few tricks like disaster reverts and stuff.  Then I went to the ollie bump for awhile and amazed myself at how impossible it is for me to ollie higher than 3 inches. It took me at least 5 tries to get a decent ollie over a cardboard box.  Ugh.  I had a little run where I manualled the landing of the kicker then ollied into the bikepath bank and 180’d out of it.  Yippee.  I was about to try stuff over the cardboard box when a drunk bum popped out from a dumpster and scared the crap out of me.  He was stumbling all over the landing and stuff so I was over it and rolled over to the curved ledge nearby on campus.  If I ever manual that thing I would be so happy.  I ended up getting kicked out after only a couple warm up ollies.  Then it was flatground time where I almost rolled my ankle on a 360 flip.  I don’t know how I didn’t.  It was one of those weird bails where I thought for sure my ankle was done.  Thankfully not.  The area I was skating is uphill one way, downhill the other.  I have had this phobia of downhill skating all my life and decided to just deal with it.  It ended up working out and I even put together a few lines.  kickflip, b/s 180, halfcab flip, frontside flip.  front shove, varial flip, fakie big flip.  heelflip, no comply finger flip, 360 flip.  Most everything I landed was landed horribly except for a few heelflips.  For some reason heelflips felt amazing.  Fun solo session.

Beat from two nights of camping and not much sleep we arrived at the Cheyenne park at around 3 in the afternoon.  Skating didn’t go well.  I filmed Brian for awhile, but a huge storm moved in and we split out.

We didn’t even find out campsite until 1:30 the morning so everyone was a bit groggy.  We ended up at Wingers in Laramie to eat breakfast.  Yes, Wingers.  It wasn’t good, but then again it’s Laramie.  Right about the time we were finishing up lunch it started raining.  Hard.  And it lasted for a few hours.  Suck.  I took advantage of the down time and went and saw Napolitano.  So rad.  After awhile it stopped raining and we all went to the Laramie skatepark and dried it up using PJ’s squeegies and some towels and whatnot.  A really fun session went down.  It started for me by losing in a game of SKATE to Fuzz, but Napolitano was the first one out so I can finally claim I beat you Eric!  Ha!  Neil skated non-stop, PJ had the lines, Fuzz slayed all, Brian got a banger and Lazer rips.  I spent the first hour just cruising around the skatepark doing kickflips up and off the curbs there.  It was a total blast.  After awhile I finally skated the tranny and got a back 50 that was about 1/20th as cool as PJs.  Right before leaving I landed a f/s halfcab flip off the taller of the curbs.  Rad.  Then we went camping and to my suprise my tent was dry.  Pictures of the party should be up here soon.

Started with a big crew of old dudes at the Egg & I in Loveland which I’ve never skated before.  Was having a blast and getting into tricks like front noseblunt and kick back tail and then Neil wanted to film.  Filmed for awhile, then after that couldn’t skate as well.  Doh.  Next up was this big taco/rainbow ledge thing that none of us have skated before and man it was way tougher to skate then we imagined.  Some tricks went down though and Fuzz killed it.  He did a ton of tricks and ended it with a blunt.  So sick.  After about 20 tries I got a front rock and then later put down a clean kickflip wallride somehow.  Cool.

Short little session with Ollie.  He manualed the whole west coast of the United States painting they have on the concrete.  Look out Kenny Anderson.  I had fun and my legs didn’t hurt too bad.

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.