Still feeling run down, after a long nap, after eating and kickball with the family I went out to find a couple spots Jack had texted me. I found one of them (the small manny pads), but it wasn’t lit. I ended up on campus and randomly ended up here. What a cool spot. I took a bit to get a couple really low wallrides. Then I tried to line it out with an ollie over the ledge too. It took awhile. I’m no Will Garson, but it was fun regardless. That pretty much drained me and after looking at some more new stuff on campus I headed home to prepare for Liz’s 40th bday.

After a long day of working on our storage shed in the heat, naps, slacking, cleaning and eating Ollie and I went to Arvada around 8pm. The park was not crowded by Arvada standards, but still had lots of people. We started off in the back corner as we always do. Ollie had an incredible first run. Little b/s ollie on the mini qp hip, some pumping, came back and front slashed the noping qp, front 180 off the kicker, fakie shove, f/s halfcab, nollie shove (he had never done nollie shove before). Wowsers. He did more front slashes, sometimes transferring over the hip. Dude was ripping. He also tried a switch shove it out of the blue and landed on it and reverted. He was hyped. I felt really out of it and a bit doped up on cough medicine. I had a fun run with a feeble grind on the noping qp, coming back to front tail on it then a little kickflip to fakie on the bank. Went over to the blue bank area. Ollie mongo pushed up the blue chip and dropped to manual on the flat one. Also front 180 then halfcab off. He also did a cab kickturn on the little bank across from it. I had a fun little run of front 50 on the little bank, wallride on the jersey barrier, ollie up the gap to the blue pod, front 180 off then a slow fakie flip. Then I spent a long time trying 360 flips to fakie yet again. This time I ended up successful as the rain sprinkled. Then it stopped and the temperature seemed to go up several degrees. Ollie was messing around just doing stuff that isn’t much yet, but just shows how natural he is. Almost did a frontside 360 off a kicker, rode off the blue chip pretty high, etc. Ollie wanted to go at this point, but I felt like trying to front 50 the super low, longish hubba which I have never 50’d before. I had to get a long line going to get myself to do it. Crooks on the tiny qp near the snake run, ollie up onto the tall blue ledge, roll off, tic tac, front 50 down. Got it after a few tries. Then we left. Pretty fun night. It’s kind of funny that I said it was harder to ollie up stuff on the smaller setup, but then had no problems with it here. Good. There were some good skaters there that were fun to watch and skating the park differently then I’ve seen before. Combining lots of street style with tranny stuff. It was cool.

I met Dave at this bank. He forgot his board and didn’t have much time to skate. We played a game of bank SKATE with my board. It was pretty fun. He got me on a rocket crail and I got him on kickflip tricks. He’s so much older than me. Ha. We did quite a few no comply, boneless, shove tricks. It was fun. It was hot. Then Dave left and I posted up the tripod in hopes of capturing me rattling off a bunch of flip tricks. When the kickflip to fakie (that I did first try in the game of SKATE) took 10 tries I knew I was in trouble. The b/s flip took awhile and the back bigflip took even longer. Ugh. After a quick front shove fakie I went for the dream trick hoping to get the hardest trick out of the way. Treflip. I couldn’t do it. Landed on a few. But nope. Ugh. I tried it for probably about an hour in the 90+ degree heat. When it was done I felt like I was going to die. I had run out of water and when I got home was borderline passing out. Lovely. That wasn’t good for my cold.

I worked from home as I was still feeling pretty sick. Took a couple naps. Went to Southern Hills for awhile and started to feel better being out in the sun and getting some exercise. I started off skating pretty bad, skated ok for awhile, then back to bad. The ledges did not grind very well as the heat had evaporated most of the wax and what was left was just liquid on a crusty edge. I tried some lines. One was switch noseslide (the John Brandow way) to forward, treflip, kick back tail on the curb. Got remotely close. Also ollied the 2 stair from the crack and did a front noseslide to forward (so rare). Tried to ollie up onto the bench in the back and back 180 off, but I could not get onto it. Bummed me out. Then tried front 180 on the sidewalk, halfcab flip into the handicap ramp then ollie onto a bench and ollie off past a crack. Couldn’t get the ollie onto the bench. Finally managed solo, but man what a bummer. I guess the one downfall I’ve found so far with the smaller setup is ollie’ing up stuff. Doh. In the small board defense though at one point I tried a switch flip and almost landed it. So close.

Stayed home sick from work and slept most of the day. Around dinner I was feeling somewhat better and wanted to get a big of exercise. So Ollie and I went across the street. I brought my skateboard, he brought a soccer ball. I did a dork line of kickflip into the bank (1/4 of a push by the black door in the photo) then curve around for a tiny crooks on the last part of the low bar on the long handicap ramp.

Then we went around the front and I did a couple acid drops of the 5 stair in between kicking the ball off the stairs at Ollie. Then some old Meta/Boulder naustalgia happened and Ivan happened to be walking by. He gave the 5 stair a go in his running shoes, but bailed out. We chatted for a minute then he left. A few bails later I ollied the 5 stair. I really need to ollie small sets of stairs like this more often because it really is fun. Then I slammed on a treflip, landed a treflip (not down the stairs) and called it a day.

Matt, Jake and I went to Longmont park to meet up with Riley who had just moved back into town. I had done about two kickflips, a front 50 and a front 5-0 before it started raining. Matt had b/s nose grinded the long ledge and did a switch tre as it started raining. Jake bailed a few back 50s in the flow bowl so I knew he wasn’t skating his best. I saw Riley slam on a back 360 over a hip.

We agreed to go to the covered pavillion and we ended up skating flatground there for three hours or so. It was awesome. Especially when we all would hit stop rocks or stop sticks and slam to the ground. No one escaped unscathed. Jake had the toughest time it seemed. He has been landing lots of treflips lately, but not this night. Riley and Scotty played 3 or 4 games of no repeat SKATE that were pretty incredible. Nollie late flips, inward heels, all kinds of tricks. It was so good seeing Riley skate again. Matt tied a ton of switch tres and beat me in a game of SKATE ending with fakie tre. I took a few tries to get tricks, but ended up getting most of my tricks. Kickflip, heelflip, fakie flip, halfcab flip, f/s halfcab flip, fakie bigflip, varial flip, fakie varial flip, nollie varial flip, treflip, nollie treflip, fakie treflip, double flip, b/s flip, some maybe. Man that list doesn’t even sound good considering we skated for 3 hours. Either way I still had a blast and it was great seeing Riley again.

I set up a lovely 8″ board. Jake showed up in the early evening and we went out to skate flatground. The joy of skating an 8″ board again was so incredible. I landed so many tricks first try and everything felt good. There was a kickflip that could have made my night all by itself, but it was joined with multiple treflips and many more flippers. Jake was skating well too. We started a game of SKATE as we waited for Matt. We both landed tricks that can often get us letters. I got Jake and S on a treflip and he got me an S on a fakie treflip (first one I’ve seen Jake do. Nice!) then Matt showed up and we left for Denver.

We went to this spot first. It was covered in debris from the tree so we didn’t skate around too much, mostly just hit this ledge. Matt tried to be a rebel and skate the whole spot at one point and slammed so hard pushing. It was brutal. He still skated good. Manualled the bottom block, back tail, manualled a bit of the top block after a quick up. I landed quite a few back 50s, chinese nollie to front tail, front 5-0s, crooks. Jake had back 50s, fakie front 50 halfcab out. Jake and Matt ollied onto the low block, then the upper block, and did tricks off. Jake did front 180 and tried nollie. I took about 30 minutes longer to get onto the top deck. Got front 180 and landed on back 180, but bailed.

Then we went to the Denver Art Museum. I saw Jake do some manuals across some ledges, ollie a narrow part of a ledge and front board a narrow part. I was having troubles seeing the poorly lit ledges. Jason always used to say I had horrible night vision. I probably don’t see any worse then others, I just am not very good at skateboarding and night vision sounds like a legit excuse. Anyways, geez. I skated kind of slow and slammed on a front board, couldn’t manual a whole ledge. But I did have a fun line of 360 flip, ollie up a ledge, over a little gap to manual the next part. Matt skated the best I’ve seen him skate. It was crazy. He was flying all over the place ollieing ledges, manualling them, nose manualling some. He was skating so hard he even broke his board. It was a Null board so you know he was skating hard because those things never break. Then we went to Black Dots/Cheap Girls which was a blast. I got home at 3:30am. Monday at work sucked extra bad.

Woke up early to give India a ride to ballet in Denver. Brought my board and randomly called Derek to see if he’d want to meet downtown. I ended up going to pick him up after dropping India off and we skated the Thornton park on 112th. There were a lot of puddles messing up the flow. Derek was kinda chilling, but ripped it. The air to fakie was perfect, first try. He did some funny wallrides to firecracker, pivot fakie a qp, couldn’t butt ride over the rainbow, dude just flows so good. I mostly just did whatever. Had a rewarding line of ollie the ledge into the downhill bank then did a hurricane on the bank to curb. Did some other stuff I was aight with.

Then we went to Northglenn HS. I tried a line of noseslide on the red ledge above, ollie the stupid little gap above, manual the bottom of the big 4 block. Sounds so simple right? But the ollie was so hard due to it being a death trap of cracks and rocks that I only got to the manual attempt a few times. Derek did noseslide 270 shove and back smith. So sick.

Later in the day I went to Southern Hills after setting up an old 8″ board that’s been in my trunk for awhile and was already cracked. It felt pretty good rolling around. I felt more willing to try and do tricks. Did a couple treflips where I actually landed on the bolts rather then the middle of a big board. Then I did a couple treflips where I didn’t land so good and the crack turned into a board in two pieces. Doh. Gonna setup a new 8″!!! Home sweet home!

After work I went to Crisis to do some bidness and meet up with this dude Jeremy from Seattle. JP from Seattle organized the skate date. After hanging at Crisis for quite a long time while it rained then dried out we wen to Broomfield park. There were a lot of puddles in the street, but not much in the bowls. We skated the flow bowl for awhile. Jeremy clearly ripped at tranny and flew around the bowl. I skated alright for me until we went to the ledge area then appeared to forget how to skateboard again. Struggling that bad is frustrating. Front 50s were weird, back 50s, everything. Darin and CJ showed up and that was fun. We skated the Quartapotty for awhile. Darin and CJ did halfcab blunt fakies. So crazy. I got a lot of my tricks and was most happy with a hurricane. Jeremy had some cool early grab variations. Then CJ, Jeremy and I skated the flow bowl for awhile. It was fun. I got some new lines around there and as long as I didn’t touch the coping it seemed like I knew what I was doing in there. I did get a few axle stalls on the pool coping though which was nice considering how long it took me to do them last time I was there. It’s also ironic how much better I skate tranny with Ventures then I do Indys. Makes no sense. I liked how Indys cruised the streets, but not the bowls. Weird huh? Then we skated kind of whatever. I could not land a treflip. Struggled with everything. Got the slowest and ugliest front 50 on the tall brown ledge. CJ was doing them sick. He almost got switch front 50 too. He good.

Went to FOCO after work to sell some boards. Met up with Matt and we went to Fossil Creek. It became apparent on my first failed curb high boardslide that I would have a tough night. Matt on the other hand was cruising around doing all kinds of good basics first try. Actually he ended up skating some of the best I’ve seen him skate. Manual the middle box on the manual pad drop down to manual. Back tail’d it too. Ollied the Carrol gap easy, kickflipped it. Halfcab back 50 on the low, halfcab noseslide to fakie on the regular ledge, nollie back noseslide. Lots of good stuff. Including a pretty bad slam on a kick back tail attempt. I had new shoes which I can maybe blame about 5% for my skating. It was all my legs sucking. More New Balance Numeric Quincys. This time in a size that wont kill my feet. When it was finally dark I was kind of skating remotely ok. Had some fun crooks, back 50s on the curb, a 3 flip on flat and slow line of ollie onto the ledge, front 50 the ledge up top and then a crawling kickflip off the ledge. I tried to back 50 the regular ledge and got back 5-0 and back feeble instead. Sounds good unless you actually saw them. Even though I totally sucked it was still fun. Matt ripped hard and laughed at most of funnier bails, it was nice out, the park was pretty empty, etc.