Ollie and I went across the street to the school. On the way there I did a couple good feeling kickflips which surprised me because I had considered not skating due to my legs feeling like crap. We went to the normal area in the back. Stupid little pebbles from the playground were now everywhere. Ollie ripped it though. Good ollies up the curb, front 180s off. Ollie over a bit of a cone off a curb. I was in serious slack mode initially until a little switch back 180 (and I mean LITTLE) hyped me up a little. I also ollie a cone on it’s side out of a curb cut first try. Pretty much nothing, but it was awkward enough for me to be hyped. When we left we looked at the 5 stair for a bit, I posed an ollie then did an acid drop from the 4th stair. Then we watched the Broncos. Jocks.

Went to the ATM on the way to pick up Carleigh and kept putting in my regular credit card instead of my ATM card and could not figure out why it would not work. Ha. We got to Arvada shortly before 9pm. We started in the smaller bowl in the back corner. I was feeling weird about my setup and could not stand up on the pool coping which was my goal. We both seemed to cruise around it pretty good though. Carleigh had some rad slashes on the pool coping part. Then we went up to the Pier 7 granite ledge thing. Well I did, Carleigh was up in the bowl area for awhile. Monico’s little brother Matt was there trying to front feeble the rail. Crazy. It cracked me up because he has the same laugh as Monico. I got boardslide, front 50, manual and crooks on the ledge before taking a long time to boardslide the long concrete ledge which pretty much ended the night. My flatground game was crap. Doh.

Jake rolled over and we headed out to Safeway ledge on a hot afternoon. We were to meet a lot of people there, but we were the first. Warming up wasn’t horrible. Jake did some fakie front tails. I did another kickflip nose”slide” where the “slide” part refers to me sliding off the ledge right away. Ha, there was some closer ones to posting up though. Dave finally arrived. Around then I put down a couple kick back 50s that felt great. One of which was followed by an ollie over a box. Dave locked into some crooks which is hard on (ha) that ledge because it angles in. I landed a bunch of b/s flips to setup switch noseslides. It’s fun finally getting that trick a little. Gotta go faster.

Then we went to a new little skatepark in Westminster. They have added some cement around the edges to give it a little space. When we got there the heat was cranking. Driving by a bank later on when it cooled a little it said 94 so it must have been even hotter. Geez. What a weird park though. It’s pretty much perfect. The taller rail is pretty much impossible to hit unless your TPuds though. I didn’t land much so I’ll just get my couple of things over with. I managed a first try manual on the Pier 7 ledge which hyped me up. Front 50 shove out. A line where I noseslid most of the wide rail then ollied up the tall part of the Pier 7 ledge. At the end I had a line of halfcab flip into the super mellow bank, ollie onto the pier 7 ledge and kickflip off. That took way longer then it should have. Dave killed it. Boardslide to fakie on the A frame. Long lines with smith grinds on the qps, manuals on the narrow decks, lofty fakie and b/s ollies on the flat bank. A bunch more that I can’t remember because it took me too long to write this. Jake also killed it. Had a line with front 5-0 off the pier 7 ledge, b/s “air” over the hip and a front blunt on a qp. Wowsers. I guess that line was too good because I don’t remember what else he did. There was another dude there that brought a flat bar and set it next to the Pier 7 ledge. I jocked out and told Jake if we didn’t land it first try we had to do 20 pushups. I landed it. Jake got close, but didn’t land it and didn’t do the push ups. Ha. Dave got it too. Fun day.

Went to Lafayette park with Ollie. I was feeling blah and for the most part I didn’t do anything to be proud of. The few things that kept me from going crazy were a line in the tiny bowl with a front feeble and almost a fakie pivot fakie. On the bank that Ollie does the halfcabs above I did fakie flip, b/s flip, kickflip fakie and a rare f/s flip. Speaking of halfcabs though I had been trying them on there for awhile and Ollie comes by after a front 180 flyout, fakie shove on flat and does halfcab first try. Ollie was ripping. All 4 of the tricks above were new tricks he hadn’t done before and at the end of the day i asked him to do them all again so I could Dad Cam him. This random dude that was pretty good started telling Ollie how to do kickflips and that he needed to push regular. Ha. It’s fun skating with Ollie, so that part of the session was fun. But man, lately I just feel old and unable to skate the way I want to. Both mentally and physically. Ugh. Oh yeah, I had a new board. A Radio Null deck. Love it.

Headed up to Fort Collins with Ollie, Neil, Blake and Dave. After leaving MRKT we went to the pizza place by the ol’ bank to ledge formerly known as the Pizza Pipeline spot. Ollie and I ate while the others started skating. Dave got a back tail. Neil back 180’d over the ledge and later did a really lofty melon over it. Blake and I tried from front smiths and failed. I also failed at kick back 50 after getting oh so close 2nd try. I blame Dave for getting the camera out. Ok, I really blame Chad, Jon and a couple other dudes as I started feeling really bad for shy guy Ollie being around such a big crew. Chadman put down a sick line quick though then a pretty monster backside flip. Next we went to the nearby alley wallride / bank to ledge spot. Ollie and I kind of hung in the corner for awhile. I landed basically not a thing. Ollie did some little nose stalls both ways. Chad joined us and showed me hoe much I suck at ollieing. We got the boot then ended up at the Kind Soopers bank to curb. I also didn’t land anything here. Ollie did some rocks. Dave did a bunch of rad tricks including a back pivot shove revert or something. So good. Blake was coming close to sugarcanes. Chad did front tail kickflip out and front blunt. Neil had nose manny shove. Last spot was the post office curb spot which ended up being really fun. Ollie had some mannies, front boards and ride on 50s. Blake had sick slappies. Dave did a really long ride on 50. I did a line of slappy front lip, back 180 off a curb cut and a fakie flip on flat. Tried a line of manual, wallie over a curb, manual front shove out, but didn’t get very close. Mike did a bunch of back 180s getting a little further each time. It was a pretty fun day. This journal entry doesn’t really do it justice.

We were told to leave work early and work from home as there was some power outages planned. I had worked hard to get things wrapped up before I left and the payoff was “working” from the street out front. I was still feeling a bit of the new shoes/PJ motivation and ended up skating flat for a couple hours. It wasn’t the best or worst flatground session. I got a few treflips which is pretty much always enough for me to be happy. There were a few other tricks I was happy with like halfcab flips and 180 flips both ways. But I ended up spending a lot of time hucking. Got kind of close to fakie bigger flip. That extra 180 is so weird. I can’t even remember what all else I hucked. It was a lot of random tricks. I didn’t land much, but I still had fun.

One of my favorite dudes ever. If you haven’t already, go buy The Holy Crail DVD here and support a great shop that has done a lot for Colorado Skateboarding.

Yeap folks. We have found the price in which I sellout. It’s called a shoe that PJ Ladd skates and it costs me less then $50 (sometimes running a company and getting hooked up at shops has it’s privileges!).   NB+ Stratford 479.  They aren’t even broken in, but I could not find the will to try those DC Mikey Taylors anymore.  Instead I went with a brand I see every day at the gym on every retired man that goes there.  It’s hip to be old?  Anyway, after bringing some new boards to Crisis, Rob, Ollie and I went over to the Safeway ledge.  Ollie wasn’t stoked, but was cool about it.  I on the other hand was super hyped.  The PJ shoes were hyping me up in ways I thought they would.  I’m the ultimate PJ nerd.  For the first time in awhile I landed the first kickflip I tried.  I went on to have a pretty good session in general, especially for a new pair of cupsoles that didn’t really have a chance to be broken in.   I was happy to get a couple kick back 50s, almost good front tails, lots of kickflips, halfcab flips, and the surprise for me was multiple switch front 180 to front 50s.  Rob was killing it.  He called kick back 50s on the drive, but ended up settling for front hurricanes instead.  What!  They were sick.  He had also tried a bunch of nollie lipslides to front 50 and didn’t quite get one.  Ollie mostly just cruised around, but did a few front nose taps and back boardslides.

It got dark so we went to go meet Carleigh at the park.  Only every teenager in the area was there which bummed out the old and the young so we said to meet at yellow curbs instead.  It was my idea so I take the blame, but upon getting there it felt wrong to skate there when it was nice out.   Rob and I managed some nose and regular manuals.  Ollie did some ollies up the curb and back 180s off.  Carleigh tied her shoes and after maybe a couple ollies we got the boot.  Doh.  It was close to Ollie’s bed time so we just bailed.

Had back to school night at the kids middle school. Got out a little earlier then I thought we would and Ollie said he wanted to skate. So a little after 8pm we went to the Louisvill park. CJ, Brian and Darin were in the hockey rink skating all kinds of boxes, rails and stuff. Ollie didn’t want to skate it though because he said everything required an ollie. Geez Ollie, learn to ollie higher already. Ha. Off to the park with the rollerbladers and bmx’ers. The first thing I did was try to ollie up onto the little manny pad and it resulted in my falling with the board not even making it up onto the ledge with me. It was at that point I wanted to throw the DCs away and leave. But I was with Ollie. Gotta be somewhat positive at least. We skated for awhile. He had fun, cruised around, pushed mongo and flowed around the way he does. It was cool. He did a ton of front 180s off the tall part of the ledge. Some were really good. I was unable to front 50 the tall part of the ledge, unable to back 50 front 180 the little ledge, unable to front 50 the qp, etc. The only good was doing crooks and a kickflip to fakie. These shoes will not be on my feet for skating again.

Had a nice morning with a hike and lunch date with Liz then Jake, Rob and Neil showed up at my house wanting to go hit Safeway ledge. Awesome! It was quite hot out and all of us struggled initially. I was thinking “oh great, here we go again”. I had taken the insoles out of the Mikey Taylors hoping I would get some board feel at least. It seemed to help a little. I voiced my frustrations to Rob and he said to just huck something I shouldn’t land. I went kickflip back 50 and landed it. Ha. So that definitely made me feel better and made up a little for the horrible ollie attempts over a small box. Neil and Jake tried to put the box upright and ollie it. Jake looked like he was gonna get it first, but ended up slamming pretty hard and gave up. Neil got it once and the box was promptly put back down. Rob was killing it. Front 180’s over the box for days and lots of no comply shoves and a million ledge tricks. Back 270 front tail, front tail, slappy lip, bigspin front nose, the list goes on for days. Neil had some good lipslides, sw boardslides, back 50s, halfcabs over the box, crooks to fakies. Slaying. I took a lot of tries to get over the little box, but once I did I put down a line that really hyped me up. Ollie, treflip on flat, front 50 shove. Also got several kick back 50s, a kick back 5-0 and almost kick back 50 shove. John had arrived and amazed us yet again how graceful he is. Tailslide, almost front tail to fakie, front shove front nose, bigspin front nose, I don’t even know, so much more.

We moved on to the foundation spot in the photo above. Unfortunately they had taken away the extra toys, but we still had fun. I was sore as hell initially, but after riding down a couple ledges started to loosen up. Rob, Neil and John mostly played manuals. Rob tried and tried to get nose manual shove to manual. I think he got an over 40 make, but he’s not 40 yet. Neil was beat, but still came kinda close to the same trick. John wasn’t too close, but he did get close to switch noseslide to frontside noseslide (whoa!). Fakie back tails and more. Jake and I did more of the start at the top of the spot and end at the bottom stuff. I got an ollie over a small flat gap to manual, kickflip off the next one. Front shove a drop, kickflip the next drop, almost b/s flip the next drop. Front 50 to front board pop out, back 50s, that’s about it. Oh yeah, I should have broken my board about 10 times, but it didn’t even crack. Guess it’s that extra hemp layer (ha). Jake did a bunch of kickflips off the top ledge which was rad because I haven’t seen him kickflip off much of anything. He did it in a line with back 50 and no comply off the next ledge as well. Sick. At the end we helped some neighbors move a big piece of playground equipment. They offered a case of beer, instead we just thanked them for tolerating us skating close to their house and not calling the cops on us.

Last we stopped at a new Arvada skate spot. Basiclly two quarterpipes and a bowled in corner. It was pretty fun. I did a front disaster. John called out a line and did it first try. Jake had a crazy line going to front pivot on the tall qp, but didn’t put it down. Fun day.