There were several reasons to bail on this show. First, I was on call for work. Second, the presidential debates were in Denver and they had been warning people for weeks not to come near Denver on this night. Third, I have been feeling pretty run down and fighting a cold. But the main reason to go to this show is the completely awesome and underrated Henry Clay People. I seriously love this band and their latest album Twenty-Five For The Rest Of Our Lives is their best effort yet. I really wanted to hear it live!

It seems like everyone used excuse #2 as I arrived before Chad, Dean and Fuzz and was literally the only person there while they did a sound check. Weird, but totally awesome because I got to mention a few songs I wanted to hear. An hour and a few more people later they went on stage. Even though the crowd was lacking they played a high energy set that pretty much ruled my world. All my favorites and left me with a new found respect for the song ‘Anymore/ Any Less’. I am super hyped on this show. I know it kinda sucked for them not pulling in a big crowd, but for me as a fan wow. It was like they played a personal set in my living room or something. It ruled. Please support this band!

Henry Clay People website.

Congrats to one of Colorado’s finest. Well deserved.

Shaun Gregoire

Jordan Sanchez

Both are awesome, fun, creative and motivating.

My legs have felt like total crap the last few days. I worked hard all day to rid the arthritic/tendonitis pain (I think the tendonitis pain is a symptom of my arthritis and the arthritis was acting up due to a big change in weather coming (snow! shit!)). Lots of turmeric (which gives me the shits), ibuprofen, walking lightly, wore my tendonitis knee brace, iced my knees twice, etc. Towards the end of the day at work it seemed to pay off. I went to some stairs and jumped up/down and my legs felt pretty good. Whew. After dinner I took a nap since I’ve been feeling pretty run down lately. Man, how old am I sounding here? Drugs for arthritis, naps, got a little sore throat, ha ha. One of my complaints about street skating is that it’s hard on my legs because ollies out of the gates hurt. I need to carve around to get my legs going these days. Well what do you know, I have a ramp in my garage, maybe I should use it! So I did. I sucked it up though. Seriously slammed on an axle stall. I guess last time I skated it my bearings were still the crappy old ones so maybe that’s my excuse. I ended up not really landing anything, but lots of falling is probably about as good of a warm up for street skating as there is. So I left for downtown, where I haven’t skated in forever. I started out in some random parking lot with some funny plastic speed bumps about 20 feet apart and banked curbs. I wallied one to manual to wallie the next. Stoked me out even though they are only a few inches tall. Also did a few weak ollies on the banks. Moved on. After some boardslides on a parking block I ended up here.

This area has more then you see in the photo. Before I put the box there I tried a few lines. Coming from the back of the photo I would ride down the handicap ramp, manual the pad in the photo, noseslide the flat bar against the wall then tried back 180 nose manual on the little median a bunch of times until somehow the stars aligned right and I managed a nice slow back 180 pivoted on the front wheels without the back wheels touching at all (how’s that for a run on sentence?). Pretty hyped on that. Going the other way I would do front 180 nose manual on the median and tries switch front 180 manual on the yellow pad in the photo. I got close to the sw one, but not quite. I was about to move on, but saw the box in a dumpster and wanted to ollie over it. It took me a few tries as I was kind of timid on my old fragile legs (ha ha), but when I got it I had a fun ride down the hill you cant really see in the photo with a long powerslide that scared the crap out of some janitors emptying trash into a dumpster. I was feeling really tired at this point and didn’t want to push things too much. So I just kind of walked/skated around for a bit looking at spots. I was kind of bummed on how many spots aren’t lit anymore. I did a fakie pivot fakie on the wells fargo mini qp then rolled off down the parking lot doing a few 180s. Seems like a good place to do somewhat downhill flatground some other time. As I pushed back towards the car I managed a bunch of ollies up/off curbs that hyped me up since I was going a little faster then normal. I ended it with an ollie up a curb and ollie down a little 3 stair that I didn’t look at first. Pretty lame on paper, but fun at the time. I’m pretty glad I went skating even though I was pretty timid/tired. Street skating is so much more rewarding then park skating to me. I can’t believe how much I rambled on about a short little one hour solo session. Sorry.

Congrats to Fuzz and Leslie! One of the cutest couples out there.

Lots of fun was had all day and at the reception. Can’t believe our son Jack got kicked out. Geez, what bad parents Liz and I are. Ha, Jack and everyone else in this photo you rule!

I love seeing these dudes at the parks or anywhere. Super fun and positive. Can’t believe they put my two tricks in there. Thanks!

Fuzz’s wedding started at noon, but I woke up angry at how bad I skated the day before. So I decided to hit Broomfield park early to hopefully redeem myself. There was only two teenage kids at the park, but they were annoying enough. They would only do tricks if the other was filming them. When they actually landed tricks they wouldn’t even enjoy the ride out, they would jump off their board and self hype. I tried to stay as far away from them as possible, but it’s a small park. I started out by doing tricks on the quartapotty. I went through most of the basics and felt a little warmed up. Did an axle stall on the weird steep bank which I haven’t really touched before. Did a few tricks on the blue ledge. Pumped around the flow bowl. Messed around on the middle wedge thing and did a rock to halfcab flip out which felt pretty good and is probably the trick that stands out the most for the day. I messed around on the black ledge for awhile. Tried a line of front 50 front 180 out, fakie flip on the mellow bank, then crooks. Never got all of them. Then tried front 50 back 180 out (never got it), halfcab flip on the bank then halfcab noseslide, but never came close. Wussed out of trying the little boardslide down the rail, did some tiny f/s ollies on the brick qp and called it a day. Glad I somewhat redeemed myself. I don’t feel like skating in the morning is all that fun though, my body just isn’t ready for it.

Got out of work around 4:00 on a beautiful friday. Been thinknig of going to this park for awhile that is less than 5 minutes from IBM. I called up Bernie and he was down to meet up. I showed up first and used the free time to put some new bearings in. Then I cruised around and it was super weird rolling faster. My other bearings were so bad, old and done. I’m not sure why I skated so bad, but nothing clicked. Bernie showed up and started ripping pretty quick. Then three carloads of random dudes from Denver showed up. Whoa, I guess they had looked at the photos in the skatepark dir and thought the park looked fun. They were all cool, but I was hoping for a mellow session and it ended up being pretty heated and I was feeling extra lame for how my skating was going. There was a couple time I almost died on dumb shit. Once was on a kickflip to fakie on the bank where I almost rolled backwards under the rail. The other was an attempt at riding up one of the qp’s trying to go to cali grind. Not sure how I didn’t break my tailbone on the corner of the ledge, but I did survive. Bernie was straight killing it though. Long 50s. Long kick back tail to fakie. Sick line of kickflip, front board to fakie, fakie flip, fakie 5-0 fakie front shove out, fakie treflip. Geez. My only highlights were crooks on the short ledge, noseslide the tall ledge, not breaking anything, and well, nothing. At the end we played a game of SKATE that I lost. Last letter was a fakie bigflip which is normally an easy trick for me. Ugh. I’m guessing it was my arthritis or something that made me skate so bad. I felt really weird. I think the new bearings added a bit of weirdness too.

Haven’t skated Red Curbs in a really long time. Mainly because it’s been nice out, but also because the cops wrote a nasty ticket to friends there over the summer. So I went solo on a rainy night to see if it was a freak one time event. The curbs were still waxed so I’m thinking it was just a one time deal. At least I hope. Throughout the night cops would drive by (it’s near a cop shop) and none of them even slowed down. I listened to nothing but the new Dinosaur Jr album “I Bet On Sky”. I’m starting to think it’s their best reunion album which already means it’s one of their best considering Farm is in my top 3. Warming up didn’t take super long, but it was clear my legs weren’t in as good of shape as the day before and my arthritis was bothering me a bit. It just makes me feel more awkward then normal and off balance. Even kickflips were kinda hard. It didn’t stop me from skating though and I feel lucky just to be able to do what I do. I’ve been thinking about front lip kickflips out forever. I guess the first step would be learning front lips. I tried a ton of them and landed a couple. I don’t think the kickflip out will ever happen, but it’s fun pretending. There were a few lights out which made the manny pad really dark. I tried a couple lines. One way halfcab noseslide then back 5-0. Never got the back 5-0 although came close and haven’t tried it in forever. Other way front 50 then front tail but I never slid a good one. I hucked a bunch of tricks throughout. Got a first try back 180 nosegrind that I couldn’t do again. Hucked a few kick back t, kick back 5-0, halfcab flip noseslide, none of which were very close. Tried some fakie nosegrinds and although I grinded them good I couldn’t ride out. All in all it was one of those nights were I didn’t really land much, but I was sweating, skating hard, having fun and enjoying the tunes. Before leaving I said I’d do 10 flip tricks. The first nine came pretty easy. Kickflip, fakie flip, halfcab flip, heelflip, fakie bigflip, varial flip, b/s flip, f/s halfcab flip and treflip. I wanted the last trick to be something harder for me so I tried some rare or NBD for me tricks like sw f/s flip, nollie tre, f/s flip, halfcab heels, but I was super tired and settled for fakie varial flip which took way longer then it should have.

Right after work I met Jack and Carleigh near Liquormart for some random spot fun. When I showed up Jack was just messing around doing a ride on 50 to “MJ out” (which is back 50 then as your getting out kind of push heelflip and the board flips). Seriously, WTF? Not even on a ledge, but a rail. Well I wasn’t about to warm up on a rail regardless if you don’t have to ollie onto it. I went about 20 feet further and found this bank with rocks on it and Jack joined me for a pretty epic dork session. Jack actually did pivot to fakie at one point. We both ended up with quite a few tricks. I’m not remember them all. Jack did kickflip pivot. The weirdest casper stall thing ever that was an accident, but perfect. I got a few basics, crooks stall, crooks fakie, and a totally lucky b/s hurricane. We were there for awhile. It’s hard for dorks to leave a dork spot. Jack did a sick rode over the rock on top to four wheel drive down the bank. So sick.

Here is a back 180 nose stall thing that I think I went to fakie on. Carleigh took the photos and will have a big blog about it at somepoint.

Then we went to a nearby alley that had quite a bit of stuff to offer. The main reason was for a tight little bank to wallride which Jack did a bunch of times. Carleigh rode the wall, but didn’t land it. I probably didn’t even resemble a wallride. I can pose f/s wallrides, but I can’t even pose b/s ones. Ha. We all were kind of doing our own thing. It was cool just cruising in an alley, ollie’ing manholes, crack gaps, flatground tricks, etc. I ended up trying to harness my inner TPuds/Chris Cole and ended up (kind of) getting a blizzard flip:

Then I had to go home for dinner. Some of the most fun I’ve had skateboarding in awhile. You guys rule. And I have to mention that my legs felt the best they have felt in a while. I guess warming up on a dork bank is good for them!