Went to SOL after work to pick up a check. I brought my board and joined a couple young kids skating on the flat bottom. I wanted to actually skate the ramp and when I started doing so the kids started playing hacky sack and it would land on the ramp sometimes. Ugh. They skated the ramp a little, but it made it weird. I of course sucked. That ramp is so hard to me. I only did some back 50s basically. Then I skated flat with those dudes for a bit. Had a good first try treflip that kind of surprised me, but then I never landed another one. Had a good heelflip and a couple other basics when a couple other dudes showed up that wanted to actually skate the ramp. Rad. They were good skaters. The kids left and we had a fun session. We all slipped, slammed, complained about how hard the ramp is, etc. But had fun. I wussed out of a front d, but had some fakie 50 and fakie back smith stalls that made me kinda happy at least. I need to skate that ramp more.

Not quite as cold. 34 degrees and sunny. Not bad! In the afternoon I drove around looking for a dry spot and found this spot. I skated for awhile before Jack and Carleigh showed up. I haven’t street skated in a long time and it showed. I was lowering the bar on horrible skating. There is a little 3 stair nearby with a weird approach, but still just a 3 stair and it took me at least 10 tries to ollie it. Ugh. I almost rolled my ankle on a fakie flip so I once again had to tighten up the Hufs as they are the loosest fitting shoes ever. Eventually I did start to skate ok. Had a run with a front 180 a little pile of snow, halfcab noseslide a ledge, kickflip, back 180 off a curb. Super basic, but it got my juices flowing. Jack and Carleigh showed up. Jack was on a beat up cruiser board and riding through snow a lot having a blast. Peep the sketchy manual in the snow above. So crazy. Carleigh hadn’t really skated in a long long time, but got some noseslides quick. Everyone seemed to be having fun and skating decent. Carleigh added a few front tails. I had a line of kickflip over the snow pile, crooks, heelflip. Jack was killing treflips all over the place and also did a dolphin flip (photo above). I got a line of slappy front tail, ollie up a ledge then front 180 off the last one. Jack was killing it with ollies up tall ones, treflips off, ollieing past the stairs, etc etc. Towards the end Carleigh did front 180 up the small one and almost halfcab the hard way off the next one. Jack did another ollie up then treflip off and I wanted in on it and eventually landed it. I know at the time it didn’t seem like a very clean make and I almost didn’t count it, but in my head now it seemed pretty good. Ha. Good thing no filming was going down. Super fun session. Hopefully it warms up so we can do it again.

Since there was absolutely no one calling in with printing problems I got out of work early. Took a little nap then went out to Rampy for an hourish before the family got back from Omaha. I mostly did did basics for awhile. Back axle, front axle, rock fakie, fakie axle fakie, etc. Some front disasters. In between bails I would try a treflip on flat. It’s so hard with that little of space and speed. I eventually would get a couple. After awhile I started just doing new tricks on Rampy. Frontside boneless/lien thing to tail. Came close to a lot of them, but only landed one. Also tried a bunch of kickflip axle stalls. Didn’t really get too close to that either. I lose a lot of motivation on Rampy these days. That coping sucks.

So awesome.

derek, connor, bernie, trent

Planned a Null day and it came to fruition. It was almost warm in Boulder, but Bernie was meeting Trent in Thornton so I went that way too. I picked up Derek and we met Connor there. It was cold as shit. There was a really cold breeze. Trent was ripping it. Crooks, feeble, back tail the step up to flat bar. Bernie was almost doing this crazy spin around manual. Derek skates parks so good and even just cruising around he kills it. Connor is so casual, but the first try front 50 up the hubba really surprised me. Everyone tried manuals for awhile. Manual the little manny pad and go all the way to the little quarterpipe. Derek did some where he manualled, dropped to manual, went to front 5-0, back to manual then to another front 5-0. So ridiculous. My head started getting too cold at this point so I made a push for us to leave. We went back to Boulder where it was indeed warmer. I just filmed at that point though. Derek got a good trick. Go Null!

It was supposed to get into the upper 30s, but it didn’t. Instead I went to red curbs in 25 degree weather wearing a winter jacket and gloves. It was pretty fun for awhile. I didn’t have much motivation though and didn’t want to make my sinus infection worse so only skated for about 30 minutes. I just did a few front/back 50s and front tails, kickflips, manuals.

Was finally starting to feel a little better after fighting a gnarly cold/sinus infection for a few days. Liz and the kids were gone so I put Pretty Sweet on and stood on my skateboard in the living room for awhile. Then I did some kickflips. I told myself I had to do 10 in a row. After two misses I ended up doing 17 then sat back down. This winter weather is getting pretty old. It’s even cold out on Rampy.

Hit 303 around 11, then met Chad at the snowy Commerce City park. I was able to skate for about an hour before needing to be home and head to my mom’s. The little ledges on the far side were dry. We skated those for awhile. Chad flipped in to frontside and backside 50s, back tail. I got way techer with front 5-0s being my techest trick. Almost got fakie nosegrind. We played on some other stuff for awhile. Chad had a super sick line with an ollie to fakie, halfcab tailslide (while nose grabbing) over the boob (seriously don’t know how to describe it, but it’s super scary looking) and probably some other trick that was super gnarly. I got a tiny back 50 on the qp and an even tinier f/s ollie. One of the flat banks was open. Chad did the MJ casper trick on it. I did a b/s flip and then ollied off of the thing Chad 5-0’d above which seemed tall to me. We did some gaps on the top benches, but there was snow all over so we were pretty limited. Chad did manual kickflip out easy. I did a front shove off the bench and a kickflip. Chad did nollie nose manny (maybe nollie flip out?? I forget). Chad rules. Fun session considering how snowy it was and stuff. Oh yeah, forgot to mention I tried about a hundred 3 flips. Landed on most, but only rode away from a couple.

This is some of the longest I’ve gone before updating my journal so this entry will be blunt. Which doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any blunts, because there was. And although the dust kicked in and you would think we were smoking blunts, that was not the case.

Connor came with Fuzz and held it down pretty hard. Fuzz and I don’t understand how he can have so many tricks. This was a front 5-0 to fakie. He did miss a first try boneless though like he said he would do.

In between pouting over a bad joke Carleigh did some tricks like feeble fakie and front d.

Jake didn’t have his best performance, but it was still a double double. Pivot fakie and gave the pool coping it’s first nose pick.

Fuzz was in good spirits. Fakie tail stall nose yank back to tail stall. Ha. He did it to fakie pivot too. Lots of other tricks.

Brian left before the phone photos started, but he would somehow grind the coping a little and do blunts to fakie that were as close to hanging up as possible.

I had a very uninspired session. The crappy pool coping is taking it’s toll on my motivation to skate Rampy. I had a couple ok runs for me. Got a front d revert. Came close to a lien boneless to tail thing.

Was told to work from home in the “blizzard”. It only snowed a couple inches, but I still bailed on driving to work. Around 4 I skated for about an hour on Rampy. I went out with the intention of learning some old man tricks, but I didn’t end up even really trying any. Instead, after doing some basics I resorted to trying kickflip axle stalls or 360 flips on flat. Maybe my first viewing of the DGK video is too blame. That video has lots of flippers in it. Basically every time I bailed on the kick 50 I would try a 3 flip. As you know there isn’t much flat on Rampy, so I was pretty excited to land any at all. I got 4 of them, but landed on about 20. As far as the kick fitty I came surprisingly close to getting into one. That’s why I kept trying it. I’ve never done that trick on any halfpipe before. It’d be way easier on a mellower/less tight ramp.

Almost forgot to mention I had new shoes! Huf Southerns. These shoes are crazy weird. They come with an insole that is super thick in the sole and really stiff. So I took it out and put two flimsy insoles in it. Seems to work so I guess I’ll see how it goes.