Been fighting a cold all week. Mainly due to having to get up earlier than normal for work and having lots of late night stuff going on (Bones Brigade premiere, Afghan Whigs, Halloween, etc). After a nap I decided I should go out and do a few kickflips. I forgot to put my old shoes on (that now have a hole in the bottom) so I guess I’ve moved on to some Mariano’s now. I did the first 5 kickflips, bailed one, then did another few and went inside. Not sure this even really counts as a day of skating, but it felt good to skate a little.

This clip rules.

A few days ago I got an email saying ‘Reply now with your name for chances to win tickets to Afghan Whigs at the Ogden Theater ..” so I did. Turns out I would win a pair. Prior to winning the tickets I had no intention of going to see them even though their first album Up In It is one of my all time favorites. I lost interest in them in the mid 90’s when they changed from a grunge band to a rock band. They had a lot of success and I respect that. I knew going into the show that I probably wouldn’t hear much of the old Afghan Whigs that I loved. And well, free tickets! Can’t beat that.

The first band was The Knew from Denver. They were decent enough, even good at times. Brian and Denise showed up and Brian immediately began talking shit about how this show was going to blow away the Dinosaur Jr show a couple weeks ago. For me I knew that this wasn’t even a possibility, but I did want to at least be impressed and surprised by the Whigs. Well, that didn’t happen. I’ll try to sugar coat how I really felt about the show. The song ‘Gentlemen’ was good. I will give them that, it rocked, they played it well. They played a lot of other songs off of Gentlemen that I recognize from late nights with Liz as she used to put this cd on a lot. That kind of stoked me out. But most songs were super mellow and the grunge of old was not there at all. They had three people playing guitars and half the time you could hear a cello over them. At on point Greg Dulli said “That’s why we have three guitars!” and it made me laugh. Which leads me to some other great Greg Dulli quotes from the night. Upon seeing someone texting in the front he said “Hey no texting up front. That’s why you aren’t getting any pussy!” The last song he ripped off the Beatles for a bit with the “She loves you yeah yeah yeah” and turned it into “Hey ladies if your man doesn’t love you come back stage after the show and I’ll love you.” Ugh, that’s some serious ego rock star crap that I don’t like to hear. But I love a band where the singer never even speaks between songs so who am I to judge.

It seems like the majority of the crowd enjoyed the show. Although Brian (a much bigger fan of them then me) did lean over and say “I eat my words” and Zach wasn’t very hyped either. I can’t say I’m glad I went even though the tickets were free. I did play some Up In It songs this morning though so it couldn’t have been the worst show.

Fuzz got someone to work for him so it was the first Sunday he’s had off and could skate. He was hyped! I picked up Jason in the early afternoon and we rolled to Fuzz’s and picked him up. Jason called the spots and we started with the Safeway ledge. Fuzz hadn’t skated in 5 weeks due to a rolled ankle, but you couldn’t tell by his skating. We rattled off some basics on the ledge starting with slappy noseslides. Some basics took longer then others. We also pulled out a big piece of angle iron for wallies/slappis which ended up being a lot of fun. Jason looked on and even walked along the fence for awhile and stretched in some ways he hasn’t been able to in awhile. Jason suggested we both do nollie front tails. Fuzz did it good and another to fakie. I got one little skidder. We also worked on front 5-0s to fakie until we each got one. Fuzz’s was of course proper. We each got back 50s. Fuzz had a really funny one with a perfect back 50, but when he rolled out he slammed forward for no apparent reason. I also managed a kick back 50 with some tic tacs in the grind and landing. Haven’t landed that in awhile. I would try to line out tricks with the angle iron and ledge. Had a fun front 50 then kickflip the angle iron. Also had some switch front 180 jams over the angle iron, then back 50 or something on the ledge. Carleigh, Connor and Blaine showed up. Connor looked like he cared for about 2 minutes. Blaine reminded me about slappy crooks. I have no idea how I could have forgotten about it, but I shortly did a line of slappy crooks on the angle iron then a kick back 50 on the ledge. Hyped on that! Carleigh had some good noseslides out of the gates then tried front 180 nosegrind shove out, but never got it.

Next we went to this bank spot. Again, Jason’s spot suggestion. He had a blast at this spot with Neil and Fuzz a couple years ago and thought about it so we rolled there. Missing from the photo is Carleigh, Blaine and I. Anyways you can kind of see the spot from the photo. Basically the banks gets taller until typical loading dock height. The left side (pictured) is a bit mellower then the right side, but both are steep. Connor and Fuzz killed it out of the gates with front pivots and tails like they were nothing. Fuzz worked up to a front pivot on the steep side. So crazy. Connor did a rock to feeble on it. Carleigh ollied into the mellower side which is gnarly. Connor got bored. I took forever to get a front tail on the easy side. Fuzz worked on fakie pivot to yank in to fakie while I worked on a line of b/s 180, halfcab flip, ollie the curb and bank where it’s really short. We both got them. Blaine did a nice ollie to fakie while I did a b/s flip on the mellower bank. Took me awhile, but the two I got felt great. As everyone started talking about where to eat I started trying some 1 mph kickflip noseslides (stall). I can get it positioned perfect into noseslide if I don’t commit my back foot, but the second I got for both feet I can’t lock in. Figures. All in all another fun day and it’s great having Jason out with us.

Picked up Jason and the Connor and headed to Ft Collins. The plan was for me to drop off some wheels/hats at MRKT which we did. Always good to see Eric.

Then we went to Launch and checked out Andy’s new facility. The ramp looks amazing and we brought Nullozine and Bored for his skate magazine library. So sick.

Next we went to Northside. Dave Fuller had joined us so the three of us skated an uncrowded Northside for about an hour before it was time to dress up for the Halloween contest. That park rules. I had lots of fun just cruising around and getting used to cruising the new trucks. Lots of wallies, some grinds, etc. Dave almost did a switch wallie over the corner of the barrier. So sick. Connor was ripping as usual. I can’t seem to remember any tricks in particular I was proud of. After awhile people started showing up in costumes as did the rest of Trick Factory. So we got dressed up.

I’m not in this photo, but that’s us. I didn’t skate more then the ledge (poorly) at this point because it got really crowded. Brian was straight killing it with the costume. Mall grabs, falling when trying to skid to a stop, had an old beat up board, etc. So insanely funny. Dave busted out a mountain board for his costume. Man it was insane. I laughed so hard. Ft Collins rules. I had to get home in time for India to have a concert which was also a blast.

Got home to a grouchy family. It was pretty cold out so flatground was out. I opted for a short Rampy session that ended up being pretty fun. I had some longer runs for me. Tried some fake backside axle stalls to rock, but didn’t get too close.

It’s snowing out, that means Rampy! Not many people interested in skating, but Lazer came over and we started things off mellow. I had new trucks as I could never get the darn bolt back on those worn down Thunders. I had some Indy Koston “Hollows”. Light Indys? I was kinda tired of wheel bite so bad with Thunders so decided to try a little higher truck. As you can see above it didn’t go so good. I was able to skate them fine for awhile. Lazer and I were pretty chill, talking a lot. Neither of us did anything too crazy for us. Carleigh eventually showed up and the mellowness continued. After awhile I bailed weird and it turns out my bushing came out like you can see in the photo and that was weird. It ended up cracking all the way through so I had to scrounge for some old bushings and found some Ace ones. Hopefully they work fine. Skating resumed. Kind of. It was really mellow, but we had fun. I slammed a few times because of the new wheels and how slippery they are when they are new. I put new wheels on because I figure if you’re gonna have new trucks, might as well make it weirder with new wheels too (plus my old wheel had lots of powerslides under them and were under 50mm). Not sure when I’ll get to putting the pool coping on Rampy, but it’ll happen pretty soon.

First and foremost, read a well written and great review here on the Westword site (where the above photo is from). I was more nervous for this show then I have been for any show in a long time. It was like the perfect storm of anxiety and I was a mess leading up to this show. So as soon as Liz and I hit the Goosetown Tavern for dinner the beer started flowing. We met up with some homies (Tom, Fuzz, John, Chad, CJ, Darin) and pre-partied until about the time the opening band went on stage. Turns out Shearwater pretty good. It’s always nice having a decent opening act.

Then came Dinosaur Jr. Gulp. They opened with See It On Your Side which is the last song on Sky. It was rad, but the sound was weird. They didn’t really get the sound fixed all night. They didn’t sound as awesome as normal, but they were actually playing pretty awesome. The Bluebird sound guy sucked it up. With all that said it was still an awesome show. They played six songs off the new album and a slew of Dinosaur classics including Sludgefeast which is my favorite live song ever. I probably drank too much. It seemed whenever I was almost finished with a beer someone (normally Fuzz) would hand me a beer and say “It’s your night man enjoy!” So awesome. Thanks to everyone for making it such a fun night and if you didn’t already know Dinosaur Jr is the greatest band of all time.

Not so bad, dude looks like he’s having fun at least.

Got an invite from Colby the night before to hit Arvada park. Alright, I haven’t hit a park in a long time. Sure. I got there and it was crowded, but not crazy crowded. The little kid area (funnest part) was pretty vacant so we skated there. Warming up was kinda fun actually. Did some boardslide popouts on the round blue ledge, carves on the jersey barriers, some dorky stuff on the edge of one of the blue kickers. Colby and his homies were ripping and having fun, but seemed to have to leave right after I got there. Doh. So I had a couple hours to kill with no money to go bowling with my friends or skate the park. I skated the park. At times I even had fun and seemed motivated. Had a fun line starting above the little bowl carving around at the start of the snake run to axle stall on the weird qp on top of the platform, brief f/s 5-0 on the little cement qp entering the kid section, b/s ollie on the hip, boardslide the marble rounded flatbar. That was fun. It was around then that I noticed the pivot cup had completely blown out and was missing from my back truck. This made for some really awkward turning and started to weird me out. I tried a run for awhile of ollie over the marble flat bar, ride over the little blue kicker to rock then front 50 the stupid super low hubba that is long. I got into it, but ollieing onto something that low is weird. I ollied into it a couple times at least. I went through a long phase of trying feeble stall kickflips out on the tiny qp under the snakerun. Actually got kind of close a couple times. Then I went up to the little qp above the snakerun that is pretty fun. Did a few basics, but really started to feel blah. Went into the snakerun a few times, didn’t carve up the monster qp very high. Only felt weightless once. Pretty much left after that. Went home and tried to replace the pivot cup, but the darn kingpin bolt/nut is so worn down that I couldn’t get it back on. I guess it’s new trucks time, been almost a year so not too bad.