Had one of those Saturday mornings where I woke up at sunrise for some dumb reason. I did some stuff on the computer for awhile then decided I should bite the bullet and skate a bit since I wouldn’t be able to the rest of the weekend. I went to Boulder park. There was some dad’s in sandles and bike helmets skating with their kids and some remote control car action going on. Ugh. Just another reminder why I despise skateparks. But I stuck with it and had some fun. I was feeling very caffeinated from some matte and cranked up OFF! on the way to the park. That happy caffeine feeling went away pretty quick when I bailed and axle stall and I almost went down hard. Skating early in the morning is so tough for me. In the end I did some basics that I’ve done at that park awhile ago when I skated it once in awhile. My favorite line was dropping into the deep bowl, grinding out of the roll in thing, front 50 down the hubba, roll into the mini section then a front rock. I also got a front d there, but man I suck at tranny. Granted I haven’t been skating it at all lately, but it’s pathetic. I also did like 20 f/s ollies over the tiny hip hoping that maybe on one of them my board would actually leave the ground. I don’t think it did. Ha. Hyped I skated at least. Boulder park is so dated.

Got off work at a decent time on a super nice friday. Met up with Carleigh then we went to the 30th & iris ledges. It was kinda dry and things didn’t start all that great for either of us. Eventually we landed some tricks though. Carleigh got noseslide, noseslide shove and almost 180 nosegrind. She also almost did a b/s flip on flat. I got some uphill crooks, slow front 50, front 50 180 out, front 50 shove, front 5-0 and a weird first try kick back tail with a slide that I couldn’t get again. Flatground was ok, got some heelflips, treflip, some kickflips.

Then we went to the crazy bikepath kicker in north Boulder. I’ve never skated it before. We both had some ollies. It’s really fun. I got a smallish kickflip too, but it felt cooler then I would have thought. That thing boosts you. Carleigh basically got pop shove, but fell off. I ended it by trying a big ollie and not even hitting the tail. Ugh. Even though we didn’t land a whole lot it felt cool to skate some harder kind of spots.

Wow.

Jack’s blog has some fun photos from recent session. Peep it here.

Right after work on the first 90 degree day I met Jack and Carleigh and we went up to Cheyenne for the 23rd anniversary John Doe skate jam at the Cheyenne park. We pulled in at the same time as Skelly, Justin and Mike from Ft Collins. Good timing. Most of the Cheyenne dudes were chilling as they had been going at it for hours. Sean hadn’t stopped though, he was still busy destroying the park. Monster sw back 180, a million awesome tricks all landed every try. Dude slays. I started out on the tiny qp in front of the main ledge. That thing is fun. I did a first try blunt to rock fakie which was new for me last time I went there and then a few backside blunts. So hyped on learning that! Everyone else was kind of all over the place. Jack did a crazy manual late 360 shove, Carleigh got a front 50 across and down. I got a noseslide down. Got into some front 50s across and down, but never quite got it. Had a couple fun lines of front 50 the top, ride down the bank, boardslide the shotgun rail, nose manny the flat of the mini ramp. Jack did a nice front hurricane on the shotgun rail right in front of me and told me to crooks it. After a patented crooks/willy/jib I did an actual crooks. Neato. Man so much was going on this is hard to remember. Mike did a really long wallie 50. Skelly was nursing a broken foot, but still shredding. I tried wallieing up the green box and was kinda just sucking flailing around. Oh yeah, I had new shoes:

Fallen Forte Lowcard collab. They are thin as hell so skated pretty good on day 1. After awhile Mike and I started trying tricks over the hip. He did back 180, cab and fakie bigspin. All were tight and all were after doing rock ‘n roll or rock fakie on the weird dark metal qp at the top. I tried backside flip and got a couple. The second one felt great. Next up we all skated near the top of the park. There were some crazy long lines going with lots of ollies. I think both Carleigh and Mike got the following. Ollie the long two, ollie up 1, quick ollie up the next 1, ollie up the taller ledge (2 stair height at the top of the park), ollie into the step up. So sick. Jack was in on the action, but I forget what he was doing. He would manual the middle stair and ollie up the next of course. No comply flip up the long 2, no comply tailslide on the bank, a ton. I was hyped on a line of ollie the long 2 (which was way easier then I thought it would be and I’m sorry I embarrassed myself so much in front of Jack and Carleigh), ollie up 1, quick ollie up the 2nd, kickflip up the tall ledge, kickflip down the top 2 stair. That’s almost as exhausting to type as it was to do. Ha. At the end Jack, Carleigh, Mike and I played a game of SKATE. It ended up Jack and I going at it and it went on forever. We weren’t landing all that much, but somehow we went on forever and it seemed like a totally epic game to me. At one point we were tied and Jack did a double flip. I hucked it and landed it. Hyped me up so much. Later on Jack would take me out with a 43 shifty that I managed to land after the game (of course). That trick hates me. What a fun night though. Warm weather, no wind in Cheyenne, a couple beers, homies, good skating. What a blast.

Whoa, a null filming mission? Haven’t done this in a while. Went to meta to meet up with Jack, Dean, Derek, Chad. While we were waiting I skated the slappy curb as I didn’t want to lose front feebles and slappy crooks. I did a bunch of them and the dream line, but with an ollie instead of a kickflip. Jake randomly biked by at one point. He’s been out for awhile with a rolled ankle, but still managed a couple slappy grinds and a bluntslide. Then we went to Southern Hills. While the boys warmed up I skated. I got a little line of ollie the 2 stair, crooks the ledge, 3 flip on the smooth flatground. Might have gotten that line twice actually. Also did a front 50 and a front 50 shove as time expired and I turned into filmer Glen. Jack got a good line. Derek almost got his gap back tail bigspin out. At times I thought I was going to throw up. I felt really weird and still sick. But I pulled through. We went to Petes to eat then to the new CU Research center. Most of Meta was there. Chad and I arrived first and Cameron filmed Josh do a completely ridiculous line in front of our eyes. It was crazy. After some drama everyone ended up at the front for what was mostly just everyone skating flatground and Josh continuing to rip everything. Josh did front 180/fs halfcab twists down the long two stairs. It was so funny. His fakie benihana was hot too:

Pretty much everyone was landing crazy stuff. Cameron did 3 shove late flip back to back. Josh did a nollie treflip and I jokingly said that trick was easy, posed one and somehow landed on it at 270 degrees. It was funny. After all that we went back up to the hill to drop some people off. I had mentioned to Chad that I really wanted to try a line at the slappy curbs. I wasn’t feeling very well and probably should never have tried it, but I did. Oh, and did I mention my shoes were literally falling apart?

Not so good for hammers. Or anything really. Jack and Carleigh hung out too as Chadman filmed. For any doubters out there, Chad is one of the best dudes ever. Well, all three of these people actually. But yeah, Chad has a heart of gold. Anyways, I started trying the line and eventually got all 4 tricks, but the kickflip and the slappy crooks were a bit too arthritic for me. What’s that? arthritic. As in that is my style. Thanks for the help Fuzz. Instead of having too artistic of a style, I have too arthritic of a style. Ha ha so awesome. I did manage to line up a front feeble with a decent kickflip over the little gap though. Maybe I’ll use it at some point, maybe I’ll just talk trash on it. I blame Chad for saying “You know if you land the kickflip you’ll get the slappy crooks”. Have I mentioned what a dick Chad can be? The kickflips over the gap (off a bench, over a short sidewalk section into a crack infested bike path) felt really weird. I committed every time, but with the lack of grip on my shoe sole I was really having troubles and I only landed 3 total. But it felt awesome to try so hard. Thanks Chad.

I’d been fighting a bad cold all week. Ugh. Started Saturday off by standing for two hours in the cold rain watching Ollie’s flag football game. It was fun though. Ollie got his first interception and his first touchdown. After some food and napping and the weather clearing up I went to meet up with Dean, Carleigh, Jack, Blaine and Conor at Red Curbs. Luckily I was late as apparently a cop had decided to make an example of them and wrote a $250 trespassing ticket. Ugh, that is one of Boulder’s best spots and so needed in bad weather. We went to the school way out on Arapahoe instead. I thought Carleigh had left to get ready for her sushi party, but it turns out she had still wanted to skate. Doh, sorry Carleigh. The crew at this point was Blaine, Jack, Dean and I. It was fun. Dean first. He did a gap out to axle stall like I had fun doing a couple weeks ago, ollied up the 3 stairs in a row (so hard for us tall folks, well at least for me), some manuals and ollied off the bigger drop. Blaine seemed to be more in chill mode and was kinda just messing around, but having fun. Jack was you know, ripping. He even did some nose manuals. Hippy jump a rail. Manual up all three stairs. It’s hard to remember all what he did at this point. It was rad to see as I haven’t seen him in a bit. I shaked off some rust and had a great session for me. Got a manual off the small drop then kickflip off the curb, manual the bigger drop, kickflip up, front 180 off the drop, ollied up the bigger ledge (super hyped on that) and had a blast. After awhile we went to the back of the school where Dean almost got a sick nosepick and I ollied (if scraping your tail counts) off the big two. It’s been awhile since I’ve ollied off anything that tall and it felt good. Jack, Dean and I went on to play a game of SKATE that I somehow won. Only because Jack was kind enough to not do switch and nollie tricks. It was my first game of SKATE since before the arthritis started and it was even funner then I remember. Nice kickflip Dean and thanks for playing old guy rules Jack. After that we went over to Carleigh’s and watched skate videos. It was fun.

BAD ASS CHICK OF THE MONTH (in the kitchen).

Daniel Spiegel – ÜBER Skateboards Part

Man this is good

Well this is awesome.

Got off work early, chilled a bit, ate a fried egg sandwich, make about 500 phone calls, watched the new TWS video and then Fuzz arrived around 7pm. We went to Meta so Fuzz could fan out and I could go buy the new OFF! at Albums On The Hill. John was saying he was gonna go skate an indoor mini and we were down. We went to skate campus until John got off work. We went about 100 feet and stayed put the rest of the night. Fuzz and I started out so bad. One of my favorite things about skating with Fuzz is how much we laugh at ourselves and each other. We looked so old and uncoordinated when we started. We were slamming trying slappy 50s on the little banked curb. Eventually things started falling into place though. Fuzz grinded a long slappy. Carleigh showed up after a bit. Out of the blue I thought about this and decided to try a slappy crooks. Got it first try! I went on to do probably 50 of them as it easily could be one of the funnest tricks in skateboarding. Carleigh did a couple slappy front 50s then slammed and learned slappy noseslides. So rad. Fuzz was killing it. Switch bluntslide popped out. Slappy noseslides, tailslides. He struggled with the slappy crooks. Kind of surprised me, but he did get a sick one. John showed up and after some warming up we started trying some lines. We did slappies, then ollied up onto the bench and ollied the little sidewalk gap. I had been doing some downhill nose mannies between sections of rock. Pretty fun. Started posing slappy front feeble grinds and they actually felt doable. Several tries later I started landing them. So hyped! Two new tricks in one night! Then I tried to combine everything with the nose manny, front feeble, ollie up the bench (the hardest part for me because I am horrible at ollies onto stuff at weird angles), kickflip the gap (never quite committed) then slappy crooks. That would have ruled. I got really close. John was doing lots of halfcabs, 43 shifties, nollie back 180s and was trying to 3 flip the gap. Never committed, but maybe if a camera was pointed his way. This night ended up being one of my favorite sessions ever. I don’t normally land new tricks and then do them several times. The slappy crooks and front feebs felt so good. And what an awesome crew.