It sure gets dark early now. After work Ollie and I went across the street to the school. It was totally vacant so we finally started skating the new yellow curb. It’s sick, and even gets tall at some points that it can be called a ledge (at least in my book). Even though I was super tired I managed to skate pretty good. Maybe it’s because I had some new shoes I was breaking in:

Lakai Manchesters. I have had a couple pairs of these shoes before, they are awesome. We rode down the handicap ramp and ollied off the tall part of the curb onto the slick parking lot. They just re-tarred it so it’s insanely slippery. Both Ollie and I slid out on some back 180s. His are so good. Riding down the handicap ramp switch and doing a fakie ollie off the ledge was fun. Then I started trying the 5 stair I’ve been staring at since it was built. A few tries in and I landed it. This would be because Ollie set his board at the bottom and jumped down onto it which got me really hyped. It’s not a long 5, but it is 5. I should ollie it often to get comfortable with stairs again. It’s probably bigger then the 6 at Broomfield. Anyways, we had a blast. I also got kickflip and front shove off the ledge after rolling down the handicap ramp. Then we went over to the long two stair area. Ollie did his drop to quick back 180 the second stair. So sick. I got front 180, but I had to go slow. Then I ollied the gap from the short two onto the asphalt. Fun. Then we ate pizza and watched Ghostbusters. That movie rules.

Met up with Josh, Max and Dean at Meta to do some filming on campus. The goal was to just roll into campus without any real plans and just film lines of Josh and Max. They didn’t disappoint. I rode my cruiser from spot to spot, did some manuals while they were warming up, fire crackered some stairs, etc. At the end of the night Josh slammed super hard on a gap to manny that went bad. Ouch. All was good though and after we went to Carleigh’s and had a celebratory beer. Neat.

Broomfield park again? Crazy. I met Jake, Carleigh, Fuzz, Brian and Neil there. Max was already there and then Josh Steele and crew showed up too. So awesome. Warming up was a couple kickturns on the quarta potty then a game of SKATE with Jake. Without much warmup I thought I would skate horribly, but it worked out pretty good. I landed a lot of my tricks and even lots of Jake’s tricks. The ones I was hyped on were 3 flip, fakie bigflip, b/s flip. After that Fuzz challenged me to another one and Brian joined. Brian skates Indys so he was out first. I think Fuzz had me at SK and he had nothing when I saw this scooter kid slam super hard trying to get up onto the blue ledge. For whatever reason I thought I should imitate it and I bailed out of my ollie and dove onto the blue ledge. Fuzz caught on immediately and was laughing so hard. Brian caught on too. Before we could resume the game the scooter kid went again, got on the ledge this time and then slammed hard diving off of it. So I imitated that slam too. I got a good shinner, but it was worth it seeing Brian, Fuzz and Neil laughing so hard they could barely stand. I have to admit I was pretty proud of my efforts. The game of SKATE was over at that point, but my humor wasn’t. Fuzz wanted to work on a trick and he said “You’re better then me at trying new tricks, lets try something”. Naturally I replied with “That’s because I never actually land them.” HA! (Gren voice) Fuzz wanted back tails. He did a bunch of really good ones. I wanted kick back tails or kick back 5-0. I got a kick back 50 then started trying to tail. Fuzz had moved on to back lips. We ended up getting them back to back. Tight! Jake was over on the black ledge doing bluntslides. Carleigh was in the pool. Neil was sitting. Max and Josh were destroying the place. Josh did front noseblunt 180 in the hard way on the steep bank. Wow. Max did a line with switch heel switch manny, halfcab heel manny back 180 out, 360 flip manual front 180 out. Yes, one line. It was insane. He also did fakie nosegrind on the brown ledge to fakie nose manual down the ledge. Ridiculous. Fuzz and I worked on front noseslides for awhile. We landed them, but they weren’t up to par yet. We will keep at it. We’ll make Jason proud. After a bit of chilling and watching Max do funny manual dance tricks I thought it would be fun to do 1/3 of one of his tricks. He had tried front 180 fakie manual fakie front bigspin out. So Fuzz, Jake and I tried it without the manual part. So I guess that’s 2/3? YES! Fuzz was of course first to land it. He got a couple. They weren’t perfect, but way better then the straight legged ass in the air one that I landed. Then Fuzz and I tried kickflip up b/s flip off. Once again, Fuzz landed a couple. I didn’t. I was close, but the lights went out. Josh was almost getting nollie front 180 heel sw manual. Geez. Another fun night in Broomfield.

Jake called me right after dinner and said he had his mom’s car and wanted to drive somewhere to skate. I had to take advantage of Jake driving! So he picked me up and we went to Broomfield park. We were warming up on the quartapotty when Sean showed up too. Rad. The quartapotty session was pretty sick. Jake rattled through his tricks quick. Pivot fakie first try, hurricanes both ways. Killing it. I struggled a bit to get a regular back pivot which I haven’t done in awhile then started trying more stuff. Front feebles there are my favorite trick. I got a b/s hurricane pretty quick which I’ve never done there before. Then I started trying f/s hurricanes which I have never done anywhere other then the six inch bank at Lafayette. It was way harder here, but I eventually got a couple. I was trying a line with front 5-0 on the blue ledge, front hurricane on the qp, back 5-0. Never got all of them together. There was not many people at the park. Darren was there and we had an old guy crook run. I got mine first, Darren second, Jake third. Tight. Then Sean ollied up the stepup super easy to manual without even flinching his arms. Jake had never ollied up it so we both went for it too. I was trying a run with kickflip into the bank, manual the black ledge, axle stall the brick qp then ollie up. Never got them all and the ollie up took forever for me. Ugh. There was a rainbow ledge session that went down for a bit. Sean did the smoothest back nosegrind back 180 out in history. It left Jake and I speechless. Jack was working on front lip and eventually got it. I was trying back 5-0 shove on the blue ledge which I eventually got. Rad, haven’t done that in forever. I also did a kickflip back 50 and was gonna fall, but took my front foot off and no complied out. Technically that’s a new trick for me even though I wasn’t trying it. My last tricks of the day were to front lip the blue box and nollie tre. Neither came quick, but I got them both. Really fun session.

I love how her “friends” are just laughing.

Dean and I had little photos in the about page of Nullozine. Here’s my photo. A crooked grind that went the distance. And by the distance I mean less then an inch. But at least there is concrete proof that I finally skated something taller then a curb. Ha. Thanks for the photo Dean.

Skates the raddest spots.

If you know how OCD I am about gas mileage then you know I was freaking out when I saw 121.4 mpg. I had filled up in Leadville and this was the mileage as I coasted downhill out of town. 1.21 gigawatts!

Sean Flaherty Nose Bonk. Photo by Dean Barnes.

Chadman front 180 up switch heel over. Photo by Dean Barnes.

Man I was so tired. I drove down from my mom’s place early. The drive wasn’t bad, but 3 hours is a bit regardless. A big crew had sounded interested, but when it came meeting time it quickly fell apart. We still went to Denver though. It was Bernie, Chad and I in my car. Dean, Max, Sean and Jack in Dean’s car. First spot was overrun with Broncos traffic so we went way out to Centennial to one of the sickest spots ever. I didn’t even warm up before the filming started. Some really cool stuff went down and some not so cool stuff. After the kids were ready to move on for food I wanted to skate. Chad stuck around and we skated a bit more. I had troubles ollie’ing up the two stair due to a crack that messed with my head, but ended up getting it. Ollieing off a little two stair that had another two right away was tough for me too. I was sucking. Chad was doing 100mph kickflip manuals up the two. There is a somewhat tall ledge off the two stair and I wanted to noseslide it. I got a kickflip out of the handicap bump then got the noseslide. Sweet.

After some food we went to the Centennial park. It was crowded when we got there and I was still feeling stiff and awkward. Max was destroying the place. Sean too. Chad skates so rad. Just kinda doing random stuff then will do such a crazy trick perfect. Dean ollied a rail on the bank. I was trying to ollie into the bank over the rail, but took forever to do it. I got it though. Max treflipped over it and ollied over it out of a manual. Yeah, I suck. I also did a tailslide on the bank, front shove off a little kicker and almost got treflip flyout for the brohs. One of the front shove misses hurt my foot. These little Lakais are gonna be done real quick. They already hurt too much. Pretty weird day. Too much driving.