I was having a lazy Sunday. It rained early and I figured that would be enough for the day and after slacking for awhile I fell asleep. I woke up and there was a text from Carleigh saying we should go skate. Rad. But then I looked outside and it looked like another unusual thunderstorm. Ugh. We headed north a little thinking we might escape it. Nope. We lasted a the Valmont spot about 5 minutes before the rain started coming. In that time Carleigh and I played a game of SKATE and I ollied off the loading dock once.

So we went to a parking garage that has some red curbs, but isn’t the famous Red Curbs. It ended up being a blast. We tried tons of tricks. Some of which were landed. Carleigh worked on back 50s until she landed her first few. Sick! She also almost stomped some varial heels. After some basics I had started trying 5-0 kickflip out and got a couple that felt doable, but I wasn’t close. I tried a bunch of nollie f/s flips and got soooo close. Argh. Other tricks I was hyped to do were treflips, front tailslide and kickflips.

Then we went across the lot to another garage and ollied a newspaper stand (on it’s side) a few times before I freaked out and wanted to leave because I kept landing weird and felt like I was gonna roll my ankle. Fun day. We were hyped to ollie the newspaper stand. Oh yeah, I had a new board and wheels. Poser.

After a fun morning of climbing around on the roof and cleaning the gutters Jake came over, whooped me in a game of SKATE then we left for Lafayette. Ollie is super into skating again all of a sudden so he wanted to come. It was weird skating that park with him, because I felt I had to keep an eye out on him at all times. He was fine though and mostly just ollied down the tight qp near the entrance and flew out of the curb cuts. He did manage a nice b/s ollie on a flat bank as well. We had met Lazer, Brett, Brian, Carleigh and Dean so we had a crew. I kind of sucked it everywhere and don’t remember a single thing worth mentioning that I did. Jake had a nice front pivot on the wallride to rock. Lazer had a nice feeble to fakie on it. Brian got gnar and did blunt to fakie. Then it started to rain so after some hanging around Ollie and I went to Red Curbs. When we first got there, it was fine, but ..

.. then all hell broke loose. Pretty much everything got wet and a huge puddle formed. You could skate both sections of red curb, but without much setup. For whatever reason I told Ollie I’d give him a new deck if he ollied up the tall curb and did a pop shove off it. He did the ollie up pretty quick, but the regular pop shove down took many, many tries. He wanted it! Lucky kid. Jack and his friend Daniel had showed up and Jack ripped it cruising around on a cruiser board. Kickflip front nose jibs, almost back 180 kickflip nosegrind. I myself was skating like crap once again. I tried a million front 5-0 kickflips out and didn’t get close at all. I tried some kick back tails as well and didn’t get them either. The only thing I landed was a front tail shove to back shove out. But I didn’t even slide it. Yippee. Seeing Jack was rad.

Liz had made plans for a late evening movie with a friend so I was allowed to skate right after work at 6:00 before watching the kids. But India ended up having a sleepover and Ollie said he was into skating again and that he would want to come again. Rad. We chowed some nachos quick, then went to one of Boulders best schools. I was feeling really tired from standing all week at work again. We cruised around the school for awhile before settling in on trying some lines up top. Ollie was trying to ollie a crack then do a front 180 all quick off the curb. He would get it. He also got back 180. I tried a line of pop shove, front 180 off the curb, halfcab flip, manual. The halfcab flips did not come easy. I might have gotten the line, but I think I touched on the manual. I tried again and slammed super hard on the manual as I didn’t even make it up the curb. Ugh. Then we went back to the main area. Ollie did a sick front board to fakie into the a slight downhill on the stair by the long aluminum bench. Then he did a super awesome line to it. Walk up the 12 stair, ride down the handicap ramp, wave at your shadow, push downhill going fast, ride sideways off the curb, then front board to fakie. I wish I was 9 years old again. He has the most fun. I did a boardslide to manual on the shorter bench which was the only thing new and remotely good I did. I got a front 50 on the bench too which was hard as I didn’t have much drive. Ollie killed it though. That kid rules to skate with. So much energy, smiles, etc. He back and front 180’d the two stair. Oh yeah his baller line was the jump off a playground equipment landing fakie, halfcab off the first curb, then front 180 off the second all quick.

Rating: STYLE
Rating: COMFORT
Rating: BOARD FEEL
Rating: DURABILITY
Rating: OVERALL

I’ve had a few of these shoes. They blow out real quick. I’ve worn through the suede on the ollie toe in under three days. The soles blow out quicker than most shoes. Well, the colored soles anyways, the gum ones seem to last longer. But they are super comfy, skate great right out of the box and look good. If you don’t mind doing some shoe repair like me (super glue in some old suede in the hole or shoe goo it) then it’s a decent shoe.

Rating: STYLE
Rating: COMFORT
Rating: BOARD FEEL
Rating: DURABILITY
Rating: OVERALL

It’s been a REALLY long time since I’ve done a shoe review. I guess it must be summer and I have more time at work, but I have a couple for you. First is the I-Path Kenny Reed Low with “waxed suede”. This shoe lasted a long time. That’s probably it’s best quality. It didn’t have the best board feel, and the waxed suede may have made them last longer, but it made the flick weird. Something about IPath vulcanized soles kind of hurts my foot too. Not bad, just a little. I’ve had the non-waxed suede version of this shoe too and liked it a bit more. Overall, it’s a good shoe for sure, not my favorite though.

First night I could skate in a few and it’s dumping outside. Doh. It ended up working out though as Ollie, Carleigh and I went to Red Curbs. Red curbs gets puddles when it rains because of the drainage, but it was really bad with the heavy rains. We managed though. I felt really uncoordinated initially. Way more so than normal. Ugh. Standing all day at work is tough on the legs, but once I get going it feels like I can skate forever. Ollie ripped it. Front 180, back 180s off curbs. Halfcab off, front and back boardslides. Some of the frontside boardslides he pulled to fakie or 270’d around. So sick. He was going slow, but still. Carleigh cruised around for awhile before settling in on trying the powerslide across the median. She got it quite a few times in the end. After some cruising around warming up, front, back 50s I told myself I had to do 4 manual tricks over the short manny pad. I ended up getting five. Manny, nose manny, front 180 nose manny, kickflip manny and switch front 180 manny. Rad. Then I tried the powerslide too. It took awhile and going the other way I would try a line of ollie a yellow bar, ollie a puddle, ollie up the curb, kickflip off. Got that a couple times. Ollie had started trying fakie pop shoves off a curb and landed it. Whoa! I got his back with the powerslide finally. I had told Ollie there was no way Carleigh and I could do that trick, but we tried it anyway. Carleigh ended up getting it in about 3 tries. It took me about 20. Ha. It had only taken Ollie about 10 tries. Last part of the session for me was trick up, off the longer manny pad. I got front 180 up then fakie bigflip off. Rad, never done that off anything before. Not even a huge curb. I wanted to do kickflip up then treflip off, but it was too late and I needed to get Ollie home. Fun night.

A couple really good new parts. First, Dave Bachinsky, aka one of the most underrated skaters of our time. The second to last trick isn’t possible. That’s an 8 foot drop into that rough bank. Not possible.

Torey Pudwill is a total skate rat and it’s fun to watch. So many mind blowing tricks in this one. Some of my favorites are the ollie over the rail into the bank then kickflip the median, the long back noseblunt, the ridiculous back tail, the switch back lip to front board in a line, the super long back lipslide 270 shove into the bank, etc. Dude rips and I’m kind of starting to like his flailing hands more than the standard hands by your side clones these days.

I have to admit that my dad dying a month ago has changed me. I’ve been way more into spending time with the kids and getting stuff done around the house. Over the weekend I built a new crawl space cover and the kids helped me paint it. So fun.

And last night was baseball with Ollie in the rain. No home runs for him, but he did catch a few pop balls I hit out to outfield. So fun.

How do you make an epic skate trip even more epic? You start it off by seeing your favorite band put on perhaps the best show you’ve ever seen them play! Everyone here knows I’m as big of a Dinosaur Jr fan as they come and when I found out that Dinosaur Jr would be playing in Boston the first night of my skate trip my excitement went through the roof. The first two days of Boston were rain, but it didn’t even matter, we saw Dinosaur Jr!

And did I tell you that Carleigh was in Boston for a day too! Awesome. Carleigh, Joe, Pat.

Carleigh took this photo of Joe, Pat, me and Charlie. And no, I wasn’t double fisting it.

Epic Bug shirt purchased.

OFF! opened and they killed it. OG Black Flag steez.

Did I mention I’m friends with the guitarist for OFF!? Dimitri rules.

The second part of the show was Henry Rollins interviewing Dinosaur Jr. We had made a joke that you would have to drink everytime J Mascis responded with a blunt one word answer. Not the case, he and the rest of the band were on point. I’m pretty sure there are multiple times where I freaked out and was like “This is the best thing ever!”

Someone recorded and posted the interview. Without a doubt between OFF! and the interview this was the best opening for a Dinosaur Jr show ever. Top it off with good friends, a good crowd, good beers, a good venue, a great setlist (Bug) and you get ..

Quite possibly my favorite concert ever. Words cant really describe how insanely awesome I thought this show was. They played In A Jar and The Wagon before starting Bug. Bug didn’t use to be my favorite, but I’ve always thought the 1-2-3 punch of They Always Come, Yeah We Know and Let It Ride was the best three song combo on any Dinosaur Jr album. It didn’t disappoint.

Instead of Lou screaming WHY DON’T YOU LIKE ME? over and over during Don’t two dudes got on stage and screamed their lungs out. It was amazing. Carleigh took this awesome photo. They played Don’t for almost 15 minutes of pure destruction. After a short break came an encore. Lou announced, “Wouldn’t it be awesome is we played a shit load of Black Flag songs?” Then they went on to play Out There and The Lung. Ha ha J Mascis is one hilarious dude. Indeed one of the best shows I’ve ever seen and I haven’t stopped listening to Bug since.

We went up to the NCAR hill above Boulder to watch the fireworks. It’s so awesome you can see the displays from several different cities in the distance and have a great view of Boulder’s. Such a great time.

Boulder surrounded by balck.

Getting artsy with the phone camera.