Met up with Dean after a long saturday of trying to get stuff done, but failing. We met at Valmont. My knee felt pretty good and I was able to ollie up curbs without pain. I went nuts, just ollieing like crazy, trying manuals, etc. About 10 minutes of that and boom, intense pain in the knee. Ugh. Pushing doesn’t hurt it so i just cruised around while Dean did some manuals. Then he went over to the ledge so I folled. Ollies still hurt (bad) so I just did switch flip attempts over and over and over. Some were close. None hurt. After awhile I noticed that my knee was feeling better so I skated “for real” for a bit. I got a line of crooked jib grind, 360 flip 5 point landing (4 wheels and one hand). I did a few front tails without much slide and a front 5-0 shove out. Dean almost got a sick line of fakie ollie off the early part of the kicker then quick into frontside halfcab to front noseslide. Get that Dean! Happy I was able to skate after an hour of pain, but I’m wondering if I’m doing more damage then good.

Epic.

My knee felt better the last couple days so I decided to risk it and go skate with everyone on old man skate night. In the first couple minutes I tried to do an impromptu axle stall with Fuzz on the brick qp, but just rolling up it the pain shot into my knee again. Ugh. I thought I was done that quick. I stood around for awhile which is kind of what all of us were doing. Brian’s back has been hurting him too. We’re old. Fuzz was wearing a “fat suit” (hoodie with hood tied tight) to sweat off some pounds. Ha. Half of the Denver Shop dudes showed up which made for some good skating to watch. Josh Murphy killed it. After some standing around the pain in my knee subsided and I tooled around on the smallest stuff at the park, the blue ledge and the quartapotty. I didn’t do anything great for me, but I was skating and I was able to do crooks, manuals and back 50s without much pain. Everyone else was playing a big game of add a trick. I think Conor won it. Dean boardslid the brown ledge. Eventually most of us moved to the other side of the park. Brian and Fuzz were doing some willy grinds to fakie on the brick qp. Dean front 180’d the rail out of the bump. Locals were killing the gnarly concrete bank hip. Neil was being elusive. I was trying noseslide 270 shove out over and over. Got close a lot, but the board kept hitting the ledge. I should wait longer to do the shove, but that would require skill. After some sitting around Fuzz, Dean and I played a game of SKATE that turned more into SKATERBOY or something. Eventually Fuzz and I just tried treflips over and over. He did a ton, I did a couple. We tried to pretend we were busting them in a line down a hill all easy. Kind of helped. But yeah, my knee worked!!! There was some pain for sure, but it kind of felt like it was working itself out. Hope it keeps on improving and doesn’t continue to need an hour to loosen up.

Day 2 of being Mr Mom. India went to a friends and Ollie wanted to skate. We went to Southern Hills. I did one ollie and the pain in my knee grounded me again. Ugh. I watched Ollie for a bit. He did a front 180 down the 2 stair and let me drag him out of there. Ugh.

Later on I was depressed and wanted to see how skating felt on Rampy since Ollie went through the trouble of cleaning it off. He ripped it with runs of backside and front side scratch grinds as well as front and back rock ‘n rolls. He also did lots of fakie ollies, body varials in the flat, manuals, etc. He rules. I sucked at everything, but ended with a first try front feeble. It’s crazy how tight Rampy is. After not skating it for so long it felt like two walls with no flat bottom. My knee had a constant pain, but not the intense pain that stopped me earlier in the day.

Skated in front of the house for a bit. I would try some tricks, wait a bit while the pain settled in the knee and go again. I tried a line of frontside 180, fakie flip, f/s halfcab flip, but never got it. Around the time I tried 3 flips the pain seemed to hurt more so I didn’t want to push it and went back inside and iced it.

Had a horrible day at work. Went home with the intention of meeting at Crisis by 7, but I fell asleep. It was much needed and Jake, Fuzz and Dean showed up at my house around 8 anyway. We went to campus. It was super nice out. Dean was free. We dorked around a little bit before ending up at this kind of long median manual pad that’s downhill. It took us a long time to get one and of course Fuzz was first. I eventually got one and both Jake and Dean had gotten really close. I was noticing that my stance felt really off and I seemed to be completely on my back (right) foot doing everything. We went to the steep bank spot at the bottom of campus. Jake owned this spot. First t rock ‘n roll then first t axle stall. I had done a fun wallride then went for axle stall and a couple tries in something happened in my knee and I had to sit in pain for most of the evening. Ugh. Those dudes had a fun session. Dean got a caveman nosepick. Fuzz did a lot too like pivot, blunt pivot, back pivot to back tail, back smith, etc. It was really the Jake show though. Back hurricane, front feeble, front pivot, nosepick, stalepick, roll in, so much more I can’t remember right now. So sick! We went up under the engineering building. I basically just tried manuals without really ollie’ing and powerslides. Thank god for being able to do powerslides, because they were a blast and kept me from being completely depressed about my knee. Everyone did some cool lines. Dean skated hard. He did a fakie dogpiss into the first “bank” then fakie ollie into the second. No comply 180 into the first, fakie ollie the second. Jake did kickflip then nollie front 180 and more I can’t remember right now. Oh I did a little fakie ollie into the first then a sw front 180 into the second which was probably stupid and hurt my knee more then it was worth. Fuzz did some rad fakie around the world then front 50 the ledge. Slappy noseslide, front 50, then an uphill front 5-0. On the way back to the car I fell trying to push switch. Ugh. Then we went and had a beer and ranted about how lame the skate industry is. Bitter old dudes. But seriously though, get out Nike, you don’t belong here.

Went out to Valmont to meet Dean and try to get a photo of him for Nullozine Jr print edition. He was already setting up the flash and went right to business. I was feeling pretty energetic, but sitting and playing Atiba for an hour kind of drained it. After Dean left I then had a couple long phone calls and then was supposed to go hang out with Carleigh and Jack before she leaves for “an adventure”. I decided I needed to skate a little and ended up skating really hard solo until Jack and Carleigh showed up. I waxed the crap out of the ledge while I was on the phone so it was really good. I really wanted to get a front tailslide. I didn’t get a good one until after they showed up. And it wasn’t good, but it did slide and make the noise. I tried a lot of flip tricks that I didn’t land. Switch frontside flips felt close even though they weren’t. I didn’t do much else geez. I talked with Carleigh once they got there for the most part. Jack ripped it. Oh I have a video clip I should maybe not upload because the quality is horrible.

Man this is such a great edit. Why couldn’t the new Real video be edited this good? And wow it works so good and he even does the unproper 5-0 to fakie on a bank like me. This must have been after the phone call from him to get tips on nollie tres too.

This is seriously amazing! Draw on paper and it goes right into vector graphics on the computer. Oh man!