Is amazing. Love the music too! (Jeff The Brotherhood)

Jack and Jake met up at my house shortly after 6 and we rolled to Crisis, hung out for a minute then off to the park. Jake and I started at the quartapotty and rattled off a few basics of ours. I manualled and nose manualled the blue pad way quicker than normal. It would be the start of a really weird night though. Basically I would either skate really good for me or absolutely horrible. No in between. Matt Carr showed up with a crew and they mostly skated the pool with Brian and Fuzz. They did some sick stuff even if I was shooting my board in on accident trying 2 mph kickflips on flat. Sorry Fuzz. I did a couple “pivots to fakie” on the quartapotty, but they weren’t proper at all. Derek and Jack were skating so good. They were hitting the rail. I saw Jack to a perfect front nosegrind down the double set rail, Derek follow it with front blunt and so much more. Jack got the wallie to firecracker he’s tried before. Derek did a fast kickflip to bankride that was gnarly. I tried to get a slow one, but was unable to and it started my decline. Dean and I ollied the six stair. I thought it would be enough to hyped me up to get the doubleset, but I bailed the first attempt and ended up hurting my back ankle pretty bad. I’m not sure what everyone else is doing, but I got bummed and tried nollie frontside bigflips for a long time by myself. It cheered me up even though I didn’t land one. I got really close though. Fuzz, Dean, Neil, Jack, and I skated the banked manny pads for awhile. Jack did something like ollie up kickflip to fakie nose manual down. Fuzz got a manual to rock to fakie manual down. Sick! I tried too, but can’t do fakie manuals. Last part of the night was the pier 7 ledge. Fuzz and I did lines of kickflip at the crack (basically into the mellow bank) the front 50 the ledge. He added manual and I added front 50 front 180 out. Jack did a perfect cab bigger spin then almost 5-0 front 360 shove out. Wowsers. I got lucky and did 360 flip followed by front 50 shove out with a sketchy landing. I moved over to try back 50 which took me awhile to work up the courage to try. And about the time I started committing to it and almost had it the lights shut off. I snapped and focused my board. I f’ing hate skateparks and their stupid regulated skate times. The softball field lights were still on of course. Ugh. To my credit the board was wearing down and was probably pretty cracked from some bad 360 flips earlier in the session.

Click here to view 2011 KOTC challenge book! Anyone is invited to do this contest, just email John Doe Zine at johndoezine@hotmail.com and let them know. Look at some of these challenges!

HAVE AN INNER TUBE RACE IN THE SOUTH PLATTE RIVER (50 POINTS)

MIKEY CHAFFEE CHALLENGE: WEAR A GHETTO GOWN FOR THE ENTIRE DAY (20 POINTS)

OLLIE THE LONGMONT LEAP OF FAITH (5000 POINTS)

The list goes on and on and on!

After a short, but tiring session on campus Carleigh and I went to Community Cycles to see Black Dots open for a couple Chicago bands. It was pretty awesome that it was so low key at a bike shop and the Chicago bands had promise so we stuck around. Black Dots were great as usual, well, maybe even better. They seemed more rockin’ and lively on stage. We even got to hear a new song that killed it.

The second band was BUST! They had the fastest drummer I have ever seen. They played fast and energetic music and looked like they were having a blast. I couldn’t get enough of watching the drummer though, he seriously killed the drums.

And the drummer is clearly a huge fan of Max. Awesome!

The last band was called The Please & Thank Yous. They were also better than expected. Not as fast as Bust, but still rocking and awesome. They had their new album on cassette only. None of us have tape players. Ha. Thank you Black Dots for playing with all these awesome bands and exposing me to new stuff.

Speechless.

This part is incredibly awesome. Flip tricks, dork tricks, no complies, big tricks, small tricks, manual tricks and it all looks incredibly fun, the music is funny and it’s edited well. Winner.

After we all met at Meta we rolled into campus. First stop was UMC and I was having a really tough time warming up. I blame it on the swimming sunday with the kids. Totally wore me out. Anyways, Max wasted no time in destroying it. Nose manual the three stair, ollie the five, little bonks on the ledges above the five, etc. Chad tried to follow suit, but seemed kind of out of it. Me and Carleigh tried lines to the ledges off the five stair. She managed to ride off it successfully before me, but then went on to say how lame it was. Geez, I was kind of stoked. Ha. I did a little rock ollie, ollied up on the ledge, rode off, front 180 off the 3 stair. That spot is super fun. It should be lit better. Chad managed a manual front 180 around the 3 stair. Next up we went and played on a long set of stairs that we just rode down. Max killed it. Dropin to high speed ride down the stairs. It was probably about 15 stairs each being about 3 feet long. It was so dumb, but fun. All of us were able to ride down them all. Max did b/s flip out of the last one, back 180 into switch ride down, all kinds of craziness. He was ripping.

We went to the spot above where Max kept killing it. Chad filmed Max above with my phone. I failed at 360 flips the whole time and was cursing the big board, but I think it was just because I was super tired. Overall a fun night though.

I am so bummed to hear the news about Sole Tech pulling the plug on Es. Es has been my favorite shoe company forever. Thank you Nike for ruining skate shoes.

Had a few emotional days watching the race my dad was training for, burying ashes and some other not fun activities that prevented me from being able to skate for a few days. After all that I was wanting to skate really bad. I was bringing my brother to the airport early and at the last moment decided to bring my board to hit the Aurora park since it’s way out there. I asked Ollie if he wanted to join and he was in. Sick! We aren’t as cool as JP, but we did get to the park pretty early. There was only a few other people there throughout the two hours we skated.

I started off not doing much more than cruising as it felt really early (9:30 or so). Ollie did lots of flyout back 180s everywhere and some backside ollies on mellow banks. He loved that park. I started getting it going and did some stuff I haven’t done there before. I did a frontside ollie over the little handrail that hyped me up. It was just a frontside ollie on the bank, but it felt cool to go over the rail. Later on I tried about one million kickflips over it going backside. I never quite got it, but had several that were close. That would have been a gillinghammer for me. Ollie and I skated the bowl for a bit. He dropped in the shallow and carved the deep end good enough to make it back up the shallow. Sick! I almost had a good run with a front slash going from the shallow into the deep, but I bailed. Typical

I managed to crooks the straight ledge going off the bank and pop into the bank. I did it pretty bad though. The front 50 was somehow harder for me. Toward the end I tried b/s flips over the hip for awhile and got close to a million before finally landing one with Ollie getting my back with a back 180. Father/son combo! I’m sure it wont be long before the tricks are reversed. After that I did a kickflip back 50 stall on the bank to ledge first try and we left. Hyped.

To make you hyped up to go skate street at night. Thanks Rob.