Forever ago on a filming mission for Soup D’Jour we had one of the most epic filming and skating days in Fort Morgan, CO. We’ve been back a couple times since with various crews. The initial crew was Bernie, Eric Napolitano, Tyler’s brother Josh and me. This time around it was Jack, Derek, Bernie, Dean and I. We got a really early start and were pulling into drive by coffee around 11am. It was hilarious because we were in rural Colorado and when Dean and his English accent ordered an “English Breakfast” the lady just stared at him. Then we went to the skatepark. Everyone started at the miniramp. Jack killed it, the rest of us struggled. Derek was sore from the day before. Me and Dean aren’t the best skaters. I’m not sure what Bernie’s excuse was. Ha. Apparently we missed an amazing slam as Jack tried to manual from high to low and drop into front disaster and missed. He had some really steezey front 5-0’s to fakie the Strubing way, no comply tailslides and more slams. I can’t skate anything but Rampy it seems. I worked up to front ds, smiths and that’s about it. Mellow ramps are so hard to skate.

Then we hit the crack ridden main area of the park. We played a game of SKATE that Bernie or Jack won. Then I kinda tried a few lines. I did boardslide the flatbar, f/s ollie on the flatbank, rock ‘n roll on the tight qp, kickflip over a crack then early grab melon/method/whatever happened off the launch ramp. So fun. I got another run with front 50 on the ledge, b/s flip on the flatbank then another launcher. Jack was kind of on fire everywhere. He back 50’d the ridiculous 5 stair rail and back salad’ it. Back 270 front lip on the flat bar. Derek did nose manny nollie back 180 out on the ledge that took me forever to manual. Next we hit the tennis court wallride where Jack went so high we filmed a line to it.

Then we went to the nearby school where Jack went nuts and hippy jumped the bar in no time. Then we skated the manny pad for awhile. Bernie got close to halfcab manual b/s flip out while I struggled to get manual and nose manual. Then I went to work filming for awhile. Lets just say Jack got a bangin’ line and Bernie almost got a rad manual trick. We drove around for awhile, found a rail, harassed an old lady, filmed Jack dropin on something, posed on a flatbars, and ended up at a gap to rail that Jack manned up to. Last spot of the day was a downhill manny pad where everyone but Derek had fun. Ha. Derek was so tired and worked so hard to do a front 180 nose manual. Bernie slammed harder than possible on a curb, but got back up and kick nose mannied it. Jack got nollie heel manual. Dean filmed while I felt about as old as I could possibly feel. I had managed to manual it pretty quickly, but could not kickflip up the curb to save my life ugh.

Oh, and I didn’t bitch about my shoes enough.  As you can see above the stupid red dye in the soles of the Supras messed up the rubber and it all just rubs off right away.  It’s so bad in the ollie area that there is no grip after a few ollies.  I have been on a serious shoe slump lately.  Luckily, Jack gave me permission to retire the Supras as we sat at Taco John’s before leaving Ft Morgan.  Those shoes sucked.

Lowcard montage from the Trick Factory dudes that can skate ramps. Pretty awesome.

Ollie got some new wheels for his birthday and he asked me to set them up in the morning. Right after that we went over to the school for a bit and broke in the new long two stair. Ollie was doing drop down manuals all steezey. I got a few too and was trying to follow it up with a quick ollie over the black plastic that was up for landscaping efforts. It took awhile and it was a horrible ollie. We went around the rest of the school. Nothing special went down. Ollie manualled across the US painting all easy. We ollied off the tall 3 stair into grass a few times and rolled around. Pretty fun. I also got a kickflip up a curb and tried to noseslide the lower level of a handrail.

After that was Ollie’s birthday party which was a lot of swimming and giving kids “surfboard” rides as I swam along the bottom of the pool with one standing on my back. Pretty fun, but tiring. Later on I could have gone skating, but was hungry, tired and sick of it being cold outside. Luckily I have an indoor ramp that people like to skate so Carleigh, Derek, Nate and Dean rolled over and we shredded for a couple hours. It was fun. Everyone was in good spirits. Carleigh maybe higher than the rest. Ha. She had her best first line ever that went all the way to a kickflip rock attempt. Nate got used to Rampy pretty quick and did lots of good tricks like front feeble, back tail, back d, back d to sugarcane and more. Derek of course killed it. He was keeping it kinda mellow, but managed a bigspin back tail in there. Ridiculous. Dean is taller than me and doesn’t skate ramp a whole lot. So he had some troubles earlier but worked it out and got the basics. I actually had a pretty good session. I got most of tricks. Actually pretty much all of them except hurricane. Even a front 50 yank out and a back rock decked on the short side of the deck. Thanks for coming over guys, it really cheered me up.

Liz and I went to the early showing of this video. We met up with Fuzz and Carleigh after some dinner with Darin and posted up next to one of the stars of the night, Shad. It was rad. Lots of teasers including a new Null one. The video itself was awesome. Not a hammer video with lots of raw street skating that can be viewed over and over. I can’t wait to get a copy of it. Liz and I bailed as soon as the credits started to get to the J Mascis show.

We said a quick hello to friends then posted right up front. I laughed as J’s guitars were brought to the front with the airplane tags still on them. Kinda hard to see in my cell phone photo above, but we shared a laugh with the guy next to us who might even be a bigger J Mascis nerd than me (not possible). The fire alarm at the Hi-Dive was going off which was pretty annoying.

J was walked up front looking frail and awkward and after a quick “Hello” busted right into The Wagon. Pretty much my favorite song ever. Although I’ll admit that’s one of those songs that benefits from the added noise of the whole band. Next up was Listen To Me off the new album and then Several Shades Of Why. Several Shades may have been my favorite song of the night. Then he went on to play mostly oldies including classics like Alone, Get Me, Ammarring, Quest. Oceans In The Way had one of the loudest crowd responses which kind of surprised Liz and I, but is just more evidence that Farm is one of their finest. I was surprised and excited to hear Not The Same. Not Enough went off. Flying Cloud is another runner up for my favorite song of the night. The encore was Raisons then Repulsion I think. The show was great. The only thing that takes away from it to me is this was the Several Shades Of Why tour and he only played four songs from it. A couple more would have made this show beyond epic to me. That being said, it was still a totally awesome show and J Mascis cannot be touched. After the show I went to get a t-shirt, but they had all sold out except one size large and a bunch of XXL (I’m not Mikey). Doh. Read a better review and see better photos at heyreverb.com.

Not sure if this day would count if I were going for 300 again, but it was cold and snowing and we were hanging out at Crisis and the banana board came out.  Fuzz did some steezey basics like shove and no comply shove.  I flailed around like an old buffoon for an hour before landing two kickflips in a row.  I couldn’t even hardly stand comfortably on it.  Ugh.  CJ ended up getting a nollie flip.  We watched the old Meta video Recess.  It was rad.  Jam and Fuzz have parts in it.  It sure is nice having a dvd of the video.  Where you at with Lumber Jockeys Sam?????????

Got home from work and had less time to skate than I had thought.  Liz and were going to dinner, then the Always Sunny premiere, then J Mascis!  So I skated flat for about 30 min.  I was horrible.  I’m not sure why all of a sudden everything feels so awkward.  I was trying a run of no comply 180, fakie flip then f/s halfcab flip.  I think I got to the f/s halfcab flip twice.  Ugh.  I would land half of the no complys completely straight legged and borderline shooting out.  Fakie flips were 1/20.  So bummed.  Going the other way I managed a halfcab flip, heelflip, treflip run.  All tricks being horrible.  I had some fakie bigflips going 2mph.  I attempted quite a few nollie tres and didn’t get them.  I did get a few treflips.  All landed with Jason’s patented 20 stair landing steez.  Another line was heelflip then b/s flip landed in a way that would only count on defense in a game of over 50 SKATE.  I started hucking tricks I can’t do just to feel better about not landing tricks anyway.  Rick flips were surprisingly close.  I landed on one, but had stopped.  Still happy I skated though

I forgot about this back smith pole jam I did awhile back.  I think it was in Transworld or Thrasher.  I don’t know, I forget.

Had one crazy evening. Got home to a completely messy house and a daughter that was screaming out of control about not being able to finish her homework in time for the talent show. Then I sat through two hours of elementary school “performances”. Two Justin Bieber songs, one Green Day song, blah blah. A couple kids could sing pretty good, but for the most part it was pretty rough. India was of course awesome for me to see and the ender was her whole 5th grade class doing the dance for Thriller. That was pretty amazing actually.

Oh wait, this is a skate journal huh? So yeah, after all that and then doing dishes and eating I went out to roll up the street to the strip mall by my house, but it was raining now. Ugh! Instead of baling on the whole thing I decided to hit Red Curbs. I pulled in and noticed a bunch of people skating. Whoa. Turns out that Satellite and Public Eye dudes had decided to skate there too. It was like a crowded skatepark. Ha, ok, so not crowded. Since I spent all of Monday sleeping off back pain my body was really out of it. I felt way more uncoordinated than normal and it showed. I struggled at everything from ollies to kickflips and in between (as if there is something in between ollies and kickflips). After awhile everyone else left. I don’t remember having actually landed anything by that point anyways. I started trying a line of halfcab flip, nose manual, kickflip back tail. I got all three, but not in a line. The kick back t was a good one for me and it slid about a foot. The weirdest thing happened though I heard someone yell really loud mid slide and it scared the death out of me. I never did figure out where it came from. Pretty weird. I tried a few nose manual nollie tres and did not get close. I tried a few front 5-0 kickflips out and did not get close. Maybe that list is a little unrealistic, but I guess I have two years to get them. Ok, enough babble about a curb session.

Two front disasters on a 3 foot quarterpipe in the opening run? Yeap.