Thursday night (16th) was spent taking 210 skateboards out of boxes, marking the size and putting them on the shelf.  Then grocery shopping and running other Christmas related errands.  I didn’t want to skate anyway.Friday though, Friday SUCKED.  First off work sucked really bad.  Most of you know by know that I work with the real life version of Ned Flanders.  Well on this Friday his college sophomore daughter was driving solo back from school to home in Longmont.  She is 20 years old, but apparently it’s a huge deal for her to be driving a whole six hours.  Ned wanted updates every 15 minutes.  This girl was home schooled in high school, but this was ridiculous.  Literally every 15 minutes he would get on the phone with her.  When it reached the end of his work day he raced home before her to videotape her pulling into the driveway.  Pathetic.  So yeah, I’m already in a bad mood, but it looked like things were gonna get better.  Liz was feeling better and both kids were having sleepovers at friends so Liz was gonna join me at Brian’s for the Trick Factory white elephant christmas party.  So stoked.  But the second I got home I got called for work.   I ended up being on a call for over five hours.  I was furious.  When I finally got off the phone at 11:30 Liz was asleep so I tried to as well.  After a day like that with no exercise or anything I tossed and turned all night.  I’m writing this at 7:30 am on a saturday because I couldn’t sleep and I’m still in a horrible mood.  Ugh.   Hopefully today goes better.

Part of the week, and that’s saying alot considering how many parts I watch every single day.

Had a good night of sleep or something and felt good all day.  Was good about standing, jumping around, stretching at work and felt great when I left work after a longer than usual day.  The family had already eaten and was occupied doing homework and whatnot so I boxed up a Null order and delivered it to Fedex then stopped by Savers for something silly for my work White Elephant.  Then I drove to campus for some skating.  It was humid as it had rained (yes it’s mid december and it rained instead of snowed) earlier in the day and there was still some puddles on asphalt.  For whatever reason I had been thinking about a line all day.  Ollie up the UMC two stair, back 180 off, sw 180, ollie the 4, front 180 the 3 so I was hoping to warm up to that.  After some fast pushing and cruising I ended up new big Visual Arts building where I did a few slow kickflips to get warmed up.  I played on the weird long bench with all the sections missing to stop skating.  I ollied onto one section then would try to ollie to the next section, etc.  It was way hard and I didn’t feel like trying it much longer so I went up to the UMC ready to battle my line I had been thinking of.  Unfortunately there was a bunch of dudes standing on top of the two stair so I went back to the fountain area.  I tried some fast (for me) pop shoves followed by ollieing onto the 5 stair ledge, off then ollie down the 3.  I was having problems on the pop shove and my board took off toward the two stair so I just left and the cancer stickers were gone.  The ollie up the two is weird because you have to ollie early because of a big crack.  It ended up not being so hard after a few tries.  I would have thought the back 180 would have been really hard, but I guess the ollie up the two set me up perfect for my cheater angle and within a couple I was riding away from those, even going past the crack.  And I gotta say that was probably the highlight for me.  I normally suck at back 180s and I was landing them almost every try.  Now for some stupid reason as I would turn around and head to the 4 stair I would get a weird nervous feeling and stop before the 4 stair.  I’m not sure what that was about so I finally just ollied the 4 on it’s own and finally the butterfly was gone.  A few tries later I landed all but the last front 180 of the line.  Sweet, next couple tries!  Well, maybe not quite as the back 180 was troublesome for a bit, but I ended up getting the whole line.  Ollie up the two, back 180 off two, horrible sw 180, ollie the 4, horrible front 180 the 3.  That set me up going downhill on a bikepath so I tried a halfcab flip and bailed.  I decided I wanted to do the line better and get the halfcab flip too.  Next try.  Ollie up felt good, best back 180 I’ve ever done, sw 180, ollie 4, decent front 180, halfcab flip, kickflip, lots of pushes, powerslide, kickflip a crack, bail a treflip.  I was so hyped.  Not sure I’ve ever done 8 tricks in a row before.  Anyways this set me back up to the weird long bench with the missing sections to ollie over.  Obviously a lot more warmed up, but somewhat sore from so many stairs (ha ha ha) I did the quick up and ollied 3 missing sections and ollied out first try feeling on top of the world.  It was still pretty warm out (seriously, I was sweating) so I decided to skate awhile longer and line out some more stuff.  I wanted to do the quick ollies on the ledge then a treflip.  That took awhile as both of those tricks were so hard for me.  At one point I noticed I had cracked my board really bad at some point that night.  It still had pop, but the crack was 4 layers.  Ah well.  Coming the other way I would try a fast (again it’s me so imagine me going about 1/10 the speed of Busenitz) ollie over some cracks then kickflip a crack gap.  I ended up getting the lines both ways and the temperature had just started to drop quickly so I went home.  Totally spent, but super hyped.  One of the funner days of skating I’ve had this year.  I love skating by myself once or twice a week.  I would say it gives me a chance to land more stuff, but really, it just gives me a chance to land stuff I’m too embarrassed to do around others.

I work til 6 this week which isn’t that bad, but it pretty much ends any chance of skating with most of TF as their bed times are 8pm and I normally check in with the family before I go skate. As soon as I got home Ollie said “Hi ya Pop, want to go play basketball?” Impossible to say no to that. So we went over to the school and shot on a poorly lit low hoop for awhile. It was a blast. My favorite is when he misses and I jump up for the rebound and dunk it. 8 foot rims rule! Anyways, it was super warm so I left after awhile and picked up Jason to meet Lazer, Fuzz, Neil, Brian and Skelly at the newly opened Lafayette park. Apparently it wasn’t crowded by grand opening standards. The park is pretty big so it does get spread out and not so bad. Unfortunately Lazer, Fuzz and Neil had already called it a night. Brian was there skating with the Ft Collins crew in the rock section. They all seemed to be ripping pretty hard. I tooled around for awhile looking at the goods. The park is pretty amazing. As typical of skateparks it seems they went a little over the top with quite a few things, but oh well. Jason and I started out at the manual pad which can really only be hit frontside comfortabely. If there is granite somewhere under all that coating I couldn’t tell yet, it’s like grinding on ice. I got a few front 50, front 5-0 and back 50 having to come up the bank first.  I’ve been skating steet a lot lately and it was weird skating such a smooth spot.  It doesn’t even feel like your skating really.   I know that sounds dumb, but it’s weird not having any cracks or anything with brand new wheels.  Just feels like floating.  A sketchy backside landing lands you in the 12 foot bowl. So lame. I really hate how 99% of skateparks put great ledges in shitty spots. And to know that Team Pain is a bunch of skaters makes it even worse. I basically took the rest of the session to get boardslide down the rail followed by back noseslide down the hubba. That was really fun for sure. The added touch is the lights shut off as I landed the noseslide. Well I guess that isn’t even cool at all considering it was 8:45. WTF? Come on Lafayette you spend that much money on a skatepark and the lights shut off before my 8 year old goes to bed? Jason got the boardslide / noseslide run too and came close to front nose down.   So sick.  Some of the lights stayed on near the parking lot.  I dorked around for a bit on the rock section that I hadn’t even looked at really.  It seems aight, not as fun as CO Springs rock section.  Some young kid told me to look out as he rolled his bike through.  That was funny.

Man it rules not forcing myself to skate when my body or mind isn’t up to it. Unfortunately though it was super nice out. Instead I played Wii tennis/boxing with Ollie and worked on Liz’s computer which still isn’t working.

So many fun looking spots.

Woke up early after a fabulous night with The Mighty LZA.  Was back from the grocery store by 9:30 am.  Yeah, crazy early.  Then started to feel pretty blah and some basketball and a nap didn’t help.  Ollie and Sam wanted to go skating though so obviously I was gonna go skate.  They wanted to go to Stonehenge.  My legs were feeling so horrible.  I have no idea why.  Ollie did a few of the basics right away on the bank to curb.  Rock fakie, rock ‘n roll and was going for back axle stall.  He did some willy stalls and a couple with the back truck almost in axle.  So sick.  He almost beat me to it.  I was skating so bad it took literally 8 tries to do a front pivot.  Ugh.  We skated the manny pad for a bit where I suprisingly manualled it second try.  Ollie and Sam did some ollies off the tall part.  I hadn’t seen Sam ollie off that big of a drop before.  Back to the bank to curb as Jason showed up for a bit.  We rattled off a few more basics.  I posed some front smith kickflips out.  Jason did some front lips.  Then we kinda skated it different while the boys played around on some jersey barriers.  I tried to do a flip trick then ollie the corner of the fence into the bank.  Didn’t come easy.  I had some kickflips, pop shoves and halfcab flips.  Even a bad heelflip, ollie into fence into the bank, kickflip flyout.  Jason had some good ollies into the bank.  We both did back tail stalls on the fence and Jason ended it with a back lip.Next we went to another nearby bank spot.  Max kills this spot in multiple Meta videos.  I didn’t do much more than some grinds as shown above and some frontside ollies.  Ollie took the above photo then I took a few of him and Sam.  Ollie skated this spot really good though.  Ollie to fakie, backside ollie, side rock (just learned that one day ago), etc.  Sam had some mean kickturns.Ollie side rock.Sam kickturnThe smile man, the smile.  Ollie’s always smiling and it rules.  Drop in.I hope Ollie doesn’t get stuck with my ollies.  This photo isn’t really taken early, it’s just his ollies are kinda like mine.Ollie show off hat tip to fakie.  Sam indy 900.Next up we went to another nearby spot with a little banked curb and other random funness.  I kept with my theme of the day and struggled.  Only decent things were kickflip up a curb, quick up ollie a tiny gap and that’s about it.  Ollie almost beat me to boardslide transfer and my halfcab transfer took forever.  Ollie ripped this spot.  Back 180s out of curb cuts, slappy back 50s, boardslide transfer (and yes he actually slid it) and he’s still got that buttery mongo push.  Sam surprised me with slappy back 50 and transferred the curb without sliding.  We took a few photos at this spot too.Sam slappy back 50Ollie back 50Not sure why we laughed so hard at this photo, but we did.  Boardslideout.Ollie boardslide transfer.  Rock Creek!Dorko the Dad halfcab boardslide transfer.  20 more years of skating then Ollie and the only difference between our tricks is I went in fakie.  Ugh.  Photo by my son who will soon be better at skateboarding than me.

My 300 day reward – new shoes.  Es Square Twos.The Lafayette skatepark opened today and there was a big grand opening party.  I am not a fan of crowded skateparks, or even a fan of crowds really.  Luckily there are some who agree with me.  Jack called, Jason called and Mikey and Jeff wanted to meet up in Denver.  I brought Ollie along and we met up at the Commerce City skatepark around 1 or so.  It was cold.  Colder than it felt like it should be.  And the park has some weird new glaze of slickness on it.  Jason slammed right away and retired to the car for the rest of the day.  Jack and I started out with a game of SKATE on the banked curb surrounding a tree.  I doubt they ever intended anyone to skate it, but we do everytime we’re there.  It’s pretty dumb.  Jack of course won with a bunch of good tricks like blunt shove to nosepick, pivot fakie, etc.  I landed some tricks though that made me happy like front blunt (no pivot!), kickflip onto the curb, boardslide.  It was fun.  Ollie seemed to be having a good time and digging the park.  He did some drop down to manual down one stair to ride down another then ollie off the third.  Some little ollies over the pump bump too.  And always a smile.  Love it.  Mikey was ripping.  I saw switch heel the long three stair, back 5-0 the long three ledge and a smile.  Jeff, always ripping.  Nollie back 180 into the bank, powerslide on the icecrete, halfcab crooks.  Jack had did a nosebonk to manual front 180 off the drop.  Ollies from the top of the park into the little bank no problem.  Funny back 50 to 90 onto a curb to ollie out.  Toward the end people were trying lines ollieing over the two benches.  Jeff almost got a switch b/s flip up one, mikey almost sw heeled one.  I ollied in the small spots.  I guess the quest to learn how to ollie is officially on.  It’s really embarrassing.The sun came out and we rolled to a loading dock kicker that Mikey wanted to bust before they put a rail on it (will probably happen this week).  Ollie and I dorked around for a bit, I did a gap to boardslide down a parking block.  Jeff chilled and proved that he has no kid filter around Ollie.  Jason read.  Mikey ollied the kicker to get warmed up then felt out a few tricks.  Jack starting trying bigger spins and was getting super close.  Unfortunately disaster struck and he rolled his ankle bad.  Doh.  Mikey went for treflips for awhile, but the wind, cold and Jeff wanting to leave didn’t help.We left for Crisis to sell some Null and see Fuzz, but on the way we hit up the nearby handicap double bank spot.  Just me and Ollie skated.  It was real cold.  I guess the new shoes had been doing pretty good as I hadn’t really noticed before this spot that I had new shoes on.  I dorked around for awhile.  Felt out the trick I want to film there sometime (side rock kickflip out to manual down) but wasn’t feeling that.  Then settled for a run of kickflip, no comply 180, fakie ollie on one bank, f/s ollie on another bank.  That came remotely easy.  Well, if you count what I did as ollies.  Since that came pretty quick and I wasn’t really feeling like anything else I went for the same line some more, but tried fakie flip on the bank instead.  I eventually got it.  I’m sure I did it all pretty horribly, but it was fun.  Ollie wasn’t complaining about the cold at all.  He rules to skate with.  Smiles the entire time, never complains, never takes it series, and always learns something.  He saw me do a side rock on the bank and I think he did one within two tries.  So rad.  I wish Jack and Jason could have skated there too, oh well.  We went to Crisis and hung out for awhile, ate some pizza, watched the new Toy Machine video and everyone made sure to drop several F Bombs.  It sure is weird being a father sometimes.

These sick days is gonna pile up now!  I got home from work, watched Leave It To Beaver with India, helped with Dinner then played Rock Band before falling asleep kinda early.  Pretty much awesome.  Do I even need to keep track of sick days anymore?

What a weird day.  I worked from home as we needed to take the Hyundai in to get the power steering fixed.  So at any point I could have technically ran out of the house and done a few kickflips to start the 300 session.  But I waited.  Right before dark I was finally off work.  I watched the OG PJ Ladd video then skated in the street for a bit waiting for Ollie to join me and Jason to show up.  Liz was stoked for me and cheered for a few minutes as day 300 was under way and official.  It felt pretty cool honestly.  I had some new 52mm superthanes as the old wheels were flat spotted and they felt good.  I did quite a few kickflips, 180s and felt like fun was going to be had.  Ollie finally came out and we went behind the school where I ran into rocks and fell down for 5 minutes straight.  It bummed me out.  It felt so anticlimatic and it reminded me that although I’ve skated 300 days this year, I really haven’t gotten any better at skateboarding.  In fact it seemed like half the time I was too sore and tired to skate up to my norm.  Oh well, I don’t have to skate every single day any more!  Ollie did some cool slashes in the mini ditch, some ollies, etc.  His board is shot though because him and his friends think it’s cool to throw boards around.  Stupid skate video influence!  Jason showed up after awhile and Ollie would not let us leave until it was totally dark.Jason drove and we headed over to Carleigh’s to meet Carleigh (duh), Chad and Neil.  For whatever reason on the way there I was feeling really down.  That changed quickly when we got to Carleigh’s though:So rad.  Thanks so much Carleigh and Chad.  They had even put my Off The Couch part on, but queued it to Eye Of The Tiger.  Pretty funny.  Then Jason put it on A-B loop and everytime it started he would say “Hey look, it’s Glen’s part!”  Cracked me up.  You guys all rule.  Read more at Carleigh’s blog.And then we were off.  Carleigh was on her bike initially as her foot was still hurting and she didn’t want to start things off by pushing for 8 blocks.  Poser.  Ha.  We started performing stunts around the bus station on the little manny pad.  After I heard Neil yell real loud I figured we’d get booted quick so I headed over to a different manny pad with the two stair ledge nearby.  Everyone else stayed there for a bit so I don’t know what went down.  It’s insanely crazy how much faster the superthane is.  It kept throwing me off.  I got kinda used to it by the end of the night, but wow.  I had a couple manuals, nose manuals and squeeked out a little boardslide on the ledge above the two.  Neil was trying wallies.  Jason was manualling and having an off day.  Chad was killing it with huge flat gap ollies, fast as hell manuals and kickflipping at high speeds.  So sick. Carleigh shot a few photos, but wasn’t really able to skate since she felt weird about her foot.  Bummer, I really wish she could have skated full tilt with us.Jason without the BroomMe nose mannyNeil 180 nose manny.Shortly we ended up at the brick area and started a game of SKATE between Neil, Chad and I.  It was cut short by the police so we moved on towards St Julien since Jason was already there with his broom.  Yes, did I mention he carried a broom all the way with us?  So funny, it hasn’t snowed yes so there really wasn’t much need.  But I guess we were prepared at least.  On the way we hit the ledge banks things.  Chad ruled it with quick up ollie to fakie.  Neil and I were just hyped to drop in.Chadman quick up ollie to fakie with some dumbass BGPsPretty dumb.We saw the police lurking so we headed once again toward St Julien only to get distracted by some wood benches we’ve never really skated before.  At this point Carleigh tried to skate, but instead decided to jump over the bench into the bush.  Her foot was not good.  Ugh.  Neil ollied on to one which was way sick.  Chad manualled it.  I did nothing but boardslide it.On to St Julien.  Jason kinda disappeared as soon as we got there.  I wasn’t sure why, maybe the lurking police?  Anyways Neil skated for a bit, did a sick crooks shove, some manual on the narrow sidewalk against the rock and some wallrides.  Then he was done for the night.  I was struggling with crooks because it was too dark.  Plus I’m used to doing them down big rails, not tiny ledges.  I pieced together a line of suck with a manual on the narrow sidewalk, sketchy 3 flip then a silly boardslide on the ledge to avoid it from being a Zero line.  Chad went on a nose bonking spree on the black posts.  He tried a bunch while Carleigh tried to shoot photos, but the timing never worked out.  Still so sick though.  Next we hit the ledge Jason and I have been looking at for awhile.  Jason and I both took way too long to get back 50s.  We did front 50s too.  I did one with a kickflip beforehand.  I tired to do the kickflip fast enough to still have speed for a front 50.  That’s my goal next year.  Learn how to skate faster.  That and learn how to ollie, but I’ve been trying that for awhile and I’m pretty sure I never will have pop.Chad ollied this a bunch of times and even nose bonked it a few times.  The nollie heel at speed for setup was dope sauce.Next years goal, learn how to ollie now that I’m almost 40.Ultra tech back 50The highlight of the evening was next though.  I saw Chad ollie a little flat gap then bomb into the St Julien parking garage.  I tried it too.  The first time though a car was coming up as I started to pick up speed so I bailed out.  Next time I went for it.  It was way faster then I remembered from a year ago and I almost pulled the bail trigger but I stuck it out and made it around the gates.  So f’ing fun.  As I was coming up Chad was bombing it switch.  Ridiculous.Next up the taller slide ledge along 9th/Pearl.  I was kinda sucking and everyone else but Chad was done, but Chad hiked up 9th to bomb the hill.  I got a crappy run of switch front 180 up the curb, front board the ledge (executed horribly) then a kickflip off the curb.  Also got kickflip up the curb and took a long time to get a silly boardslide popout.  On the way to Petes we went by the white ledge building and found a new little ledge out front.  I tried a couple kickflip back tails.  Got one to suski on accident, then did one to back T.  Chad did a mach 10 hardflip on flat for fun.  Jason was still having an off night, but got a good back noseslide on the white ledge.  I got a crooks.  Chad manualled the downhill ledge.  Chad and I dropped in on the A structure and powerslid into the wall.  Well, I slid into the wall, Chad gracefully slid before it.  I guess the 80 pounds I have on him came through for me.  An ollie up the two, front 180 off later and we were at Petes to celebrate.  Best burritos in town and we had a few drinks to celebrate.  Then it was off to Carleigh’s to watch Sasquatch once again.  Thank you guys for ruling it.Cory Kennedy did what?Wow that’s crazyPlease go to Carleigh’s blog for more photos, words and hit and runs.  Thanks again!