On October 28th, Carleigh, Fuzz and I met up with John and Rebecca at the Bluebird for some Thermals fun. Carleigh, Fuzz and I missed the opening bands due to an extremely fun session at the Broomfield park. That band has never disappointed. Every show has been completely awesome and this one was no exception. Apparently Fuzz and I even chest pumped to show our appreciation:Or maybe Fuzz just wanted to be closer to his shop’s shirt. Either way we all had a blast, the new stuff sounded great, they even played When We Were Alive and I went over my 7 beer weekly limit for the first time in 3 months. Yippee!

Feeling really sick now, but stressing over this 300 day thing. When Ollie said he’d skate Rampy on a snowy night I couldn’t resist.  He ripped it.  Rock ‘n rolls, body varials, fakie ollies, funny faces.  I got a couple things I don’t even remember.

Feeling sick even after a nap I couldn’t resist Rampy with Jake since he called.  I said it should be a quick session, but it ended up being pretty long and of course, fun.  We both started out ok and did most of our tricks.  Jake had trouble with his staple of front nosepick, but came through with a bunch of feeble grinds which he surprisingly hasn’t done before.  I did a bunch of front tail stalls, front feeble and possibly my first ever backside chink chink.  Well, I’m not sure it’s a chink chink if it doesn’t make much noise.  But I went in fakie, touched the front truck and went back in to fakie.  Cool.

I can’t figure out who Thrasher will give it to this year. To me there isn’t one person that is leagues above everyone else. Here’s what I think should be looked at:1. Video part(s). This one is mandatory. You gotta have at least one bangin’ part.2. Magazine/internet coverage.3. ContestsAnd you gotta be progressing skateboarding. Not just upping the stair count by a couple. With that in mine here’s a few I think could take it:1. Leo Romero. Two parts! I haven’t seen the Brainwash video yet. Progressing skateboarding with the up rail stuff, but is it enough? A bit too much of a hammer kid for me to get overly hyped on.2. Brandon Westgate. Best part in the Emerica video. Probably part of the year for me. Totally pushing ollies over stuff to a new level.3. Grant Taylor. Gnarly coverage, but no video part.4. Cory Kennedy. Another top part of the year (Sasquatch), KOTR MVP (you know Phelps is hyped on this), tons and tons of internet and magazine coverage, pushing tech/gnar to a new level, smiles for days. I could see him getting it next year.5. Shane O’Neil. Sick part, Street League stuff, etc. I need to get over the Berrics association.6. P Rod. He’s done it all this year and has a video part coming in a week that will probably be insane. The PR shirts ruin it for me even though he’s lost a bit of the roboticness.7. Malto. Sick coverage, contest stuff, but no video part.8. Reynolds. Leading the stair count race and he’s in his 30s. I really don’t like when they give it to someone that has already won SOTY though.9. Tory Pudwill. Lots of NBD’s in his Transworld part, but man, clean up those arms kid.*EDIT* I forgot Dylan Rieder.  Lots of people are on his stick after the Burton part.  I’m not.  It’s got some amazing stuff, but those one footed treflips ruin the part more than a no speed tic tac for me.There’s probably someone I’m forgetting. I seriously don’t think I can say who I think deserves it. I just know that Cory Kennedy has probably hyped me up more than anyone else on that list.

After feeling sick enough at work that I almost went home early, dinner, a nap and some Leave It To Beaver I met up with Carleigh for a quick skate session. We started out at the 3 stair spot where we almost lasted the whole time. Other than some ollies on the rounded curb I tried to manual off the 3 stair forever. I don’t think I’ve ever manualled to a drop down stairs. Yes I know it’s only a 3, but it was weird for me. I kept putting my wheels down right before. Carleigh was trying to ollie up the curb then kickflip the 3. The truck parked right next to the 3 stair with the lights on and the couple making out was a little weird. After Carleigh said ‘last try’ about 10 times I finally landed it. We left, went by the 5 stair where Carleigh ollied it a few times, and I bailed. Argh. I committed to it twice, but the brick to concrete runway messed me up. That’s my excuse at least.275/300 days down. 25 more to go. 53 days left in the year. It’s possible.

Warmed up a tiny bit at the jersey barrier spot before turning into filmbot for the day. I was still feeling pretty sick and run down and didn’t have much motivation to skate myself. I did a few rock ‘n rolls and scratch grinds on the jersey barrier, some no comply 360s and some failed nollie tres. Then I filmed, filmed, filmed. One of the most productive days of filming I’ve had, but totally exhausting. I even slammed really hard at one point trying to use the Meta filming board and pushed off one of the wheels that sticks out. Ugh! Got a good swellbow from that.filmingmore filmingfilmed for daysBut still managed to drop some awesome BGPs when possible.Go to Carleigh’s blog for more ..

Feeling run down and sore in a fighting a cold kinda way, I met up with Jason early to skate the manny pad before filming Mikey. Carleigh joined us after awhile as it took Mikey a long time to arrive. Jason and I took a long time to land tricks. Jason rarily gets nose mannies, but he put down a bunch of them. It was cool. He also did a really smooth halfcab manny back 180 out. So good. I took forever to get nose manny shove out, but when I did it felt great. I also got a couple kickflip mannies, failed at nollie shove mannies for awhile, got front shove, fakie big up the curb. Ended it with a first every fakie bigflip up the curb. Carleigh put down a few mannies too. Mikey showed up and after a bit of playing around we went out filming.Mikey beat himself up for the most part. But we had fun.

Feeling really run down I should have taken a nap before going to the Nuggets game. Instead I watched Cory Kennedy’s Sasquatch part, got hyped and went out and skated flat. I had thought of trying a line of switch front 180, double flip, backside flip. After some warm up kickflips and whatnot I went for the line. Somehow it happened real quick. Like 4 tries. The double flip was really bad, but whatevs. After that I went for treflip than nollie treflip. Got that one too. Then it was time to go.

Another busy day. Get up for work with not enough sleep, work, do 7 titles for Bernies video, help India with her homework and it’s 9pm. I went to Table Mesa shopping center to deposit some checks then skate for a tiny bit. I didn’t even bring water since I was hoping it would prevent me from skating too long. Whom I fooling? Skating is so fun. I started out just cruising around and it was colder out that I would have thought. In the 30s, but not bad. A few warm up tricks and I ended up near Abos trying to do a slappy back 50 ollie a hole back into 50. Never got close. Started doing f/s calis in a line. Ollie a tiny crack gap to manny, quick up a curb, f/s cali, ollie up a curb and try to boardslide a round flower pot. No love so I went for crooks instead and got it first t. Then I started trying lines to/from the southside cafe with ollies over the lower umbrella stand. I moved two of the cafe benches close to each other to try nose/tailslides at the same time. I’ve wanted to do that ever since Craeger did it in Menikmati. I tried a couple and it was way scarier then I ever imagined. That might have to do with the benches being curved and a huge crack before them. So I tried it at the end of a line. Back 180 up a curb, halfcab flip, ollie the umbrella stand, bail nose/tailslide. Gave up and tried it by itself. It took awhile. Tried to ollie a taller umbrella stand too, but didn’t quite get it. Started getting closer to the nose/tailslides. Wow. Such a wierd feeling. It feels like a boardslide kind of. At one point I tried some switch flips and came super close. Committed to them, but didn’t land on the board. It felt right there though. After awhile I kept getting closer and closer and eventually I skidded out of one. I had started to think it was gonna feel dumb, but the make felt really fun. I haven’t had a stoke jolt like that in awhile. After that I headed home, hyped to have tried and landed that trick.

So funny.