Had the day off work and ran around to several shops selling a couple boards before picking Max up and heading to Longmont to meet Bernie and Sam.  We got to a nice looking C ledge, but my side was worse off then I thought.  I tried dorking around, but couldn’t skate.  We went to a bump to weird ledge nearby where I mostly filmed Bernie, but also tried some pivots to fakie on the bank to crack.  That was it for skating until later on when I dropped in on a bank a couple times.  It’s been awhile since I’ve had these spasms.  Ugh.  At least I filmed Max and Bernie get banging manny tricks.

Liz and I bought our Pavement tickets a long time ago when somebody thought that somehow they would sell out the 1st Bank Arena in Broomfield.  Yeah right.  Months later and the show got moved to a way better venue – The Ogden.  The same place that Liz and I had seen Pavement multiple times in the 90s.  Perfect.  After dropping off our kids at some friends we rolled to the Ogden with our neighbors and got to the venue plenty early.Jenny and Johny were up first.  Jenny Lewis is totally awesome, but Jenny and Johny aint so awesome.  Decent background opener music, but nothing as good as Jenny’s solo stuff.  Luckily they close with a Jenny Lewis song that totally killed it – The Next Messiah.(sorry for the crappy cell phone photo)The show was sold out so there was lots of hype when Pavement came out.  Looking about the same as they did back in the day they played for over two hours and pounded out a well rounded set from all their albums.  By the end of the first song No Life Signed Her the show was already worth the $30.  Here’s the whole setlist:

1. ? 
2. No Life Singed Her 
3. Shady Lane 
4. Kennel District 
5. Summer Babe (Winter Version) 
6. Frontwards 
7. Starlings of the Slipstream 
8. Cut Your Hair 
9. Father To A Sister Of Thought 
10. In The Mouth A Desert 
11. Silence Kit 
12. Trigger Cut/Wounded-Kite at :17 
13. The Hexx 
14. Stereo 
15. Date w/Ikea 
16. Gold Soundz 
17. Spit On A Stranger 
18. Unfair 
19. ? 
20. Range Life 
21. Fight This Generation 
22. Two States 
23. Stop Breathing 
24. Encore:
25. Lithium (Nirvana cover) 
26. Box Elder 
27. Fin 
28. Rattled By The Rush 
29. Our Singer

I stole this from setlist.fm and it seems accurate.  The show seriously ruled.  Everything about it was awesome.  The lights were a nice touch.  They played beyond all of our expectations.  They were funny like they used to be, and they seemed to know how to play music better.  Sorry you couldn’t make it Brian and sorry my reviews are so boring.

Didn’t have much time since we were leaving for an early show at the Ogden.  Pavement!  Anyways Ollie and I went over to the school for a bit.  It was a pretty weak session.  I landed a treflip in skier stance with my front heel on top of my back toes.  That’s a new one for me.  I like inventing new ways for my style to suck even more than it already does.  I started encouraging Ollie to stop pushing mongo more than normal.  I even told him that if he finally loses mongo he can get a new complete.  He seemed to like that motivation.  As we were leaving I tried to kickflip over Florida (on the USA map that’s painted on the ground) and totally ate shit and bashing my left heel into the ground really hard.  Ugh ..

Awhile ago Liz said she wanted a nice camera to take photos with.  I had just talked to Meta Sam about his camera which he films with too so I was like, whoa, lets sell the video camera and get one of these new DSLRs that does great photos and HD.  Win win!  Whew!  Unfortunately it hasn’t been so easy.  My video camera sold on ebay, but the dude has yet to pay.  There is a Sony coming out soon called the A55 that seemed amazing until I found out more about the video options (no progressive?  seriously sony?).  Everyone knows the Canon 7d is the bomb for this, but it’s $800 more then the Sony or the cheaper Canon t2i.  So I think I’m probably going with the t2i once I get the money for my video camera.  After talking to Meta Sam (7d stud) he agreed that it’s probably not worth the extra $800 anymore and you can build up a better lens collection with that money.  So maybe Null will finally go HD and just maybe I can make video clips that are slowed down more than the Lakai intro.  Ok, you’re right, that’s not possible.

I used to be pretty against skate brand jeans and just wore crap like Old Navy or Levis.  But I saw these at Meta and they stood out.  One trip to the fitting room later I know have all three color ways!  Super long for tall guys, a little stretch in them, good fit and good colors.  It’s the haps yo!

It’s been almost a month since the last time I took a day off skating.  I’ve been kinda needing a day off for awhile.  In skating’s absence I went swimming with the kids which is pretty tiring.  Especially after jocking out pretty hard at the gym earlier in the day at work too.  Have I ever mentioned I’m related to the strongest man in the world?Well it’s true.  2000 and 2001 Super Heavy Weight Powerlifting Champion of the World Big Bad Brad Gillingham!

Late evening short session at Valmont.  We skated the manny pads the whole time.  Carleigh got a manny pretty quick on one of the shorter ones and I managed a couple on the longer one.  Then Carleigh proceeded to land 20/22 kickflips or something.  So sick.  She was also trying slappy nose mannies and getting somewhat close.  I was trying heelflip up one, then nollie shove up the next, but only landed one or two heelflips up.  Coming the other way I tried to manny, drop down to manny, then pop up to nose manny.  Never got close.  Other then that I did lots of ollies around and managed a kickflip manual.  Fun little session.

Believe it or not it was my idea to go skate a ramp.  We hadn’t been to Dave’s ramp in a long time and I had been thinking about it.  I picked up Jake and Lazer and headed to Meta where we met Jason and I got a quick tutorial on DSLRs.  Off to Longmont we picked up Brian and went to Dave’s.  Oh yeah, we drove through a bunch of smoke from the wildfire going on and at times it was snowing ash on us.  Anyways, the session started slow.  I was really sucking, but surprisingly Lazer and Brian were having troubles too.  Brian took the worst slam I’ve ever seen him take (which is saying a lot).  He was trying front axle stall to fakie and dove from the coping onto his back all the way to the flat.  It was epic.  The fact that he was able to laugh it off is beyond me.Things eventually got going.  Jake was ripping as usual.  Brian was throwing down trick after trick, Lazer was ripping, Dave was holding his daughter, Jason was downloading music and I finally landed some Rampy tricks elsewhere.  I got a fakie pivot fakie, fakie front axle to rock ‘n roll to got heckled, crooks on parking block side, front ds felt pretty easy, etc.  We dorked around for awhile and I ended up getting Brian’s trick the front tough guy to front rock.  It was bad, sloppy and fun.  After awhile I held Dave’s daughter so he could skate.  That was pretty fun.  Allan had showed up and was calling out tricks for everyone to do.After awhile Jake and I went out front to play of SKATE which was going pretty slow and was ended abruptly by a drunk neighbor that tried to fight us and threw rocks in the street.  That dude sucked.

Another hot and sunny day.  I took Ollie and his buddy Sam to the new Arvada park.  When we got there the park was almost empty.  Just one other skater.  I had a goal of trying the euro to manual and tried it kinda out of the blue and got it first try.  Whoa, that’s rare.  I also had a goal of doing a rock ‘n roll on the shallow end, but never got it.  I was trying a few lines.  Flip trick then rock ‘n roll in the shallow.  Never got the rock.  Later on I did manager a layback f/s rock and dropped in too.  I got a line with back 50 the ledge, front feeble little qp, front 50 front shove out the ledge that hyped me up.  I tried a run with front 50 or front d on the top qp, ollie on the twinkie, then kickflip the euro but managed to never ride out of that somehow.  Ugh.  Ollie was cruising around with his mongo steez.  He did a cool line of kickturn on the twinkie bank then ollie out of the curb cut.  He also rolled in the tiny qpipe easily and even ollied into it (but cleared the tranny).  Sam learned rock ‘n rolls on the little qp.  Some BMXers came that were some of the best I’ve seen.  It’s still annoying sharing a little park with dudes going that fast and worrying about collisions with your kid, but they did a bunch of cool slide on their tires tricks I’ve never seen before.

It was another mid 90 degree day and I wasn’t ready for it.  I met Jason at the manny pad where I struggled badly.  10 tries to even land a manual.  I was skating so horribly.  Jason seemed to be doing better and trying some new tricks.  Neither of us landed much.  I managed to get my first nose manny nollie back shove out in a long time.  Came close to heelflip manny.We left for the ledge area and my legs had nothing.  I could boardslide and crooks it, but ollies up into 50 was so hard.  Jason was ripping through.  Back 50s, front board pop out.  Brian and Lazer met up for some skating and complaining.  We went over to the bank to curb area nearby.  Jason and Lazer threw down a bunch of tricks.  Tail blocks, crails, stuff like that.  Brian sat and debated quitting skateboarding.  I tried back pivot shove outs until I got one that met my requirement for a clean landing ( < 3 tic tacs).  I had to leave to get to a BBQ at Zachs.  Fun.  Not the best day of skating.