Quite possibly the dumbest griptape job of all time, but I totally love it.  I started off attempting to make some type of artsy mosiac then came up with this.  Awesome.Brian, Lazer, Jason and Nate all came over a little after 7pm and we hung out for a bit while Nate setup a board before we skated Rampy.  We started out with a somewhat organized game of SK8 that involved me giving everyone a letter on back 50 to fakie.  Even Jason.  Blew me away.  Ha, it was over quick though and everyone was having fun.  For some reason Rampy was super slick and Jason was slamming hard a lot.  He ended up leaving because he hurt a finger.  Nate was tearing it up for him.  Totally awesome sketchy crazy combos.  Brian did two frontside halfcab to backside rock ‘n rolls in one run.  So sick.  Lazer did every trick possible in two runs.  I got a lot of my tricks pretty quick and when I went into my typical ramp funk about 15 minutes in started trying several of Brian’s fun looking front truck bash tricks.  I ended up getting quite a few of them.  Frontside front truck bash, frontside truck bash to fakie, frontside truck bash rodeo clown out (270) and eventually even a front truck bash to front rock.  So stoked.  those are the funnest tricks ever.  I am officially in the Brian Ball ramp tricks fan club.  Nate got a few of them too.  backside nosebash to rock fakie, frontside nosebash to rock fakie all which were easier for him then just a regular frontside nosebash.  Ha.  I even got a line of backside nosebash, frontside nosebash, frontside nosebash to fakie then after a few tailstall/rock fakies I got a halfcab nosebash.  So fun.  In the mix somewhere I got more of my harder tricks within a few tries.  Front 50 to front D to back smith, front 50 yank in first try, fakie pivot fakie and 20 or 30 rock fakies per run.  Super fun session.

After a late dinner then grocery store duties Jason, Nate and I met at Red Curbs.  It was cold, but not super cold.  Warming up was going decent and the vibe was super fun.  I was hititng no comply 270 back tails pretty much every time.  I tried one of my Off The Couch lines (with the no comply 270 back t) but couldn’t get the noseslide 270.  Then we mostly skated the manny pad.  Jason did a manual back 180 out.  I’ve never seen him even do that before.  Sick!  Nate got a few manual 180 combos.  I landed on, but didn’t ride away from a manual back shove out.  It felt really good.  I even popped the trick.  Doh, if only I would have rode away from it.  We setup a cone to ollie over in a line.  Nate and Jason of course had no problems with it.  I ollied it first try surprisingly, but it wasn’t easy.  A few tries later I landed on the tail and snapped the tail clean through.  Felt pretty cool to ride away from the trick with a snapped tail, but I was bummed I was done skating.  I watched Nate and Jason do boardslides on the knobbed flatbar for awhile then we left.

WOW.  Fast, tech, creative, lines, smooth, dudes got it all.

The family and I was in Omaha for Christmas and it just so happen’s that one of our favorite musicians Conor Oberst was playing a show while we were there.  Being the the cool cats we are we were put on the VIP list of course.  Or was it we spent $60 on ebay for tickets?  I can’t remember.  Anyways, we got there early through the freezing rain and proceeded to play the worst game of pool the bar has ever seen.  Finally some music came on so we could stop embarrassing ourselves.Up first was Renee Hoover.  Decent Omaha style music.  Mellow, grown up and talented.  Good opener.Up next was Simon Joyner.  Did I mention these photos were taken with my cell phone?  Well, they were.  I didn’t like this set at all.  BORING.  Put me in  bummer mode and made me tired.  From what I can remember Liz enjoyed it somewhat at least.Finally Conor and crew came on stage.  Here’s the setlist that I found on what is hopefully a reliable blog.North of the CityCape CanevralI Won’t Ever Be Happy AgainSomething VagueTrain Under WaterBowl of Oranges10 WomenScaleI Know You (new song)Poison OakMoabMilk ThistleEncore:New YearFreemenRoll OnI Don’t Want to Die (In the Hospital)Pretty much the whole set was awesome.  Hearing some of the older Bright Eyes songs was awesome.  My favorites of the night were Something Vague and Train Under Water.  I didn’t really enjoy the encore when pretty much everyone from the previous two bands got on stage and joined them.  But I totally dig that about Conor Oberst.  He wanted to have a Christmas party type show and he did.  Fun times.

Jason and I both drove across the country earlier in the day.  Jason from Utah.  Me from Omaha.  We were both tired but wanted to skate so we met Nate at the Circuit City garage and brought my poorly built ledge.  Warming up was slow as usual for Jason and I.  Nate warmed up by slamming super hard on a back nosegrind attempt.  Ouch.  Jason ended up skating really well.  He rattled off a few basics for him like front and back 50s, front smith, front noseslide, back noseslide, halfcab noseslide before moving on to new tricks of back and front willy grinds.  Awesome!  He also did slappy front tails, crooks and halfcab back willy.  Pretty awesome.  Nate killed it as usual.  His basic warm up tricks aren’t fair.  He worked up to back smith, front smith front 180 out, switch front 5-0, probably more and came close to some crazy tricks like nollie front 180 to fakie bs nosegrind, fakie bigspin noseslide, fakie shove fakie nosegrind and who knows what else.  I got into a groove of trying a few runs.  Tried halfcab flip, back 5-0, nollie tre, but never go the nollie tre.  Got fakie flip, fakie nosegrind, but couldn’t end it with fakie tre.  Treid a bunch of front smiths, but couldn’t ride out, front nose grind, but the only ones I rode away from I bonked the back wheels on, kick back tails weren’t close.  It was fun though.

After spending a small fortune on new snow tires I figured it would be awesome to also spend money on something which I normally do for free, skateboard.  Joe, Zak and Dan picked me up and we went to the only indoor park around.  Opening the door we were greeted by loud corporate crap x-games music before a nice lady helped us get checked in.  They had a new 1031 video and Joe bought it up in a jiffy.  Turns out Greg and the rest of the 1031 dudes are hero’s there.  Cool.They got rid of the bowl which I thought was pretty fun and packed in some ok and some really bad street stuff.  Dan had hurt his ankle and it appeared to be worse than he thought.  We dorked around a bit, but it wasn’t long before he had to sit out the session.  To add insult to injury he had to sit and listen to that horrible manufactured X-games screamo crap music the whole time.  Sorry Dan, but thanks for letting us skate.Almost my entire session was spent dorking around.  I seriously can’t deal with skating in that type of environment.  Shitty loud music, tons of kids, bad skatepark.  Joe and Zak were ripping though.  They both skated the pyramid and hubba for awhile.  I saw Joe get a 5-0 and front smith down it.  Zak had the best ollie over the pyramid ever that he should have never committed to, but since he’s one of those naturally gifted dudes he rode out fine.  Dude rips.  My trick of the day would probably the the backside flip on the flat bank to slide down sideways and go to fakie at the very end.  Pretty funny.  I spent a long time skating this cool wedge spine kicker thing.  I tried a bunch of no comply to tail then transfer over, but never got one.  I got a kickflip blunt transfer and a blunt shove transfer, but couldn’t combine the too.  Then I tried a run for awhile where I would ollie the wedge, come back do a front 5-0 stall and try to 270 shove transfer, never got that either.Then I got bummed for awhile and sat next to Dan for awhile before heading out to do some flip tricks in a corner avoiding kids.  After awhile I skated the tiny mini ramp that’s pretty fun.  Joe and Zak joined for awhile and we all skated pretty well.  I got a couple of my harder tricks: fakie pivot fakie, front d, front 50 stall front d back smith.  We closed things out with a game of SKATE where Zak killed us.  He ended it with a double flip.  Argh!  Better then not skating, but seriously, that place could be a lot better with a few mellow obstacles and some better music.

Mr Joe HamiltonIn Omaha for Christmas Joe and his friend Zak picked me up.  We drove around for awhile trying to find a dry parking lot which we eventually did.  We started off hitting up a kind of longer speed bump for awhile and it was fun.  Joe got things started with a run which I’m totally forgetting right now.  Something like halfcab flip, front 180 over the bump,  fakie bigspin.  We all did them.  We were all having a ball trying tricks in a run.  I think at one point I got halfcab flip, 180 of the bump, fakie flip, fakie varial flip.  Fun!  Zak was killing the fakie/nollie shove combos.  We both eventually got kickflips from the bump to flat, which was much harder than it should have been.  I blame it on the cold.New Fremont recruit – ZakWe pulled Joe’s flatbar contraption out after awhile .  Joe and Zak killed that thing.  Both did front 50s, front boards, front smiths and front 5-os like it as nothing.  I managed a crook quickly, but other then that totally sucked on it.  Then we started lining out to it.  I tried a run of kickflip off the bump, heelflip on flat and crooks the ledge.  Don’t think I got that one.  Joe and Zak got a couple sick ones.  Zak did something like 180 the bump, halfcab heel, nosegrind.  Joe got front shove, 180, halfcab flip, front smith.  Zak also got a line to front smith and Joe did a long line to front lip that involved a swith front shove and a fakie big on the way.  Sick!  I eventually kind of got a line with 180, no comply 180, halfcab flip, croseslide (crook noseslide combo).Before freezing, I mean leaving, we played a game of SKATE.  I ended up getting a lot of my tricks and won it.  I think I got halfcab flips both way, fakie bigflip, varial flip, fakie flip, treflip and won it with a heelflip.We left after Joe attempted to boardslide a rail into the snow and did a funny dive into the snow.  Ha.  Another super fun session involving the Fremont crew where the attitude was always positive and everyone skated hard.  Awesome.

Jason and I felt like getting an early start.  I felt pretty crappy as usual lately.  I think I’m getting a sinus infection.  I skated in front of my house for awhile waiting for Jason and then Brian.  Ended up doing a faster than normal kickflip followed by a frontside flip.  Then we went to the ballpark ledges, aka Jason’s spot.  Because he kills it.  Without warming up he was doing 10 feet long front noseslides.  That’s his trick.  Fuzz, Brian, Neil, Jake and Nate eventually showed up.  Rad.  I was able to front 50 it pretty easily , but never able to get the front 50 shove.  Got a couple front 5-0’s but they were supposed to be front 50s so I wasn’t pleased.  After awhile I tried a run of noseslide coming up, then ollie onto the ledge and kickflip off.  Ollieing up the ledge was hard and took me way to many tries.  Then I finally got up it and around the stupid corner and had no where near enough speed to kickflip off.  Oh well.Next we went to the Lville skatepark where a ledge had been brought to the hockey rink.  Everyone I’ve ever skated with was there it seemed.  Louis, Darren, Travis, Jam, Max, Brian, etc.  The concrete is so perfect there it seemed hard to skate after the rough ballpark ledges and cracks.  I didn’t land anything for a long time actually and almost died on a back 50.  My back foot hung up on the way up the ledge and my front foot stayed on the board which went and grinded the ledge.  So I did the splits over the ledge.  UGH!  I sat for awhile and cooled off while everyone else seemed to kill it.  Fuzz learned a new trick – fakie 5-0 halfcab out.  Jason almost did back tails.  Nate did a ton of back lips.  Eventually I got a front smith then a front 50.  After awhile I played a game of SKATE with young Max.  He beat me, but we had a good game.  He was mostly trying 540 flips and I posed a couple.  Impossible.  Before leaving Louis, Brian S and I got in a nollie treflip rut.  Louis and I landed them then moved on to trying nollie front bigflips.  We were both really close and eventually I pulled one off.  Rad!  I think I kind of landed one in LA a long time ago with Nullers and JP around, but this one was legit.  I would have liked to skate longer, but I had to get on some Christmas family stuff.  Fun day.

epic