Monico is in town, Rad!  We planned on filming an entire video part in one hour on campus, but it didn’t work out.  Monico brought his little brother Matthew and we picked up Jack.  Off to campus where we skated under the engineering building for awhile.  Warming up was Monico letting us down on the flatbar, Matt beating me and Monico at SKATE and Jack setting up a new board.  Eventually I tried a few runs and failed.  I was sucking and felt really flat.  I tried to up the motivation, but I guess I was too tired.  The one thing I did that made me happy was pop shove into the first bank, kickflip into the second.  It’s not like you get going that fast down the first one, but I’ve never gotten the kickflip into the second before.  Guess all that high speed Busenitz action is paying off.  Joking.  Monico didn’t even have to put in any effort to front 3 into the first one, then 3flip into the second.  Matt was trying tricks down the three stair like he was a kid skating a 3 stair.  Ha.  So sick though.  It must be nice to have all that energy.  After Jack setup his board we proceeded to beat Matt in SKATE then do some thread the needle mannies against the wall.  Pretty rad.We eventually left the Engineering building and ended up at the two downhill manny pads.  I actually manualled the first one 2nd try.  Fun.  Jack probably mannied the whole thing before doing a super rad ollie into tranny on this little triangle thing at the top of the stairs.  It wasn’t really possible, but he did it.  After a rock walk competition down the 5 stair that I won Matt proceeded to act his age and back 180 off the tall ledge.  Last up we hit the the red ledge area and all did wallie back 50s before little Jack did something Monico and I are still confused by.  Wallie wallride ollie out over the crack.  Once again, not really possible, but Jack did it.  It’s the little things like that that stoke me out .  Fun night.  Pretty chill and I skated like crap and it was cold, but whatevs, fun crew good times.Of course a quick Rampy session was in order before the Candelaria’s left town.Kid’s will be kids.  Matt rock fakie pose out.Another pose.  At least Matt’s was a make.  Poser of the month.

Yeah my neck is better!  Yeah it’s warm out!  Unfortunately there is still a lot of snow out.  That didn’t stop us from rolling around downtown and having a blast though.  We all met up near Lazer’s Mom’s house then rolled to St Julien.  We went past a perfectly good ledge, but the sidewalk was fun.  I had new wheels and they felt so much faster than my old flat spotted wheels.  St Julien had lots of snow so we moved on.  The sidewalk east of there is so fun now.  We cruised down it hauling ass.  Lazer noseslid one of the new wood benches.  I boardslid one.  I also found out all my hardware was loose.  Seriously every one of them.  Guess I haven’t been street skating lately.  Ha.Next we ended up in the alley between Broadway and Wells Fargo.  Normally we would just pass it by, but there is snow in a lot of spots so everything seemed fun.  Lazer killed it there too by hauling ass and ollieing onto a ledge, ollieing a gap in the ledge then popping off.  I had a crappy run where I ollied a tiny ledge, 180’d onto another and switch f/s 180’d off.  Next up was the Wells Fargo QP area and we found that during construction one of the benches had been unbolted.  Awesome!!!  It was hilarious actually.  Lazer walked up to it to give it a nudge and see if it would move at all and it slid away.  Everyone wallied out over the flat bar.  Lazer got grabs out, landed in 50 on the bar, huge back 180 and some other cool stuff.  Carleigh got a front 180 over the bar.  Nate and Jason got back 180s.  I wallied to a short 5-0, backside early grabbed over the bar, tried to back tail transfer but failed and tried ollie grabs but failed.  It was fun though.  The cops rolled up and I thought we were getting a ticket.  But then it became apparent that the cop wasn’t moving fast.  He had pulled up right next to us and opened his door.  I was right there ready to kiss up, but he just sat there.  Jake and Lazer were walking off so the rest of us joined.  Then we skated off and everyone went in different directions for awhile.  We were all close at one point and then Jason and Nate disappeared.Lazer, Carleigh, Jake and I walked for awhile and ended at this church with a big crack before the stairs a rail down the middle, and two tiny hubbas going down the sides.  We all slappy noseslid/tailslid them.  Lazer manned up and back 50’d one the real way and cave man’d the rail.Next up was the white ledge.  You couldn’t do the bump before it, but the ledge was decent.  I got some sloppy back 50s, bad back nose, bad crooks, boardslide and got a kickflip off the curb at the end for a nice topper on a couple tricks.  We were hoping Jason and Nate would meet up with us at some point, but we never found them again.  We were near the cars, but no site of them.  We skated a painted curb for awhile which was pretty fun.  Finally we saw Nate and Jason, but they were in Nate’s car and just drove by.  Ha.  We gave in and called Jason and called it a night.  Turned out they had totally stopped skating and were hanging out in bars.

Wowsers.

This really makes we want to skate.  Fun looking spots.  City skating.  Not many hammers.  Damn snow!

Two of the nicest looking flat ground tricks ever.  Seriously blew me away.

Finally warm out, but still tons of snow everywhere.  Jason, Nate ad I attempted to skate at the covered manny pad.  It was pretty nice out, but my neck was killing me.  For a bit I thought it would loosen up and I’d be able to skate.  Nope.  I got a nose manual and a manual rock ‘n roll out.  Then I just resorted to taking photos with my new camera.Nate back lip.  He got a lot of these.  Stoked that my new camera takes the photo the instant you push the button.Jason is learning back tails at 38.  Totally awesome.  Obviously should have used the flash on this one.Here’s the delay with the flash on.  Oops.  Ended up being a photo of a steezy Jason rollout.  This is not his standard 10 stair landing, but still awesome.Before leaving we realized Jason’s tire was really low.Nate used this as his opportunity to showoff his tire pump that hooks up to your car lighter.Pretty cool for emergencies.  But when we could just drive two blocks and fill it up in 5 seconds ..

Ollie and I rolled on Rampy a bit early in the day.  He almost got a rock ‘n roll then lost interest as it appeared to be kind of hard.  I had some decent runs considering how early in the day it was.After hanging out and feeling like crap over at Lazer’s I went home and instead of going to sleep decided to mess around on Rampy “for a few minutes”.  I ended up being out there for over an hour and walked away with a new trick.  Front axle stall to front D to back smith stall.  My first curb dancing on a ramp.  I tried a ton of regular front D’s to back smith (or maybe it’s sugarcane?), but couldn’t quite get it to work.  I did maybe my best run on Rampy yet at some point.  Back 50, back 5-0, rock fakie (gotta have a few of these), fakie pivot fakie, tail stall, front d revert, tail stall, back nosegrind, rock fakie, fakie back smith fakie, bail a front 50 to front d back smith thing.  After awhile I got pretty tired and stopped skating with a really good feeling.  Happy to skate and wanting to skate really hard the next day.  Unfortunately I woke up in the middle of the night with intense neck pain which would take me out .  Ugh.  Sucks getting old.

once again, i’m a fan

Old Bad Religion is still awesome.