Skated flatground in front of the house for about 5 minutes to see how I felt and to my surprise I wasn’t super sore from the day before.  Then Ollie said he wanted to come out with me so we headed to Red Curbs.  But right before we got there I remembered the little table top thing a little past Red Curbs.  We went there and Ollie seemed to dig and we ended up being there for almost a couple hours.  We started just doing mannys across the top and dorking around.  Ollie is totally getting how to manual and didn’t scrape most of the time.  So sick.  I tried to ollie most of the table top but failed.Then we spotted another loading dock thing nearby and rolled over to check it out and to our delight was a new section of banked curbs with manny pads in between and flyout potential all over the place.  Ollie did the best ollie (seriously though I wish I would have thought this whole Ollie ollie thing through a little better before naming him that ..) I’ve ever seen him do.  He snapped the tail hard on a flyout and probably got close to a foot up.  Sick.  He also did little backside ollies on the banks, half cabbed in and out of the bank  and even came close to flyout back 180s.  I set out a box nearby and did a decent run for me.  Halfcab flip, ollie the box, ollie into the banked curb, front 180 nose manny.  Cool.  I ended up ollieing the box several times.  Also kickflipped into a mellow part of the banked curb, ollied into the loading dock (so fun), slammed on a rock, did a few treflips, had a blast.  Ollie was totally ripping for him.  He also manualled two section of the downhill loading dock and bomb dropped off it.  Smiling the whole time.We left and drove around and found another dry spot nearby.  It’s kind of a two stair loading dock thing.  It had good asphalt around it.  Ollie ollied (again, Ollie ollie) the two stair like it was nothing first try.  I tried to ollie over the two stair rail, but failed.  Partly due to snow in the landing.  I ended up going for a run of ollie up the loading dock, ollie the two stair, quick ollie over the curb, ollie over some snow.  Got it.  I was happy to be landing the ollie up the loading dock better.  Ever since John called me out and told me to land on all fours I’ve been working on it.  Anyways.  Ollie and I cruised around a bit more and found some fun snow gaps.  I ended up getting a longer line along the same lines (ha).  Ollie small snow gap, 3 flip on flat, ollie up the dock, ollie the two, ollie the curb, ollie some snow.  Hyped on that.  And hyped that I landed every single 360 flip I tried today.  Granted, some were landed horrible, but 5-0 is my record by far.  I also got a fun manny into a downhill pad where I had to carve around some picnic tables in the run out.  Seriously having a blast at this point.Before leaving Ollie found a tennis ball and we would cruise the downhill parking lot tossing it back and forth.  It was so fun.  Ollie was having a blast.  I even through in a first try kickflip over some snow up a curb while we were doing this.  Awesome way to start out the new year.

Last day of 2009.  Got off work early and it was somewhat nice out, but snowy at most spots.  I stopped off at the spot where Brian ollied the big bush and ended up staying for a couple hours.  I had my mp3 player going on shuffle and that worked for awhile.I dorked around for awhile getting warmed up.  I wanted to do the smaller gap near the bush ollie, but there was snow in the landing.  I posed the big one a couple times, but never came close to committing.  I found a snow gap off a sidewalk that I ended up using to try and start a line.  The gap was about 5 feet long off a crack ridden sidewalk with a short setup.  It didn’t take me as long to commit to it as I thought it would and it ended up being really fun.  I would ollie it, ollie up a curb, front 180 off a curb, f/s halfcab flip and then manual this weird metal grated manny pad.  I never got all of them.  I got to the manny though.  Another run I was trying was kickflip up a curb, back 180 off over a tiny snow gap, halfcab flip then manny.  I got those 4.  They were bad though.  It took me forever to do the back 180 because I totally suck at that trick.  Before leaving I told myself to do 20 flat ground tricks.  It didn’t matter what.  I started with pop shove, did tricks like b/s flip, 360 flip, fakie 360 flip, fakie bigflip and ended it with no comply bigspin.  Fun session.  Skated really hard.  Goodbye 2009!

This part blows me away.  Kickflip back noseblunt pop out in a line.  Halfcab back 50 on a flat bar.  This front 50.  Wow.  Click the image and watch the movie.

Horrible music and some plaid shorts, but damn!

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.