I met up with Rob and Neil at Louisville Skatepark with no late night partying or silly outfits to use as excuses.  Yes, after 3 nights of raging I went to sleep before my kids had even finished the official count on their halloween candy.  Felt great.  We started a game of SKATE right away that Rob won.  I think I got a 360 flip in it though. But maybe that was the second one.  It was a good warm up and we headed over to Rock Creek to meet up with Lazer, Brian and Kurt.  Not so fast though.  On the way there I barely rear ended a lady at a light.  Ugh.  No damage to the cars save some minor scratches on plastic.  Luckily no one was hurt.  The lady had started accelerating at a green light then totally hit the brakes for some reason.  I guess she was from out of town and confused what a green light means.  Ugh.I was feeling a bit jittery, but once again Brian ruled it and decided a game of skate on the pyramid bank was in order.  We did some dumb tricks and some fun ones.  Brian won it with tricks like frontside 540 kickturn, blunt to staple gun, etc.  But the story of the session was that I got a letter on him with a front rock. Yes, Mr One Foot Front Rock.  Ha.  Actually it was nothing though and we started skating the ramp after that.  Rob, Brian and Lazer were ripping as usual.  Rob and I shook our heads in disbelief at how rad Lazer’s opening run was.  Dude’s got it.  I tried a lot of front smith grinds and maybe landed a few.  Or maybe they were just slasher grinds I don’t know.  I got a fakie pivot axle stall which I normally take to fakie on Rampy, but at least I finally got into it.  Brian slammed on his bad hip and the ramp session pretty much ended.  I skated flatground for awhile and landed a fakie treflip for the first time in forever.  Felt really good.  Got a 360 flip or two as well and tried to round it out with a nollie tre, but no love there.  I also got a front 5-0 shove on the ledge.  Sweet.  Feels so good to skate with no concerns of what should be filmed.

That is me. I can’t believe it either. I made somewhat of a conscience effort to try and get of out Halloween Havoc, but Brian is just to awesome and kept on me. After another night of Dinosaur Jr destroying all things music I ended up at the Boulder park looking like that. The Trick Factory all went with a Road Warrior Theme and I was to be Lord Humongous.But hey, at least I refused to go without jeans. See more pics of everyone else on Jack’s lassfullofshit blog. So as you can probably guess I was pretty weirded out looking like that and skating was not easy. Everytime I ollied I the belt got me in the nuts. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get Little Jack to SKA in a game of SKATE. Granted though he was trying the hardest tricks I’ve never seen him do before. His final trick was the Pat Hickey – switch front shove late flip. For the most part I didn’t skate much. Jason and I skated the curbs for awhile, but that was it. After the contest was over and the wind turned me into an ice cube I ditched the Humongous gear and skated in the Boulder park for at least 4 runs which was long enough to never land a no comply bigspin.

Tired from the night before (Dinosaur Jr!!!!), but with a big grin of course, I woke up slightly before noon, went to Meta, then hit some flatground until Ollie got out of school.  I tried a bunch of 360 flips, but only landed one.  And it happened to be one that I dedicated to Liz as she walked by.  Sweet, she probably thinks I have them on lock now.  I was really tired/lazy so I didn’t put much effort in and there was still quite a bit of snow on the edges of the road.  All made for a mellow, but fun session.  Got a few decent heelflips, tried a lot of switch f/s flip and nollie heels.  Hopefully the stars will align at some point and I start landing those.  At the end I landed a nollie tre and called it a day.  Well, ‘landed’ is a stretch.  It’s quite a bit like the nollie tre in my Off The Couch part, but without the scrolling text making fun of myself.

Gordon, Brian, Nate and I were skating as others gathered to eat pizza.  Gordon did 100 tricks again in 30 seconds.  Ridiculous.  He also introduced Rampy to front blunts.  He did so many of those board to pivot tricks that I thought they were easy enough to try.  I kinda landed a rock ‘n roll with a front truck bash, but it wasn’t the pivot thing I was going for.  Oh well, cool.  I skated much better than the day before, but still couldn’t get the fakie pivot to fakie like I had for about one session.  Nate was trying some hard tricks and getting close.  Brian was killing it too.  Between him and Gordon I think basically every trick was done.  Time for Dinosaur Jr!!!!!

Buy your own copy of Off The Couch!  Do it, it’s epic!  And only $10.  Full parts from the Trick Factory and the “best intro ever”!  Give Matt Rief the credit for that quote.And while your at it pick up a fantastic Off The Couch t-shirt.  The shirt is a high quality Anvil Ringspun 980.  Ballin’!

Two feet of snow in October.  UGH!  Lazer, Carleigh, Jason, Reed and Gordon came over for a session.  Gordon’s first run was the best first run anyone has ever had on Rampy.  I don’t remember what all he did, but it was like 15 tricks.  Wow.  I was on a straight suck fest for the first half of the session bailing everything including axle stalls.  Ugh.  Jason was killing it grinding from wall to wall.  Lazer destroyed as usual and Reed ripped it too.  Carleigh laughed a lot and attempted front d’s for a long time before setting down a kickflip rock fakie quick like.  Toward the end of the session I finally started having fun and landing a couple tricks.  Then we went out and had a fun night drinking beers and watching the Nuggets.  Who would have ever thought that Lazer and I would high five the Nuggets winning their first game?  Not me, but it was awesome.

A tired/hungover crew of TFers headed to the Westminster park after a late night of celebrating at the premiere.  The crew was Jason, Jake, Fuzz, Brian, Lazer, Gordon and me.  The first few minutes were pretty funny.  Fuzz slammed so awkward trying to boardslide a ledge.  It was like nothing I’ve seen him do before.  He was trying to boardslide a ledge on top of a step up but his back foot didn’t even make it up the step up.  It was hilarious.  I tried a weird dork trick nose manny into someting on the qpipe and ended up doing the weirdest trick.  Rock to nose manny to board to tail and somehow survived.  After awhile I played a game of SKATE with Lazer that quickly turned into a game of SKATE with Lazer, Brian and Jake.  Brian was out quick which I’ll blame on the hangover and Lazer quit so it was Jake and I.  I got a 3 flip something else to close it off in the end.Then we went to Rock Creek.  We played a huge game of SKATE.  Well, since I easily suck the most on the ramp I believe by the end of it that I had spelled SKATEBOARDER MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION RENEWAL.  It was fun for the most part, but it was definitely embarrassing and frustrating not being able to land any of the tricks.  It was probably good for my ramp skating, but ugh, I suck at ramp.  The only new tricks I got remotely close to were fakie rock to smith and the same thing regular.We ended it with a flip trick session and Jason did some kickflips for the first time in as long as I can remember.  Fuzz got some hard heelflip variation.  Front 180 heel and b/s halfcab heel.  I got a couple 3 flips, heelflips and fakie bigflip.  Couldn’t do nollie tre.  Fun day for how beat we all were.

Nate, Pat, Pat’s friend Charlie, Jason and I headed over to the Lville park for some pre-premiere skate action.  I started off slow.  Really slow.  After awhile we played a game of SKATE on the bank to ledge.  I bailed a couple easy ones, but got a kickflip pivot first try.  Pat won the game of course.   After awhile we headed over to the hockey rink for some flatground SKATE.  I kept up the sucking for the first couple games.  Nate gave Pat a run in a couple of the games.  The last game we could only do tricks we hadn’t done yet which somehow worked out for me as I didn’t lose right away and got at up to SKA.  I don’t remember all what I landed, but I know everything took a bunch of tries and I couldn’t do tre’s or nollie tres.  Then we went back into the park and shredded around for awhile.  I was tired and starting to get a bit stressed about the premiere, but managed to do one of the better lines I’ve done there.  Manual the ledge by the pool (first time I’ve ever done that), ollie onto the little ledge and into the bank, kickturn, kickflip over the hip.  Most of those were done horrible.  The session ended when Jason stomped a back tail over the bank to ledge.  Sickness!

There’s no way I could go to Fremont and not play Joe in a game of SKATE.  He had to be to the church for the wedding by 11am so we got out and played some SKATE in front of his house around 10.  Joe started pretty slow and I started super slow for what may have been the longest game ever.  Joe had me SKAT to S, but couldn’t seal the deal and I eventually came back and won it.  Flip tricks felt really weird.  Mostly due to my legs being messed up from sitting and editing for the last two weeks, but the new setup was partly to blame too.  After the game of SKATE Eric and I did slappy curb tricks for awhile.  Then I dropped those guys off and went to Linden.  I took a long time to warm up, but got a new trick somewhat quickly.  Front 5-0 to front board.  I got a lot of back 50s too which is hard for me.  Back 50, back 50 back 180 out, back 50 back shove out, back 50 horrible front 180 out.  I also tried a lot of front nosegrinds and front smiths.  Never got the nosegrind, but pulled out a couple short smiths.  Fun times.

In Fremont for Matt Rief’s wedding, but still exhausted/destroyed from so many late nights of editing the Fremont crew and Pat Hickey headed to Linden.  It was cold and and I had new shoes, new board and new wheels.Hey, I figured Off The Couch is done so why not start fresh?  My other gear was busted anyway.  Joe went to work immediately and seriously busted every move he’s got and some new ones.  Front lip to front 50 to front board.  back shove front 50 front shove out.  Back 50 back board 27 0 out.  The list goes on and on.  His new trick was a fakie front 50 turned into a back 50.  Ridiculous.  Matt was taking it mellow for obvious wedding reasons.  Pat wasn’t ripping as much as normal, but both of us were really tired/sore.  Glad we skated.Eric took a few fun long exposure photos. Not sure how he was able to capture this rare front 50 as I only did about 50 of them.Maybe these initial are cooler then sskfbts – ncbt.  no comply back tail.  I’d post some more photos, but Eric has them posted in a copywrited site so I gotta screen capture each one ..