Then west coast skating.  Jerry Fowler and Jahmal Williams killing it.  Hopps seems like a rad company even if they have the same logo as Hype.  After watching that I then watched an old 411 Jerry Fowler part.  (Yes, I get most of these video links from the slap forums which i browse about once a day)

Brought India to ballet class at the North Boulder Rec center in the early evening and just skated around there for awhile.  I cruised around for a bit just looking for something fun then settled with a mellow downhill parking lot and bailed tricks for awhile.  I suck at doing tricks downhill and I only got a couple runs down the hill.  One came quick, back pop shove, kickflip, back 180, halfcab flip.  I wasn’t going fast but I never had to push.  One was fakie flip, halfcab flip, kickflip and then bailed a varial flip.  I couldn’t land a frontside halfcab flip to start one line and I just kept trying nollie heelflips going uphill and came remotely close to a few of them.  Gotta keep trying them!  The last run started with a first try sketchy fakie bigflip, kickflip, kickflip, kickflip.  Neat.  Then I skated an alley for a little bit and sucked, but landed a 360 flip to give it some sort of a fun feeling.  Then Jason and I went to the Louisville park really late.  We got there at 9:30 so only had 30 minutes before the lights shut off.  We started off pretty quick and were trying lines were we rolled into the flat bank, ollied the hip then went over the ledge backside.  The Louisville ledge is the only ledge I can crooks good these days.  I got a couple with pop outs, a couple to fakie and almost a crooks shove.  Someone waxed it a lot so it was scary fast.  Other tricks that went down were front 50 back 180 out and front 5-0 front shove out which I haven’t done in awhile.  Used to be a warm up trick for me.  Doh!  Fun quick session though.

Rating: The Thermals became one of my all time favorites after Fuckin A came out.  Two albums later they are even higher on my list and have yet to disappoint.   Each album has a different feel and there seems to be less punk in their rock with each album, but they are all awesome.  The new one “Now We Can See” is easily their poppiest and cleanest to date.  I was skeptical at first, but hearing it live and listening to the record over and over has sold me on it.  I’m not going to give this album a perfect rating.  I don’t think any of their albums have been a perfect 10, here’s my minor complaints about this one:* The album doesn’t start as strong as all other Thermals albums.  ‘When I Died’ seems like they forcefully toned it down.  Still a great song, but it’s lacking that Thermals album opener overdrive.  * The high pitched parts of “We Were Sick” are a little tough on the ears sometimes.  I’m all for Kathy helping on the vocals, but parts of that song don’t work so well.  Luckily the “We were high, we were alive, we were sick” makes up for it.  *  The order of the songs could be better.  “At The Bottom Of The Sea” could be a great ender.  Not sure, but listening to the record sounds better sometimes starting at side 2 which starts with “When We Were Alive”.  That being said don’t think for a second I don’t love this album.  There are some epic Thermals songs on here.  “I Let It Go”, “Now We Can See”, “At The Bottom Of The Sea”, “When We Were Alive”, “I Called Out Your Name”, “When I Was Afraid”, and “You Dissolve” are all amazing to me.  I think their song writing and structuring has improved on this album and Hutch seems to deliver the lyrics as good as ever.  I give this album an ‘A-‘.  Kudos Thermals, your one of my favorites.

Josh sent me a link to this today.  That is one hyped up crowd as they should be.  Dinosaur Jr – In A Jar – today’s Song Of The Day and a classic.

After a busy early evening of being Mr Mom doing laundry, dishes, cooking dinner I wasn’t really feeling street skatintg and it was too late for Louisville.  Nate called and suggested Rampy.  It warmed up quick in there and we sweated our asses off in between runs and listening to the Nuggets game on the radio.  Yes, I’m a jock.  Anyways we were both skating OK.  I took too long to relearn front pivots which scare me way more than they should.  I got most of my tricks and at the end actually slid some front lips.  Rad.  Nate learned back blunts.  Sick!

First thing I thought when I saw the start of this clip, ‘Is that Brian?’  But then I realized it’s some other dude farting into the camera.

As Brian would say, I’m a jock and jocks like flatground, so I was hyped to to a game of SKATE at the Boulder park with Berrics rules (ie, no no complies).  I was pretty sore from the day before and skated Rampy for a bit with Ollie to get loosened up.  Didn’t even really try any tricks, but it was fun.  Then I went out and did a few tricks in the street before leaving for the Boulder Skatepark.  Got to the park and played a couple chaotic games of SKATE with Little Jack, Nate and Big John.  John killed it!  They were fun games and then came the real game.  Nate and I made the mistake of chilling out while we waited for our games to begin.  It was 4 people and the top 2 advance.  I played the worst game of SKATE ever missing tricks like front shoves 4 times in a row.  Luckily no one else could hardly land a trick and I got to round 2 where I was pink slipped by 4 tricks I’ve never done before and a bailed 360 flip.  Ha.  Oh well.The rest of the day was spent messing around with the curbs, mini quarterpipe and more games of SKATE.  It was a blast.

Mikey and I rolled to CO Springs on a nice, but windy morning in Boulder.  Get to the Springs and it’s windy there too, but cold as well.  I’ve come to realize it’s never nice when I go there.  We played a game of SKATE to get warmed up that went on a long time and put me on my ass a few times.  Ouch.  I still can’t land nollie tres anymore, but got treflip pretty quick.  Skating the park was weird at first.  I was sucking. I even fell rolling into a flat bank at one point.  Ugh.  I almost just wanted to leave there, but we kept going and eventually I had fun.  We skated the weird pyramid thing and Mikey and I started our ‘back to back’ trend for the day.  I learned a bluntslide to fakie transfer and he backed me up with a nollie backside flip over the hip.  Next up I backside flipped on a flat bank and he switch 180’d the stairs (steezey as it gets).  Lastly Mikey nollie shove manualled the downhill manny pad and I manualled it (which was scary to me).  I took a break for awhile then we ended up at the backyard pool bowl and Mikey killed the ollies to fakie up by the light.  I did some lame carves.  Then we played a couple more games of SKATE in the rain/wind and split out as the temperature dropped 20 more degrees.

Nate and I figured we should play some SKATE since we were gonna do the SKATE game on Saturday.  In almost an hours time we only played two games and probably spent 20 minutes trying varial heels.  Both of us got close, neither of us rode away.  The tricks I had a lot more trouble with than I should have were fakie flip, fakie big flip and nollie treflip.  One surprise for me was a fakie treflip second try.  Nate has some bangers like nollie big heel, switch var heel ,etc.  I need to skate flatground more, it’s fun.  Especially now that my feet don’t hurt as bad since I don’t wear tiny vulc shoes anymore.