Jason, Nate and I had just watched And Now for the first time and only had time for an hour or so of skating so we were pretty hyped up to say the least.  The only times I’ve been to Lville park recently was to help teach kids how to skate at 9am.  That’s too early to skate. Anyways, I was taking a warm up run in the snake run and since there was a bunch of BMX’ers around I figured the coping was really sticky.  Nope.  I slid out pretty bad and landed on my wrist on the coping.  Thought I broke it at first.  Ugh.We ended up skating the ledge as we always do.  It was a pretty hectic session.  The park was really crowded with people that were actually skating so it was chaos.  Nate beat me to a front 50 back 180 so I was cursed on front 50s all night causing me to hurt my wrist even more.  Luckily crooks were feeling good.  The 8″ trucks help with those for sure.  Within 5 tries I had done crooks and crooks 180.  Unheard of for me.  I started trying crooks shove and was getting close, but the board kept spinning to far.  I decided to go with crooks bigspin out and somehow came super close.  Gotta go back and learn that one!

I love east coast videos and the last Traffic video Via is still one of my all time favorites. According to stuff I read on various skate nerd sites this is more of just a promo video to introduce it’s new team riders Bobby Puleo and Jack Sabback than a real video. Knowing that I was still a bit surprised by the shortness of this video. Bobby and Jack each have full parts and there is one montage. Luckily the video packs a lot of sick skating in and just like their last video, makes me want to stop whatever I’m doing and go skate immediately. If only I could leave work whenever I wanted to. Doh.The filming and editing is improved and the video flows well. Puleo opens the video with his patented quick feet, long lines and unique spots. I was expecting a bit more, but it’s still a good part. My favorite trick is the ollie up onto the ledge while 50’ing a wide flatbar. Sabback’s part is pretty ridiculous. Tons of tech tricks while flowing through the city and dodging pedestrians. Dude is sick.Rating:

Had one of those days where you get a million phone calls trying to figure out where/when the skating is gonna happen. Nate had been raving about a new ledge he found with me via nerd computer chat all day so I was determined to meet up with him there. In addition the crew was Gabe, Jason, Neil and Rob. The ledge was ok, but sketchy with water on the other side, hornets, etc. I was ok skating, but others weren’t. Little Jack called and so we left to pick him up and skate around downtown. Nate had a soccer game so he was out. Downtown was fun for me, I like skating anything pretty much, but there was so much bitching again. Rob killed it at Wells Fargo. Manny, back 180, wallride, kickflip. Dude rips. We setup a trashcan on it’s side after a little bump and attempted tricks over it. I say ‘attempted’ because the only tricks that were landed were ollies and a no comply by Neil. I’m still having issues with the 8″. It’s way heavier, but more stable to ollie. I’ll get it. Over all, a fun night, kind of a weird vibe though.

The above photo basically explains how I felt.  I woke up at 9am after 3 straight late nights and the first thing I heard was Ollie asking, “Dad, when are we going skateboarding today?”  I had promised to skate with him.  Around 1 pm we finally headed out to a fun little park in Longmont that shouldn’t have anyone there.  It was closed for repairs and fenced off.  Ugh.  Then we went to this other little park, but a thunderstorm prevented that.  Ugh.  Drove all the way back to Boulder and it was raining.  Found a parking garage finally.  Ollie was flying around.  Kid has so much fun skating.  It’s weird though, sometimes when I’m out with him I feel even older than normal.  Today was one of those days.  We went to the banked curb spot that I skated the day before, but this time I ran into a curb at full speed trying to carve around all the blocks and bloodied up my knee.  Over it.

I was running late due to cleaning my garage for hours getting ready for a garage sale and have a  goal to put some type of tiny little ramp in there this winter, but eventually met up with Gabe, Brian, Neil, Fuzz, Lazer, Jason, Rob, Lloyd, Jack and I believe that’s it.  Well, initially Rob, Lloyd and I went to pick up Little Jack since he’s young and can’t drive or any of that.  We found him doing polejam wallies into banks and decided to film it.Rob took the photo, I filmed.  5 minutes into the day and Little Jack does a better trick than I will ever dream of.  Next we went to Boulder ditch where half of us claimed it’s the worse spot ever and the other half skated.  Brian made fun of me filming Neil trying a run because I can’t push switch hardly at all, especially through a ditch.  The top photo is Brian’s attempt at keeping it straight while filming Neil.  Ha, just playing Brian, I was happy to not film and instead lost as quickly as possible in two games of SKATE to Rob and Jack.Next we went to a little bank/curb spot.  Pretty fun really.  I did a couple dork tricks as usual and somehow snapped my tail trying to do a kickflip over a curb onto the bank.  Doh.  My dork trick then changed to an even dorkier trick using a cracked board.  My whole part will be nothing but 2 mile an hour dork tricks that most people wouldn’t even think of as warm up dork tricks.  Sweet.  I swung home with Jack to setup a new board and then meet the crew at Canyon Center.  Jack gripped my board.  Maybe I’ll be blessed with some type of radness now?  The Canyon Center was fun.  Fuzz and Brian killed it.  I lost in a long game of SKATE to Lloyd and Jack.  Day over.  Exhausted, but hyped.  My new Hombres deck has a pink topsheet.  Sweet.  Every single Hombres 8″ deck came with a pink topsheet.  Not sure what’s up with that.

Rating: STYLE
Rating: COMFORT
Rating: BOARD FEEL
Rating: DURABILITY
Rating: OVERALL

Fallen is making some of the best shoes out there in my opinion. Some of the soles are a bit thick, but this shoe, wow, this shoe is basically perfect. My only complaint about these shoes is the huge logo. That’s not really a complaint, it’s just me being overly picky. I guess the lace saver ripped away after awhile, but that didn’t really bother me too much. I wasn’t able to tre flip lipslide huge handrails either. Not sure what’s up with that since these were the Billy Marks shoes and all, but maybe I should have actually tried it. Who knows, maybe it would happen.Fallen Footwear

Matt and I tried to do the late night skating thing again. Once again it didn’t work out to well as it was still really hot and I was tired. I’m still having lots of trouble with the big board and how different the timing is on it. I think overall I’m digging it though. Our game of SKATE went forever and we ended up playing until I spelled SKATEORDIE. Matt tried to play it off like he only had S, but later on at the bar I rattled off at least 4 tricks he didn’t remember bailing. One good thing that came out of the night was I tried frontside wallrides on a regular vert wall. I’ve never really committed to it before, but there was even a few I thought I could roll away from.We ended up at the Downer and had a couple too many beers making fun of women who dressed up all nice thinking they were in San Diego.  Seriously though, why do so many ladies dress up now?  This isn’t the OC or San Diego, it’s Boulder.  If this trend keeps up I’m gonna make a blog of photos of ladies dressed up all nice and make fun of them.At the end of the night I owed Matt $6 for a pitcher of PBR and he decided that if he could land a 360 flip in two tries I wouldn’t owe him the $6.  It took him three tries.  Cha ching.

Was supposed to bring the kids skating with Zach and his son, but that didn’t work out. My kids still wanted to go though. As I stated in my last journal entry I was totally over the small board and wanted to try the opposite side of the spectrum. Hey, I’ll be the first to admin I’ve got OCD with my setup. Anyways, I found some old 8″ Indy’s that have been laying around since the Blame The Filmer days and setup an 8″ with some new 51mm wheels.When I first stood on the board I felt like I was riding a tank. After a 7.625 and 8″ feels huge. On top of the board feeling like a monster I had to get used to Indys. I’ve been on the Thunder program for years. Oh well. We had fun. Ollie ollied a 2×4. India did some bunny hops on her scooter. I flopped around. We had fun.Around 10pm Matt picked me up and we went to the shopping center near my house with no real spots in mind, just cruise around and hit whatever. I was feeling super tired and didn’t have the energy or the coordination for the wallride banks so we played a game of SKATE. I figured I’d get pink slipped since I was tired and flip tricks on a monster board didn’t seem that appetizing. Luckily I was surprised to find out that it flips decent. Kickflips felt the best they’ve felt in a long time. I lost, but landed more than I would have thought. We cruised around for awhile and I watched Matt ollie everything. That dude has so much pop. We ended up at a slappy curb for awhile that ended up being way funner that one would think. At one point I got a slappy to manual. Tried slappy to nose manny, but that would actually be good. We split out after another game of SKATE that Matt won, but I put down some tricks I wouldn’t have thought for the first day out on a bigger board.Didn’t really like how the board felt so big, but I did like how it ollied and kickflipped. Hopefully I start to get a better feel for it. Boring ass entry I’m sorry, but like the About page says, don’t read them if you don’t want to.

I can’t skate in the sun when it’s this hot.  I’ve been napping after work then skating later on.  By then it’s perfect.

Rating: STYLERating: COMFORTRating: BOARD FEELRating: DURABILITYRating: OVERALLI’m not sure exactly how many pairs of this shoe I’ve had, but it’s a good one, and I enjoy skating them.  I’m pretty picky with the tongue on shoes and this shoe easily has the best tongue of any shoe I’ve ever skated.  It’s thin, but responsive and protects the top of your foot.  Style wise this shoe is a hit obviously considering it’s basically a vulcanized version of the ever popular Accel.  As with most Sole Tech shoes the Square One is super comfy.  The sole packs out and feels like paper after a few weeks and the ollie area will sometimes blow out.  The ollie area can be shoe goo’d, but still, why not have the both layers of suede go all the way into the sole instead of ending where the layers meet.  Oh well, over all I think it’s one of the best shoes out there.eS Footwear