Luckily I only did a couple of these. Click the photo for a whole lot of PJ and Lazer beer bong photos. Sorry for the lack of captions, but all you really need to know is PJ kept yelling “If it aint documented, it didn’t happen!”
These have me so fired up. Rob is the man.
Ollie had been watching some of the Off The Couch footage and asked if the ramp in the Rock Creek clips was close. I said yes, he wanted to go. We got there around 11am and it was sunny and in the 70s. September in CO rules. It ended up being a super fun session. I love how there is absolutely no pressure on me to skate when I’m with him. At one point I was going 2 miles an hour trying front 180 nosegrinds on the ledge. Didn’t get close, but no one was there to laugh at me. I suppose someone reading this can laugh at me for skating so slow. I’m used to it though, I always skate slow. It’s not by choice, it’s just called being very uncoordinated and lacking any sort of confidence on a skateboard these days. Or maybe it’s called being old. Either way we had a blast. There was some other kids there that couldn’t really ollie at all and I think for the first time Ollie felt like he wasn’t the only beginner at the skatepark and he loosened up a little. I think that’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him while skating. And that’s saying a lot because he seems to sincerely love skateboarding already. He smiled the entire time and shredded like I’ve never seen him. He ollied up on to the flatbottom of the ramp (the height of a curb) at least 20 times and probably fell at least 50 times trying it. We got to the point where I even skate coached a little and gave him some pointers. He’s been ollieing into board stalls on ledges for awhile so I told him to take a little angle and try it at the end of the ledge. A few tries later he did a back boardslide. It was a jib, but wow. Then all on his own he started trying it frontside onto the end of the flatbar and landed it pretty quick. Imagine how rad it is to see your best skate buddy of all time landing a new trick, that’s about what it feels like to see your kid land a new trick, except maybe times 20 or something. It seriously is so fun skating with Ollie. He claps on the rare occasion I land tricks, he doesn’t talk much, he skates hard, he smiles, he bails, he gets frustrated, he never complains, he never wants to film and wow I’m really rambling on and on tonight. Oh well. Skateboarding is incredibly fun. And skating with your own kid is also incredibly fun. I came remotely close to doing a nose manual shove manual on the flatbottom of the ramp. Would have been cool, never done that before. Later on we went to the school for an evening session and it sucked. Well, I sucked to be specific. Ugh.
Started the day off skating with Ollie at the school for a while. We mostly skated the yellow curb above the four stair. It’s pretty fun trying to do every stall I can do. I got nosepick disaster smith 180. Ha. Ollie started trying halfcabs off the curb and it blew me away. He was actually popping them pretty high. He never rode out of one, but it still blew me away. I started trying no comply finger flips off the curb and eventually got a few. I’ve never tried that trick down a curb. It felt slightly different, but it was fun and put a smile on my face.After going to the CU game with India and then a nap I met up with the Trick Factory about the time sun was setting. They all wanted food and stopped at Wendys. Travis and I rolled over to the Grease Monkey because there is a rock on top of a manny pad there that could be moved around. We pushed it off the curb and started wallieing up it onto the manny pad. I eventually got a couple wallie manuals. So hyped. Off to Valmont. Skating there sometimes really bums me out. I skate there a lot and not landing tricks bums me out there more than normal. Anyways I tried a run for awhile. Knowing the camera was in the car and that trying it on film would fail seemed to bum me out too. After awhile Fuzz, Brian and I played a never ending game of SKATE. It ended up being a blast. Seeing Brian attempt flip tricks rules. He landed a front foot impossible. First time I’ve ever seen him land it. I landed a nollie treflip. Best feeling trick ever. Well, maybe not, but I don’t believe I’ve ever had a bad session that involves a nollie 360 flip. Up next was a game of SKATE on a metal crate propped up against a wall with Brian and Gabe. Once again this game never really ended, but it was easily one of the funnest sessions I’ve had in awhile. We did rock ‘n rolls on the sides, wallies off the sides, rock ‘n rolls, Gabe and Brian did rock fakies, and we got to the point of doing axle stalls on the top which was pretty hard actually. I somehow pulled off a back smith stall then was gonna try back smith to fakie, but kinda hurt my foot. I called it at that, but Gabe, Brian and Fuzz started joking around only doing tricks that they could get speed for by tic tac’ing. It was hilarious.
The first day of skating in a long sleeve is typically one of my favorite days of skating each year. Not this year. Jason, Gabe and I went to the rainbow ledge area. I could not do anything. This might be partially due to me having a new deck, but it was pathetic. I was sucking so bad on the ledge that I chose to just film Jason who was killing it. He did every trick I’ve seen him do there. Jason is 37. He rules.
Silas’ welcome to Adidas clip. This dude rips so ridiculously hard.
Was gonna meet Nate and Longmont park, but he called saying it was raining there. So Valmont it was. The session started off real slow for me. Luckily when Nate got there we started messing around with switch frontside noseslides. I hadn’t really tried that trick in years and ended up getting a couple very weak ones. Then we did some wallride stuff and dropped in on some sheets of wood against a crate. Fun. After that we hit the manny pad for the most part and Nate killed it. front 180 nose manual, first try nollie front 180 nose manny, switch manny, nollie shove manny, probably more. I wanted to try kickflip manuals but I had cracked my board pretty bad on a heelflip so I basically just tried front 180 nose manuals over and over and came closer than I ever have at Valmont. Cool. We ended it on a curb trick session. Nate is hella fun to skate with.
Is today’s song of the day.
Solo mission to the Basemar shopping center which is only about a mile from my house. There is a weak little bank along a bikepath that I started out on dorking a few tricks like disaster reverts and stuff. Then I went to the ollie bump for awhile and amazed myself at how impossible it is for me to ollie higher than 3 inches. It took me at least 5 tries to get a decent ollie over a cardboard box. Ugh. I had a little run where I manualled the landing of the kicker then ollied into the bikepath bank and 180’d out of it. Yippee. I was about to try stuff over the cardboard box when a drunk bum popped out from a dumpster and scared the crap out of me. He was stumbling all over the landing and stuff so I was over it and rolled over to the curved ledge nearby on campus. If I ever manual that thing I would be so happy. I ended up getting kicked out after only a couple warm up ollies. Then it was flatground time where I almost rolled my ankle on a 360 flip. I don’t know how I didn’t. It was one of those weird bails where I thought for sure my ankle was done. Thankfully not. The area I was skating is uphill one way, downhill the other. I have had this phobia of downhill skating all my life and decided to just deal with it. It ended up working out and I even put together a few lines. kickflip, b/s 180, halfcab flip, frontside flip. front shove, varial flip, fakie big flip. heelflip, no comply finger flip, 360 flip. Most everything I landed was landed horribly except for a few heelflips. For some reason heelflips felt amazing. Fun solo session.