Had a horrible week at work and Friday was the worst day yet.  Got home from work early feeling very cranky, tired and sore.  I took a short nap and woke up feeling slightly better.  I put on PJ Ladd’s part in WHL (best part ever) then ran out of my house with my board, pushed as fast as I could to the bikepath down the street.  When I got there I pushed as fast as I could down it.  It’s not steep or anything, but if you push fast enough the last couple corners before it ends can be scary.  The feeling of flying down a hill rules.  I need to do it more.  My flatspotted wheels were making so much noise, my trucks were wobbling, I was scared and man, it was fun.  After the first one I felt sooooo much better about life.  I skated back slow doing a couple kickflips/shove its and talking on the phone.  I got back to the top and did the same thing again, except even faster.  I walked back and did it a final time somehow going even faster.  Fast enough that I barely made the corner under Moorhead.  I came so close to jumping into the creek.  That would have been so cold!  To finish the run I did a kickflip going kinda fast and laughed for awhile about how fun something as simple as pushing down a hill can be.  Yeah skateboarding!

John’s band was awesome.

And wow does this look like fun!  He even starts off at Cruz!

This stuff is seriously mind blowing to me.

My second time reaching 20 days of skating in a row this year. I really wanted to just sit on the couch with the family and watch the Lindbergh movie they were watching, but my legs felt decent and it was kinda warm out (35f). When I left my house I felt better than I have in awhile though and I ran the 5 feet to the car. I guess I had more hip in my hop or something.I pulled into Red Curbs at the same time Nate biked in.  It was mostly wet again.  All we could really skate is the manny pad, the ledge and a curb.  Wow, sounds awesome!  I had some motivational issues early on, but put them to rest and tried to skate hard.  I ended up skating harder than I have in awhile.  I would try manual tricks with a flipper after.  I think my best little run was probably a manual disaster then a 270 flip tic tac.  Ha.  Nate was getting his ledge tricks on and basic mannies back since he’s still getting used to the man sized setup.  I had the most fun trying trick up, trick off the manny pad.  I got kickflip up kickflip off, pop shove up kickflip off and a new one for me, pop shove up varial flip off.  I don’t think I’ve done varial flip off.  Maybe?  Oh well.  I tried to do it up the curb for awhile, but failed.  I also got backside 90 flip and fakie bigspin up the curb.  Pretty fun night.

Ok, there’s been too many amazing Rampy sessions to say one is the best, but this one was one of my favorites for sure.  The crew was Brian, Kurt, Dave and I initially.  After awhile Lazer and Carleigh showed up and after awhile longer Nate showed up.  Jake also stopped by briefly to say hi.  Good seeing him.  Jason was also in attendance for awhile, but just to watch.I was pretty tired/sore so it took me awhile to get going.  Dave and Brian were killing it pretty much out of the gates.  It was Dave’s first Rampy session and he seemed to take an interest in the short deck side.  Trying to fakie rock fully decked, manuals, etc.  Anyways, this session is going to be pretty much impossible to fully document.  Everyone was ripping.Lazer and Carliegh get their own little section since they left before the camera came out.  Carleigh and I played tag with front Ds.  We can’t seem to both land them, only one of us has them at a time.  Carleigh also put down feebs to fakies easy and came real close to her patented kickflip rock fakie.  Lazer was Lazer killing everything.  I don’t remember any new tricks.  But when you have a bag that deep it doesn’t matter.  Front tail block, f/s airs, back lips, millions of rad tricks.Gonna start with Kurt.  He is in town from Austin, TX visiting his girlfiend.  He started out ripping quickly and finding new and dangerous ways to fall and scare everyone on the deck.  Don’t get me wrong, the dude is rad and rips hard, but as I’m sure he’ll say he’s got kind of a reckless style and goes for broke.  Dude gave Jason a run for the money on longest grinds on Rampy and took away Nate’s title of scariest shoot out potential at the same time.    Nate takes better photos than me – Kurt front lip.Kurt Front Rock – photo by NateBrian got so tech we had to put the camera in movie mode.  Brian helped make this session as amazing as it was.  Lots of laughter, tons of great skating and non stop fart jokes.  He even landed a front blunt.  Ok, well he landed it well enough to make it into an older Zero video.  Tons of one foot combos.  One foot tough guy, one foot cross over front rock, one foot tail on his first run, I don’t even know how many more.Dave Fuller is a legend in my book.  Over 40 years old and amazing style.  He did so many tricks I didn’t even know the name of.  Backside no comply 5-0, backside chink chinks, the best back disasters ever,   layback nosepicks, indy nosepick, 5-0s to fakie, back tail reverts, backside & frontside sweepers, bonelesses, so many rad tricks.  On top of all that he showed us you can be over 40 and learn new tricks.  So sick.  This photo is a layback grind to tail or something.  Who knows.Dave front bonelessNate Front Tail.  Nate was killing it.  His sketchiness has gone away a bit and he’s got the basics down better.  His new tricks were fakie front pivot to rock fakie and lien to tails.  But my favorite was when he got up onto the deck right in between Brian and I who were clearly having a fart off.  Who gets up onto the deck between two grown men aiming their asses at each other?  Ha, Nate took it in stride.  My other favorite trick of his was the fakie pivot to shifty out.  He’ll never do that again.  Other than that he did most of his tricks pretty quick.Saving the best for last.  Ha ha yeah right!  Here’s Brian giving me the thumbs down for bailing a front feeble.  Like I said, I started off super slow because I was tired from skating so much lately, but we ended up skating over three hours and it was a total blast.  I landed close to every trick I’ve landed on Rampy.  Fakie pivots to fakie were coming easy for a change, but front disasters were lost to Carleigh for most of the session.  My new trick for the day was front tail revert landed with enough speed to almost get to the tranny all the way on the other side of the ramp.  Other tricks I was hyped on were front feebles, the front tough guy to front rock combo, back 50s to fakie and backside crooks.Me fakie pivot fakie.  Photo by the man formerly known as the sketchiest skater on Rampy.My favorite new trick – front feeble.  Love this photo.  I actually like how the trick looks, Brian has some awesome BGPs and Nate Dog took it.  It’s good all around.

I have to be to work by 7:00 am this week.  It’s not easy for me.  This morning I get to work at 6:45 am and I’m hyped to be on time.  While my computer is booting I do a little stretch and RIP there goes the crotch on my pants.  SHIT.  So I drive home, sit in traffic due to a 4 SUV pile up.  Get home, change and now I can’t find my work badge.  SHIT. Turns out it fell off when I got out of my car getting home.  Finally found it, drove back to work then I get to listen to moron’s I work with talk about religon.  Not sure what I did to deserve all this.

So in love with this band!

So last night the family was sitting down for dinner when two truckloads of skiers pulls up to the school across the street and start getting their gear out.  My kids said something about how there was some big jumps they saw at recess.  Kids were sliding down them.  Seeing as how the school is totally flat I thought it was a bit odd.  Turned out they have one of those wakeboard winch pulley things to get speed.  After awhile they turned on the generator and lights and started filming some “grinds?” over the fence in front of the school.  Ollie and I went out and watched for awhile.  It was pretty funny being a lurker after how bummed I’ve gotten on people lurking when I film the Null kids at night.  Anyways, a couple of these guys were pretty good.  They would go up, turn, slide about 15 feet then do 180s or 360s (helis?) out.  I say ‘heli’ because that’s what skiers called spins back before snowboarding became so popular.  And what’s with their gear?  Their pants sagged all the way to their ski boots.  Their jackets went to their knees.  Is it kind of like rollerbladers trying to prove how cool they are at the skatepark by sagging so far?  I don’t know man, they looked like clowns to me.  Maybe I’m just old.After awhile the cops ended up coming and it was funny because I’m pretty sure the cop hadn’t seen anything like that before.  I mean you know, if I haven’t seen it before (and I’m insanely hip to Xtreme culture being a skateboarder right?) then I’m sure the cops haven’t either.  The cop gave them a few more tries and told them to shovel up their mess and shook their hands when he left.  Neat.

I work the early shift this week which means I have to be at work by 7:00am.  That’s wayyyy too early for me.  The one advantage is I get out early, but half the time I act old and go home and take a nap.  This time I picked John up and we went over near the bikepath bank.  We were skating the parking lot for awhile.  John was ripping out of the gates.  I was sucking.  BAD.  John ollied the parking block gap all easy and then we skated this huge snow gap.  Ok, so it was tiny.  John back 180’d it and followed it up with a sick run that included ollieing the parking block gap and a treflip.  I kickflipped the snow gap.  But it wasn’t no ordinary kickflip.  I took off too late so the nose hit the snow and it went flying.  Somehow I still landed the kickflip and it may go down as one of my favorites ever.  As John said, it was like a kickflip with fireworks.  We ended up getting kicked out so we moved over to the bank where Nate met us shortly.This is where I got real pissed.  The most pissed I’ve been at skating since the days of the kick back fail.  I don’t know what happened, but I could not even do ollies at all.  I was tripping.  Wanting to focus my board.  Being a drama queen.  It sucked.  Nate and John were ripping.  I eventually kinda got over it and just skated mellow, but man, I was bumming.  I think it was one of those I’ve-been-skating-too-much-and-I-am-burnt-out moments.  John did a bunch of 270 no complies onto the bank, frontside 270 ollies onto it, back 180 onto it, f/s ollies, f/s crailslide, amazing backside ollies and a nollie shove he stole from Nate.  Rad.  Nate did some ollies then moved on to pop shove fakie, nollie shove, nollie 270s, f/s ollie over some snow then ollie back onto the bikepath etc.  My finest moment was a 2mph pop shove onto the bank only because I’ve never done it before and I did it pretty good.  I did have fun carving over some snow too.  My other tricks that took way too long were ollie up over some snow to f/s ollie back to the bikepath, f/s 180 onto the bank and ride in to fakie, kickflip over some snow onto the bank and b/s and f/s ollies.  Man, somedays I really suck on a skateboard.