After a somewhat late night of partying I woke up early (8am) at the shop.  The forecast was rain for the day, but it was dry.  Skate!  Nate and Neil woke up too and we were out by 8:30 to Eagle Donuts then hit the streets by 9.  We cruised down the mellow hills and ended up near the Potrero skatepark so we just continued on and went there. Those hills near the shop are SO fun.  I was still hurting when I pushed though and it was bumming me out.  There were a few people at the skatepark, but not many.  Neil was ripping pretty quickly.  He had some cool lines going with lots of little ollies and good speed.  It’s hard to remember this as it’s 5 days later and we partied every night.  I know Nate did a rad lipslide across the box on the mellow bank.  I did a couple first try tricks on the super mellow q-pipe.  Front D and b/s nose grind kinda.  At some point I started trying wallies out of the bank to ledge to manual to the little q-pipe.  Never quite got it.  But it was cool to see it took Brian Anderson a couple tries to do the same trick a couple days later. Then I started trying Neil’s line of carve on the huge bank, b/s 50 on the q-pipe, ollie on the twinkie, tailslide on the bank.  I never really got an ollie.  Partly because I suck at ollies, partly because there seemed to be someone coming everytime I was near the twinkie.  It took both Nate and I a long time to do our first kickflips.  I got an undercrook on the ledge.  Ha, it’s my patented 2″ jib crook.  Neil started doing tricks up the euro.  Kickflip, one foot, b/s 180, no comply.  Ripping.  Nate and I tried tricks on the tight brick q-pipe.  Nate got a rock ‘n roll and a scratch grind.  As I went for an axle stall I said to Nate, “If I land this one it wont rain the entire trip”.  Landed it.  Hyped.  Unfortunately it didn’t quite hold true.  After a few hours we got a call from Lazer saying they were ready to skate.  Back to Eagle Donuts for breakfast #2 and meet up with the crew.After the best bagel sandwiches in the world and new Trick Factory calendars from Brian we hit the streets.  We started around the corner by the shop.  Everyone was kinda messing around.  I still felt awkward on my skateboard and pushing hurt.  Ugh.  I managed a couple runs I wanted to do since last time.  Kickflip up the curb, cruise down.  Front 180 up the curb, sw 180 off the little drop.  We worked our way up the hill a bit and bombed into the corner.  Nate, Fuzz and Neil were hauling ass.  Then we rolled toward the flower shop by way of lots of hiking up hills, skating down them, hiking up other, skating down.  SO FUN.  I was foot dragging alot instead of power sliding, but at least going pretty fast for me.  We fanned out at the Omar Salazar noseblunt ledge.  We ended up on top of the hill by the flower shop and Gordon offered me $10 to bomb the hill with no foot drag.  I went for it.  I was going quite a bit faster than I thought because at the end I did a foot drag to stop but it wasn’t enough and I ran into a fence.  It was maybe my favorite moment of the trip though.  Even though I didn’t slide out at the end it still felt awesome to bomb an entire hill and only foot drag at the end.  The rest of the crew came flying down and everyone was hauling ass.  So awesome.  People were flying. I didn’t get the $10 because of the foot drag at the end, but whatever I had fun.The Flowershop was locked so we skated the ledge area for awhile.  I was hurting.  So sore and tired.  Ugh.  We skated the gap area.  I did a little run with an ollie over a flat gap then a super slow ollie over the gap where I landed not moving at all.  Fuzz and I laughed a good minute over that.  Carleigh ollied it first try then landed on pop shove first try.  She beat herself up for awhile and never quite landed it.  Lazer ripped it with an ollie over the last flat gap to manual pop over the gap.  Sick.  Fuzz did some cool ollies up the ledge then front 180 the flat gap then switch ollie the gap.  Nate had a good clean ollie over it too.  Next we skated the actual ledges.  Fuzz did a sick line with all the basics.  Front 50, front 5-0, front tail and the worst halfcab flip ever done.  Brian got his tallest front 50.  Nate did some nollie front tails and some basics.  I was bumming out and sad that my body was so sore already and unable to ollie well.  I got a couple front 50s, but that was about it.Next we skated the Flowershop tranny spot.  I sat out the first part of the session just trying to catch my breath and get some energy.  Everyone was ripping.  A couple other dudes were there ripping too.  Gordon did some crazy stuff.  He skates that park so well.  He got a new trick for himself there on top of all his sickness – it was either a fakie D on the big wall or a frontside grind.  I’m not sure.  Fuzz was cruizing around fast, Neil was flying around and ollie’ing into tranny the way only he could, Brian almost got front rocks on the extension, Lazer skates tranny good, Nate was having fun too and landed a grind on one of the vert walls as we were leaving.  Fun session.  After all that skating we hiked more hills/skated down them, etc back to the shop.  Party time.

After four days of being stuck in a class and not doing my normal stretching routines at work I got out early hyped to be leaving for SF shortly.  It was gorgeous outside and Ollie was skating with his friend Cooper in the driveway.  I set my board down to push and this weird pain shot through my left hip/groin.  Ugh.  Great way to start a trip.  I kept skating a bit though.  Kickflips felt ok.  I ended up skating the ledge with them which is right by the house so I have to skate super slow (nothing new there eh?).  Ollie was doing slappy front 5-0s.  I was trying kick front boards and got one.  It was horrible, but landed.  First one ever.  Sweet.After a bus ride, plane ride and then a train ride I skated with Nate, Neil and Lazer from the BART station to Cruz Skateshop where we were staying.  We sessioned the curb for a minute, but nothing too serious went down.  Hyped to be in the greatest skate city.

I’m starting a new category here called ‘sick days’.  In other words, days where I didn’t skate.  Yesterday was my 3rd sick day of the year.  The last time I did a day without skating was Feb 4th and I have no idea why I didn’t skate that day.Anyways, I took advantage of my sick day by going to the Nuggets game with my visiting Romanian coworkers.  It was awesome.  The Nuggets killed the Thunder and we had a couple beers.  Great time!

Got home from work and it was nice out.  Ollie and his friend were skating in front of the house so I joined them.  They push up the driveway, ride up a sheet of wood and try grinds across Ledgey.  I rolled around in the street for awhile and landed most my tricks and felt good.  Kickflips, shoves, no complys.  Then I posed a few kickflip front board attempts on the ledge and Cooper had to leave.  After that Ollie tried showing off and dropped in off the deck of the ramp onto the driveway (the garage door was open).  He said he had dropped that far before, but he basically went straight to his stomach.  It was really bad.  He fully ate shit.  Skinned up his elbow real bad, but didn’t cry at all and didn’t scrape his face.  Whew.  He did call it a day though.  So I went in too.

This part is incredible.  To me this is the best “first” part from anyone since PJ.  On top of the amazing skating the music, editing and filming are great.  The spots are not blown out So Cal spots and there is some filler in there which I like.  Kudos.  I’m buying this video.

First day of March was another winter day where the snow had to melt off and it got cold at night.  So Jake and I went to Circuit City to skate flatground in the somewhat heated parking garage.  Things started out slow for me, but I’ve become accustomed to this when I skate so much.  My new board was feeling good and after a few warm up laps of 180s, kickflips and whatnot we settled in on a 360 flip battle.  First one to land one gets a beer.  Jake won!  Stoked on this actually.  First time Jake beat me to a 3 flip challenge.  After this we each worked on lines for awhile.  I was trying halfcab flip then 360 flip then nollie 360 flip.  Didn’t get the nollie 3 flip in this line, but the halfcab flip and treflips were feeling great.  Jake ended up getting a banger of a line.  No comply 180, halfcab flip, f/s flip, fakie flip.  So sick.  Shortly after that I put down my best flatground line ever.  Fakie bigflip, front shove, nollie treflip, treflip.  Finally got treflip and nollie treflip in the same line!  I don’t think the tre was too clean, but whatevs, the rest of the tricks were ok and the nollie tre and fakie big flip felt super good.  Another challenge went down.  Gummy bears for the first frontside halfcab flip.  It took a bit, but I got it.  Then I tried a run of heelflip, varial flip, frontside halfcab flip.  Never got the fs halfcab flip.  Had a blast though.  Near the end I had slammed on some trick and was laying on the ground laughing with Jake.  I love skateboarding.  I love when you have as much energy as I did tonight and I love being a grown ass man that laughs when he falls down in a dirty parking garage on a cold night.

For those of you that have met my wife Liz you already know that she is the greatest woman of all time.  Ok, well, she’s my wife and I love her dearly.  She’s been playing the guitar for awhile now and started piecing together a song.  A few weeks later here we are with her first song called ‘Oh My Bones’.  Click HERE for the link to the mp3.  I dig it.

The kids were staying over at a friends so Liz and I decided to go to this show.  After eating some good BBQ with TF and watching the Nuggets win we headed to Denver with Carleigh.  We got into the show about the time the opening band Cannon started.  They ended up being really good.  They were pretty heavy indie rock at times, somewhat metal at other times.  Next up was Lion Sized which was the only band I had seen before.  I liked them a lot the first time I saw them, but this time they kinda let me down.  The music is a lot like Hot Snakes, but it just didn’t do it for any of us this time.The headlining band was called Tauntaun.  We had never heard of them. We figured if they sucked or were even just mediocre we’d leave so we could get to sleep early.   They started the show by cranking the fog machine up so much that Liz left the front room.  Ha.  Within the first song it was pretty clear that they were awesome.  Really awesome.  I don’t like much metal, but this was incredible.  It reminded me of classic metal.  Sabbath, Maiden, Priest and Motorhead with a bit of grunge thrown in to make it completely incredible.  It was so good that Liz liked it, and she hates most metal.  It was also so good that I bought a Tauntaun t-shirt and record.  Check them out, they rule.

I took a few runs on Rampy while waiting around to see what was developing for the day.  Luckily it hadn’t start snowing yet.  I didn’t do anything too great, but I was having fun.  After meeting Jack and Carleigh at Meta we went to Willville.  We messed around on the bank with the grate.  Well, but mess around I mean Jack did all kinds of ollies into it and Caleigh and I just dropped in on it.  While Jack was warming up on the six stair ledge I a run of front 50 on the ledge, kickflip on flat then ollie onto the ledge and roll into the bank.  I kept being totally lame on the roll in into the bank, but eventually got it when we got the boot.Next up we went to a big gap where Jack not only broke his board trying to back 3 the gap, but broke mine too.  I was kinda hyped though because I wanted to setup a new board before SF and I didn’t have to make up no silly excuses.  The board was broke!  After a board setup party Jack, Carleigh and I skated Rampy.  It was a fun session for awhile, but then it seemed everyone got tired at the same time.  Carleigh was getting front D’s everytime, Jack was doing 5-0’s to fake fakie revert, I landed the majority of my tricks except front feeble and hurricane.  The session ended when Jack did a front 5-0 shove out.  Sick.  It’s snowing again.  SUCK!

Tired from a fun show the night before and being a dad of a girl in 4H club I met up with Nate and Carleigh at the Mikes Camera manny pad.  I started off pretty good with some mannys and nose mannys first try.  But I wasn’t feeling too on my game and I was solo for awhile.  I did a few ollies over snow and whatnot and started feeling better.  Nate showed up right as I gapped over some snow to manny.  I looked cool for a second.  Ha.  It was rad, Nate was hungover.  He said he drank a ton of beers the night before.  That a boy Nate!  Carleigh showed up after awhile too.  Nate quickly proved that he is younger and did some neat tricks.  Front 180 nose manual.  Nollie front 180 nose manny.  He’s good.  Carleigh hasn’t spent much time trying mannys before.  She never quite got one, but she definitely seemed to get the hang of how to manual by the end of the session.  She was also landing kickflips pretty much every try.  Good ones too.  We skated for about an hour total.  Nate did some pretty crazy stuff like fakie manual, half cab nose manual, and quite a bit more that I can’t remember right now.  He came close to fakie manual fakie 3 shove out.  Ridiculous.  He also got most of his flippers back on the bigger board.  I saw perfect tres and nollie b/s heels go down.  Sick.  I didn’t really skate all that hot, but I did a few things I was proud of.  Kickflip manny which took a ton of tries and my first ever fakie bigspin manual.  I’d be more hyped, but I did it so bad.  I landed at 90 and lost all my speed, but somehow managed to manny all the way to the end.  Argh.  I also did a 360 flip up the curb (easier then varial flip up) and a line with a fast nose manual followed by a nollie treflip on flat.  All in all a pretty fun session.