A nice day in the 80s.  Bernie and Sam showed up at my house wanting to go to Brighton.  The plan was to go to Longmont, meet Cheyenne Matt then head to Brighton.  Well Matt was running late so we were gonna skate the Longmont Library area for awhile until they showed up.  We ended up skating there for a long time as Matt was running late.  Bernie and I started trying some lines and we eventually filmed them.  Bernie got a back 180 on flat then a bangin fakie varial flip followed by a gap to front 180 nose manual in under 10 tries.  My line wasn’t that quick.  I was doing f/s wallride, b/s wallride side rock, manual, 3 flip.  The downhill manny was the hardest because I suck at downhill stuff and the treflip wasn’t meant for that spot.  So I went with no comply shove.  Stoked on that line, thanks for filming Bernie.  Sam was up next and got a line with switch 180, nollie heel, gap to manny.  Next we went to this weird bank spot that is way harder to skate then I remembered.  When we first go there I wasn’t even feeling like dropping in on it.  After awhile I started trying to no comply into it but hung up and rolled down the bank.  Awesome.  Bernie suggested I do the grab version of the no comply and a few tries later I did it.  Then Bernie shot a sequence of it.  How embarrassing.  I’ll probably have it soon to post up here.  I can tell everyone is holding their breath to see it.So then we went to Brighton and started at the skatepark.  My legs were dead when I got out of Bernie’s car, but after some cruising around they started working.  My highlights were no comply wallie thing out of the flat bank over the ledge, 3 flip on flat, rolling into the halfpipe section and skating the mini ramp area not as horrible as normal and rolling in and doing a tiny little ollie onto the flatbank.  Bernie had some good front tails and tried to blast a f/s air.  Joe landed the high to low air.  Sean had huge flyouts and mad popped blunts to fakie in his warm up run.  Matt killed it.  Back 50 the hubba, ollie the hubba, sw heel up the euro, so much more.  Lastly we went to the Brighton kicker where I shot photos with Bernie’s camera and Matt nollie inward heeled it all steezey.  Joe did front 180 mute and back 180 melon.  Rad.  Fun day.

After a night of camping involving late night beer drinking and then a good breakfast we arrived at the skatepark on a cloudy and nice morning (well, probably afternoon).  We kinda cruised around for awhile everyone figuring out what energy if any they had.  I felt slightly better then the previous day somehow, but still couldn’t ollie up the manny pad very well.  I don’t remember much until everyone started skating the bigger bowl.  Skelly had joined us so found some new lines and got Brian and John hyped on the bowl.  All three of them were skating it good.  Brian almost got 3 f/s grinds in a row.  Sean was rolling in everywhere.  Neil was doing some low ollies when he wasn’t off trying to skate in front of teenage girls.  I managed some b/s grinds in between bailing when Brian called me out and told me to stop being so timid on the coping.  Kinda made me think about it and skate harder.  Thanks Brian (honestly).  The bowl session went on awhile.  Sean did a back 50 on the tallest part which probably isn’t quite vert, but scared the crap out of me when I dropped in on it.  I got a tiny scratch grind on it.  Brian was doing sick FSGs on it (frontside grind).  Sean was also doing crazy lipslide rollins from the deck.  So sick.  John, Reed and I played most of a game of flatground SKATE and I started off with like 7 tricks or something out of the gate that I couldn’t believe including a treflip.  The fun had to come to an end eventually and we headed back down to the front range to spend the holidays with our loved ones.

After a million phone calls, rumors of people bailing and whatnot Neil, Brian, Maria, Reed, Lazer, Mary Kate, Gordon and I headed up to Winter Park.  First stop was setting up the tents followed by a bear sighting then the skatepark.  The skatepark gets littered with kooks.  Kids learning how to bike, skateboard, scooter, stand up.  Parents standing around acting like idiots.  Ugh.  This session wasn’t so great.  Brian and I were struggling and it showed.  Neil did all his tricks and bailed front 50s in the bowl.  Reed has a broken hand and could only skated for awhile.  Early on I got a little crooks jib up the handrail so I thought it would be a good day.  Nope.  I did have fun on our group session of the tiny qpipe.  Neil and I both got front pivots which was not easy for us.  Lazer and Brian did everything.  I eventually got a rock ‘n roll on the tall part.  Skating the flow bowl Brian and Lazer killed it.  So many grinds over hips and lots of tricks on lock.  Around now John showed up and added some positive energy to the session as he started killing it immediately.  Before we left I got a line of manual along the elevated ledge and a rock ‘n roll on the taller steep qpipe.  I struggled at b/s flip on the steep wall for a long time and eventually put it down followed by a blunt to pivot.  John did a gnarly blunt to pivot to fakie on it and we left.