A busy night getting ready for the trip to Seattle.  Didn’t have much of any time so I skated Rampy.  Basically did most of my Rampy tricks which was fun and tried a bunch of kickflips and switch flips on flat to get used to a new Mall Grab deck.

After setting up camp we drove into the city to skate and saw a bear!Starting with Roxy the dog going clockwise.  Roxy, Reed, Neil, Gordon, Mary Kate, Lazer, Maria and Brian.Brian sleeping, The Brandows and Reed with his knive.John brought his laptop to show some secret Stereo footage.  Brian disapproves with the thumbs down.Most disgusting photo ever?Nope, this is even more disgusting.Skelly showed up!Brian woke up.In time to see Maria get handled by wine.Reed surprised everyone by throwing a pack of fire crackers into the fire.  Luckily he knew that the forest probably couldn’t handle roman candles.Or maybe he didn’t want to go fetch a very frightened Roxy out of the woods again.Last ones up!  Didn’t make it to the sunrise though.

Even with a shovel and broom he can ollie better then me.

Had almost do desire to skate at all.  Last day I didn’t skate was June 18th.  I’m sore and burnt.

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.

Had the day off work.  The plan was to skate the new Arvada skate spot with Brian, John and Ollie.  We made it there, but a few minutes after arriving we were told by a contractor that the park isn’t open yet and to leave.  Ugh.  This scared Ollie so he didn’t really do anything other than follow me around saying “Dad, let’s go”.  John ripped everything before we left.  Blunt pivot fakie on the 1 foot tall qpipe.  Brian wasn’t into how small everything was, but still managed to not land a frontside grind over the stairs.  Only thing I was hyped on was a front to back 50 transfer over the spine.After stopping at Community to say whaddup we went to the old Arvada park for a few minutes before the lightning scared us out.  Brian and John were ripping right away.  Brian did fsg bf ft on the cement walls (fs grind followed by blunt fakie first try).  John got in on the cement bank action too and did fsg and back disaster as well as blunt to pivot.  Ripping.  Ollie cruised around.  I felt like the lame dude that can’t do fsgs.After some pizza and rain we attempted to do Broomfield, but there was too much traffic and we needed to get back.  A short stop at Louisville was in order.  I got pissed quick bailing back 50s around the corner.  I ended up having an ok time though.  I also got a front smith on the bank to ledge and ended it with a crooks on the flyout ledge that I’ve never skated before.  Ollie got some front boards on the little ledge and cruised around a lot.  Brian was manning the clock and the no comply front blunts.  John did a pivot to fakie on the edge of the bank and some other tailslides and whatnot.After a small dinner the plan was to go skate Broomfield.  This was John’s idea, but he didn’t answer his phone.  Skelly was coming all the way from Fort Collins and I was gonna meet Brian and maybe Fuzz there too.  I ended up skating flatground for awhile because I knew it would be awhile before everyone showed up.  I ended up skating flat pretty hard again.  I guess I must be into it again.  Anyways after some initial messing around I started trying a couple runs.   One way was fakie bigflip, front shove, 360 flip.  I got that run once with a sketchy 3 flip.  The other was was f/s halfcab flip, heelflip nollie treflip.  I came super close to that one.  Landed on, but never rode away from the nollie tre.  When I would bail runs I hucked some random tricks and came super close to nollie flip at one point as well as landing maybe my 3rd or 4th 3 shove.  I guess I skated flat for awhile because I got a call from Sean asking if we were still coming.  Oops.The drive went by quick as I was bumping some Priority Records sampler I found.  Snoop, NWA, EPMD, etc.  Awesome.  I got to the park which was crowded, but not as insane as it can be.  Lots of Boulder heads were there.  Fuzz wanted to play SKATE kind of with a trick on the qpipe then ledge.  I opted out of that quick since I suck and Fuzz is good.  Especially after he did a first try front d on the qpipe then back 5-0 on the black ledge.  I hid out in the flow bowl for awhile posing out and not landing anything.  Then the bowl got crowded so I went to the ledge area.  I can’t remember doing anything worthwhile except an accidental front 50 on the little qpipe.  I think I went back to the bowl around the time Brian showed up.  His first run was so sick.  Seriously, I hang out with that dude sometimes.  I finally got a couple little stalls/grinds.  Doing stuff on the 3 foot tall part on top of the bowl is really fun.  Max was there and he killed huge flyout to front ds.  Toward the end I started skating the ledge area again.  I almost rolled or broke my ankle bailing a front 5-0 on the convex ledge at one point.  That was scary.  I got boardslides almost every try on the tiny downhill rail.  Brian almost did feeble and eventually went on to do a perfect front board as the lights shut off.  He followed it up with a really good run too.  Fuzz struggled a bit at boardsliding the rail but backed it up with first t halfcab board and a feeble grind.  At the end of the session I was doing front 50s down the euroish ledge and trying side rock’s on the manny bank with a kickflip out.  I eventually got one.  Hyped.  I forgot to mention Sean.  He skated the bowl really well and managed to boardslide the little rail with a broken toe.  Wow!  That park is awesome.

One of those days that I really want to take a day off of skating so I go to the park and do nothing but carve around.  No ollies, barely any grind attempts, a few no complies on flat and almost a back smith on the steep qpipe.  That’s it.

After a nap and some nachos for dinner I skated in front of the house for awhile before meeting Jake at Meta at 8pm.  I skated faster and harder doing flatground then I have in awhile.  I did some of the fastest front shoves I’ve done and tried a couple lines.  Halfcab flip, 360 flip, heelflip.  Had too much problems with 3 flips to get it.  Front 180, f/s halfcab flip, nollie tre.  Never got that either.  I feel somewhat clumsy in the shoes I have now.  Not sure why since their vulcs, but either way I’ve struggled with treflips.Then I went up to Meta to meet Jake.  We wanted to go across campus to this other spot.  On the way there things weren’t feeling right on my skateboard and  I bailed a tiny ollie then later on ate shit trying to ollie a little crack gap ate shit.  Scraped up my knee, elbow, ankle and hip and pissed me off to no end.  I wanted to focus my board.  I didn’t though and we went to the tall red manny pad.  I had some more awkward slams trying to ollie up the taller side.  Ugh.  Neither of us quite got the manny from the shorter side.  Jake got an ollie up the taller side to chinese nollie off the shorter side.  I tried ollie up kickflip off, but never committed.  We went over to the long narrow manny pads area.  I ollied off the tall ledge.  Next we went to the double sided ledge.  I got a few boardslides and halfcab boardslide.  Neither of us got front board pop out.  Last up was near the red manny pad again where we did wallie back 50s.  It wasn’t waxed up too good, but we managed a few.  Jake tried to get one with a treflip and I tried to get a wallie nosegrind to fakie.  Jake never got the tre and and I never got the nosegrind, but I did whip around to fakie off the front truck and ride down the curb.  Fun.  Maybe with some wax it would nosegrind.  But my groin really started hurt again and we had had enough.  Not my favorite session, but that’s skateboarding.Lastly, it’s halfway through the year.  My goal of 300 days of skating is still realistic.  I’m at 155 with 184 days left in the year.  Some days it seems awesome, some days it seems daunting.  I missed 26 days in the first six months.  I can miss 39 days in the second half of the year and still get 300.  Yippee.