See, John Denver wasn’t full of shit. Some sunset photos from Monday night.
Took a ton of tries to just barely get the end of a lightning bolt.
First photo with the new fisheye and a cameo from Liz’s parents. It’s blurry, not good!
Feeling slightly better I went to the Table Mesa are for a bit after Liz’s parents left for the night. I cruised around doing basically nothing for awhile before trying to manual the really long pad in front of the bank. I didn’t get remotely close for a while. Eventually I got about halfway, but I was still bummed on that. I can’t manual.
This one was an honest to goodness sick day. I got a good ol’ head cold, almost puked a couple times and felt horrible. I’m halfway through my sick days for the year now. Doh.
A cool and dreary fall day for once. Neil came over and we watched the Orchard video to get hyped on street spots. We headed out, picked up Carleigh and drove around looking for Jason. After finding him we headed to Longmont, picked up Brian and went to the nearest USA loving gas station. Next up was Rocky Mountain Elementary which is pretty much my favorite “spot” in Colorado. Unfortunately I was feeling pretty stiff and old again. We started out ollieing down the two stairs to warm up. The worst part was having to get up the curb as a set up. Ha.Everyone kinda warmed up at their own pace. Me probably the slowest, although Brian was more into just chilling. Bernie showed up and added a flat bar into the mix. Carleigh was trying boardslides on the flat bar, noseslide shoves on the ledge. Jason was doing front boards on the flat bar, front noseslides on the ledge. Neil was doing front boards on the rail, front tails or lip attempts on the ledge. Bernie was doing front lips on the flatbar, back or kick back tails on the ledge. I messed around into the dirt bank for a bit, got a kcifklip in. Then I was trying to kickflip over one of the brick sections. Bernie took a photo of it that I would put up right now had he emailed it to me like he said he would. Around the time Neil and Brian were ready to head out Bernie loaned his fisheye and filming skills to my new camera and Jason, Neil, Carleigh and I tried some lines. I got really frustrated with the kickflip, but ended up getting it again and followed it with a quick crooks. Carleigh got about 20 boardslides followed by noseslide shoves and then bailed pop shoves. Neil one footed over the bricks then slammed on a crooks and was out for the rest of the day. After I got my hammers I filmed Jason get a couple lines with front 180 over the bricks, halfcab noseslide the ledge, feeble the rail. Carleigh got ollie over the bricks, kickflip over a grate then front 50 the ledge. Bernie got kickflip to fakie over the bricks, halfcab a grate then front tail to switch manny off the curb. Before leaving Bernie and I tried a few tricks into the dirt path. Bernie did fakie manual and I did nose manual. Decent day and we got mad footie son!
Met Bernie at Mike’s Camera to go in and look at camera stuff. Bernie bought a new bag and lens while I did nothing other than ask Bernie if I can try out his old camera bag. Awesome. Then we cruised over to the manny pad for the last few minutes of light. Skating a manny pad with Bernie is a treat. He ripped it. Kickflip manny drop to manny for awhile on accident so kickflip out. Fakie manual. He was trying back 180 fakie manual, but didn’t get it. I was having one of those days where I felt pretty stiff and old. I didn’t land much, but came close to kickflip manual, nollie shove manny and nose manual back shove out. I say “close” but that only means I got into manual. It was a nice mellow little friday session.
This owl is so fun to watch for awhile at work. He ate all the rabbits though so I think he’ll move on soon. I wish I could have got a photo of him with my good camera.
My third in show in little over a week. Also the third show in a row I didn’t have even a single beer. Weird. Anyways, Liz and I rolled in shortly before the opening band Free Energy. I had heard nothing about them before listening to some songs of theirs on myspace early that day. After what I heard I should have known better, but we don’t like just seeing only one band.
This band was bad. Really really bad. Somehow they had a large following.
Lots of them wore headbands.
Or they were parents.
Even some Ultimate Fighters in the house. It was seriously the weirdest crowd.
Killing some time during the sucking we rolled back to the merch booth and noticed their name was wrong on their own 7 inch. That’s funny! The scary part was that the members of Titus Andronicus came out to play the Springsteen cover with Free Engery and it was also really bad. Liz and I were definitely a bit worried for Titus at that point.
Titus Andronicus eventually arrived on stage. It started about as epic as one can imagine. A drunken fan recited the opening speech from The Monitor and stage dived into the crowd as the band exploded into “A More Perfect Union”. I haven’t witnessed a band get on stage and blow me away that quickly in a long time. The giant turd left in the air by Free Engery was defeated immediately. Thank god. Titus Andronicus went on to play one of the best shows I have ever seen. Tons of energy throughout, great setlist, great stage presence, it was loud, the sound was good, the crowd was very into it, everything you need for a great show. They came off more punk rock then I would have thought with lots of fist pumping anthems being yelled by the crowd. The ender “Four Score And Seven” was so intense and powerful that I actually hoped the show was done. No encore. That song burned the house down. Totally epic set.Lastly, sorry once again for the crappy cell phone photos. But if I brought my nice camera I’d feel obligated to spend my time trying to get the perfect photo instead of just enjoying the show.
Skated Rampy for a few minutes and sucked. Ollie filmed a fakie pivot fakie for an HD test. Looks like I gotta turn up the sharpness and stuff. But hey, it was the first clip.
Just a quick session before going to see one of the best shows I’ve ever seen – Titus Andronicus. I went out right after eating a ton of food so I felt extra fat and uncoordinated. It didn’t last long though and I started actually feeling pretty good. I didn’t do anything special and did a few flippers going pretty slow. The only noteworthy thing to me was manually from the neighbors curb cut all the way to ours. Pretty long for me. Yippee.
Carleigh and I rolled up around 8 on a really nice night. The park wasn’t too crowded, but everyone that was there was skating. Or I guess biking. I really don’t understand why people would bike at a skate plaza with low ledges anyways, but whatever. I wanted to warm up in the bowl with a grind on the little qp on the top, then a grind around the corner after. This took a long time and pissed me off. Then I continued sucking in the street course. Carleigh seemed to be skating decent. 50s, boardslides on the black ledge all easy. Almost front shoves out of the bank. I started trying the step up for the first time and it’s really awkward. It took about 7 tries for me to finally land it. It was funny because somebody gave me a sympathy “yeah” and Carleigh said I looked so bummed so she laughed. Ha. After that things got better for me though. I got a run with boardslide down the ledge, back 50 the black ledge (haven’t landed that before there) followed by front 50 front shove out on the black ledge. I made myself ollie over the tiny rail into the bank again. It took a bunch of tries and I still can’t land in the bank with enough angle to not run into the grass. I came close to getting front smith on the black ledge too. Carleigh was working on kickflips into the bank and came close to a bunch of them. I started skating the lower area after making myself ollie the six stair. It took a couple bails this time before I put it down. Carleigh ollied the double set like it was nothing then went on to pop shove. I got a line on the lower part that hyped me up. Manual down the angled blue ledge (never done that before), front feeble the qp, back 5-0 the blue ledge then nollie treflip shuffle (counts!). Carleigh put down the pop shove all sick. I started trying kickflips over the tiny rail, but the high school kids took over and started lighting the rail up with deodorant and being generally annoying. I might have actually committed to that, but who knows. At the very end I finally ollied over the tall part of the rust ledge and into the bank. I’ve wanted to do that for awhile. All in all it ended up being really fun, I just wish I could warm up faster sometimes.