I used to be pretty against skate brand jeans and just wore crap like Old Navy or Levis. But I saw these at Meta and they stood out. One trip to the fitting room later I know have all three color ways! Super long for tall guys, a little stretch in them, good fit and good colors. It’s the haps yo!
It’s been almost a month since the last time I took a day off skating. I’ve been kinda needing a day off for awhile. In skating’s absence I went swimming with the kids which is pretty tiring. Especially after jocking out pretty hard at the gym earlier in the day at work too. Have I ever mentioned I’m related to the strongest man in the world?
Well it’s true. 2000 and 2001 Super Heavy Weight Powerlifting Champion of the World Big Bad Brad Gillingham!
Late evening short session at Valmont. We skated the manny pads the whole time. Carleigh got a manny pretty quick on one of the shorter ones and I managed a couple on the longer one. Then Carleigh proceeded to land 20/22 kickflips or something. So sick. She was also trying slappy nose mannies and getting somewhat close. I was trying heelflip up one, then nollie shove up the next, but only landed one or two heelflips up. Coming the other way I tried to manny, drop down to manny, then pop up to nose manny. Never got close. Other then that I did lots of ollies around and managed a kickflip manual. Fun little session.
Believe it or not it was my idea to go skate a ramp. We hadn’t been to Dave’s ramp in a long time and I had been thinking about it. I picked up Jake and Lazer and headed to Meta where we met Jason and I got a quick tutorial on DSLRs. Off to Longmont we picked up Brian and went to Dave’s. Oh yeah, we drove through a bunch of smoke from the wildfire going on and at times it was snowing ash on us. Anyways, the session started slow. I was really sucking, but surprisingly Lazer and Brian were having troubles too. Brian took the worst slam I’ve ever seen him take (which is saying a lot). He was trying front axle stall to fakie and dove from the coping onto his back all the way to the flat. It was epic. The fact that he was able to laugh it off is beyond me.Things eventually got going. Jake was ripping as usual. Brian was throwing down trick after trick, Lazer was ripping, Dave was holding his daughter, Jason was downloading music and I finally landed some Rampy tricks elsewhere. I got a fakie pivot fakie, fakie front axle to rock ‘n roll to got heckled, crooks on parking block side, front ds felt pretty easy, etc. We dorked around for awhile and I ended up getting Brian’s trick the front tough guy to front rock. It was bad, sloppy and fun. After awhile I held Dave’s daughter so he could skate. That was pretty fun. Allan had showed up and was calling out tricks for everyone to do.After awhile Jake and I went out front to play of SKATE which was going pretty slow and was ended abruptly by a drunk neighbor that tried to fight us and threw rocks in the street. That dude sucked.
Another hot and sunny day. I took Ollie and his buddy Sam to the new Arvada park. When we got there the park was almost empty. Just one other skater. I had a goal of trying the euro to manual and tried it kinda out of the blue and got it first try. Whoa, that’s rare. I also had a goal of doing a rock ‘n roll on the shallow end, but never got it. I was trying a few lines. Flip trick then rock ‘n roll in the shallow. Never got the rock. Later on I did manager a layback f/s rock and dropped in too. I got a line with back 50 the ledge, front feeble little qp, front 50 front shove out the ledge that hyped me up. I tried a run with front 50 or front d on the top qp, ollie on the twinkie, then kickflip the euro but managed to never ride out of that somehow. Ugh. Ollie was cruising around with his mongo steez. He did a cool line of kickturn on the twinkie bank then ollie out of the curb cut. He also rolled in the tiny qpipe easily and even ollied into it (but cleared the tranny). Sam learned rock ‘n rolls on the little qp. Some BMXers came that were some of the best I’ve seen. It’s still annoying sharing a little park with dudes going that fast and worrying about collisions with your kid, but they did a bunch of cool slide on their tires tricks I’ve never seen before.
It was another mid 90 degree day and I wasn’t ready for it. I met Jason at the manny pad where I struggled badly. 10 tries to even land a manual. I was skating so horribly. Jason seemed to be doing better and trying some new tricks. Neither of us landed much. I managed to get my first nose manny nollie back shove out in a long time. Came close to heelflip manny.We left for the ledge area and my legs had nothing. I could boardslide and crooks it, but ollies up into 50 was so hard. Jason was ripping through. Back 50s, front board pop out. Brian and Lazer met up for some skating and complaining. We went over to the bank to curb area nearby. Jason and Lazer threw down a bunch of tricks. Tail blocks, crails, stuff like that. Brian sat and debated quitting skateboarding. I tried back pivot shove outs until I got one that met my requirement for a clean landing ( < 3 tic tacs). I had to leave to get to a BBQ at Zachs. Fun. Not the best day of skating.
Was totally gonna take a sick day as I didn’t think I had much desire to skate and I was super sore. It’s approaching a month of skating every day. Anyways I got home from work and the house was all to myself with a new Thermals record waiting for me. I cranked it up, lounged for awhile and drifted in and out of sleep. There was some light left in the night and I thought it would be a sin to not go skate at least a bit since it was so nice outside. I grabbed my board rolled to the street and popped an ollie that actually felt good. I a few no complies later and I noticed our trash can hadn’t been put away yet. I’ve wanted to ollie it forever so I set it down and posed a couple ollies over it before landing one with a bonk. Pretty hyped on that, but wanting more I kept going back to setup and would nollie a pine cone. Even that felt fun. A few tries later I put down a clean ollie that felt great.
*** OH NO ** I forgot to mention a trick that Brian did a few days prior at the last Broomfield session. Alley oop one foot back lip from low to high first try. Can’t believe I forgot that. Whew.I pulled in behind Brian being obnoxious and trying to swerve around his bike. He looked unphased. The park wasn’t super crowded and after a few nothing laps we ended up at the little qpipe to play a game of two trick SKATE. Flatground then qpipe. It became apparent real quick that neither of us had this kind of energy so we just skated. John showed up in awhile and added a real nice nose manual dive to flat into the mix. Brian was hyping me up on trying low to high tricks. I posed some front tails and got into a few rock fakies but never committed to landing them. Brian did a bunch of tricks of which I promised to blog, but I’m forgetting exactly which ones they are. Access to the internet all day at work has killed my memory. Anyways, I think he did low to high blunt fakie, low to high front rock, a few more and tried low to high front pivot, but couldn’t put it down. I was not having much luck ollieing as I would pretty much accidentely wallie into anything I tried. It was scary.Oh I should mention that it was cool out. Long sleeve weather even. Felt good. The park had kinda cleared out so we skated the little hump above the pocket in the flow bowl. John was killing the pivots to fakie on nothing. Brian managed to front lip and front 50 nothing. John also put down front tails, no comply sal flips or whatever you call them, alley oop fakie 50s on nothing, front biggee, kickflip fakie. I took way more tries then needed to do f/s flips and backed them up by doing nothing in the middle of the park. Brian would do tricks on the hump then kill the brick qp, then do some crazy wallride up the wallride bank. So sick. Near the end I was doing boardslides down the rail and messing around and some dude in the biggest shoes ever kept doing what I was trying and beaming me after. There was definitely a point when I felt like punching that dude. Oh well, he had a much cooler dress shirt then me so he must be tough. I managed a few no comply pole jams finally. Skating the top area was pretty fun even if we kept getting in the way of the double set. John front 50’d the hubba at the end and we both flailed some 3 flips. John landed most, I barely landed one. Then the lights shut off and the cops rolled up quickly making sure everyone leaves immediately. They wouldn’t want skaters hanging out after the park is closed you know. They do bad things.
Worked late and had such a frustrating day I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Watched a couple episodes of Leave It To Beaver with the family then felt like skating a manual pad. On the way to Valmont I had all these one – two tricks in my head to do on the back to back manny pads. When I got there I landed every warm up manny and I thought it was on. Then a truck came and parked in front of one of the pads. Doh. I still tried a bunch of lines and pretty much never landed anything other then a manny and nose manny. I tried a run to a nose manual 180 out. Couldn’t even get that. I tried a line to 180 nose manny. Couldn’t get that either. Ugh. The saving grace was all the tricks I got up the various curbs there. 180s, sw front 180, kickflip, pop shove, fakie bigspin, heelflip and a very rare frontside halfcab. I tried a few 3 flips up, but never got close. I left bummed although I was happy with how hard I skated. I just wish I would actually land tricks sometimes.