skate journal: denver cold with jeff, mikey, jack, jason, ollie (12/11/10)
My 300 day reward – new shoes. Es Square Twos.The Lafayette skatepark opened today and there was a big grand opening party. I am not a fan of crowded skateparks, or even a fan of crowds really. Luckily there are some who agree with me. Jack called, Jason called and Mikey and Jeff wanted to meet up in Denver. I brought Ollie along and we met up at the Commerce City skatepark around 1 or so. It was cold. Colder than it felt like it should be. And the park has some weird new glaze of slickness on it. Jason slammed right away and retired to the car for the rest of the day. Jack and I started out with a game of SKATE on the banked curb surrounding a tree. I doubt they ever intended anyone to skate it, but we do everytime we’re there. It’s pretty dumb. Jack of course won with a bunch of good tricks like blunt shove to nosepick, pivot fakie, etc. I landed some tricks though that made me happy like front blunt (no pivot!), kickflip onto the curb, boardslide. It was fun. Ollie seemed to be having a good time and digging the park. He did some drop down to manual down one stair to ride down another then ollie off the third. Some little ollies over the pump bump too. And always a smile. Love it. Mikey was ripping. I saw switch heel the long three stair, back 5-0 the long three ledge and a smile. Jeff, always ripping. Nollie back 180 into the bank, powerslide on the icecrete, halfcab crooks. Jack had did a nosebonk to manual front 180 off the drop. Ollies from the top of the park into the little bank no problem. Funny back 50 to 90 onto a curb to ollie out. Toward the end people were trying lines ollieing over the two benches. Jeff almost got a switch b/s flip up one, mikey almost sw heeled one. I ollied in the small spots. I guess the quest to learn how to ollie is officially on. It’s really embarrassing.The sun came out and we rolled to a loading dock kicker that Mikey wanted to bust before they put a rail on it (will probably happen this week). Ollie and I dorked around for a bit, I did a gap to boardslide down a parking block. Jeff chilled and proved that he has no kid filter around Ollie. Jason read. Mikey ollied the kicker to get warmed up then felt out a few tricks. Jack starting trying bigger spins and was getting super close. Unfortunately disaster struck and he rolled his ankle bad. Doh. Mikey went for treflips for awhile, but the wind, cold and Jeff wanting to leave didn’t help.We left for Crisis to sell some Null and see Fuzz, but on the way we hit up the nearby handicap double bank spot. Just me and Ollie skated. It was real cold. I guess the new shoes had been doing pretty good as I hadn’t really noticed before this spot that I had new shoes on. I dorked around for awhile. Felt out the trick I want to film there sometime (side rock kickflip out to manual down) but wasn’t feeling that. Then settled for a run of kickflip, no comply 180, fakie ollie on one bank, f/s ollie on another bank. That came remotely easy. Well, if you count what I did as ollies. Since that came pretty quick and I wasn’t really feeling like anything else I went for the same line some more, but tried fakie flip on the bank instead. I eventually got it. I’m sure I did it all pretty horribly, but it was fun. Ollie wasn’t complaining about the cold at all. He rules to skate with. Smiles the entire time, never complains, never takes it series, and always learns something. He saw me do a side rock on the bank and I think he did one within two tries. So rad. I wish Jack and Jason could have skated there too, oh well. We went to Crisis and hung out for awhile, ate some pizza, watched the new Toy Machine video and everyone made sure to drop several F Bombs. It sure is weird being a father sometimes.