After a pretty chill day at work I left, picked up Jack and we headed up to Fort Collins to sell some boards then skate.  Initially the crew was Jack, Chris, AJ and me.  Chad quickly met up though.  After pushing basically all the way down Laurel we hit a rock wallie spot.  I stepped in dog crap right away.  So bummed.  Jack nosebonked a pretty tall rock, AJ ollied one and then we moved on.  Pretty quickly we ended up at a banked ledge spot by the dorm towers.  I’m not sure why they aren’t waxed up more because they are perfect.   Chris and Jack were ripping it pretty quick.  Jack went mostly the non-wallie route with some solid front 50, front 5-o, front tailslides but slammed so hard on a front 5-0 front 180 out.  Jack was wallieing into anything pretty quick.  Wallie bluntslide, wallie back tail shove, wallie back lip almost.  AJ had some good wallies then got close to about 500 wallie 50s but never landed one.  I wasn’t skating too well.  I tried a line of crooks a ledge, wallie, wallie boardslide.  The crooks were my rare weird undercrooks and the wallies were really bad, low and I would land primo sometimes and slam.  Fun.  After awhile Greg, Eric and Jacoby showed up, but a nearby cop lurking weirded us out so we moved on.  Some dorking around and we ended up at the new lot by the gym with the rocks and kicker.  I was skating sooo bad at this point and was so sore and old feeling.  Wah.  Skelly joined up for a minute but was too sore/tired to skate really.  AJ starting throwing some gnarly hardflips over the kicker and put down a good one.  Greg was trying to nosebonk the pole and came close.  I tried a couple slow kickflips and just gave up.  Chad had tied a banner to the pole and was holding it up to do tricks over.  5 tries later I was able to ollie it low.  Not hyped on how hard and scary it was for me, but hyped that I didn’t give up on it.  Jack started trying this really crazy ollie back foot kick out over the pole and I went and played a game of SKATE with Greg that didn’t last long.  I did land a treflip and a heeflip which felt good though.  I also finally manualled down the kickder and to the lot.  Greg was doing the funniest manuals.  He would manual and take his front foot off and pretend like he was falling then go back into manual.  It was really funny.  Jack tried the crazy trick for awhile and ended up kinda wrecking his ankle again.  Doh.  After this we went to Chipotle where there was a soda cup that said “Welcome to the office Glen” on it.  Jack spotted it.  So funny.  They normally don’t even have Glen keychains at gift shops.  Even though I didn’t skate well it was a fun time and a fun crew.

I loved Boondoggle, hopefully this one is as good ..

After skating / filming yesterday we had a blast watching some skate videos and ate at Petes.  I’m not sure if it was the Petes or the kids being sick last week, but I got sick.  I didn’t quite puke, but it was close and I felt horrible.  Perfect time to push the filming board for a couple hours in Longmont ditch.  More quality footage was collected.  Stoked.

Woke up still bummed from the night before.  Redid the Null board wall (photos soon) then went outside for some flatground waiting for some Nullers to show.  I ended up skating really good for me.  Way faster than normal which I know isn’t saying much.  Real quick I did a line of front shove, kickflip then nollie tre.  The thing that hyped me up the most was I actually did the kickflip fast enough that I was a bit scared with the speed I still had going into the nollie tre.  No biggee though, I stomped it.  Ask Busenitz.  Greg showed up and we played a decent game of SKATE.  Greg won as usual, I got him with a fakie bigflip and I think that was it.  Doh.  We left for Willville and Nullers were warmed up quick and wanting to film stuff before I was ready to go into film mode.  I posed a few ollies over the six stair and told Derek when he kickflips it I’ll get his back.  A few (ok, several, he struggled) tries later he lands the kickflip and I went for it.  I know it’s only a six stair, but I have never rode away from a bigger set.  I landed it first commit and it felt seriously awesome.  Then I went on to film all kinds of amazing stuff.  I’m getting so excited for the next Null video.Oh yeah, I had a brand new Lung deck and it felt amazing.

Thursday night (16th) was spent taking 210 skateboards out of boxes, marking the size and putting them on the shelf.  Then grocery shopping and running other Christmas related errands.  I didn’t want to skate anyway.Friday though, Friday SUCKED.  First off work sucked really bad.  Most of you know by know that I work with the real life version of Ned Flanders.  Well on this Friday his college sophomore daughter was driving solo back from school to home in Longmont.  She is 20 years old, but apparently it’s a huge deal for her to be driving a whole six hours.  Ned wanted updates every 15 minutes.  This girl was home schooled in high school, but this was ridiculous.  Literally every 15 minutes he would get on the phone with her.  When it reached the end of his work day he raced home before her to videotape her pulling into the driveway.  Pathetic.  So yeah, I’m already in a bad mood, but it looked like things were gonna get better.  Liz was feeling better and both kids were having sleepovers at friends so Liz was gonna join me at Brian’s for the Trick Factory white elephant christmas party.  So stoked.  But the second I got home I got called for work.   I ended up being on a call for over five hours.  I was furious.  When I finally got off the phone at 11:30 Liz was asleep so I tried to as well.  After a day like that with no exercise or anything I tossed and turned all night.  I’m writing this at 7:30 am on a saturday because I couldn’t sleep and I’m still in a horrible mood.  Ugh.   Hopefully today goes better.

Part of the week, and that’s saying alot considering how many parts I watch every single day.

Had a good night of sleep or something and felt good all day.  Was good about standing, jumping around, stretching at work and felt great when I left work after a longer than usual day.  The family had already eaten and was occupied doing homework and whatnot so I boxed up a Null order and delivered it to Fedex then stopped by Savers for something silly for my work White Elephant.  Then I drove to campus for some skating.  It was humid as it had rained (yes it’s mid december and it rained instead of snowed) earlier in the day and there was still some puddles on asphalt.  For whatever reason I had been thinking about a line all day.  Ollie up the UMC two stair, back 180 off, sw 180, ollie the 4, front 180 the 3 so I was hoping to warm up to that.  After some fast pushing and cruising I ended up new big Visual Arts building where I did a few slow kickflips to get warmed up.  I played on the weird long bench with all the sections missing to stop skating.  I ollied onto one section then would try to ollie to the next section, etc.  It was way hard and I didn’t feel like trying it much longer so I went up to the UMC ready to battle my line I had been thinking of.  Unfortunately there was a bunch of dudes standing on top of the two stair so I went back to the fountain area.  I tried some fast (for me) pop shoves followed by ollieing onto the 5 stair ledge, off then ollie down the 3.  I was having problems on the pop shove and my board took off toward the two stair so I just left and the cancer stickers were gone.  The ollie up the two is weird because you have to ollie early because of a big crack.  It ended up not being so hard after a few tries.  I would have thought the back 180 would have been really hard, but I guess the ollie up the two set me up perfect for my cheater angle and within a couple I was riding away from those, even going past the crack.  And I gotta say that was probably the highlight for me.  I normally suck at back 180s and I was landing them almost every try.  Now for some stupid reason as I would turn around and head to the 4 stair I would get a weird nervous feeling and stop before the 4 stair.  I’m not sure what that was about so I finally just ollied the 4 on it’s own and finally the butterfly was gone.  A few tries later I landed all but the last front 180 of the line.  Sweet, next couple tries!  Well, maybe not quite as the back 180 was troublesome for a bit, but I ended up getting the whole line.  Ollie up the two, back 180 off two, horrible sw 180, ollie the 4, horrible front 180 the 3.  That set me up going downhill on a bikepath so I tried a halfcab flip and bailed.  I decided I wanted to do the line better and get the halfcab flip too.  Next try.  Ollie up felt good, best back 180 I’ve ever done, sw 180, ollie 4, decent front 180, halfcab flip, kickflip, lots of pushes, powerslide, kickflip a crack, bail a treflip.  I was so hyped.  Not sure I’ve ever done 8 tricks in a row before.  Anyways this set me back up to the weird long bench with the missing sections to ollie over.  Obviously a lot more warmed up, but somewhat sore from so many stairs (ha ha ha) I did the quick up and ollied 3 missing sections and ollied out first try feeling on top of the world.  It was still pretty warm out (seriously, I was sweating) so I decided to skate awhile longer and line out some more stuff.  I wanted to do the quick ollies on the ledge then a treflip.  That took awhile as both of those tricks were so hard for me.  At one point I noticed I had cracked my board really bad at some point that night.  It still had pop, but the crack was 4 layers.  Ah well.  Coming the other way I would try a fast (again it’s me so imagine me going about 1/10 the speed of Busenitz) ollie over some cracks then kickflip a crack gap.  I ended up getting the lines both ways and the temperature had just started to drop quickly so I went home.  Totally spent, but super hyped.  One of the funner days of skating I’ve had this year.  I love skating by myself once or twice a week.  I would say it gives me a chance to land more stuff, but really, it just gives me a chance to land stuff I’m too embarrassed to do around others.

I work til 6 this week which isn’t that bad, but it pretty much ends any chance of skating with most of TF as their bed times are 8pm and I normally check in with the family before I go skate. As soon as I got home Ollie said “Hi ya Pop, want to go play basketball?” Impossible to say no to that. So we went over to the school and shot on a poorly lit low hoop for awhile. It was a blast. My favorite is when he misses and I jump up for the rebound and dunk it. 8 foot rims rule! Anyways, it was super warm so I left after awhile and picked up Jason to meet Lazer, Fuzz, Neil, Brian and Skelly at the newly opened Lafayette park. Apparently it wasn’t crowded by grand opening standards. The park is pretty big so it does get spread out and not so bad. Unfortunately Lazer, Fuzz and Neil had already called it a night. Brian was there skating with the Ft Collins crew in the rock section. They all seemed to be ripping pretty hard. I tooled around for awhile looking at the goods. The park is pretty amazing. As typical of skateparks it seems they went a little over the top with quite a few things, but oh well. Jason and I started out at the manual pad which can really only be hit frontside comfortabely. If there is granite somewhere under all that coating I couldn’t tell yet, it’s like grinding on ice. I got a few front 50, front 5-0 and back 50 having to come up the bank first.  I’ve been skating steet a lot lately and it was weird skating such a smooth spot.  It doesn’t even feel like your skating really.   I know that sounds dumb, but it’s weird not having any cracks or anything with brand new wheels.  Just feels like floating.  A sketchy backside landing lands you in the 12 foot bowl. So lame. I really hate how 99% of skateparks put great ledges in shitty spots. And to know that Team Pain is a bunch of skaters makes it even worse. I basically took the rest of the session to get boardslide down the rail followed by back noseslide down the hubba. That was really fun for sure. The added touch is the lights shut off as I landed the noseslide. Well I guess that isn’t even cool at all considering it was 8:45. WTF? Come on Lafayette you spend that much money on a skatepark and the lights shut off before my 8 year old goes to bed? Jason got the boardslide / noseslide run too and came close to front nose down.   So sick.  Some of the lights stayed on near the parking lot.  I dorked around for a bit on the rock section that I hadn’t even looked at really.  It seems aight, not as fun as CO Springs rock section.  Some young kid told me to look out as he rolled his bike through.  That was funny.

Man it rules not forcing myself to skate when my body or mind isn’t up to it. Unfortunately though it was super nice out. Instead I played Wii tennis/boxing with Ollie and worked on Liz’s computer which still isn’t working.

So many fun looking spots.