The winter storm had hit.  I had a busy morning of shovelling, hanging with the family, walking to the grocery store to get some much needed coffee and sledding with the kids.  A few people were interested, but only Dave showed up to skate.  We had a good session.  Mellow at times, kinda heated at others.  Dave has such a good style and has a pretty large bag of tricks.  It’s hard to blog them all.  One of my favorites what the coping grab nose pick 270.  The tricks he worked on the hardest were back tail 180 out, fakie pop shove rock, never quite got fakie crooks to fakie.  I had a fun time even though I struggled with front disasters for some reason.  I did a lot of frontside “ollies” (I put it in quotes because I’m not quite sure what I’m doing qualifies as an ollie), a front feeble, fakie pivot fakie, Hewitt grinds (sorry Brian) and a first time on Rampy fakie rock to fakie smith.  I tried a few kickflip axle stalls too, but never got close.  I think it’s possible, just super hard to get set up.  Seeing as how it’s snowing like crazy out right now I’ll probably have some time to work on it.

A decent day.  Last morning of bachelorhood in which I totally got crazy and went to the grocery store so the family would come home to a well stocked fridge.  Ahhhh.  Greg showed up hungover which is rare for him.  We watched some Go Big Shred then went and picked up Max at Meta where I inquired about PJ’s new shoe sponsor since John was at Agenda.  No one knows.  Max was ready so we moved on as we know how long it takes Carleigh and Chad to get ready.  We drove around showing Greg the spots as he’s never seen the area before.  He was blown away by all the spots he’s never seen before.  Almost all spots were dry.  We started out the normal starting spot, the up blue rail where Chad, Carleigh and Jack me us.  I was feeling really sore from skating so long in the cold weather the night before.  Everyone was doing their own thing.  Jack was falling.  Greg was doing long front 50s up the blue bar.  Max was ollie’ing dumpsters.  Chad was doing flatground ollies.  Carleigh was going against doctors orders, skating, and even landed a kickflip.  I started trying a line.  Boardslide down the blue bar, no comply 180, halfcab flip, ollie the little cement ledge thing in the weird fenced in area.  I thought the ollie was gonna be the hardest part for me, but apparently my recent practice is paying off and that ended up being easy.  I eventually got the line, but the no comply 180 was horrible.  I was attempting to skate a little faster than normal.  I doubt it showed though.We moved on to a fun manual pad we saw.  It was a mini two stair up and then a drop about the height of three stair off.  I was the first to manny it with a first try manual.  I felt pretty cool until I couldn’t do it again for like 10 more tries.  Ugh.  Max wanted to film a switch flip manual and ended up landing before I busted out the camera.  Crap.  I started trying kickflip manual and got kinda close.  I kinda wish I would have tried it a bit longer.  I would have been really hyped.  Instead, it was filmbot.  Filming manuals is the worst.  Seriously.  No one lands anything.  Well, not for several tries at least.  Max did get the switch flip manny again and it came out good.  Jack got a sick manual wallie manual.  Greg almost got a nose manual, shove it, manual, no comply 180 out.  Actually, he did get it, it was just one where he said “don’t film this”.  Doh.  Chad almost got switch heel manual, but bitched out with about an inch to go.  Carleigh came somewhat close to the manual.Next up we went to the steep banks.  For some reason I thought I could drop in and ride through the snow.  Carleigh and Jack took some photos.But the snow stopped me:I went down pretty hard.  I laughed, but it hurt.Jack took some good photos too, but for some reason his blog wont let me get anything wider than 320 pixes which is not wide enough for this high class blog.  That was pretty much the end of my skating.  Not because I was too hurt, but it was time to film.  Chad did a sick kickflip and Greg played around with a front crail judo.We peeped a 16 stair on the way out for me to nollie tre, but the crack on the approach had me weirded out.  Greg says a back 180 or tuck knee would stoke him out.   Amateur.  I went home and cooked dinner as the family was pulling into town.  So good to see them again.  I had never looked at my elbow after the drop in slam and I didn’t really pay attention to it before getting into bed.  Liz was pissed the next morning as there was blood everywhere.  Turned out it was all from my elbow.  Oops.Please go to Carleigh and Jack’s blogs about the day.  We had a blast.

After a boring day at work, a good mail day (new Thrasher, Transworld and Omaha video Go Big Shred), nap and small dinner (nachos) I headed out to a pretty crowded Lafayette park on a pretty cold night.  Lazer pulled up the same time as me.  Neil would arrive soon.  Max, Davis and other dudes were there.  Carleigh, Chad showed soon and Fuzz followed after awhile.  The park was almost completely dry.  Just the big useless bowl at the end of the ditch run had snow in it.  Ft Collins Mike showed up eventually too.We started mostly in the little bowl.  My runs continue to be completely lame.  Then it was just cruise around and kinda hit whatever.  It’s fun doing that in that park, but I really didn’t see what anyone else was doing until the end.  I saw Carleigh carving around and I would remind her to not ollie.  She didn’t listen.  Chad back 50d across and down the hubba.  Neil front lipped the bump to marble.  Lazer got tranny skills.  I was having fun.  Did the front 50 to manual pretty easy.  Struggled at bump to ledge.  Mike got me to do a fun wallie into the ditch run.  In fact I don’t think I had even been in there before.  I also got some backside flips on the mellow rock flat bank and almost followed it up with a no comply bigspin.  I got the fun “Zero line” of boardslide down the rail then noseslide down the hubba.  Within a few minutes of being there I saw Fuzz do halfcab boardslide the rail, back 5-0 the hubba.  Wow.  Chad did a mach 500 kickflip up the 3 stair.  Lazer left.  After awhile Carleigh, I, Mike and Fuzz skated the medium sized bowl.  That ended quickly as a biker kept getting in everyones way.  Then we mostly hit the rock area.  Fuzz and Chad did some monster ollies.  Fuzz did switch blunt on the lower of the rock narrow qpipes.  I one upped him with a non-decked weak front rock.  Fuzz went for front noseblunt on it and shinned himself pretty bad.  Ouch.  Chad did some crazy manual and nose manuals over the round pad into the bank.  Carleigh noseslid the bump to ledge and may have got shove out on it too.The street lights shut off, but the others remained for quite some time.  We dorked on the tiny qp for a bit then moved on to the main rock.  Mike was making wallies over the hip look so fun.  Fuzz and I got them second try.  I really didn’t think I would ever commit to that so quickly and it ended up being a really fun trick we did a few times.  Stalls on the rock were fun too.  Mike got fakie rocks super easy.  Chad was doing nollie norths into the setup bank then rock fakie or front pivot on the rock.  Fuzz did fakie rock, axle stall, back pivot and worked hard for fakie noseblunt and would lose his board into the bowl of snow.  Crappy.  For some reason the lights stayed on longer than they were supposed to.  It was freezing out, but we kept skating.  I got a back rock, horrible front rock and worked up to a fakie rock which was really fun to land.  I eventually got a wallie boardslide off the other side too.  It was kind of a sloppy mess and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it was fun.The cops came and booted us.  The lights shut off shortly anyways.  It was freezing outside.  I stretched and we all went on our separate ways.  Went home and enjoyed my last night of bachelorhood by eating oatmeal and watching a Samuel L Jackson move (Unthinkable).  No drinks required.