Liz and I went to the early showing of this video. We met up with Fuzz and Carleigh after some dinner with Darin and posted up next to one of the stars of the night, Shad. It was rad. Lots of teasers including a new Null one. The video itself was awesome. Not a hammer video with lots of raw street skating that can be viewed over and over. I can’t wait to get a copy of it. Liz and I bailed as soon as the credits started to get to the J Mascis show.

We said a quick hello to friends then posted right up front. I laughed as J’s guitars were brought to the front with the airplane tags still on them. Kinda hard to see in my cell phone photo above, but we shared a laugh with the guy next to us who might even be a bigger J Mascis nerd than me (not possible). The fire alarm at the Hi-Dive was going off which was pretty annoying.

J was walked up front looking frail and awkward and after a quick “Hello” busted right into The Wagon. Pretty much my favorite song ever. Although I’ll admit that’s one of those songs that benefits from the added noise of the whole band. Next up was Listen To Me off the new album and then Several Shades Of Why. Several Shades may have been my favorite song of the night. Then he went on to play mostly oldies including classics like Alone, Get Me, Ammarring, Quest. Oceans In The Way had one of the loudest crowd responses which kind of surprised Liz and I, but is just more evidence that Farm is one of their finest. I was surprised and excited to hear Not The Same. Not Enough went off. Flying Cloud is another runner up for my favorite song of the night. The encore was Raisons then Repulsion I think. The show was great. The only thing that takes away from it to me is this was the Several Shades Of Why tour and he only played four songs from it. A couple more would have made this show beyond epic to me. That being said, it was still a totally awesome show and J Mascis cannot be touched. After the show I went to get a t-shirt, but they had all sold out except one size large and a bunch of XXL (I’m not Mikey). Doh. Read a better review and see better photos at heyreverb.com.

Not sure if this day would count if I were going for 300 again, but it was cold and snowing and we were hanging out at Crisis and the banana board came out.  Fuzz did some steezey basics like shove and no comply shove.  I flailed around like an old buffoon for an hour before landing two kickflips in a row.  I couldn’t even hardly stand comfortably on it.  Ugh.  CJ ended up getting a nollie flip.  We watched the old Meta video Recess.  It was rad.  Jam and Fuzz have parts in it.  It sure is nice having a dvd of the video.  Where you at with Lumber Jockeys Sam?????????

Got home from work and had less time to skate than I had thought.  Liz and were going to dinner, then the Always Sunny premiere, then J Mascis!  So I skated flat for about 30 min.  I was horrible.  I’m not sure why all of a sudden everything feels so awkward.  I was trying a run of no comply 180, fakie flip then f/s halfcab flip.  I think I got to the f/s halfcab flip twice.  Ugh.  I would land half of the no complys completely straight legged and borderline shooting out.  Fakie flips were 1/20.  So bummed.  Going the other way I managed a halfcab flip, heelflip, treflip run.  All tricks being horrible.  I had some fakie bigflips going 2mph.  I attempted quite a few nollie tres and didn’t get them.  I did get a few treflips.  All landed with Jason’s patented 20 stair landing steez.  Another line was heelflip then b/s flip landed in a way that would only count on defense in a game of over 50 SKATE.  I started hucking tricks I can’t do just to feel better about not landing tricks anyway.  Rick flips were surprisingly close.  I landed on one, but had stopped.  Still happy I skated though

I forgot about this back smith pole jam I did awhile back.  I think it was in Transworld or Thrasher.  I don’t know, I forget.

Had one crazy evening. Got home to a completely messy house and a daughter that was screaming out of control about not being able to finish her homework in time for the talent show. Then I sat through two hours of elementary school “performances”. Two Justin Bieber songs, one Green Day song, blah blah. A couple kids could sing pretty good, but for the most part it was pretty rough. India was of course awesome for me to see and the ender was her whole 5th grade class doing the dance for Thriller. That was pretty amazing actually.

Oh wait, this is a skate journal huh? So yeah, after all that and then doing dishes and eating I went out to roll up the street to the strip mall by my house, but it was raining now. Ugh! Instead of baling on the whole thing I decided to hit Red Curbs. I pulled in and noticed a bunch of people skating. Whoa. Turns out that Satellite and Public Eye dudes had decided to skate there too. It was like a crowded skatepark. Ha, ok, so not crowded. Since I spent all of Monday sleeping off back pain my body was really out of it. I felt way more uncoordinated than normal and it showed. I struggled at everything from ollies to kickflips and in between (as if there is something in between ollies and kickflips). After awhile everyone else left. I don’t remember having actually landed anything by that point anyways. I started trying a line of halfcab flip, nose manual, kickflip back tail. I got all three, but not in a line. The kick back t was a good one for me and it slid about a foot. The weirdest thing happened though I heard someone yell really loud mid slide and it scared the death out of me. I never did figure out where it came from. Pretty weird. I tried a few nose manual nollie tres and did not get close. I tried a few front 5-0 kickflips out and did not get close. Maybe that list is a little unrealistic, but I guess I have two years to get them. Ok, enough babble about a curb session.

Two front disasters on a 3 foot quarterpipe in the opening run? Yeap.

As I headed over to skate a new manual pad Neil said him and Brian were skating Lafayette.  I skated the manny pad for awhile since Carleigh was gonna meet up and was feeling pretty weird.  I had woken up with back spasms and did my best to sleep them off.  I was super tired and out of it, but it felt good to be on a real board again (a Null of course!).  I kinda wanted to go to Lafayette to meet up with them, but was so lazy.  I did try starting trying nose manual nollie treflip out.  I have gotten nowhere near close to that trick, but it still feels possible and I’m starting to be able to setup my back foot for the flick better.  I don’t know if I’ll ever land it, but hucking it is fun either way.  Carleigh showed up kinda bumming because of school.  We had a mellow session.  Nothing special went down and it started sprinkling after awhile.

Seriously, it was snowing in the morning.  April 23rd, and it’s snowing.  Ugh, Colorado can be so lame sometimes.  It killed filming plans.  I spent the time trying to make a new Null teaser which was for the most part very productive.  But sitting down for so long killed my legs.  I attempted to go skate at Southern Hills.  I had told Carleigh and Neil to come meet me and they both sounded interested.  I warmed up ok.  But had a couple weird falls that I blame on that Creature board.  I seriously hate that board.  It felt wider than it was long.  The tail was so short I would miss ollies non stop.  Anyways the one thing I did I was happy with was a kickflip over the little crack thing followed by a crooks on the bench.  I’ve wanted to try that for awhile and it came quick.  After that I started thinking about trying the bench to bench gap.  I figured a good warm up would be to ollie off the two stair with speed.  I ended up falling super awkward and in my head just could not deal with that board anymore.  I got up and focused the shit out of that board.  One stomp.  One pissed off stomp that went through that board so easy I hurt my heel on the concrete.  Session over.  Board done.  Good riddance.

Carleigh and I rolled to CO Springs to meet up with Bernie, Sam, Mikey and Derek.  After hitting Proper we went and met up with the dudes at a somewhat famous rail.  Derek was the only one to get on it even with a boardslide.  Pretty gnarly spot.  The rest of us just kinda skated around.  I did a dumb run of front smith stall on a wood ledge, followed by a nosestall on a ledge, then ollie a 4 stair then back 180 right away over a crack in the sidewalk.  After some driving around we decided to just skate around downtown Springs.  Not a whole lot went down for awhile.  We ended up at the City Hall or something which had a nice ledge down a 5 stair.  Mikey was able to nose manual it, Derek back 50’d it.  I tried to noseslide it.  But it felt like it was time to move on.  We ended up at a downtown park with this bank:

Bernie and I skated while others investigated the nearby spots.  I beat Bernie to a back smith, front rock, but he did ollie up to front 50 like it was nothing to prove he is better.  Ha.  We had fun though.  The front slash above was super fun.  Sometimes doing a basic trick first try feels the best.  I didn’t go much beyond this.  Mikey kinda killed it.  Blunt to pivot, nosepick.  Derek did front blunt easy, back disaster, almost pivot fakie.  Then we took a long skate back to the car.  On the way the funnest thing I did was a wallride on a jersey barrier.

Next we went to a school we had peeped earlier.  It was basically a long three stair where each step was about 3 feet long and about 40 feet long and curved.  It looked insanely fun and we (at least I) had a blast.  Bernie and Derek kinda messed around and did some sick manual tricks from one stair up to the next and back down etc.  Bernie did manual kickflip up to the next level and almost fakie manual up to fakie nose manual which would have been of the chains.  There were gaps off the second and third levels.  Carleigh did a front 180 off the second one into the parking lot.  Mike almost nollie nose mannied the lower level and slammed a lot trying flippers off the second level.  I kinda somehow found the drive and skated about as well as I could.  After I got kickflip up the first then manual the second in only a couple tries I had a lot to work with.  Coming the other way I wallied up to the second level, kickflipped on flat then back 180’d the gap to the parking lot.  Coming the other way I got kickflip up the first level, ollie up on, ollie up one, front 180 off the 3rd level.  And the line I worked up to which made me so happy was wallie up the two, kickflip up onto the third then ollie to axle stall the curb into the parking lot.  It was one of the best feeling lines I’ve ever done.  Not only was every trick good for me, but I did them good and I seemed to have a fluid motion throughout.  The wallie up felt super good.  Popped above the ledge and floaty feeling.  Seriously felt awesome. One of my favorite lines I’ve ever done.  Next we went to the dream spot bank school where I failed at back 50s and Bernie failed at kickflip front 50s.  Derek had fun playing Bball skate.  Mikey had a nice front blunt.  After filming we played a loose game of flat bank SKATE that deteriorated into a game of HORSE with a flat basketball that Bernie won.  Then was dinner.  Fun day.  Had a blast at that 3 stair spot.  Still hate that board though.  On the way home Mikey joined a very tired Carleigh and a slightly intoxicated me for a Pissed Jeans music fest on the way home.  I obviously loved it.  That band is the best.

Be there.