Met Derek, Chad, Chris and Jake at the Denver park. We skated there for awhile. I tried to do a few manuals out of various banks around the park. Had a little line going where I tried a few manuals in a row, but I never got all three. Maybe the key to having fun at Denver park is to not be able to actually skate. Derek did a couple crazy tricks. Front tail to fakie manual 180 out. Five oh to switch crooks to fakie nose manual. Chad did some neat lipslides. Chris almost died trying a quick ollie to front bigspin out of a kicker. Jake shut down the handrails.

Then we went filming around Denver. I just rode my filmer board and continued the non-ollie rehab theme. First spot Derek put down a hammer. Second spot we got kicked out of before Chris could get his line. Third spot we kind of got kicked out of before Chad could try his trick. Fourth spot we got kicked out of before Chad could try his trick. Fifth spot Chad got a banger line. Sixth spot we got kicked out of before Chad could get his second trick. Seventh spot Chad couldn’t do anything cool at. Eighth spot we had hotel employees sweeping away sand and encouraging Chad to get his trick. Which he did and we were super hyped. Soon the spot will be melted away and it’ll just be one of those rare opportunities that can only happen when cruising around the streets.

Had a blast. Fun crew. Hyped that I was able to push around and it seemed to strengthen my knee rather than hurt it. I hope I can ollie soon. At the moment though my arthritis is pretty bad anyway.

Kind of a nice day in the lower 40s. Yeah, you know it’s February when lower 40s seem pretty nice. But the sun was out, the sky was blue and my arthritis was kicking. Ugh. I am supposed to take Humira (arthritis drug) every two weeks and by the end of the two weeks my knees and ankles start to act up again. The arthritis is still going away slowly, but it gets hard to skate when it’s acting up. With that said I met up with Brian, Neil, Blake, Travis and Jake (and about 500 other dudes) at the new Arvada park. It was my first time there since it’s been finished and officially open.

I walked in over the puddles and spotted Brian and Travis skating a little miniramp like section in the front and that is where I would stay for the most part. I had my knee brace on and I still can’t ollie so this was perfect. Brian and Travis were killing it. The only thing I’ve skated in the past five weeks is Rampy so I struggled to land anything. It was fun to skate outside though. Travis did some awesome early grabs and a lot of his tricks. Brian had some long runs loaded with losi grinds, one footed grinds and a lot more.

After awhile I just cruised around the park looking at how much fun it would be if one could ollie. Jake was killing the jersey barrier. He got front 5-0 and back hurricane. Gnarls. Brian ended his session on the jersey barrier. I forget what trick he was trying, but he went down hard. I skated the bank to curb with Blake for awhile. It took me several tries to get a front slash. Other tricks I got were back 50, back feeble, front rock and back rock. Blake and I did some doubles too with the infamous nosestall revert to add insult to injury for Brian.

At the end I noticed the miniramp section had nearly emptied out so I went back over there and struggled some more. I ended up getting a few of my harder tricks that I rarely land outside of Rampy. Fakie back smith stall fakie, front d, front smith and back 50 to fakie. I had fun, but the whole not ollieing/having to wear a knee brace is weighing on me.