After a super fun night at the Malfunction premiere (ok it was a blast, but my digestive issues made it not quite as fun as normal although it kept me from drinking any beer which I was hyped on when) I woke up early and felt ok (other than the upset stomach and numerous morning visits to read Lowcard on the crapper (I have a goal to some day write an entire journal entry in one run on sentence with numerous parenthesis)). I continued to not take turmeric supplements and my stomach seemed to ease up for the first time in awhile. The problem with that is turmeric really helps my arthritis. Fun eh?! Either way, I went to the Arvada park not knowing if I would have to leave because of the shits, if my tendonitis in my knee would act up and if my arthritis would lock up my ankles. It sure is nice having a huge bag of excuses. Ha just kidding, I can’t wait to not worry about this crap.

Things worked out. It was 70 degrees out and I was rocking my new J Mascis shirt I’ve been saving for a nice spring day. I rocked out to The Men on the way to the new Arvada park and Neil was already there. The park was almost empty and I started the slow warm up process. This is the first time I’ve skated there with ollies as an option and under 500 people. Awesome. Neil was ripping. Lines spanning one end of the park to the other. This park truly is amazing. Neil got into a one foot to manual up the euro and bailed the landing. So funny. He did some cool no complies on the angled mj circle (I’m pulling names out of my ass here I’m sure people that have skated here a bunch have way better names than me and would laugh hysterically at my dorky names). I was just kind cruising for awhile not ollieing yet and looking at everything there is to skate. Neil boardslid the long curb thing next to the tiny manual pad and I tried too. So fun. Took me a few tries, but I got it. Neil started his line with a little front pivot on a weird qp which I luckily got first t then never again. He almost had lipslide on the little many pap which I tried to manual, but failed at. We headed over to the jersey barrier area and Neil had some good lines with lots of speed and ollies. I managed to get a little back 50 on the bank up the long 3 stair. Hyped on that. Ollieing up step ups wasn’t working for me. My timing is way off. Some tricks come easy, some dont. Hard ones like ollies definitely don’t. I had fun doing over the hip back 50s on the tiny qp by the main euro then went up and did a front 50 shove first t on the little manny pad. That was such a cool feeling. I haven’t done that trick in awhile and it felt just as easy as it used to be for me. It made me giggle a little. We hit the bank to curb for a bit. Neil had a sick front tail. I struggled at front rock, but did a kickflip on flat that felt awesome. I love that I went to a skatepark and my favorite tricks were flatground tricks. I suck! I battled treflips for a bit and then Neil had to leave. I was gonna leave too, but decided to skate a bit longer. I sucked it up in the back mini bowl for a bit then found a lonely flat area to try some more three flips. I landed on almost all of them, but would bail and my ankles were hurting a bit, but I got one! My first 3 flip in forever! It was slow, ugly, sloppy and completely awesome. It’s a trick I love so much and I felt like maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to do this skateboarding thing again. There was no signs of the knee tendonitis pain and my stomach wasn’t hurting so bad. The arthritis in my ankles wasn’t great, but not enough to hold me back. I did a little axle stall on the bank to banked ledge and called it a day. I left super hyped. I really hope this continues.