Reactive arthritis is the gift that keeps on giving. My arthritis pain isn’t much anymore, but the penecillin I’m still taking are reeking havoc on my insides. I had another night of no sleep and a few unwanted visits to the toilet. Ugh. So later on when Carleigh picked me up I felt super drained. She was tired too. We got to NorthGLENn park and it was super crowded. Sam, Bernie and Derek were there. We met Skelly and Dave Fuller there too.

Starting out was not easy for Carleigh and I. This was the first time I’ve skated without my knee brace in a long time. It felt really weird initially and took some getting used to. I used it as an excuse to watch Derek and his buddy Nate skate. They were destroying it. Derek was skating as faster then I’ve seen anyone skate before. It was insane. He did everything then ended his session trying to ollie from the clam shell into the jersey barrier which is about 12 feet. He got close, but had to leave when Nate wrecked himself. Skelly was ripping. The crew of fort collins kids destroying the bowl was pretty insane. One kid especially doing every trick he wanted to. The last run he did was bonkers. Lien air followed by lien to disaster. Backside boneless to tail followed by backside boneless. Huge backside ollies and a monster stalefish to close out the session and send me posing elsewhere. Dave was ripping. Frontside pivot on the jersey barrier followed by a long boardslide transfer into the bank was ridiculous. Carleigh slammed good on some noseslides that she’s done a bunch of times before, has found that tailsliding the whole hip is too easy and got at least one pop shove over the hip. After the crowds died down I skated a little better and got me a line I was super hyped on. Front 50 the little ledge, roll on the bank then go over the the little narrow qp and did front feeble, front slash on the bank, turn around on the clam shell then noseslide down the little hubba. I was actually skating! Later on we hit the bowl for awhile where I made a complete ass of myself, skelly ripped it, dave ripped it and has the best frontside pivots, carleigh feebled “a whole tile”, and the fort collins kids embarrassed the antihero team. Right at the end Skelly and I tried 360 flips and Carleigh tried varial flips. We all got close, but the lights shut off an hour early. Doh. We’re blaming daylight savings time. I was hyped to skate without my knee brace and actually try some tricks. It’ll be awhile before I’m back to my normal self. I’m still worried about my knee tendonitis and the new digestive issues are really taking away my energy. Doh.

This is so ridiculously good.

All day Saturday I avoided skateboarding. It’s tough to do in this weather, but I did. I’m at this point where my knee feels so much better, but definitely not 100%. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to go at it 100%, but for now it’s a weird game of feeling ok when I’m skating, but not feeling confident enough to skate full on. I think I’ll do rehab stuff for a couple days, then skate, rehab a couple days, etc for awhile and work in flip tricks/ollies a little more each time. With that said it was another nice day and after getting blown off by Nullers I asked Ollie if he wanted to skate the little arvada park and he said yes. Nice! I guess with the warmer weather he’s into it again.

The park had a few people. Enough to intimidate Ollie initially, but not enough to keep him from skating. I was having fun right out of the gates cruising around that park. It’s so fun. Pumping over that little spine, being able to roll in everywhere, tiny quarterpipes, that place is a blast. Once Ollie got warmed up to the crowd he started skating better than I’ve ever seen him skate. He still pushes mongo, but otherwise he looks so natural on his board. He did front and back rocks on the qp at the top of the park, front slash, rock transfer, back 50s, front 50s and a bunch more. He learned rock transfer 180. So cool. He also accidently did a back 50 to fakie on the tiny qp so I told him to actually try it and a few tries later he did. Then I suggested he try blunt transfers over the little spine and a few tries later he landed that too. I was pretty surprised because he never bailed. The first few didn’t quite get into blunt so he just put it into rock and transfered. He landed the first one he put in blunt and then did it again super easy. I was working on a little run of pump over the spine, front feeble in the corner then blunt shove transfer over the spine. I got it and it put a smile on my face. At one point when I did a front feeble and a high school kid said something like “that dad just did a front feeble” and it made me laugh. I crooked the ledge in a couple tries. I tried front 50 and didn’t have it at all. Some tricks feel like I still have them and some feel like I’m gonna have to start all over again. Ugh. Part of it is the knee brace I’m wearing though. I think I’ll stop wearing it. The last thing I did was a line of roll in, pump the spin, long front 50, then kickflip on the hump (it was so bad! but it felt so good to do a flip trick) front board the last inch of the ledge, back 50 the bank, back smith bail on the qp. Man that park is fun. Oh yeah, I did a few weak sauce front 5-0s on the qp as I’m trying to learn that evil trick.

After that we stopped by Community for a bit, got some donuts at 7-11 then hit the Westminster park. There was a strong breeze there so the euro was pretty much not skateable. But there was only a couple other people there and we had a blast. It’s another park I wish I could ollie at more, but oh well. I started mostly on the qp above the bank. It’s fun doing a trick on the qp then rolling down the bank too. I got a hurricane after a few tries, front feeble, front d, rock fakie (first time going fakie which was nowhere near as scary as i thought it would be) and a blunt to axle stall. I had fun trying to cali grind all three ledges in one line. I got it after a few tries and it was more fun than I thought it would be. I took me a few tries to ollie from one of the bumps up to the next level. That shouldn’t have been so hard and it seemed to stress the leg a little. Ugh. I did a couple kickflips, a first try 1mph (normally when I make fun of myself I saw 2mph, but this wasn’t even that) backside flip and a fakie bigflip where I landed one footed judo style and somehow rode away (at .5mph). I did a frontside cali grind, dropped a level then did a quick front 180 down the the next level. This park is almost really cool. Ollie was still ripping. He manualled the pyramid really easy. He did fly out front and back 180s. Almost fly out pop shove. Most of all he looked really hyped to skate and we had a great time together. Near the end of the session some dudes wearing famous hats and monster shirts showed up to jump their rc cars in the park. Yeap, I guess we were in Westminster.

I’m not sure if it’s the antibiotics I’m taking, the turmeric supplements, the arthritis drug or the large amount of ibuprofen I’m taking, but it’s taken it’s toll on my stomach. I’ve had the shits for days. It’s not fun. Hoping it would leave me alone for awhile I attempted skating. Carleigh and I met Dean, Jack, Fuzz and John at Crisis. Then Carleigh and I took the uncool car to northGLEN where we skated for awhile before the cool car showed up. Skating was awesome. For me I did a few ollie tricks. Got a boardslide and noseslide on the ledge. Tried a few noseslide 270 shoves, but didn’t get too close. John, Fuzz and I did miniramp lines on the narrow short qp and the flat bank. I find it pretty funny that John struggles with front 5-0s when he’s so good at everything else. Fuzz had some long front 5-0s and almost did front 5-0 to switch crooks. My best was a front d on the qp then a front 50 on the bank. Might have done front feeble on the bank too, but I slid out a few times. Jack was pretty much skating as good as he ever has. So in other words he was ripping and smiling too. I forget the lines, but tricks like crooks transfer the flat bar then back tail the ledge. Some 270s out too though and a first try crooks 270 shove out. Carleigh was doing ollies over the hip mixed in with a couple hang ups and slams. Ouch. Dean was eating a sub for awhile then cruising around. He committed to the somewhat downhill flat bar near the top, but him and John were unable to get it. I wanted in on it, but decided to pass on ollies and started cruising around the park trying not to ollie. Kind of hard to do there. I struggled with front tails on the little bank near the front of the park. Made me realize that I’m now at five months since I’ve been able to skate 100%. Wow, that’s a minute. Carleigh was trying kickflips up the euro. John was wondering how big it was. Jack said it was easy, I said it looked hard. Ha. John did it first try though. Jack had some monster b/s ollies over the hip. Carleigh almost tailsid the whole darn thing. We skated the big bowl for a bit. Dean had some good carves. Carleigh was getting skate coached from John on feeble grinds and posed up some grinds that were “a whole tile long” (John was saying how impressive that was when each tile is about 1″ long? ha he meant a section of pool block). John did some mean feeble grinds. Fuzz did back d fakie. Wowsers. Around now my ankles had started hurting pretty good (arthritis) so I sat down. Everyone else did flip tricks and stuff into the mellow bank. Man I wanted in on that session so bad. Argh. Fuzz did fakie flip first t. John did front shove. Dean fakie ollie. Carleigh nollie b/s and f/s halfcab. Jack first try tre. Some one footed dorking went down. John wins that with the 360 flip one foot then back bigspin to one foot front nose down the hubba. So funny. Jack tried front noses down the hubba. A few bails, slide outs, a head bonk and then he had them bolts every try. So sick. The lights shut off then we really dorked out with some sit down rides. Hilariously fun. It’s so slippery there so the speed wobbles would result in some funny slide outs. Dean killed it out the gates. It cracked me up that Fuzz may have struggled the most. Good thing he was never pro for sit down skating. Fun night. Hyped to skate with friends. Still miss flip tricks/ollies/ledges/ollies/flip tricks/flip tricks/flip tricks.

A nice warm spring feeling day! I went out to Lafayette and met up with John and the Meta crew (Max, Sean, Davis). They were skating the tiny tranny in the middle of the park. Max, Sean and John killed it too hard for me to hang with them. Max and John had 10+ trick runs going. Crazy. I dorked around being really mellow for awhile. It was fun being outside at night and it wasn’t cold. I got a little boardslide on the black ledge. I know it’s nothing folks, but it felt good, came super easy and made me feel better. I went over to the minibowl with John for awhile. We were both working on stuff until he did all of his tricks in one run then moved on to do hammer lines like ollie the 3 then front 50 the hubba. I didn’t land much in the mini bowl, but I did get a few Rampy tricks like back willy/nosegrind (in my head it’s a crooks and I’m pretty sure that if you shot the photo from below the ground looking straight up it might look like I’m posted up in crooks ha), back 50 to fakie, front d and almost fakie pivot fakie. Fun. Back to the manny pad I did a little front board, slappy manual (ollie to rock, then bounce up to manual) and then a slappy manual rock tap out. Man that felt good. Rearry good. It was first try and I think having the smaller board helped with the control to do it so easy. Awesome. I got a noseslide on the bump to ledge that felt good. I did a couple bad kickflips that didn’t hurt at least, a sloppy fakie bigflip then another fakie bigflip that felt amazing. I was giggling like crazy. I haven’t been able to do tricks like this in awhile. Davis and Sean were murdering the flyout over a trashcan. Sean did the steeziest shifty ever. Davis did a nollie tre on flat at one point and I was like “yes I want to try that too!”. Almost got it in the first few tries, but the lights shut off and it escaped me. Oh well, I skated! I think I’m gonna have to stick to skateparks and mostly still skate tranny for awhile, but wow, I see some light at the end of the tunnel. I’m really sore now (writing this the day after) so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back at it though.

I got the ok from the acupuncturist to start skating a little again. Very limited jumping, but could start working it in. After hitting up a few shops with Ollie and his buddy Sam and chilling with Fuzz at Crisis for awhile I went out to the street in front of my house. I love that place. But the wind was howling and it was cold. I didn’t feel very good mentally or physically. I did a couple ollies and it just felt weird, awkward and the wind/cold pissed me off. I did a couple horrible kickflips, shove its and went back inside. Not exactly what I had in my mind as being able to skate again.

I’m blowing it.

Went out for a little while after a long day of running around with my brother and Ollie playing football. So fun. Steve still has some moves. He got a run with axle stall, rock fakie and rock ‘n roll. He was hyped. Ollie did his thing. His surprise was a mean f/s kickturn and lots of backside scratch grinds. I skated ok. Did lots of tricks including a front feeble which has been elusive lately. Oh and I didn’t feel like dealing with my knee brace so I didn’t wear it. I think kickflip season is around the corner!