Up to MRKT after work with Carleigh to sell some Nulls. The weather was nice and the wildfire smoke wasn’t sticking in the air. Mike joined us. As did everyone from there because their scene rules. Mike was ripping the whole park. Carleigh and I tried to discredit it because he lives there and skates there all the time. Ha, like just living somewhere can make you a good skateboarder. My arthritis was once again not cool. Ollies were slow/awkward. I managed a little line of dropin, ollie on a hump, front rock the little barrier, then kickflip smalllly over a hump (WordPress says smallly isn’t a word. Oh well.). Then Carleigh and I raced for wallie over the barrier. I tried my best to be chivalrous and let her land it first, but low and behold I somehow stayed loose and floated a wallie before her. She did it go. It seems like most of the rest of the time for me was spent trying to do a b/s flip on the brick bank. I didn’t get close at all. People skated the ledges a little. Bonner and Andy showed up. Such awesome dudes. And rippers. At the end of the session Mike, Andy, Carleigh and I did a few various slappy grinds over the hump. Mike was slaying it and forgetting that he’s regular footed with lots of switch slappies. So sick. Andy, Carleigh and I learned frontside slappies up and over. I’ve thought about this one for awhile and got it kinda quick, b/s slappy frontside 180 revert as i came off. It felt so fun. Then I managed the otherway, f/s slappy b/s 180 revert out. Skateboarding is fun. Fort Collins is the best.

My level of excitement for this album is through the roof.

Best band ever.

October 15th at the Bluebird! Whew!

Had another one of those unexplainable bad nights of sleep. Carleigh and I went by Crisis and did some bidness with Fuzz. A homie of his stopped by and handed everyone a Left Hand Milk Stout. I was super hungry so it hit me really hard and trying to skate after that was weird. Both Carleigh and I felt nauseous. The sun was kind of blinding too. See all the excuses I’ve already prepared you with to explain my sucking? It actually wasn’t that bad. Since I’ve been mostly skating street and the ledges are harder it was almost funny how easy it was to try tricks at the park. I managed a few frontside nosegrinds which I normally struggle with try after try. Was thinking of trying shove or 180 out, but Fuzz started a game of anything goes (except tranny) SKATE with Carleigh and Keenan. I got outed pretty quick. Keenan and Fuzz lasted forever. Carleigh had some heelflips (say goodbye to those ha ha). Fuzz gave Keenan a run, but lost in the end. By the end of the session my body was falling apart and a slam hurt way more then it should. Arthritis sucks. It’s crazy to describe, but when I fall it tingles around my whole body. I’m not sure why it seems to be getting worse lately. I wish this shit would go away. But at least I’m mostly able to skate compared to last October when I couldn’t even get out of bed.

Pretty hyped on this.

Pretty hyped on skating all day after PJ won BATB5. Kinda wanted a solo session and went to Southern Hills. I did all the things I normally do throughout the day to feel good. Rode the bike at work for a bit, stretched, walked for awhile, etc. But when I got on my board it felt horrible. I’m still getting used to the new shoes, but clearly it was more then that. My knees were stiff and it felt like I had ankle weights on. Ugh, arthritis sucks. I tried to skate hard, but multiple bails while setting up for tricks is tough on the confidence. I stuck with it and did a few things I should be somewhat proud of in hindsight. But everything was done poorly and even slower than normal for me. Noseslides and crooks were the only decent tricks with speed. The crooks hyped me up because I wasn’t just doing the end of the ledge, I was getting on at the start. Granted I wasn’t grinding all the way, but it was cool. Other tricks I got on the ledge, front 50, front nose, front nose fakie, front board, front 50 180 out, noseslide 180 out (so bad) and a weird crooks to fakie. Flatground was bad too. In total I got a bunch, but it took a long time and they were slow as hell. Kickflip, heelflip, varial flip, fakie big flip, fakie heelflip, 360 flip, f/s halfcab heelflip (PJ inspired minus a half) halfcab flips both ways. I left feeling pretty old. My body is not working so well. The arthritis seems pretty bad in my shoulders and knees right now. I can’t even throw a ball to Ollie without it hurting too much. Ugh.

Not as hot. Kinda breezy. Ollie said he was down to skate. Rad. We went to the Mikes Camera manny pad to start with which isn’t Ollie’s type of spot. He did a couple 180s then went and sat in the car reading Fox Trot. Jake and I plugged away at some tricks. He ended up with a line of manny then kickflip a crack as well as manual then f/s flip. Not too bad for just getting off a rolled ankle. He also did manual front 180 out. I took awhile to get nose manual shove, then tried nose manny bigspin, but never got close. Got a kickflip manual. Heelflip, front shove, fakie bigspin up the curb. Neil and Carleigh showed up as we were ready to move on. But not after Neil and I did a few manual/nose manual “combos”. I think the record was switching four times. Pretty fun

Then we went to the school out on Arapahoe. Neil killed the quick ollies up the curb, nose mannied the main manny pad, had some good pop shoves and bailed ollieing the ledge to drop. Carleigh bailed that as well. Both could get it. Ollie had fun with some little drop down mannies and a line of halfcab off one curb, ollie the next, back 180 the last. Jake ollied up the tall ledge and chilled. I didn’t skate great but managed to ollie the main manny pad, ollied up the tall ledge and at the end landed one of the best feeling front shoves I’ve ever done off the ledge. Fun times.

On the hottest day of the year Tyler and a few Denver Shop heads showed up so Tyler could get a photo for Four. The crew was Tyler, Nathan Fantasia, Steven Gritz, Justin Greer and Deano. I kinda dorked around at the warm up spot (Arapahoe school), but for the most part it was chill/dork/film mode. And it was fun. And it was productive. And I should skate more, but my arthritis aint doing so good lately.

Oh man, finely mostly recovered from the intense skatathon with the Fremont crew. Met Fuzz around 9 on campus. We rolled to the mini bank to curb. Oh yeah, crap I had all new stuff.

New shoes (eS Theory 2s). Null board. Null supers. And for the first time in 2 years, new bearings. Wow my board was fast, the normally little hill on the way to the bank to curb actually kind of freaked me out as my board went way faster then I’m used to. Whew. After a few tries each we finally got the most basic trick there of manual around a sign. We went on to get our switch pushing and fakie/switch trick itch. Fuzz did fakie pivot all perfect. Ollieing fakie was hard for me. He also did chink chink. The best part was us pushing switch though. Fuzz took a few tries to be able to run and set his board down switch. It was so funny. He would run and was unable to not put his left leg on the board first. We stuck with it and did some stuff though. We both got switch crooks. Fuzz did switch pivot both ways. We rolled on and ended up at the tall ledge by the engineering building. We did some nose stalls and front rocks before Fuzz’s had a palpitation. Scary stuff. We walked it off. Fuzz then had to take care of some other bodily issues so I skated flat for a minute. Worked on a tech line of sw 180, kickflip, b/s 180. Never got it. Fuzz joined up and I noticed a cop so we walked off, peeped some spots, saw Sean skating, chatted, then called it a night.

Go see Matt’s photos here. They cover the day better than my words will. It’s funny that my favorite full days of skating get such bad treatment in my journal because they was so much I can never remember everything. Especially when it takes me six days to start writing it. Anyways, we started at Northglenn. We were all tired. It was really hot. My arthritis wasn’t as bad though. We started working into our tricks after awhile. The only things I really remember were Joe ripping the ledges as he always does. Eric and I getting little scratch grinds in the deep end. Me getting a grind around the corner in the shallow. Greeley Eric showing up and destroying the bowl. Jeff arriving and slaying things. 360 flip the china gap then turn around and do it switch. Insane. Then we went to a weir brick bank spot that was really hard to skate. Jeff did a lot. Lazer, Joe and I got boardslides. Then it rained. We went to No Love warehouse. It was crowded and even though everyone there is super nice I didn’t skate really. Joe ripped the ledges. Jeff slammed, but still ripped it. Next was downtown denver. We hit a couple spots for a minute before ending at this weird ledge on top of a curb spot that ended up being way harder to skate then it looked. Joe did a ton. 50, 50-180, 5-0 180 (I think), tailslide, etc. It’s hard because you have to quick up the curb and get setup right away. Not easy for me. I got a front 50 (which took forever) and some front board pop outs. Dan got tech and did a front board to hurricane. I tried a long line of 3 flip, nose manny, front board pop out. Never got all of them together. Then we hit this weird two stair spot. Dan did a line with 43 shifty, manual front 180 out. Joe did a couple tricks down. I did a front shove down. Tried to get kickflip up, b/s flip off, but struggled with the kickflip up too much. Not really sure what we did after this for awhile. Hit the jersey barrier for a minute. Hit the bank to curb for a minute. Bombed a crazy parking garage ramp right before getting to the car that hyped me up so much. It had a weird drop near the end and I think I accidently cleared it. Ha. Anyways, the fremont dudes are the best to skate with. Had so much fun. Legs needed a few days to recover ..

Oh man I was so sore/tired from skating Denver so late the night before. We went to Arvada park after a nice big breakfast. I waited to long to update this so remember all that went down is virtually impossible. Luckily Matt took about a million photos which are RIGHT HERE. See, that’s better than my boring words! Um, where to begin. Oh, well for starters the city was there trying to make the park as clean as possible for their big grand opening party and they were spraying water everywhere. So stupid. We skated the bank to curb a lot. We skated that whole area the most I think. My arthritis/hot pocket pain was kind of intense preventing motivation to ollie/land tricks. Brian, Neil and Lazer showed too. Some dude doing pivot fakie on the big blue thing said “I couldn’t live my life without skate socks”. That was funny. Since this is my journal I’ll just say what I was happy about. Front d the bank to curb. Front 50 the rainbow ledge. Noseslide the rainbow ledge.

GO LOOK AT MATT’S PICTURES ALREADY. Next was little Arvada. That park RULES. I think I did 4 tricks first try I’ve never even tried before over the spine within 5 minutes of being there. halfcab 50 to fakie was one. back 50 stall which turns into front 50 then to fakie. Some other tricks. Had a blast here. Everyone killed it.

After lunch we went to Boulder ditch. Eric struggled for feeble to fakie and got it. Joe boardslid and front 50d the box. I struggled for front feeb on the qp and got it. Hyped. Next was the school out on Arapahoe where my body had basically given up. Dan got a cool manny trick. Joe got some bangers. Matt even manualled around in his cast. Really fun day.