Had a great day. Woke up early, went to a movie with Liz (Moonrise Kingdom super good) while the kids when to a different movie (Brave). Then got paid $30 to test drive a Lincoln luxury mobile because of some promotion they were having at the mall by the theater. Cool that paid for lunch! Then napped in the 100 degree heat awhile, did some ballet with India (sometimes you gotta make sacrifices being a dad and it seems super good for the legs so why not?), a short bike ride with India (to look at skate spots ha), some basketball with Ollie then I biked over to the mall because I had seen a ledge earlier in the day that looked fun. I biked around the mall a bit looking for what I’d want to skate first. I’ve never skated the mall before and was kinda weirded out what people would think and how quickly security would probably show up. I started at some little downhill sidewalk that would get me moving fast enough that by the end a powerslide was a tiny bit scary. The first section of sidewalk was level then it dropped into the hill. I manualled the first section, then went for a line of nose manual 180, sw 180 then powerslides. The speed for the sw 180 was scary, I never got it.

Then I found this ledge. It took me a bit to get a boardslide pop out, but when I did I followed it up with a little run to the opposing downhill sidewalk and did a slow kickflip off a little kicker then had a fun powerslide or two.

Then I went to the ledge I had saw earlier. It was darker then I hoped, but still skateable. The run up for b/s was kind of non-existent unless you ollie up the curb, but I was trying to stay hidden so everything backside was one little push. I ended up getting quite a few tricks total. Most were horrible. The roundedness of the ledge made it harder to lock into grinds then I would have thought. Front 50, front 5-0, back noseslide fakie, back crooks, kick back 50 (super duper bad), back 50, front 180 fakie f/s 50 f/s halfcab out, front tailslide and almost a front tail shove out but I saw security pull up so I just pushed off all fast and decided it was time to head home anyway. Oh yeah I had the new Henry Clay People album up pretty loud on my headphones. That album rules.

Yes! Another hot day. Was kinda slacking and should have got Ollie out to the basketball court like he wanted earlier. But got a call from Carleigh saying the bus would be at my house in minutes. Gabe and Lazer were in town. The crew was large. We started off at Rock Creek. The crew was Jake, Brian, Neil, Gabe, Lazer, Carleigh and me. I was so hyped to skate with everyone. Rock Creek was a fun start. I skated it decent for me. Brian was killing it. No new tricks I saw, but then again his bag is like 100 deep and I think he hit most of them. There was lots of smiles going on. Jake was ripping as usual. After awhile Jake and I started a game of SKATE. Oh yeah, I had a new board and new shoes.

Es Edgars and another 8.125 Null board. So yeah, back to the game of SKATE. It was going. I bashed my knee really bad on a heelflip attempt and had to sit awhile and then we left anyway. First stop was the all new Wheatridge water fountain. I say water fountain because they just recently sodded around the park and they have sprinklers running 24/7 and they run into the skatepark. What city plants grass this time of year in Colorado? Especially when there are fires everywhere? Oh well. I pretty much had zero motivation to skate while at this park. This was due to the water messing up lots of fun stuff and crowds. But TF rules it and I managed a few dumb things, boardslide on the tight qp/ledge thing above the a frame, f/s feeble grinds on the super small qp, lots of posing including a poser ollie down the double set as we were leaving I should have done. Carleigh and Gabe did lots of booger slides down banks. Gabe also did some rock variations on the tight a frame qp. Brian and Jake did a bunch of tricks on the weird qp on top of the bank as did Lazer. Neil had some nice lines as he always does. Brian did a blunt to fakie on the tight a frame qp. It was ridiculous. The running water/puddles got pretty old quick.

So we went to big Arvada. It was pretty crowded. I wasn’t in the zone. We skated the tiniest qp in the park for awhile. We all fell pretty hard with some funny and entertaining slams. After that Carleigh and I skated the brown hubba area kind of. She ollied onto it. I noseslid it. I was really bumming at that time. I retreated to solo Glen mode for awhile. Boardslid the manny pad then manualled the step up pad. That was fun. Bummed on how long the boardslide took though. Then gave in and skated the best obstacle there, the blue rounded flat bank. Did a few flippers on it. B/s flip, kickflip fakie, fakie flip, big flip, treflip to fakie (took forever), front shove to fakie and fakie treflip (also took a long time). I had fun doing that. After that it was borderline heat stroke, cold beer to try and cool off, a really fun bbq (thanks Brian) and then pass out immediately. I rove you Trick Factory.