Haven’t skated Red Curbs in a really long time. Mainly because it’s been nice out, but also because the cops wrote a nasty ticket to friends there over the summer. So I went solo on a rainy night to see if it was a freak one time event. The curbs were still waxed so I’m thinking it was just a one time deal. At least I hope. Throughout the night cops would drive by (it’s near a cop shop) and none of them even slowed down. I listened to nothing but the new Dinosaur Jr album “I Bet On Sky”. I’m starting to think it’s their best reunion album which already means it’s one of their best considering Farm is in my top 3. Warming up didn’t take super long, but it was clear my legs weren’t in as good of shape as the day before and my arthritis was bothering me a bit. It just makes me feel more awkward then normal and off balance. Even kickflips were kinda hard. It didn’t stop me from skating though and I feel lucky just to be able to do what I do. I’ve been thinking about front lip kickflips out forever. I guess the first step would be learning front lips. I tried a ton of them and landed a couple. I don’t think the kickflip out will ever happen, but it’s fun pretending. There were a few lights out which made the manny pad really dark. I tried a couple lines. One way halfcab noseslide then back 5-0. Never got the back 5-0 although came close and haven’t tried it in forever. Other way front 50 then front tail but I never slid a good one. I hucked a bunch of tricks throughout. Got a first try back 180 nosegrind that I couldn’t do again. Hucked a few kick back t, kick back 5-0, halfcab flip noseslide, none of which were very close. Tried some fakie nosegrinds and although I grinded them good I couldn’t ride out. All in all it was one of those nights were I didn’t really land much, but I was sweating, skating hard, having fun and enjoying the tunes. Before leaving I said I’d do 10 flip tricks. The first nine came pretty easy. Kickflip, fakie flip, halfcab flip, heelflip, fakie bigflip, varial flip, b/s flip, f/s halfcab flip and treflip. I wanted the last trick to be something harder for me so I tried some rare or NBD for me tricks like sw f/s flip, nollie tre, f/s flip, halfcab heels, but I was super tired and settled for fakie varial flip which took way longer then it should have.

Right after work I met Jack and Carleigh near Liquormart for some random spot fun. When I showed up Jack was just messing around doing a ride on 50 to “MJ out” (which is back 50 then as your getting out kind of push heelflip and the board flips). Seriously, WTF? Not even on a ledge, but a rail. Well I wasn’t about to warm up on a rail regardless if you don’t have to ollie onto it. I went about 20 feet further and found this bank with rocks on it and Jack joined me for a pretty epic dork session. Jack actually did pivot to fakie at one point. We both ended up with quite a few tricks. I’m not remember them all. Jack did kickflip pivot. The weirdest casper stall thing ever that was an accident, but perfect. I got a few basics, crooks stall, crooks fakie, and a totally lucky b/s hurricane. We were there for awhile. It’s hard for dorks to leave a dork spot. Jack did a sick rode over the rock on top to four wheel drive down the bank. So sick.

Here is a back 180 nose stall thing that I think I went to fakie on. Carleigh took the photos and will have a big blog about it at somepoint.

Then we went to a nearby alley that had quite a bit of stuff to offer. The main reason was for a tight little bank to wallride which Jack did a bunch of times. Carleigh rode the wall, but didn’t land it. I probably didn’t even resemble a wallride. I can pose f/s wallrides, but I can’t even pose b/s ones. Ha. We all were kind of doing our own thing. It was cool just cruising in an alley, ollie’ing manholes, crack gaps, flatground tricks, etc. I ended up trying to harness my inner TPuds/Chris Cole and ended up (kind of) getting a blizzard flip:

Then I had to go home for dinner. Some of the most fun I’ve had skateboarding in awhile. You guys rule. And I have to mention that my legs felt the best they have felt in a while. I guess warming up on a dork bank is good for them!

Went to Crisis for awhile, sold some null, hung with Fuzz, laughed a little and then went to the Broomfield park. Almost no one was there when I got there. I pumped around the flow bowl for awhile. That thing is fun. Didn’t really try any tricks then did a few wallrides on the front of the bank/hubba and moved into the street section. John showed up. We did our typical dorking on the blue pad and quartapotty. It was a blast. John had some good nollie back tails. I had a couple short fakie nosegrinds. Wanted to try something out, but never got there. Came close to kickflip 50s. Neil showed up. We all played manual down the angled pad, trick on qp, nose manual up it. Neil got it quick. John got the first 2 easy and maybe the nose manual too. I didn’t get either manual. Then the dudes from Wyoming randomly showed up. Matt Warner in the house! Dude rules. And Shaun too. So fun to watch them shred. They killed it. Neil was also killing it. When he gets in the zone and does laps around the park landing everything it’s super fun to watch. Such a good ollie, his lipslides, front tails, nollie back neil’s, everything. I had a little contest line of boardslide the little rail, crooks the black ledge, front 50 shove the black ledge. Neato. John and Neil started to kind of chill. Shaun had to leave. Matt too. I tried a bunch of f/s nosegrinds on the blue ledge, but didn’t get the nollie out. Did get some back 5-0s though. Still loving the smaller board. The weather was perfect. Sunny around 80 with a little breeze. Fun session. Then I bailed quick to hit 303 and get back in time for dinner. Happy to have a decent skate day after the previous day.

What a long day. Had to get up at 4:00am to bring my mom to the hospital for a minor surgery. Everything went well and while she napped in the afternoon I was to run up to MRKT and sell some boards and maybe skate a little. The hospital is in Loveland and I just kind of drove north on the rode I was on not really knowing where it went. Low and behold I ended up on Lemay and there was Fossil Creek on the left. Decided I should give that a try. My body was in worse shape then I had imagined. Not sure if it was lack of sleep, arthritis or both, but I had nothing. No confidence and no coordination. I did have some decent crook grinds going though. At one point I tried a line with back 50 on the curb high ledge over the brick section, crook on the ledge then tried a nollie treflip since that is the exact spot I hucked my first one and started thinking it would be possible. That was about the only brief time period where I skated remotely ok. I did a few other tricks, but really didn’t have much of anything. I tried quite a few things that I would have been proud of. Hucked a bunch of kickflip noseslides that went in perfect, but I’m not sure what would happen if I committed both feet to it. Also almost got front tailslide over the little brick section under the curb ledge. I skated, it wasn’t pretty or even that fun, but I skated and sometimes that’s all that matters.

Whew. Had a long day. Have the early shift at work so got off work at 3:30, drove to 303 in Denver to sell boards, grabbed some pizza nearby, hit Wax Trax to pickup The Thermals “Blood, Body, Machine” on vinyl (I’ve wanted this for so long!) then drove to Lafayette to meet Neil, Jake, John, Blake and whoever else was there. The park was pretty vacant when we first arrived. I kind of followed Neil around for awhile and tried to at least touch my tail as many times as he did. His ollies were always way higher, further, steezier and better. Blake said he was working on front 180 up fakie big off the manny pad and did it first try I saw. I managed to manual it. Cruising around that park is really fun when it’s not crowded. Neil and I started dorking around trying to front board up the last bit of the round rail. He did some good ones. Around now John showed up and joined in. We had a fun little front tail going on the manhole cover as a setup to turn around at. I got a tiny bonk one. John hates front boards so tried switch noseslides instead (wtf?). I hucked a few kick front boards, but got nowhere close. John did a Madollie to tail kind of thing and it looked fun so I tried and got one too. Not sure I’ll ever be able to bring that anywhere else. Blake did a crooks bonk coming up and Neil got a front nosegrind bonk up. So sick. Jake showed up and the next game was flatground trick, ledge trick, trick on the small horsetooth quarterpipe. Jake did kickflip, manual scrape, pivot fakie first try. Wow. John had a ton of flippers like treflip, nollie flip, front shove, etc. Neil had front shove, front lip, front ollie. I couldn’t land a flip trick and when I got to the qp I wanted to try front pivot. Got close enough you could tell what it was, that was about it. Next we played in the flow bowl. Asian Jeff and another dude were slaying it. Crail blocks, smiths, everything. Jake was killing it of course. John too. I had my favorite session on trannie taller then Rampy in awhile. Eventually got a run with a front d and a back 50 in it. Yippee. Carving that thing is fun. Most people went over to the fish bowl after that, but I was kind of all over in the street area. Not sure how, because I didn’t do much. I wussed out of trying the noseslide down the 3 stair. Played a game of SKATE with John and Jake that took awhile. Struggled with 3 flip, fakie bigflip, fakie var flip. Ugh, it’s funny how rarely I land tricks. I did manage to win it though and somehow pulled out a f/s flip when I was at SKAT. It was fun though and overall the night was awesome.

Today is the day everyone has been waiting for! The official release date for Dinosaur Jr’s new album I Bet On Sky. I’m not sure how this isn’t a national holiday, but make sure you get to the record store today and buy it! Unless of course you’re like me and preordered a fabulous deluxe package!

I hope this shows up in the mail today! Yippee!

I went to skate flat in front of the house for a bit, but there was a lot of traffic and I didn’t feel like dodging it. So I brought a broom and went behind the school with Ollie. He shot hoops while I skated. I had put some new super 52s on for multiple reasons. First, the wheels were old, second, my bearings sucked and I replaced most of them with some old ceramics I had, and third, the new graphics are gonna ship this week so I best get rid of the old ones. Ha. Anyways I was sucking for a long time. Struggling so bad and feeling that arthritis hot pocket feeling a lot. I was trying to set a record for the most tricks not landed when Liz came to join Ollie playing basketball. Maybe just the presence of her awesomeness made me start landing stuff. I still struggled a bit, but my bag of landed tricks got pretty deep. Kickflip, fakie flip, back shove, front shove, f/s halfcab bigspin, heelflip, halfcab flip, f/s halfcab flip, treflip, fakie bigflip, b/s flip and nollie treflip. I hucked quite a few other tricks too like sw f/s flip and sw flip that I didn’t get very close to, but had fun trying.

It was Fuzz’s bachelor party day! As people gathered at Crisis John and I skated a parking block in front of the store for about an hour. It was really fun. John did some crazy stuff like bean plants, no comply to tail the far curb to disaster the parking block and kind of learned slappy crooks. I did a few slappy crooks to shove out, a quick slappy front crook fakie, the best bean plant to primo land I could do (ha we were laughing so hard when I went down). We did a lot of tricks and had fun goofing around.

After the Coors tour we hit a mini ramp for a bit. I’m not sure if the crowds or the beers I’d drank kept me off the ramp more, but after a couple failed axle stalls I bailed out. Brian, Neil, Dean, John and Fuzz killed it.

Last was a session at the Nederland park. I was clearly too intoxicated to skate well and was probably risking it skating at all. Not sure how Fuzz can shred so hard after so many beers. But he did. Front tail over the flyout, front carve over the love seat, a bunch more. Brian had the craziest trick of the day with a weird 270 slide on the helmet to crazy sideways roll in that ruled. Dean carved over the love seat. Chad ollied up the step up. Jack did a bunch of pole jams. John slayed it and had a gnarly pivot fakie at the end of the session. I mostly just dorked around and at the end did the weird drop in into the step up that everyone else was doing followed by a b/s flip on the bank. Pretty fun. Off to camping. Read/see more on Jack’s blog here.

UPDATE ** I should probably go into a bit more details of how fun it was to skate with everyone at Nederland. Skating with TF is too infrequent these days, but when we do it’s a blast. I should also mention that camping was also a blast and to check Jack’s blog for proof of the awesomeness.

Got out of work at a decent time on Friday and picked up Ollie as he said he was down to go skating. He’s about a once every two weeks kinda skater know. Better then nothing, but he sure has a blast when he does it. We went to “Stonehenge”. I had a new board!

Love it. Ollie and I did rock ‘n rolls first try. Then he did a rock fakie. So impossible there as the ground is really rough and I’m too heavy and get caught in the holes (great excuse eh?). I couldn’t do a back 50 for like 5 tries. It was almost bumming me out so I just started rattling off other basics and it all worked out. Ollie also did a few front rocks (seen at the top of dis here blog entry). We also kind of lined it out and did some tricks from the loading dock into mini bank and came around to the bank to curb. Ollie tried switch front 180s for a bit, but couldn’t quite get it. Good thing since that trick took me forever to learn some ~20 years ago (wow).

We hit the back loading dock area too. Ollie did some ollies and got a back 180 off. I did some ollies too over a little gap and weed and a switch front 180 that took a few tries. We goofed off quite a bit and had lots of fun.

After work I helped Liz clean awhile then pick up India from ballet and we all ate dinner. We were supposed to finish watching the 80s movie Labyrinth after, but India had too much homework. She said she might be able to finish in 30 minutes or so and I wanted to skate. Rather then just walk to Rampy I wanted to get out and enjoy the first long sleeved session of they year. I went to a real close shopping center (Basemar) and kind of tooled around for awhile. Tried this dumb little manny to quick up, but just slammed a bunch. Did a front rock on a bench in front of Egg & I. Got a front shove down the 2 stair by the Goodwill. Then felt kind of Quikish with a fast ollie up a curb to ollie over another curb to little gap in front of Taco Bell. My knees were not feeling so good, but I was able to skate it seemed. Around then I got a text from home saying India still had too much homework so I bailed out of that shopping center.

I almost drove to the Arvada park, but remembered that I drove from FedEx earlier in the day and noticed that I have never skated at the shopping center near Arapahoe & 55th. So I went there. A few things looked fun, but there was either cars or Ball Aerospace security cars parked at them. I found this little yellow curb spot below.

This photo kinda sucks and doesn’t really show the spot at all. It’s only covered over the curb and there is way more around it. Manny pads, gaps, these weird yellow kickers and more. I started at the weird yellow kicker and did a weird kickflip off the kicker onto the narrow ending of it. It was really dumb, hard and since it was street skating it felt totally awesome. Around then I noticed my board was totally cracked down the middle which hyped me up knowing I could go home and set up a new board after the session. I kept skating though and had a blast. I did a lot of lines/tricks.

One line started ollie’ing this little gap that the photo doesn’t show very well. It’s tiny of course, I guess the photo is just showing how bad the landing was. But I ollied that, front 50s a curb at speed then ollied up a curb to little weird wallie tailslide. I also tried ollie’ing the gap past the sign, but it was way too big for me. Did kick back tail (no slide) then ollie the cone. One ridiculously slow, wanna be tech line of sw 180 front 50 “nollie” back 180 out, back 180 onto the slanted curb to fakie grind pivot out (?) then a switch slappy noseslide 270 out. Ha it was so ridiculous and fun. I can’t have that much fun at parks. Other tricks I did were nose manny the taller manny pad which was hard because it’s so short in distance that it felt like a nosebonk (which I can’t do), 180 nose manny, almost front 5-0 kickflip out, some more fun stuff. Oh and the whole time I had the new completely amazing and epic Dinosaur Jr album blasting in my ears. Awesome.