After two days of sickness, a long nap, working from home, going to Community, some crazy thunderstorms I ended up at Crisis where Rob, Fuzz, Tim and I hung for awhile. They was drinking beer, but with my cold I wasn’t interested. But really, I probably wouldn’t have been anyway. We eventually decided to skate for a bit and ended up at the church behind Crisis. Fuzz was drunk. Rob was buzzing. I was coughing. It was a nice temperature. There were some puddles around still. Immediately I was surprised at how fast my board felt in the asphalt. Wow, 52mms and superthane is intense. We were all just getting in our grooves. Fuzz made me bring some wax so I waxed up the curbs. I did a f/s slappy and that started a f/s slappy fest. Neither Rob or Fuzz had ever landed one before. Rob started getting close and declared it should be on his ‘by 40’ list. Fuzz was not so close and getting kinda bummed. He wanted to blame the alcohol, but said he couldn’t. Ha. I had some dream lines envisioned, but never got any of the tricks really. I did get some good front slappies that were up on top of the curb, not just the side. OH, and this was a square curb! None of that rounded easiness. I got a few slappy crooks on there too. Felt so good. A front tail shove or two. Posed kick back tails. Posed nose manuals. In the end Rob got closer and closer until he straight up did a great front slappy. So stoked for him.

The weather was rainy and in the low 60s. What an unusual day for late July. I was feeling really run down and sick with a cold. Doh. I had gone to Meta earlier and picked up some new Thunders that hopefully wouldn’t have axle slip like my old ones. While I was at it I got new bearings and fruity colored hardware. So there you go, a new complete!!! I went with Null 52mms. Maybe I’ll be a normal skateboarder again.

On top of that I had new shoes! Lakai Guys. I’ve been waiting and waiting for the Nikes to die so I could wear these. They seemed good out of the box and they don’t have a stupid swoosh on them!

We went around to the side of the school we don’t normally skate. There are tons of pebbles everywhere, but we ended up having a blast and skated it in totally new ways. My shoes felt amazing. My complete felt like a new complete. I did keep my old bushings going so it wasn’t completely night and day. The bigger wheels really cruise over cracks easier, but they also gave me wheel bite as I’ve gotten used to tiny little wheels. Ollie was killing it. He did a fakie back shove out of the curb cut back onto the sidealk, front 180 off the stairs (above) and halfcab off the curb, back 180 and f/s halfcab out of the curb cut into the parking lot. The f/s halfcab was new for him and he did it really good. For how sick I was and mellow I was feeling I skated pretty good. From right to left in the panorama I worked up to a run of kickflip up the curb, front 180 off the 2 stair then fakie bigspin off the curb. From left to right I did ollie up the curb, front 180 onto the loading dock then halfcab flip on flat. Fun, brief session. Stoked to have a somewhat normal setup that makes cruising around a little easier.

Rating: STYLE
Rating: COMFORT
Rating: BOARD FEEL
Rating: BREAK IN PERIOD (Good rating means it doesn’t take long to break in)
Rating: SOLE DURABILITY
Rating: UPPER DURABILITY
Rating: OVERALL

These shoes lasted 20 skate days

Alright alright, anyone who knows me knows that I have talked a lot of trash on Nike skate shoes. I try to stick to skater owned companies and Nike represents the enemy. I have been dared over and over to actually try a pair and I finally gave in on the condition they were free. So huge thanks to Jaimie for hooking me with a pair. I’ll start with the style. They were bright red and they look like golf shoes. They aren’t D3 ugly, but pretty close. I painted the upper part black though and they ended up looking alright. They also game with a super thick “Lunarlon” insole. They were way too thick for me so I swapped them out for some Lakai insoles I had. The board feel was ok. Although if I would have been forced to skate those lunar insoles I can’t imagine how bad the feel would be. In my book insoles are meant to be swapped out though. This made them kind of a loose fitting shoe, but that’s my bad and the shoe is clearly designed for a thicker insole. The impressive part of the shoes is the durability. I normally blow through shoes faster then this. It’s not however, night and day longer then other shoes. I normally blow out the sole on the front foot setting up for flip tricks. This is the first time I’ve ever blown out the heel of my back foot. Still though, they lasted a long time and I wore them for a week straight all over Montreal, hiking, etc. I will give them credit on durability. Overall I am happy to say that I gave these shoes an honest try and will not be tempted to get them ever again. Nor should you. Support some skater owned brands and lets get rid of this crap.

Blaine rolled to Boulder then we picked up Jack at Meta. Warm up was at Southern Hills. Blaine cruised around. Jack tried some gnarly tricks on the bench to bench gap. I did a warm up line of kickflip, front noseslide to fakie, halfcab flip, front board. Was trying a line of ollie the two stair, front 50 a ledge and something else, but styruggled too much with the front 50. Then we went to a 6 stair spot nearby for Jack to do a wallride. He did it quick. He also did another trick. I tried to ollie the six. Well, I posed it out and it ended up really hurting. We had a rain delay and some yummy chai thanks to Jack before ending up at the old folks bank. It’s been years since I’ve been there. Rho had joined us. We had a fun session. I tried a couple kickflip pivots and Blaine showed up with the camera. Apparently Jack had told him to film me and as Jack predicted I said it wasn’t worth it. Ha. It took me a long time and I never got the pivot, but I did it with axle stall and no lunch break so I was pretty hyped. That place is a lot of work. Jack was doing all kinds of tricks. Warllride pop out, wallride to tail bash, Front pivot to fakie, backside boneless wallride to board shoot out into Blaine’s head, and more. We ended the day by me suggesting Jack try two hard tricks combined into one. Initially he even thought it was a good idea! Ha. Sorry it didn’t work out Jack. I guess I know why I was so sore as I’m pretty sick now while writing this. Ugh.

I feel like I’ve been doing alright at life lately. Been spending lots of time with the family, keeping null going, not having many beers and getting to skate a lot. The one thing I’ve been blowing it at though is hanging with my friends. Luckily Andy at Launch has “Over 30 night” once a month and I was invited to roll with an awesome crew of people I need to hang out with more. I got off work a couple hours before the Square State Bus was supposed to head out and Dave could get out early too so we went to Longmont High. I felt better then normal, a little numb in the legs, but good. We skated for about an hour. Dave ollied up onto the blocks easy and started trying front 180 nose manuals. He got really close. He struggled with kickflips, but had some nice back 50s on the long ledge. I could not ollie onto the block. I blame going back to high trucks! Ha, I think I have a couple more days of adjustment that I can list as an excuse. I had better front 50s then last time on the long ledge, switch noseslides both ways, ollied some flowers, didn’t land many flip tricks. Then we were off.

Then Dave and I got picked up at SOL in the Square State bus. It was a fun ride. Lots of old dudes watching old OJ skate videos. We got to Launch around 8pm. No dinner stops. I ate gummi bears and a cliff bar from 7-11. The ramp wasn’t crowded so I got on it right away to get my initial bails on axle stalls out of the way. It got crowded quick though and I retreated to the little ledge and skated it with Mike and Skelly (Skelly is back!!!). Mike was killing back 180 nosegrinds and fakie nosegrinds both ways. Skelly did a front nosegrind 180 that I swear he never touched anything, but the kingpin. It was rad. He had lots of 5-0s and stuff too. I did a few basics. Had some kick back 50s, one bad kick back tail, switch noseslide shove, a few back hurricanes that I was hyped on. There was a lot of yelling going on the ramp. I normally missed what the tricks were, but it seemed like everyone was ripping and having a good time. I would skate the ramp when the deck cleared out a little. I didn’t get anything new, but didn’t bail my basics too many times. I saw Brian do a rock to fakie on an extension and ride fakie through the lower level. Unreal. Fuzz did sugarcane easy. Orlando destroys. Fuller looked good on a new Null board! Oh, and he ripped too. Mike has a rad line with a switch carve through the corner to Hewitt grind to forward. Man there is too much to list. I wish I had skated the ramp more, but I just didn’t feel like waiting and I suck in snake sessions. When it got crowded again I joined Rob, Dave and Andy and skated flatground. Dave got a couple over 45 makes on switch front 3 and a steezy f/s fakie bigspin. Andy rattled off tricks that looked really good and were gnarly. 3 flip, varial heel, hardflip. Geez. Squeeks would join us too, but he’s only 20 something so we’ll ignore what he did. Rob did some rad no comply and fastplant variations. Skating flatground is the best! I had fun even though tricks took longer then normal. My favs were treflip (took a long time), nollie treflip and f/s halfcab heel. At the end I did b/s flip and kickflip to fakie on the little roll-in in the street course. The kickflip fakie was super hard because of how the roll in is rounded. But that was really fun and my favorite trick of the night.

We eventually stopped skating. Everyone had grins on their face. Ric even gave out some prizes and just made the night more special by being so into it. Seriously fun night. The kind of night that we keep doing this for. Awesome.

The Mighty LZA and I were in Montreal to celebrate our 15th anniversary. We looked into concerts while we were there and were hyped to see that Woods was playing. We got tickets ahead of time and everything. We both like their latest album Bend Beyond quite a bit, although we hadn’t actually purchased it yet. Rather then rent bikes, take a cab, take the metro or anything reasonable, Liz decided we should walk there. Of course. Ugh. By the time we finally got near the venue lets just say we deserved a little sangria!

We got to the venue pretty early and found some seats that we claimed as ours the whole night. Il Motore seemed rad. The crowd (and it seems all of Montreal?) was really young. The first band was a two piece called The Nymphets. Lady drummer and a dude that played the guitar fast. It was good, decent, basic rock ‘n roll. Parquet Courts were along that line too. It seemed they had two types of songs. Black Lips inspired songs or Pavement inspired songs. We laughed. They are good though. The faster songs went off live and the crowd was really into them. Last up was Woods. They were incredible. The thing we liked the most about them is they are original. The setlist was full of their hits and songs from Habitat videos (ha). Really though, they were great and I’m now an official fan.

Chadman showed up at my house before Liz and India got home so we convinced Ollie to join us on campus. I had put some old Thunder trucks on (Titanium Lights son!) so was prepared to deal with having taller trucks again. We cruised around a bit before hitting the UMC area. Man my legs were feeling weird and my trucks felt really tight. I have to admit the Ventures turn nice, but only for a tiny bit. Ollie was in full on skate mode. Trying tricks non stop. Chadman’s warm ups were pretty impressive. Kickflip up the 3, back 180 down it. It would probably take him longer to kickflip down it. Ha. I had fun with manualling down the wheelchair ramp then riding off the 2 then 3. Also ollied onto the far ledge and rolled off the drop. Felt fun. Ollie ollied (ha!) off a ledge and so I had to show him up with a front 180. He was popping his ollies higher and trying lots of kickflips and shoves too. We went up a little further on campus.

Hit the slappy curb for a bit, but it wasn’t very waxed anymore. Fuzz and Blaine joined us. Chadman kindly got me a gatorade. Dude rules. We had a fun downhill cruise back to the UMC so Chad could do some stuff up the 3 then 5, but it turns out Sean had already basically done it in the latest Meta video. The downhill was fun though weaving through people and for me watching Ollie cruising fast and weaving through people. He even went out of his way to say it was fun. Down at the UMC everyone was kind of just dorking around doing some weird crail tailslides on flat. Rob joined us. Everyone was swearing a bunch and seemed to not care that I had my son with me so Ollie and I moved on and rolled down stairs:

We were having a good time with it. Eventually the others joined us. It’s harder then it looks. Ollie is smaller though and it was super easy for him to ride down them all and he almost got back 180 off the last one. I would try pivots on the stair above then come into the stair set, but it rarely worked. I did manage some faster rides down though that were fun. Everyone did it at least once or twice.

Then we ended up at this area for quite awhile. Ollie beat me to ride down all the stairs to front 180 off the last one. When I finally got mine I followed it with a fakie flip though. Take that Ollie! Max joined us. Everyone either sat or skated flat for awhile. Fuzz clamied he can’t do no comply 180s, but did two perfect ones. I tried for a long time to get kickflip off the last stair. So hard with the quick setup. Liz came and picked up Ollie as it was getting late and I resumed tries to kickflip off the last stair and eventually got it. Felt great. We hit some other nearby spots. Ollied a little gap, Fuzz and I slammed trying to manual after a little gap and hung up in a big crack. Max tried to film a line at Poser Atlas, but was too tired. Or too much of a poser! Ha ha. I sat there trying to ollie up the ledge in the dark over and over. So stupid. I need to learn how to ollie. My legs were finally feeling warmed up though. This whole protein thing Brett was talking about might be right.

After a very long hike with the Mighty LZA I still managed to get out and skate with Ollie later on. We went to what I think is Ollie’s favorite spot. Someone had waxed up the really low curb and immediately I was like, ok Ollie, lets see your first front 50! Several tries later he scraped a little one or two. So awesome! While he was trying them I surprised myself with a switch front 50. Couldn’t do it backside though. Ollie did a bunch more of his patented quick feet ollies on the little flagstone steps. I tried over and over to ollie up the second tallest ledge and eventually got it. Whew. Got a few back 50s. Came super close to back hurricane. Did a line of manual through the first couple ledges then front nose 270 the next ledge and bailed a 3 flip. Back 180 up the little ledge, fakie ollie off the next one, halfcab flip on flat. Heelflip on flat, front tail the second lowest ledge (one even slid!). I guess I was skating ok. I was really tired from the hike though. Ollie was rusty and didn’t land many of his 180s. He was getting cleaner and poppier ollies up the low curb though. At the end I struggled with switch front 180 up the 2nd lowest curb then front shove off a later one. I was struggling so hard, tic tacs, wheel bite. At that point I knew the Venture lows were done. I ended up getting the line, but went home and put some old Thunders on. I can’t win. Ha. I nerded out on truck heights for a bit. The axle of Venture Lows sits about 1 3/4″ off the ground. Thunder Highs (but with the thinner baseplate) site 2″. Venture highs 2 1/4″. Yes, me a nerd. 2″ seems good. What else is there at 2″?

After running some boards to SOL and Firestone I met Brett and Dave and Longmont High. The spot was my idea, I guess I was just craving something other then Rocky Mountain Elementary. At first we all seemed a bit skeptical, but it ended up being a blast. Brett slammed hard out of the gates on the little metal beams on the ground (not in the photos). Ouch. Dude slams so hard early in the session, but man he really got it going. We were mostly doing lines connecting the taller ledges and the lower long one. He did noseslide then noseslide shove super proper. He also manualled one of the ledge blocks. So gnarly. Also kickflip into the mellow bank next to the ledge and a bunch more I can’t remember right now. I took the photos after Brett left unfortunately. Dave killed it. He manualled a ledge while holding onto a trash can. So sick, look for the footage in his youtube video coming sometime in the distant future. He also had noseslides both ways on the square ledge, little back 50 on the long ledge, boardslides, a bunch of front 5-0s (even though the photo is a pose) and a completely amazing front 5-0 to switch crooks. Yes folks! 45 year old Fullertron got mad tech! front 180 up onto the square ledge (photo) was sick too. I felt good, but didn’t skate all that great. I started to realize how much the low trucks are messing with my flow. I was tic tac’ing a lot and even getting some good wheelbite. I love how they work for flip tricks, but have been in denial about how much they mess with normal skating. Anyways, skating was fun though. I had one run of 360 flip on flat, front 5-0 down the long ledge (although I didn’t grind long) and then bailed something on the ledge. Had some other lines. Didn’t commit to kick back 50. Barely ollied onto the square ledge. Dave was making that look so easy. I did have fun with slappy switch noseslides both ways. Came kind of close to back hurricane grind on the long ledge. At the end got a front 50 front shove out on the long ledge that took way too long. It was fun times though. So glad we weren’t stuck in a crowded park.

While walking all over Montreal I saw a million things that would be fun to ollie over, but knew that I couldn’t ollie over any of them. So it made me want to work on the ol’ basic again. Ollies. For some reason this stupid rock on campus stuck in my head as a good place to start. It has a horrible approach. Down a sidewalk then have to turn at the rock last second. After cruising around the parking lot below it for a bit I went at it. The approach was so much harder then I remembered. Then a car parked pretty much right in the landing so I went and did a few flip tricks and cruised the lot for a bit. They stayed there forever just sitting in the car with the lights on so I went down the hill a little. Found a fun line of ollie up a curb, ollie down a 3 then kickflip a small crack to crack gap. Went back up and the car had finally left. I struggled and struggled and finally managed to get a couple ollies that might have gone over the corner. I don’t even know. Maybe I’ll learn how to ollie some day. Oh yeah, had some new 50mm STFs. They good. Not supernullethane good, but I like the little size a lot.