On our last morning in Montreal i went to go to the crazy DIY spot I saw, but it had already been destroyed by the city. DOH! Luckily I like street stuff a lot and this was right across the street. I only had about 15 minutes before we needed to catch the airport shuttle. I manualled from right to left and noseslid to fakie up the ledge. That was all. That spot has a lot of potential for lines. Maybe next time. Ha, as if there will ever be another time.

I had done some skate spot research before going to Montreal. I watched this Adidas clip and this Barry Walsh clip and Carleigh (who lived there for awhile) pointed me in the right direction. Thanks Carleigh! This ledge was really close to the hotel and in a park that Liz wanted to walk in. So it was a win win. My legs were really shot from walking so much over the previous couple days. Liz refuses to rent bikes, cars, take busses, anything. We walked everywhere. I wish my legs didn’t got sore so easy, but they were wrecked. I was still hyped to skate though. On the way there Liz walked (of course) and I skated mostly just doing kickflips and ollieing up curbs and stuff. This was the longest I’ve gone without skating in a long time and I was pretty rusty. We got to this spot and of course the ledges seemed weirder then they look. First the amount of wax on the two main ledges was insane. And it was super hot and humid and it would splash up. This scared me on front 50s so much. They weren’t all, but the shortness of them weirded me out too. Luckily since it had been so long since I skated the thing I missed the most was flip tricks and doing them on granite is extra fun. For some reason I had f/s halfcab heels stuck in my head and started trying them. I ended up getting a few of them and tried to follow them with front 50s, but would normally just slide around on the ledge and jump off because of all the wax. There was also this mini kicker thing that I would kickflip out of sometimes. Going the other way I tried lines of crooks, noseslide to fakie then fakie varial flip. I might have gotten that. Got a couple treflips. I was really struggling though. Liz showed up ready to go and I hadn’t really landed much of anything. I finally got a front 50 and a front noseslide to fakie. She took a couple photos and we headed out. The one below is of me showing my frustration of how bad I suck on ledges and what a sweaty mess I was.

Still glad I was able to skate a little though and now I can say I’ve skated in three countries. Neato.

My uncle Frank Zirbel started Mental Insect several years ago and now Amazon has all of the cds for sale. All three are here. If you’re wanting the live one (which I highly recommend!) it’s also on Create Space here. Either way it’s a win/win. You’ll have good music and you’re supporting a good man. Get on it now!

Totally out of the blue completely awesome album from a small band called Ovlov (Volvo spelled backwards). A heavy 90s vibe. Lots of layers, fuzz, slack, grunge and fun! Stream it here!

Ollie and I got to Arvada park around 8pm on another nice, warm night. The park was super crowded so we hid in the bank to curb corner. It was fun though. I had a new board. It’s the Hair Club For Null deck. Stoked on that older one I traded out at 303 for a newer one recently. Hurricanes happened first try on the noping section. Cool. Ollie did a front slash and front rock quick too. We went to the blue bank area for a bit, long enough for me to get my first two 3 flips on the new board. Guess a new board helps for that trick. Back to the bank to curb/noping area where I kept almost running into the same people standing in my way over and over. I managed to not get too angry and land a new trick I’ve never done in a few tries. F/s allie oop fakie front 50. Stoked! We played on the pier 7 thing a minute. It was crowded. I tried to boardslide the long curb, but the wax killed me. Trent was there skating it uphill so only waxed a bit of it so it went from death scary fast to regular and it kept throwing me off. Back to bank to curb land for awhile. More weaving through people, trying to avoid getting angry, bikers, scooters, lurkers. I was doing runs starting with either hurricane or allie-oop fakie front 50 and almost hitting people every time. It was kind of fun. I ended up getting a bunch and got a front d on the upper quarterpipe in the snakerun above the small bowl. Stoked me out. Ollie was doing fun little lines of rock to fakie then halfcab off the kicker or grinding the edge. Then we mostly skated the “beginner section”. I boardslid the granite round bar, front 50’d the rainbow ledge. Ollie almost b/s 180’d the A frame kicker. At the end of the night I front 50’d the mini hubba. Man that thing is scary to me. First couple attempts were sooo slow. Felt good to do it though. Skating with Ollie is always a blast.

Fuzz and I were first at the park and we started with the gnarliest tranny at the park. Just look at how blurry it is? We had to haul ass to get all the way to the top! The best part though, is that we started on the tiny part on the far left of it. Stalls, pivots, etc. It was funny. Front tail transfers over the hip. I did a front blunt transfer which sounds so cool, but it’s just a glorified kickturn on a curb. We did line it out with tricks on the tight qp too. I couldn’t do backside 50 so went front 50 instead. Fuzz had a nice back pivot. We started to step it up to the “extension” on the tiny qp above and it got gnar. Brett and Dave showed up and we stepped it up to the double extension, aka the rock. Fuzz and Dave killed it. Fuzz did front tail transfer on the rock and front pivot. Dave did back tail transfer. Oh yeah, first though. Dave slammed skating from his car to the park. Seriously! It was funny! Brett did some cool blunt variations on the qp and almost killed me shooting the board out. Luckily my board took the brunt of it. We skated the main wallie rock for awhile too and I managed a front rock on it that hyped me up. Mitchell did a flyout of the bowl to tail on the rock. Pretty nuts. I think Dave and Fuzz stayed in that area all night. Brett and I played elsewhere at times. The mini bowl for awhile. The ledge area for awhile. Kind of whatever. We both tried to skate the pier 7 triplica (3 times taller then pier 7), but didn’t do anything on it. We skated the ledge down in the flat area that never gets skated. It’s a tall ledge that is normally just passed by on the way to flyouts. It’s pretty tall. We did boardslides and noseslides. I managed a back crooks. It felt awesome because the granite is like new. It felt like we were skating a perfect marble ledge downtown somewhere. We were also doing some little nose stalls on the side of the hubba when Brett leaned back a lot too far and off the tail went. Doh. I worked on a line for awhile. Ollie the 3, noseslide the hubba then kickflip to fakie on the bank. It took a really long time. Jack and Carleigh showed up. Carleigh was in on noseslides for awhile and apparently bruised her leg on a slam on the tall bump to ledge. Doh. Jack was all over the park and I saw Tranny Jack in action a few times. He killed the rock. Back sugarcane (accident maybe?), texas plan and a bunch more. I ended with lines to no comply attempts on the almost tranny bank by the mountain sculpture. Got a few weak no complies and a knee buckle scare that ended up being fine. My favorite line was the roll in to the little 3 foot section, ollie out of it, ollie on the manhole bump, then no comply. I did a few flip tricks too, but failed on treflips and cracked the board so much worse that it became unskateable. The lights shut off and we sat, had a beer and laughed. Good times, great oldies.

Headed up to Launch in the afternoon with Dave and Jake and met up with birthday boy Neil. We skated Launch for awhile. Well, Neil didn’t really, he was conserving his energy. He is 40 now after all. As usual Dave killed the ramp. There was a couple tricks in there I hadn’t really seen before. No “aerials” though. Ha ha. Jake too. Those guys are too good. I look so lame skating with them. Chadman showed up eventually. He skates that thing pretty well even though he makes fun of himself the whole time. My best was a run that had a back scratch grind revert, front d and fakie back smith to fakie in it. Mike was there killing it in his own unique way. The layback hurricane was sick. Wannabe old guy Justin was there ripping and putting in more energy on every trick then I would in multiple runs. I think he had 3 walls in a row involving 540s. So sick. Mullen photo was there too. Super nice dude. Super good at skateboarding. Go figure, it’s Fort Collins for you.

Then we went to Northside where Jason and Lindy met us. Sooo stoked! Chad and I chatted with Jason for awhile then headed into the park. Chadman seemed to stay at the ledge the whole time. He was trying to learn fakie backside nosegrinds, but couldn’t get it. He did post up the sick front crooks in the photo though. The rest of us were kinda all over the place. I saw birthday boy lipslide the ledge and get a boardslide on the jersey barrier. Jake had some nice manuals across the ledge. I was able to get on the ledge for awhile before I got tired and it became too high. Got a front 50 and 5-0 , front nose to fakie, front nose back 270 out (it’s really just a dumb pivot – just imagine me looking really old and slow and you’ll get the picture). Then I kinda just skated the main area for awhile and didn’t really see what others were doing. Oh, Jake did a front blunt on the weird big bank. That was crazy. I had a line of wallie the corner of the jersey barrier, front tail stall on the china bank, axle stall on the bank to ledge, back 5-0 on the china bank, slappy 50 the hump. Fun. Got a kickflip on the weird big bank which felt really good. Wallied over the low part of the barrier, front 50 on the bank to ledge. I did a lot of crooks on the ledge too. They were really fun. That ledge leaves a mark every time. Chad and I played a game of SKATE. He made me look bad with nollie flip, sw flip and sw heel quick. But my dumb tricks like fakie varial flip started adding up and I got him to SKAT. I tried treflip for awhile and just couldn’t get it. I had enough tries, but he eventually took me out with switch front heel and nollie f/s flip. Dave and Jake played on the big qp wall for awhile. I guess they did pivot to fakie followed by fakie flips. sick. Jake and I played another game of SKATE. Again I got him to SKAT, but couldn’t land a treflip for a long time even when Jason towed me in. Luckily Jake was missing tricks so I eventually got it and won the game. Then we had a good dinner at La Luz and some laughs. Good times.

I met up with Blaine, Bernie, Scotty, Dean, Trent and a dude named Josh at the Sugar Mill spot. Trent, Scotty and Josh were trying stuff on the bank and Blaine and I were just kinda looking at stuff when the cops came. Luckily we didn’t get any trespassing tickets, but it took awhile to go through all our IDs. Next we went to the spot above. In the foreground of the photo above is Blaine filming. Blaine rules. Bernie got a good trick. Trent got a couple good tricks. I was kind of able to ollie and happy about that. I manualed the small pads, took forever to nose manny it, slammed trying to ollie up a curb and managed a horrible over 40 ollie over the gap. It’s harder then it looks only because there isn’t much setup and not much landing. I didn’t skate well, but I was happy that ollies were somewhat doable.

After some lunch/dinner we went to one of my favorite spots in all of Colorado. Rocky Mountain Elementary. Bernie waxed the ledge all crazy and it was on immediately. I got a lot of my ledge tricks quickly. Boardslide popouts both ways, front nose to fakie, back noseslide, front 50, front 5-0, front 50 front 180, front nose back 270 out, back crooks, kickflip back 50 (couldn’t do reg back 50). It was awesome! I seriously love that place. Some of the tricks were in lines. Backside I did a few lines with dropin on the kinked brick bank, kickflip up the curb, crooks, then not land a 360 flip. Frontside I had a couple slow lines with manual a curb, ollie onto the ledge, ollie the 2″ gap, drop off, heelflip on flat, front 50 to front board. Bernie was destroying it and almost got an ender line. Blaine filmed it soooo good too. If only Bernie would have got the last trick. He was close, he’ll get it. Blaine had a blast rolling into the dirt section. Metal Matt, Shaun and another dude showed up. It was great to see them. Shaun was of course ripping. Bluntslide pop to fakie on the ledge, kickflip out of the bank over the curb. Matt was chillin’ for the most part. Then darkness hit. I had tried a few kickflip noseslides and didn’t get very close. And never got a treflip, but it was still a fun session. Love that spot, need to skate it more.

After a super late night at the drive-in with the family in Fort Collins I woke up at noon and bolted out quickly to meet up with Blaine and Nullers in Denver. We met at the “only spot in Denver” aka the hill spot. Blaine and I rode / firecrackerd all the 2 stairs before anyone else showed. Then Connor, Cody, Max and eventually Chadman showed. My legs were done. So done. My arthritis was sucking. It basically makes my legs move super slow. I struggled with kickflips. They literally were super hard. I would try as hard to do them as I could and barely get them around. Ugh. So I just mostly did powerslides down the hill and little ollies/180s up/off curbs. Blaine rules and filmed Connor almost get a line and Chadman get a line which I get partial credit for (I thought of the first trick!). We cruised around a little, got kicked out of some spots and then ended up in a fun alley. Max got a sick line here with the back smith. I somewhat came to life. Had some tiny noseslides on that flat bar, a weird ride on a chunk of concrete then a few front 50 variations on a little angle iron ledge. That was pretty much the day. Stoked that Blaine is down to film, but which my knees wouldn’t have felt so bad.

Fullertron, Fuzz, Rob, Blaine and I headed to Denver on another nice night. We intended to start at the bank to curb behind the church and ended up at the Greyhound parking garage hill bomb. Rob had never been there and did the whole thing proper first try. No warm up, no speed checks. So sick. He had some speed wobbles at the bottom, but he pulled it off fine. We were all pretty amazed. The rest of the older dudes speed checked in some form or another. Fuzz carved, I powerslid, Dave foot dragged a little. Blaine went in hard with filmer wheels filming it. So sick. It was a great way to start the session. Powerslides and flying through traffic. We didn’t go far after as there was a great slappy curb in the main depot area that we got quite a bit of time on. It was this rad little angled yellow curb. Everyone got their slappies on it. There was also some little medians that got some love too. I saw Rob nosebonk and no comply one. I tried to lipslide one, but never quite got it. My legs were feeling pretty bad. Fuzz had some rad slappies that her turned around the corner on. Dave killed slappy tails. Blaine is young, but the age of the crew he was with must have rubbed off and he got some slappies too.

We pushed over to the Chase bank yellow curb garage that is oh so fun. It had gotten waxed up in a few sections. We were all doing our own thing. Fuzz and I went betweeen a couple and did front and back 50s. He had 4 in a row I think. Next was Tabor for awhile. It’s the marble hip/bank area in the photo above. We all skated this thing for awhile. Fuzz did a bunch of transfer tricks over the corner like front tail to fakie, front board, etc. Dave rode over the handrail which is so gnarly. Feeling the Ron Allen inspiration I learned boneless to wallride. Although the bank isn’t much of a “wallride” it still felt amazing and maybe my favorite new trick in awhile. I tried to line it out with a flatground kickflip and a front 180 down the 3, but we got booted about the time Blaine went to film Fuzz.

Not sure where we went after this. We did chinese nollie manuals, Dave fire crackered a long 4 stair. I failed at 3 flips. We got some liquid. We were exhausted after. Everyone looked beat. We ended up at the metal grate inside manny pad. Fuzz almost got smoked trying to manual it. I tried bonks into it then front board transfers out. Got close. Dave did no complies and almost switch no complies. Rob and Blaine chilled. After we got the boot I went across the street to a granite section and skated by myself for a bit. Tried a line with ollie onto the bench then ollie the little hole to manual, no comply 180, fakie bigflip into a slight bank. Kinda got it. Met up with the rest of the crew at some fun red curbs and a white ledge into a garage that Fuzz did some sick front 50s on.

We kinda chilled at the end of the 16th St mall for awhile. Rob and Dave were doing some boneless stall/slids on the granite blocks. I tried 360 flips over and over and crooks on the granite blocks (got a few of each). Then Rob called out a rad bump to bump from the fountain to a curb cut. Fuzz ollied it all sick. Blaine hauled ass and basically cleared it without much of an ollie. So scary! I couldn’t get out that far. Dave put his board after the bump and I ended up having a super fun run of ollie out of the fountain over Dave’s board and pushed across the street, front 180 up the two, sw 180 on flat, ollie the 4 stair as security was chasing me. Landing the four stair hurt. My legs were done at that point. Ugh. Fuzz got a sick line ollie’ing the fountain to the curb cut then a 900mph manual through some scaffolding across the street. What a fun, late night.