Had a nice morning with a hike and lunch date with Liz then Jake, Rob and Neil showed up at my house wanting to go hit Safeway ledge. Awesome! It was quite hot out and all of us struggled initially. I was thinking “oh great, here we go again”. I had taken the insoles out of the Mikey Taylors hoping I would get some board feel at least. It seemed to help a little. I voiced my frustrations to Rob and he said to just huck something I shouldn’t land. I went kickflip back 50 and landed it. Ha. So that definitely made me feel better and made up a little for the horrible ollie attempts over a small box. Neil and Jake tried to put the box upright and ollie it. Jake looked like he was gonna get it first, but ended up slamming pretty hard and gave up. Neil got it once and the box was promptly put back down. Rob was killing it. Front 180’s over the box for days and lots of no comply shoves and a million ledge tricks. Back 270 front tail, front tail, slappy lip, bigspin front nose, the list goes on for days. Neil had some good lipslides, sw boardslides, back 50s, halfcabs over the box, crooks to fakies. Slaying. I took a lot of tries to get over the little box, but once I did I put down a line that really hyped me up. Ollie, treflip on flat, front 50 shove. Also got several kick back 50s, a kick back 5-0 and almost kick back 50 shove. John had arrived and amazed us yet again how graceful he is. Tailslide, almost front tail to fakie, front shove front nose, bigspin front nose, I don’t even know, so much more.

We moved on to the foundation spot in the photo above. Unfortunately they had taken away the extra toys, but we still had fun. I was sore as hell initially, but after riding down a couple ledges started to loosen up. Rob, Neil and John mostly played manuals. Rob tried and tried to get nose manual shove to manual. I think he got an over 40 make, but he’s not 40 yet. Neil was beat, but still came kinda close to the same trick. John wasn’t too close, but he did get close to switch noseslide to frontside noseslide (whoa!). Fakie back tails and more. Jake and I did more of the start at the top of the spot and end at the bottom stuff. I got an ollie over a small flat gap to manual, kickflip off the next one. Front shove a drop, kickflip the next drop, almost b/s flip the next drop. Front 50 to front board pop out, back 50s, that’s about it. Oh yeah, I should have broken my board about 10 times, but it didn’t even crack. Guess it’s that extra hemp layer (ha). Jake did a bunch of kickflips off the top ledge which was rad because I haven’t seen him kickflip off much of anything. He did it in a line with back 50 and no comply off the next ledge as well. Sick. At the end we helped some neighbors move a big piece of playground equipment. They offered a case of beer, instead we just thanked them for tolerating us skating close to their house and not calling the cops on us.

Last we stopped at a new Arvada skate spot. Basiclly two quarterpipes and a bowled in corner. It was pretty fun. I did a front disaster. John called out a line and did it first try. Jake had a crazy line going to front pivot on the tall qp, but didn’t put it down. Fun day.

I woke up with my body feeling good. The best it’s felt in a long time. Did some cleaning and errands around the house and eventually headed out to Longmont to meet Derek, Blaine and Chad. I went to Rocky Mtn Elem which is one of my favorite spots ever. When I got there there was two random high school age dudes skating. Both had Null boards! So awesome. I said hi and tried not to barge their session much. After feeling so good earlier in the day it didn’t seem to translate to skating well as I struggled bad. The two random kids left and a few minutes later Blaine, Derek and Chad showed. Right when they would almost get warmed up it would shower just enough to be too wet to skate. I never got warmed up. I did one line with an ollie onto a curb, front 180 off then switch noseslide coming out regs. Then we all did some ollies up the curb to tricks on the bank. Blaine did ollie up, ollie to fakie and halfcab off. Tight! I took about a million tries to get a kickflip to fakie. Almost rolled my ankle super bad. Everytime I stepped off my board on the bank my shoes would almost come off. These shoes suck. They are too high off the ground. Chadman tried a line for a bit, but we ended up moving on to Longmont High (above). Derek did that back 180 in like 5 tries. Which is too bad, because if it was in under 3 tries I was gonna get him and Blaine a burrito (Chad wanted one too, but he could just have the leftovers). Seeing the back 180 was crazy. Derek is gonna self deprecate, but I haven’t seen a trick like that go down in awhile. He did it so insanely perfect. Then we went over to the blocks on the other side of the school were Derek got a sick line in a couple minutes. Geez killing it. Chad tried some stuff, but just wanted to eat. I started trying flatground just to get something going, but it didn’t work. Couldn’t even really land kickflips. Stoked on Derek killing it so hard, but man what a tough day for my skateboarding. Maybe one of my worst ever. Oh yeah at the first spot once I kicked my board out intentionally once and Chad grabbed it and wouldn’t give it back until I calmed down. So funny. Chad rules.