Alright so I’ve been good at stretching and moving around and all the things that normally have me feeling pretty good physically. But the last couple days I have felt so bad. Dizzy, tired, lack of motivation, sore as hell. I tried to play football with Ollie and running was so hard. Just finding the will to take the first steps sometimes is hard enough. So it hit me, shit, my arthritis is raging. Guess it’s crept up slowly or it’s due to the weather/season change or something. Ugh. It’s really hard to describe how it effects me, but basically it makes everything harder then it is normally. It’s not all that painful, it’s more just feeling very stiff, sore having no confidence. So perfect time to go skate and prove how dumb and stubborn I am. I had been thinking about Arvada park all day and went with it. No one else was able to make it, but that park is fun enough anyway and there is always someone there I know (Cameron was there this time). The park was pretty crowded when I got there around 8pm. Lots of bikers, quite a few lurkers, dudes with shirts off and Monster tattoos, etc. I started out at the top tiny qp and took several tries to do basics. Moved down the blue banks area where I bummed out people by trying tricks on the bank rather then standing on it. Got sick of that so went over to the bank to curb, struggled for a hurricane grind. Skated the little bowl for awhile doing only axle stalls and carves bumming out the flyout kings. The snake run was empty so I hit that for awhile. Carving that big ass wall is fun and scary. I got no where near the top, but I could have touched the coping with my hand if I wanted to. I took a long time to do an axle stall on the qp by the doorway coming out of the snakerun, but I did and bugged out of that area to the Pier 7 marble pad. Over there I bailed back 50s and flip tricks. I never really landed anything there, but it was kinda fun because when I did I would go down to the step up and manual that and do a kickflip to fakie on the blue bank. I skated the miniramp for awhile. Started slow, but ended up having some ok runs for me that included front ds, fakie back smith fakies and front rocks in them. Then I went above and was trying a flip trick, a tiny qp trick then front 50 the marble ledge into the bank. Which is scary. I had a few ok lines going in, but it took me awhile to commit to landing the front 50 in the bank. Last area I skated was the little area by the smaller pole jam. I got a run of crooks on the tiny qp, no comply pole jam, ollie into the wide hubba then bail ollieing up the 3 stair. There was no way my legs could do that in my condition. Argh. Frustrating day, but realizing that it hasn’t been just in my head and that my arthritis is messing with me made me relax and enjoy that I can at least somewhat skate (unlike two years ago when I couldn’t get out of bed).

On a very nice afternoon I met up with Dave at the rollerblade park. He was skating the hockey rink when I arrived and we warmed up trying to manual from one side to the other. We eventually did so. I had new wheels so that kinda helped although kinda threw me off too. My old wheels had gotten down well under 50mm so it was time for some new ones. Since I had cracked my board trying to ollie over a small cone I setup a new board too. This one was 8.125. An entire 1/8 of an inch larger. It didn’t feel much different, but the new wheels did. In the skatepark things were mellow. Dave did a rad layback boardslide down the hubba. I didn’t see the start of it so I asked a kid that was there “Did he ollie into it?” and he replied with “Yeah I can do it” then went up and ollied into the bank. Ha that was pretty funny. I was feeling tired and run down yet again and my legs were sore as ever. I’m so sick of that. As far as other tricks I don’t remember much. Dave did boardslide and boardslide fakie on the wavy rail. I struggled with ollies over the little flat bar. Pathetic. Dave left and I tried a few more things. Got a line of front 5-0 on the ledge, kickflip to fakie on the bank, halfcab noseslide on the ledge. As impressive as that sounds slow it down and imagine me doing it. I flailed at some flip tricks for awhile after that. I thought having a wider board would make the trucks feel looser, but everything felt tighter. Weird. Maybe it was having new wheels that felt bigger.