Stuck working on a Friday night. Ugh. Managed to see most of Ollie’s football games. Then went for a brief skate to the research center. I started near the Max rail and it ruled. I had new shoes (Etnies RCT) and a new 8.25 deck with my old Venture wides. Yeah, so in Portland there were several times where I felt like my board was too small. So I figured it’s time to try the bigger setup again. This time only 8.25 and Ventures instead of Indy. It felt decent. I started with a line of noseslide coming up the handicap ramp, boardslide a curb, then front 180 up the two stair. It’s a dorky spot, but really fun because you have to curve around all crazy. Then I had a super fun line. Firecracker the two stair, ride down the mess of long stairs, kickflip on flat, no comply 180, start doing down the hill, switch front 180, back 180 (felt really good with the bigger setup), turn around, ollie up the curb, crooks the ledge, then manual the long pad. But I ended up falling on the landing of the manual. I laughed then looked up and saw this awesome view.

I skated the ledge for awhile. Locked into some crooks, didn’t land many of them. Did one back 50. Went to try some flippers, but my achilles is still hurting so bad that I stopped.

Last day of the trip. We had until around 3pm to skate. I did some flippers in the street for awhile while waiting for others to get ready. I was feeling alright. Then Dave and I played a game of SKATE. He won. I forget what with, but one trick was a switch front shove. Off to breakfast.

Then we hiked a hill (Tabor?) to start the day with a hill bomb. Fuzz called out everyone had to do a kickflip first. Handled.

Pretty fun way to start the day. Although Dave and I went the wrong way at one point and had to hike back up awhile to go the right way. It was cool though because we got to see the spot that young Rochester, MN ripper Alec Majerus destroyed.

Then we went to the Ed Benedict skate plaza. The park is incredible! Most of us were to sore and exhausted to take full advantage though. Carleigh ripped it though. Ollied the launcher, noseslid over a gap and flowed all around the park. I tried to skate, but had to give up. Had a crooks or two, slammed kickflipping the hip Nate is ollieing, landed the kickflip, ollied a 3 stair and felt too exhausted to skate so I stopped. Fuzz front tailed the weird bank at the entrance, ollied the launcher. Chris ripped it too. Ollied the launcher, some stairs, good back 50s some other stuff I can’t remember any more. Dave had a rad back tail on the bank, front 50 on the bank to ledge. Nate skated good. Fast back 50s, pop, crazy tricks. Matt cruised that park so easy. Fast ollies, tricks on the benches, back nosegrind the bench over the gap, and a crooks up the top of a rail. That was it. Such a fun trip.

Sunday sunday sunday! The plan was street skating and street skating is what went down. We were at this first spot for several hours. It had a lot to offer. A perfect curb that also served as a manny pad, a good ledge, the ledge Nate lipslid over, and much more. In the beginning I saw Matt noseslide the “Nate Ledge”, a bunch of manuals on the curb by most people. I kind of was solo for a bit trying lines with trick up curb, flatground trick then ledge trick. Fuzz joined me. First one was switch front 180 up, kickflip on flat, noseslide. Handled. Second was bs 180 up curb, halfcab flip on flat, crooks. Handled. Well, I’m not sure Fuzz did that one. But he made up for it by doing a few extra 180s. Fuzz had a sick line involving a bunch of really fast 180s, a kickflip and a fast halfcab noseslide. I tried another line of kickflip up curb, b/s flip on flat, hc noseslide. Didn’t quite get it. The bs flips were slow any way. Then most people were skating over by the Nate Ledge as he battled the lipslide for a long time. Jack bluntslid it and bluntslide to fakie. Neil almost lipslid it too. Neil had some good lines to the ledge starting with pop shoves up the curb and no complies over a sign. Fuzz had a really funny slam. Rob was doing this rad line of manual then no comply bs wallride. I messed around with some front 50s on the ledge. Eventually our new homie Snakey Jakie showed and made a little kicker/pole jam thing which was quite fun. Snakey killed it with an ollie out to board break. Fuzz and I did pole jams then 180s off the curb, his bs mine fs. Carleigh rode off to manual. Dave missed an early grab. Jack late shoved it. Nate went out to the street. Matt probably ollied the whole thing.

Dave and Jack filmed some stuff before we ended up here which Nate referred to as “The best manny pad ever!” We wasn’t too far off though as it was pretty fun. He did the trick above so easy so many times. I got a manual to back 180 in (with a couple minor tilts). Then Nate and I tried lines for a bit. He was trying no comply 180 up the curb (the hard way) then halfcab nose manual back 180 into the bank. Got pretty close. I was trying switch 180 up the curb, kickflip off, nose manual front 180 in. Got real close, maybe even did it with a little tilt. I should mention that my achilles was killing me. Every push hurt soooo bad. Ugh.

Went a half block to this which is so much gnarlier then it looks. Matt ollie’ing it was so sick. Dave tried front 360 manuals. I tried something dumb. Nate 50’d the ledge into the bank. Then Jack tried gapping from the kicker down to the edge and about died. He messed up his arm. It was a horrendous slam. Hope his arm is ok.

Then we hit this ledge for awhile. Well, some of us. Everyone was beat, myself included. But I am too stubborn to stop skating. Nate did a few tricks and ended with a really nice front smith grind. I could hardly ollie that high. Dave and I tried lines. Slappy tricks on a curb, then across the street for a ledge trick then down the hill for more. It was kind of weird because people were posted up near the curb and I kept almost hitting them. Anyways I would eventually battle through a line that ended up being my skate highlight of the trip. Halfcab boardslide the parking block, front 50 the ledge, no comply 180 in the street, then switch 180 over the little bank in the photo of Fuzz above. It’s not the best line for me, but considering my worn down condition it felt like the best I could do and it felt super awesome. I yelled in joy when I got the switch 180. Dave had a really sick line. Switch slappy crooks to forward the parking block, crooks the ledge then ended up doing a wallie bash thing off one of the white things on top of the bank. That was the end of the skating. Everyone was beyond beat so we went to see pretty much the coolest thing ever. The Swifts!

After a really fun morning at the beach we checked out the Cannon Beach skatepark. It was kinda janky. I skated the bowl for a bit. Chris had already done like 10 lip tricks before I did a back 50. Most people were messing around on the street course. Then we got booted for not wearing helmets. So lame. Then we got back to our cars and had parking tickets. Even lamer. Oh well, we moved on to another beach.

We ended up at the Bay City Skatepark. Kind of a weird park, but it seemed like everyone ended up liking it. At first I was bumming because everyone was skating the park fast, just going all the way across and doing tricks on the quarter pipes and I really wanted to mess around on the stuff in the middle. It ended up being really fun. Chris was slaying. I guess skating vert has it’s advantages and he was doing every lip trick with ease. Fuzz, Jack and Matt were throwing lofty ollies over the pyramid. Matt’s ollies are seriously so good. Jack was getting gnarly and manualling the big bank. There is so much that happened in this session there is no way I can remember. So I’ll try to just summarize everyone. Matt, huge ollies, 360 flip the hard way over the hip, nollie flip over the hip, front tail and back tail on the mini bump to tall ledge. Fullertron front 5-0 the crazy bank setup, boardslide to fakie on it, tailslides over the pyramid, manual the weird bank maybe. Carleigh ollies both ways over the hip and pop shove to bum out. Nate was slaying. Wallie boardslides, wallies, front/back 50s on the mini bump to tall ledge, the craziest no comply pole jam on the weird slanted flatbar on the edge of the park. I started slow, tried to noseslide across and down the pyramid but never made it to the downhill, some silly mellow bank flip tricks, front 50 the mini bump to tall ledge, wallie boardslide the barrier, back pivot and front 50 on the bank that Dave 5-0d. Rob some lofty bs ollies, his steezy bonelesses. On top of every lip tricks on the qps Chris managed to shred the middle of the park too. Feeble the flat bar, heelflip up the euro. Fuzz skated really good. Cool transfers on the qp to middle section, lofty airs to front disaster, so much more I’m forgetting right now. Really fun session with the exception of Jack knocking his knee out of place and being in a ton of pain. Prior to that he was ripping though. Front noseblunt across the pyramid, front 50 across the euro, manual the weird middle section, a lot I’m forgetting.

First spot of the day was Burnside! Some people had seen it, some hadn’t. Since I’ve never been to Portland before I was one of people that hadn’t ever seen it. Dave, Jack, Josh, Neil and I started on the little mini on the hill in the top photo. It sucked! Axle stalls were hard, unless you are Dave and Jack. Then we went in for the main area. Chris was killing it! He’s the token vert dude on the trip and he skated so hard. Lots of tricks, every trick. I think everyone but Rob took runs in the park. I only took two runs. It wasn’t all that crowded, I was just feeling weird. Everyone else looked good. Dave may have been the one that surprised me the most with his smoothness and large bag of tricks. After awhile we posted up near the parking lot and skated that area. As you can see by the photos a lot went down. What isn’t shown is me skating the parking block below everything. Ha. Ok the narrow new bowl was really fun to carve around in.

Then we moved downtown, hit the food carts, ate food, got kicked out of a fun ledge way too fast then ended up at this fountain spot where we lasted for hours upon hours.

We were literally here for hours. There were multiple people skating it in different ways. I was a part of the ‘treat it like a hip’ crew. Others were doing wallies off part of it or skating the ledge, or dropping in from scary heights. The flip trick the hip session was awesome. Nate did nollie back 270 heel! JP did frontside flip, lots of poppy one foots and nollie bigspin. Carleigh did kickflip even though she was talking with a new friend for a long time. Rob had several of his stylee boneless and some kickflips. I landed almost every flip trick I can do on it. Kickflips both ways, b/s flip, varial flip, hc flip, fakie varial flip, the worst f/s flip ever done I had a blast. Matt killed it with back 50 gap to back 5-0. Jack manualled through the skate stoppers to blunt. Ridiculous. Neil was all over the place. Near the end I began skating the ledge with Carleigh, Matt, Josh, Jack, Rob. Rob did boardslide to manual. I got front 5-0s when I was trying front 50s, a front 50 to front board and maybe technically a smith. Josh had some nice front noses and a front tail or two. Carleigh done did f/s 180 nosegrind a few times. Then we skated around for awhile, hit a shop, got lost and ended up at a huge ramp on the other side of the city.

Nate and I weren’t in the mood for a ramp so we went and skated flat. Well, tried to skate flat. We were so sore and it was not a pretty game. We skated around a little more, but came back to a fun looking session. Josh, Carleigh, Chris, Dave were still skating and ripping. I took a couple of runs and wish I had skated it more. Oh well, at least I beat Nate at SKATE! That was it for the skating on day 2. Long day! Fun day.

We made it to Portland! We flew all the way to Portland to skate spots like the one above! Ha, okay so we landed and had a couple hours to kill before Neil arrived. We went to a bank to curb spot and this was there too. The bank to curb could have been so good, but there was a truck in front of the good area. That didn’t stop Matt from doing some nice ollies, Dave from a pivot to fakie, Fuzz from an ollie I didn’t see behind the truck and a Jack front tail.

Then a couple of us used some piled wood to make this weird manny pad contraption which turned out to be a blast. I am writing this almost a week after the session so it’s really hard to remember what went down. Nate killed it though. Manual first try, nose manual, nose manual turned to switch manual down. So ridiculous. Carleigh ollied up and back 180’d in. Jack did kickflip manual, manual front shove back to manual and more. Chris tried some heelflips up and got close. Fuzz did kickflip up, back 180 in. Front 180 up, f/s halfcab in. I did kickflip up and f/s 180 in. Rob manualled it, no comply manualled it and I want to say nose manual too, but I’m not sure. Oh and back 180 up. I can’t remember what Dave did, but I think it was ollie up and back 180 in, maybe manual too? Then near the end Jack started a funny session off the little electric box into the bank. The box was about 1 foot longer then it looks in the photo so pretty much impossible to get speed. Jack ollied in and I think tail dropped in? Dave and I got dork and did 180s (he’s goofy). I added boneless 90 then took forever to land a funny feeling boneless 270.

Off to a really fun garage we went where we got booted faster then I could ollie up a curb (so we had a couple minutes there).

Then another parking garage where we lasted long enough for several people to do front 5-0’s around a corner curb before we got the boot. That was the end of the skating. Good start!

On the way home from a long day of work where I got up super early I wanted to skate flat for a bit to get the legs into skate mode. I drove by Valmont and the whole east side of the parking lot was vacant so I went there. I started really slow, but ended up getting through most of my basics quickly. Struggled a bit with fakie flips and am considering giving up on treflips. Managed some heelflips which has been rare lately and even a really bad f/s halfcab heel. The treflip sucking had me bumming, but other then that I did ok so I should chill out. Oh and I had some new wheels because Nate insists the ground is bad in Portland and that I would need some. I went with the big ol’ Null superthanes in 52.

My uncle Frank Zirbel sent me some more Psycho Unity frames to upload. So look for a new one every week or so for quite some time! Hyped! Also, check out some of his movies on his youtube channel FrankJosephZirbel here.

This one probably shouldn’t count as an entry, but I guess I did enough tricks to warrant it. I skated about 10 minutes in a parking garage because it was raining. I had dropped India off at ballet and had two hours of free time before I needed to pick her up. I went to the Valmont garage. I started with some slappy stalls on the parking block. Got most of the basics. axles, pivots, feebles both ways. back crooks. I really hate the Leo Laced shoe. Beyond hating. They feel bad for my feet even just wearing them. I bailed a kickflip and left for Meta to get new shoes. Then I ended up talking to John until I picked up India. It probably took me longer to write this then the time I spent skating. Oh well.

Met Dave at Northglenn park around 9am. There were just a few people there. But one really annoying mom training her kids to be the next Ryan Sheckler. It was ridiculous. There were several kids she was yelling at and encouraging them to try harder, go faster, learn this, learn that. Her voice carried so far. I wanted to focus my board. She sucked. Luckily she eventually left. Dave was ripping as usual. Did his boardslide transfer, feeble stall on the jersey barrier, nice lines around the park. I was kinda sucking. Had a fun line with fakie flip on a bank then a boardstall transfer up onto the marble hubba. Then Dave and I began training for street league. I mean trying tricks we wanted to do at Ambulance ditch. Dave did back 3s over the big hip and I did no comply 270s over the little hip.

So off we went. Dave was first and got his back 3 pretty quickly. I went next and after failing at b/s flips on the far bank for a bit the line came relatively quick. Dave was up next again and tried to frontside pivot the ledge which has a rail a few inches above it. SLAM. Seriously brutal slam with his tail catching on the rail.

Luckily he had a Null 5 Panel on and it saved his face. Check the bent bill! So crazy. He ended up getting up and getting it a few tries later though. We were just kinda messing around and I started hucking f/s halfcab flips. Dave started filming even though I wasn’t really serious about it yet and then I started getting closer and then it turned into a very long ordeal (kind of like this sentence). Some 70+ tries later I landed one! Ha. It did feel great though. Like really great. Really really great. Pretty neat to have to dream tricks for a spot and actually land them and get them on film.