After some lounging around I went to dog park to meet the crew and help with a cleanup. Cass had some bondo and we mostly did that for the first couple hours. And I’m stoked! At no point did I really skate hard and I hated my setup and shoes almost the entire time. Jesse and I played a game of SKATE that Dave would join in the middle. At one point I did fakie bigflip, halfcab flip then b/s flip in a row. But other than that I sucked it up. Jesse won once again. This time on f/s flip.

(setup 3/10 8.3 PMG, jessup ultragrip, thunder team hollow 149s, spitfire 51mm bones stf v1 pj, new balance numeric 272 b/w size 11.5 half insoles)
(pain level 4/10 vulcs)

Had no motivation to skate, but needed to deliver a board in Broomfield. So I went to Broomfield park and was there for about 15 minutes before Cass arrived. I didn’t do much in that time other than a few stalls on the bank to curb. I would get a back pivot and I think front tail which I hadn’t done before. There was a dude who basically lined out a front 5-0 in the deepend of the bowl with a b/s flip down the doubleset. So yeah, I felt very out of place. But the crowd switched over quick and Cass showed so I didn’t feel so bad. I had started trying a warm up line of ollie onto the black ledge, kickflip out of the bank, front tail the bank to curb when a van full of kids showed up. And they sucked! Cass had front noseslide then front shove out of the bank before we started to have everything interrupted by a bunch of kids that didn’t care about anything other than themselves. Crooks were working for me. I was getting up into 50s but not landing them on the black ledge. Cass had some nice front 50s on the new ledge into the bank. I’m not remembering a whole lot more. We ended with a game of SKATE that was a good one for Cass and I. We landed a lot of tricks. Heelflip, halfcab flips, b/s flip, hardflip, fakie bigflip, varial flip, Cass won with fakie varial flip. During the game one of the kids almost ran into me then told me to get out of the way. I about lost it. Told him to STFU. He didn’t care at all. Those kids really sucked. It was a fun session though.

(setup 3/10 8.3 PMG, jessup ultragrip, thunder team hollow 149s, spitfire 51mm bones stf v1 pj, new balance numeric 272 b/w size 11.5 half insoles)
(pain level 3/10 vulcs)

Not too motivated to skate I went to dog park to meet Mike, but he was at Valmont. After some terrible warming up for me we mostly just skated the pond area. And it was really fun. There weren’t too many kids doing the evergreeen pump track, but we were definitely still bumming people out by not just pumping through. For whatever reason I started thinking about ride on blunts and that’s how it got started for me. I actually kind of did some fs ones first. The first line took me a long time, but was really fun. Actually, the noseslide – kickflip line took me a long time too. Mike was skating the steep little qp like it was easy. The Hewitt grinds were sick, the rock fakie carve to fakie rock too. Other than those I really didn’t do much. We cruised around after and I didn’t do much.

(setup 3/10 8.3 PMG, jessup ultragrip, thunder team hollow 149s, spitfire 51mm bones stf v1 pj, new balance numeric 306 blue size 12 dunk insoles)
(pain level 6/10 vulcs)

After letting it warm up a collection of us met at Broomfield park to check out the new additions to the park. I arrived first and got called for work immediately upon exiting my car. Argh! But I jut needed to make some calls so it wasn’t too bad. I had rolled around a little and was getting used to my setup when others showed up. Rob, Dave then a bit later Bratcher, Jesse, Tim. Also the Daryl and Justin which are always good to see. David, Max H was there. Darin showed up. So yeah, as you can see a lot of people were there and the park was quite crowded and chaotic at times. I had yet another setup change, 8.3 with Thunder 149s. It was good except for the big wheels I put on it. There were too many people for me to notice everything that was done, but I’ll start with Rob. He had some really good front tails on the new bank to curb, shove lipslide on the blue ledge, crooks, front boards and laid his board to rest when he couldn’t get a kickflip. Dave was on a mission as always. He had a really good run of boardslide to fakie the brick qp, switch crooks to forward the new smaller bank to curb, ollie up back 180 from the banks on the pier 7 replica but couldn’t get the pressure flip garnish ha ha. Him and Darin skated the quartapotty for a while which is way hard to skate now with the massive coping. I had a lot of fun crooks and had a couple noseslides to fakie on the bank to ledge, some fun front slashes on the bank to curb. Mostly I bailed tricks though and took way too long to boardslide the bump to bar. At the end Darin and I did some flippers. Well, Darin did a bunch in a try or two making me jealous of his little 8″ board. I may or may not have gotten a treflip as I’m not sure if my back foot was really on it initially or not. Jesse was shredding, Bratcher too. Great seeing Daryl and Justin rattling off tricks and the rest of the Emage crew was ripping. Pretty fun session.

(setup 5/10 8.3 PMG, jessup ultragrip, thunder team hollow 149s, spitfire 53mm orange swirl classic shape F4, new balance numeric 306 blue size 12 dunk insoles)
(pain level 4/10)

After watching it snow most of the day the sun kind of came out and the ground was dry so I went to Platte to skate flat. I had tried 8.25/5.6 and hated every second of it. I did have a couple of kickflips that flipped faster than normal, but everything else was miserable. After flailing around for ~20 minutes I went to the ledge that had snow falling on it off the tree and did a few tricks. Noseslides, crooks and made myself do 3 little back 50 jibs in a row.

(setup 2/10 8.25 null spanbauer dead spots, jessup ultragrip, venture 5.6 with royal bushings, 51mm bones stf pj, new balance numeric 306 blue size 12 nike sb dunk insoles)
(pain level 4/10)

Went to dog park after work having changed trucks to Ventures. They did not feel good for ollies, but flippers did feel better. I would have a pretty blah session, but managed two things I hadn’t done before. A front tail shove on the curb and a front smith to fakie on the c lurb. Neither one grind/sliding. Still felt cool.

(setup 5/10 null 8.3 pmg, jessup ultragrip, venture v-cast 5.8, 51mm bones pj, new balance numeric 306 blue/white nike sb dunk insoles)
(pain level 4/10)

On a breezy night I went to Square House and for a bit it was just Jesse and me. Warming up felt impossible for me, nothing felt good. Nick and Jake showed then Ben, David and D5. Gray would skate most of the time. We were on the miniramp for a while and I skated it so terribly. Moved on to the main area and still skated pretty bad, but better. Got a first try kickflip up the euro. Gray, Jesse and I all got pop shoves up the euro. I had never done it there and it was pretty fun. I would go on to get a b/s flip up it which felt really cool. Jess, David and I finished with a game of SKATE that I got destroyed on which was ultra depressing. Especially getting letters on tricks like halfcab flip and heelflip. Jesse won it with a super good fakie tre. Struggling so bad with flippers sent me into setup madness.

(setup 5/10 null 8.3 pmg, jessup ultragrip, royal ultralight 149, 51mm bones pj, es melange black size 12)
(pain level 5/10)

I didn’t do anything on Sunday and it was great. But I felt pretty out of it still Monday after work where I met up with Paul, Sean and Rob. I had a mixed session of weird flailing and some decent stuff. New things I got were front 50 the curved part of the C ledge finally, front 180 up the ledge then switch 180 off. Skated hard though and posed some stuff I hadn’t done before and seemed to skate a bit faster. Rob was ripping with nollie lipslides, shove lipslides, manual back 180, back 50 back 180, halfcab boardslide and more. Paul added switch 50s to his ledge game. Sean did his infamous line of back nosegrind then kickflip nose manual. It was so nice out, hard to leave, but everyone seemed exhausted.

(setup 5/10 null 8.3 pmg, jessup ultragrip, royal ultralight 149, 51mm bones pj, new balance numeric 272 b/w size 11.5 half insoles)
(pain level 5/10)

Oh man. I haven’t edited the video yet and thinking back on this day I cannot believe I thought it was a good idea to try it. It had snowed overnight and we needed to squeegee the park just to even skate. I had skated for what seemed like an hour before filming even started and I was feeling a great deal of anxiety about the whole thing. Finally I just started asking people to film and it began with Paul showing me up on some slappy crooks variations. Things were going incredibly slow for a while and I think after like 3 hours I was only at like 18 tricks. But then Jack arrived as a mostly full time filmer and it really got going. I think my favorite personal trick was kickflipping onto the C ledge and also a heelflip 3rd try. A couple of my favorite show ups were 180 a parking block then Sean 180’d the hydrant, me doing fakie 50 then Rob doing halfcab 50. After about trick 40 I started to go cross eyed due to being dehydrated with bright sunlight. I was a mess and kind of stopped caring if people were showing me up or not and just did a few more tricks to get to 50 or more (hopefully). Brutal day. I will not be doing it again. Especially because the next decade would be 60! Huge thanks to my friends for participating in such a silly idea, skating all day and filming. Video soonish.

(setup 8/10 null 8.3 pmg, jessup ultragrip, royal ultralight 149, 51mm bones pj, new balance numeric 272 b/w size 11.5 half insoles)
(pain level 3/10)

Took the day off work for obvious reasons and met up with Dave at an empty Frederick park at 10am. I got there first and felt great as soon as I put my board down and did a few warm up laps. Dave showed a few minutes later and we kept our warm ups going. I felt snappy pretty quickly and even got a manual on the little pad first try I think. I man have popped up onto the taller ledge first try too, but I did it a few times. Dave and I settled into some lines on the manny pad area. I couldn’t get a nose manual to start it. Dave got his line way quicker than me. Back 50, manual, quick up front 50, nose manual. Wow! I ended up doing ollie up, kickflip off, noseslide (I had done a few crooks that felt good but when I finally got the kickflip I just wanted to keep it going), 180 onto the pad then switch front nose off it. Normally if I pop up that ledge once I’m pretty hyped, I must have done it 20 times! After that we went to the bank to curb area. Dave had the nice boardslide to tailslide. I got a questionable treflip flyout after struggling to do axle stalls. Dave front pivot to front rock then kickflip flyout was so sick. My phone missed some of the action after this. I had some slappy crooks and nollie front 180s out of the bank. Dave did a halfcab rock up to feeble. He had to get to work. I ended it on front slappy then rolled out to celebrate with the family. Really fun session.

(setup 8/10 null 8.3 abstract33, jessup ultragrip, royal ultralight 149, 51mm bones pj, es melange black size 12)
(pain level 4/10)