Had a busy day at work then busy when I got home until Rob, Lazer and Fuzz showed up. We went to research center and met Matt there. Hyped to see these dudes! Another nice evening. Fuzz and I started out riding down the stairs. Then he did it switch first try! I’ve only done that once. Matt and Lazer did back 50s first try on the ledge. The main difference being that Matt’s was locked in and perfect. Lazers was the best one ever. He was all over the place. Feet moving on the board, the trucks not even locked in. And he landed it. It was amazing. I had a new board so I didn’t join in on the manual fun on the double pad. I had a couple slow, but fun lines down the hill and was kind of surprised how well flipping the board was working. Got a crooks kinda quick. Was gonna do more, but have a new rule for myself where I have to do at least one back 50 before I do more crooks. It was funny because I locked into back 5-0 on the first one and people thought I was actually trying 5-0. Ha. Even better was that a couple tries later I landed a back 5-0. It was really bad, but still, kinda funny because I was just trying 50. I would end up getting a back 50 as well. Matt is too good. Back 5-0, back tail, front tail, front 50, front 5-0, fakie front 50, fakie nosegrind to foward steezed out like Smolik. Rob focused his board pretty early on. That always makes for a weird session because you know it can’t last much longer. If only Fuzz wouldn’t have lubed up his bearings. Ha. Lazer got into some back tails and crooks. Fuzz a sketchy back 50, then a perfect back 50, then a really funny back 50 back 180 out fall. He also went on to land a crooks popout which he’s never done before. So rad. And that was it. Darn good to see all these dudes and skate together. Lets do it more often!

(setup 8.25 null venture wides bones med bushings 50mm spitfire f4 101)

My brother was off site seeing bso I got some stuff done then went skating.  I had a new board. Ollie art on the top and bottom, so awesome.  It didn’t help me much though as I started off skating horribly.  I tried a line of boardslide, front tailslide the one stair, kickflip on flat, crook. Never got it. Almost lost my shit.  Got a front 50 that was slow. Going faster was supposed to help, but I just stuck. I finally had one ok line of noseslide to fakie, halfcab flip, crooks. Other then that I had a squatty treflip, front board pop out, and that was really about it. 

Later on in the day after some football I met Dave at Steelyards which was too crowded to skate. So we roamed around the new train depot area over to Folsom. We didn’t really do much or find anything great.  It was nice out and fun though. 

(setup 8.25 null venture wides bones medium bushings no washers 52mm null wheels)

A photo posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Mar 3, 2015 at 2:15pm PST

We hit this right after getting off the bus. Nate front boarded up and across a lot of the ledge. It was amazing. He had also front 50’d up pretty easy. I couldn’t 50 because my trucks were too wide and would lie flat on the curb which wasn’t slick enough for that. I wanted to boardslide across and down the ledge, but never got that warmed up. We went and ate and Ben Raybourn walked by. That was cool.

A photo posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Mar 3, 2015 at 8:39pm PST

Then we skated this spot for a couple hours. Nate did nose manual drop down to nose manual. So sick. He got close to a bunch more as well. Fakie manual, pop shove nose manual, and more. I did quite a few little 180s, came close to nose manual to tailslide, did switch 180 up one then quickish b/s flip up the next. Kickflips up. Not enough manuals though. We ended with a game of SKATE. Nate once again avoided the tricks I’ve never done therefor allowing me to win. Although I did land some good ones for me. Heelflip, 360 flip, nollie 360 flip, b/s flip, fakie bigflip. Fun trip. Man that was a lot of skating.

(setup 8.25 venture wides bones med bushings no washers null wheels)

New favorite #griptapeart by my son Ollie

A photo posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Feb 18, 2015 at 8:22pm PST

Such a nice day out! Got out of work at 3:15 and headed up to Fort Collins. Stopped at my Dad’s grave on the way. Went to Fossil Creek first. I love that park. When I got there there was just a couple other people sitting up top. I just skated the ledges on the bottom. I was feeling pretty arthritic. Mostly likely due to the huge weather changes coming (snow ugh) and skating every single day. I had a new board with awesome Ollie artwork after breaking mine yesterday. I warmed up with back 50s on the curb. Started trying lines with back 50 then crooks. Never got a regular crooks pop out. Kept landing on it, but not riding away. It was weird. I got a couple that fell off to fakie. Did front 50 shove. Chadman showed up! So stoked to see him. He is one of the best dudes out. I tried to back 50 the square ledge in the middle of the park and finally did it slowly. Chad did it super fast of course. He also started with a good line of switch front 180 onto the ledge, front smith the ledge up top then nollie shove off the curb. I was trying crooks shove one way and a line the other way. Out of nowhere I did a great feeling crooks shove. I think I’ve done that trick before, but I don’t even know. Either way it made my session go from fun to insanely fun. On top of that I got my f/s line next try. Ollie up the ledge, front 50 the upper ledge, kickflip off the curb (didn’t have to push in between any of those) then noseslide the ledge off the 3 stair. I was hyped! Chadman was killing it. Really good nollie flips, long fakie nosegrinds to shove out. Long manuals and nose manuals going fast. At the end we went up top and messed around for a couple minutes. I failed to ollie the ledge off the 3 stair. Chad came super close to drop down nose manual shove up the curb. So crazy.

@nolancormier at the super fun @launchskate facility. #nullskateboards

A video posted by Null Skateboards (@null_skateboards) on Feb 20, 2015 at 6:29am PST

Then we ate Chipotle and went to MRKT. Then I went to Launch for “Over 30 Night”. To my surprise it was a mellow one with only a few people there. One of which was Nolan totally ripping. He’s only 25, but is one of those dudes that fits in with a mellow old man session or a heated young kids session. He can do it all. Like front tails across the whole ramp to forward or fakie, huge f/s ollies, hurricanes, sugarcanes, tricks I don’t know the name of and the stuff you see above. At least the f/s invert took awhile. I didn’t skate great. I think I was feeling the Rampy effect and skating a lot already. I got a few squeeker front smiths, little b/s slashes to fakie, front disasters, but wasn’t flowing too well. Played a game of SKATE with Andy and John that was pretty fun. It was right after John got there so he wasn’t warmed up and went out quick. Andy was trying some real tricks like hardflip, varial heel. He got me with 3 shove and fakie 3 shove. I got him with lame tricks on him like varial flip and fakie varial flip. Somehow had an ok b/s flip and a good feeling heelflip. Fun evening of skating!

(setup 8.25 venture wides bones med bushings no washers null wheels)

After my depression session at Broomfield I pulled my pile of used trucks out of the garage. I ended up going somewhat big. Venture wides and I setup an 8.25 board. It felt pretty awesome too. I tried a few basics without doing as many setup tricks in between. The bigger board did feel a little better on Rampy. I did a few flatground tricks too. Kickflips felt great. Got a couple others including a heelflip.

(setup – 8.25 venture wides bones med bushings ricta crap wheels)

Such a beautiful day!!! @matthouse back tail in a t-shirt

A photo posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Jan 25, 2015 at 2:58pm PST

New complete because I left my board at the spot today and it was gone when we went back. #doh #idiot Thanks for having @venturetrucks lows @metaskateboards !!!

A photo posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Jan 24, 2015 at 9:10pm PST

Went to Southern Hills after a long morning of cleaning toilets, vacuuming, etc. It was SUPER NICE OUT! Like 60 degrees and sunny. Breezy at times, but not bad. I had a totally new setup due to losing my last setup. Doh. So new Venture lows, Bones medium bushings, Reds, 8″ Null deck and some Ricta 51mm speed ring wheels. I was gonna just go with Null wheels, but Meta had them and I like to check the competition. Ok, the real reason is they were smaller. I gave everything a coat of Snaky Jakey wax and went to it. It’s been a minute since I was so motivated. I was skating fast for me. Did a line of noseslide, kickflip, crooks. I was super hyped on going faster for the noseslide. Had an exhausting line of fakie flip, halfcab noseslide, ollie up the 2 stair, ollie down the 2 stair, noseslide (was supposed to be crooks). Had a few front 50s, but definitely struggled with them as I have been for awhile. The new board did feel poppier though. A couple felt good. Had one line with ollie the two stair (it sounds lame, but there is a crack in front of it so it’s not all that small of a 2 stair) then front noseslide. Was trying a ridiculous line of front 50 a bench, nollie tre on flat, kick back tail the bottom stair. Since I never landed the nollie tre I just did back 50s on the curb which were fun. Also came close to ollie onto a bench then up onto a table. So close. Matt showed up and did every basic ledge trick first try perfect. The back 50 so casual looked so fun. I’m jealous. He also did front 50, front 5-0, front tail, front tail fakie, back 5-0 and back tail. But he couldn’t do a nollie tre! Ha. Oh and it took him 5 tries to land a treflip which might be a record for him. I didn’t get much more after Matt showed. I was pretty beat. Oh, some crooks where I started at the beginning of the ledge and grinded pretty far, rather then just jibbing the end. Fun day, that’s the best I’ve felt all year! 25 days down. 1/12 of my goal of skating 300 days.

(setup 8″ venture lows bones med bushing ricta 51mm wheels)

Hyped to have Ollie art on my new board

A photo posted by glen gillinghammer (@corpoglenny) on Jan 1, 2015 at 8:21pm PST

Feeling insanely sore and stiff I headed to North Boulder to bring India to ballet. I had almost two hours to kill before having to pick her up. I had a new board (8″) with Ollie’s awesome artwork on the grip. It felt incredibly warm out, but that meant puddles everywhere. I went to a parking garage across from Ideal Market that I’ve been to once with Jack before. The upper levels were completely wet, but the bottom two were mostly dry. I did the downhill lap over and over, getting a bit techer each lap. I would go down a hill, turn and down the next hill bringing me to a stair set that I could walk up and be right back at the start. It kind of ruled for how sore I was. I started with slappy tails and 180s going down the hill. Then I started doing back 50s on the curb above, kickflips, 180s, ollies over the next medians. My last lap was back 5-0 on the curb, kickflip going down the hill, ollie a median, curve around and ollie another median. Then I played on the a yellow median like the one in the photo for awhile. I had a fun slappy front tail then fakie flip. A manual bonk into the hill. Got a fakie nosegrind which cheered me up a bit. At that point I heard people talking and I got a little freaked out. It’s weird going into vacant parking garages at night. Sometimes it’s pretty creepy. Turns out it was a security guard and I was getting the boot.

So I drove around for a bit looking for other garages and dry. I ended up noticing the middle school might have some dry. There was a small patch of dry near the tall ledge and a small section of dry to skate flat. I started with the ledge. It was one quick push then hit the ledge. I did noseslide, noseslide to fakie, front nose to fakie and front board. Maybe a crooks. Then addition of the new skate stoppers kind of kills the spot. I wanted to do a front 50 so I tried that. Forever. I’ve never gotten into 50 on that ledge before, only the smaller one there. It sucked. I took forever. I only got up on it 3 times. The last one seeming very easy making me wonder why it took so long. I had a few more minutes to kill so I went for flippers. Got a really horrible front heel, a slightly less horrible fakie f/s heel and a treflip that took me forever making me 5 minutes late to pick up India. As much as I struggled it felt great to skate outside in warm weather. It was 55!

(setup 8″ venture lows bones med bushing spitfire four 50mm wheels)

Bitter cold and snow all day so I worked from home. I didn’t think I would skate at all since my knee was pretty bruised. I setup a new board (8″ this time) and felt better come evening so I went out and skated. I started mostly doing doing trannie stuff and it felt good. I do too many tail stalls and rock fakies as setups, but oh well. I got a couple f/s bean plants which make me happy. When I would bail at the end of a run I would do a flip trick. Kickflip on the slightly smaller board (last board was 8.125) felt great. Rattled off a bunch of my basics in between trying a random dumb one on the ramp – “nollie” front disaster to fakie. Felt neat. I had added heelflip, fakie flip, fakie varial flip, 360 flip (first try!), b/s flip, f/s flip and started hucking fakie double flips. I was desperate to make my year end goal so I wouldn’t have to do it again. I landed one both hands down. Then another one both hands down. Then one bolts, but I stepped off. Then one with one hand down. And finally one with no hands, but a bunch of tic tacs. Counts! Whew. It felt pretty cool to complete the 12 new tricks for the year. I’m also excited to not try double flip tricks any more. I’d rather learn tricks like nollie heels even if it’s less then one new one a month. I also hucked a bunch of bigflips and got remotely close.

i can’t ollie

Slept in a bit for once on a cloudy saturday. Ollie actually wanted to skate. I had to meet up with Rob in Niwot so after that we ended up at this random bank behind Case Logic. I was sore from so much skating recently and hiking. Ollie had some nice fly out 180s both ways. Manuals down it. Some other stuff before getting distracted by a pile of tar to reshape. I went through a few basic flippers on the bank then started trying to ollie the trash can. I originally placed it the lowest way possible and was able to ollie that pretty easily. But I couldn’t get it the ‘taller’ way. Not even with Ollie shooting a sequence and cheering me on. Just look at how my back foot isn’t even close to the board. What the heck? Ugh.

Ollie had enough skating so I dropped him off and ate some food before going to Southern Hills. This spot is tougher to skate then it looks and I didn’t have much pop. I started linking some basics together. Noseslide, heelflip, crooks. But then some kids came to play basketball which kind kills half the spot. It was ok though because then I could just go back and forth and not line out as much with how tired I was. But I had to skate the old ledge (front left in the photo) which doesn’t grind all that good. I was only able to do the basics. My front 50s were really slow and full of struggle. I kept trying though. Got one front 50 shove out. Couldn’t do back 50. Couldn’t do halfcab noseslide. I put a little rock between the crack and 2 stair so I had to ollie over it. I only managed that a few times. Also kickflipped into the handicap ramp a bunch and a halfcab flip that felt great. Ollieing up the 2 was hard. Flip tricks weren’t going well, so I mostly hucked ones I can’t land anyway. After awhile the basketball kids left. I forced myself to ollie up onto the bench (right front in the photo). I was going pretty slow but I figured I should do it with a kickflip off the bench. After only a few tries I rode away from the first kickflip I committed to. I was so tired until that point and it totally hyped me up and gave me a second wind. I got a treflip, hucked a bunch of fakie tres, tried to slide front noseslides longer. Did a bunch of crooks on the good ledge (back right of the photo). Then forced myself to get into crooks at the start of the ledge in hopes of crooking the whole ledge. I didn’t get close to crooking the whole thing, but I was hyped to get on early and grind it awhile. Then it got dark.

I was planning to meet up at Crisis, but it was only 5pm so I went to Broomfield park which was mostly vacant. I mostly dorked around on the blue box and quartapotty. Did a switch boardslide on the blue box and a back 50 front 180 out. Front 50 back 180 out, lots of slappy tailslides. Tried to do fakie nosegrind sw 180 out, but couldn’t quite do it. Man, what a long day of skating. Later that night Fuzz kept telling me I skate too much. Ha.

There was supposed to be super high winds, but it was just breezy and kind of warm in the mid 40s. I setup a new board as I could not get the crap off of my grip from the night before. It turned into this weird slippery mess. Grip gum, shoes, scrubbing would not get it off. And since I’m totally over PJ I had to get rid of his pro trucks. Ha, ok, as if. I had grinded them to the axle and being the poser that I am I don’t like keeping trucks around when I get to the axle. I mean when you get to the axle you already won right?! So I setup some new black ones that Reed from DLX had sent me. I had to wait awhile before I could leave because Liz was picking up India so I had to watch Ollie. I skated Rampy for a bit. Not having all that much fun. Oh I had put my old Bones medium bushings in the new trucks. I don’t really know why. Partially because I’ve wanted my trucks a little tighter, partially because I didn’t want to take the PJ trucks apart. Anyways, Rampy kinda sucked. I almost died trying a couple front tailslides. Forced myself to do a frontside ollie then it was off to the Research center.

I started near the Max rail. Just doing that line I love of noseslide, boardslide pop out then roll down the long stairs. I was struggling a bit with the new setup. After awhile I moved back to the 4 stair side. I really wanted to get up the 2 stair part then down the 4, but I’m not good like Matt and Josh. So I settled for an ollie to back axle stall, turn onto the top, push and ollie it. Yippe. I tried a couple front 180s after, but they were just poses. Then I went over to the ledge. Had a few crooks, a sloppy back 50, a couple really great feeling front 50, really great feeling front 50 shove, a couple worry attempts at front tails and of course some noseslides that were supposed to be crooks. I lined out a couple things that felt good. Ollie up the curb, crooks, front 180 the manhole, halfcab flip. Had a few b/s flips. And trying to learn switch back 180s better. I would love to do that trick up curbs.

Then I skated flatground for awhile in the big parking lot out back. I had told myself to do 20 tricks and was at 15 when I got distracted by trying a long line. Manual a bit of the sidewalk in the background by the snow pile (the manual took me forever and I think I toe dragged a little (TILT!)), no comply 180, fakie flip, halfcab flip then ollie the tiny gap over the curb in the foreground. I only got to the ‘gap’ once and it was way smaller then I thought so luckily I did it first try. That pretty much drained me and I headed home after that. The manual seriously took me forever. Ugh.