Met up with Dave on a super nice and warm Friday afternoon at the “Rollerblade” park in Longmont. I had new shoes. Supra Stacks. They are cupsole. They took a bit to get used to, but once I had one good kickflip they never felt bad again. I’m writing this several days later so it’s hard to remember how it all went down, but at one point I did my first sweeper ever on the big bank (far right background of the front board photo) and Dave got my back with a kickflip to fakie. What the heck? So funny that Dave did a kickflip and I did a sweeper. Total role reversal, but we were both hyped. Dave did a bunch of shove variations on the bank too. Nollie shoves, fakie shoves and the sickest cab bigspin ever. I tried to line out some flip tricks and stuff. Didn’t land much. Had a few decent goes at the ledge with a long crooks pop out and front 50, front 50 shove, front 50 front 180, front 5-0. Posed some kickflip noseslides. Had a great feeling fakie flip on the bank, but couldn’t get a halfcab flip. Dave front boarded the flat bar all steezy like and blasted the sick method above several times so my cell phone photo timing would get the photo. All in all a pretty fun session.

Then I went to the manual pad by Mikes Camera for awhile before the Lame Brainz/Blind premiere. I was really sore, but managed manny (whoa so tech!!!), nose manny, switch front 180 manny (hyped on this one coming easy two days in one week), nose manny shove. Came close to kickflip manual (that trick teases me). Tried sw front 180 manny back 180 out. Got kinda close. Left and had a blast at the premiere. The Blind video is way crazy.

After a long day of watching Ollie play flag football then playing basketball with Ollie I was able to tempt him with skateboarding at Red Curbs since it was raining. But by the time we left it was sunny and dry so we ended up at Valmont area. I had some new shoes. Well, some really old shoes that I’ve worn to work for a year or so. Some Fallen James Hardy Ramblers. I can’t even find a photo of them online anymore. My Lakai’s weren’t dead and I might skate them again, but I had forgotten I needed to shoe goo them again and it was too late to fix them up before skating. Right out of the gates I could tell these shoes sucked. They are fake vulcs and gum sole and they were slippery. Kickflips were weird. We started at this bank area:

Ollie had fun doing body varials and did the best frontside ollie(s) ever. Basically went for a frontside ollie, but didn’t really ollie, stopped, then popped an actual ollie and laughed. Ollie rules. I managed kickflip to fakie, backside flip, fakie flip. Then a line with front 180 over a little curb gap, switch front 180 off a curb, ollie a tiny median, frontside flip on the bank. Then a varial flip fakie and a front shove fakie. Ollie did a few body varials and fakie shove attempts where he rode up normal then body varialed, came to a halt and tried to fakie shove. So awesome.

Next we went over here. Do a trick into this bank, a flatground trick then something on this bank:

Ollie was doing awesome cannonball runs down it, then going for 360 body varial on the bank. He never quite got that. I was going for no comply 180 into the top bank, halfcab flip on flat then nollie tre on the other bank. The halfcab flip proved hard as I kept slipping off the darn grip. Argh. Got kind of close to the whole line.

Last up was this area. In the distance you can see Ollie. He did ollies down the 2 then 180s off the curb. The best front 180s I’ve seen him do. He also did the ollie off the loading dock at the top of this page. I ollied up that before. Crazy. Definitely couldn’t do it now. I had a little line of front 180 the 2, sw 180 the curb. Ollie cheered as he always does when anyone lands anything. The kid is awesome. I started trying a line of nose manual the slanted manny pad, ollie up onto the sidewalk then kickflip the 2. Well that ended up sucking. The nose mannies were easy. The kickflip ended up being easy. But that whole ollie’ing up a sidewalk backside was not. One time I hung up and dove into the bushes and pillar. Ouch. I ended up doing a weird 90 degree ollie to tic tac and got the line. Perhaps I can blame some of it on the new(old) shoes, but man not being able to ollie up a curb hurts. But skating with Ollie was awesome and seeing his goofy kid tricks after pushing mongo puts a smile on my face.

Jack had shown me a photo on his phone of this spot and when us older dudes were thinking of spots to meet at I remembered it. Dave had gotten to the school before us and said there was nothing at the school. Ha. But this spot was there and I thought it looked pretty awesome. Luckily we had to wait for Neil to show so Rob (yes, Rob is back!!!), Dave, Ollie and I were forced to wait there and skate. Unfortunately we didn’t have any wax, but I thought it was still fun without it. Ollie found a basketball so he just hung out and shot hoops so he was hyped. Rob was reaquainting himself with skateboarding. I saw a first try kickflip. Dave was doing lots of 180s and nollie/fakie shoves. I was hyped on how my legs felt. This might partially be because I got some basketball shoes for when I play with Ollie. We played for awhile on Saturday and it felt like leg rehab. I guess playing basketball in tiny vulcanized shoes is not a good idea. For that matter maybe tiny vulc shoes hurt even when skateboarding. Or at least when they are worn down to just the insole. With all of that said, I had some new shoes.

After my previous pair of these I had said I’d never skate them again, but Meta Sam said that Lakai has a new manufacturer and he hasn’t seen any problems with them. This is great news because the Carlo is one of my favorite shoes ever. Considering the previous pair wore flat in one session and this pair showed almost no signs of wear in one day I’m guessing Sam was right. Anyways, enough about shoes. I skated pretty hard out of the gates. I love random spots that aren’t perfect. I got ollie up the curb, front board transfer up. Ollie down the “bigger” drop, front 180 off. Front 180 down then switch back 180 off (so stoked! although there was no pop involved). Eventually kickflip up the curb then front board fakie transfer up. Hyped on that one too. The smaller setup was ruling it and solidified in my head why I like low trucks. They are so much better for street skating and trying to have somewhat quick feet. Even without wax Dave and I tried to cali grind off the two stair. He managed to get one and then did a drop down boardslide off it too. Neil looked at it and was over it immediately. He skated a bit, but mostly just played basketball with Ollie. Jack, lets skate there again! These dudes suck! Ha. With wax the spot would be amazing. You can even wax up a long ledge for boardslides.

Next we went to a long, red metal flatbar/curb that we later coined as Retal Curb. Ollie continued his non skating ways and just hung out. The rest of us had some fun boardslides to get started. Neil and I added crooks and halfcab boardslides. Rob did a lot. lap over lipslide, smith. boardslide pop out. Dave straight slayed this thing. Boardslide, boardslide fakie, long front 50s, almost front 50 back 180 out, feeble grind transfers. So good. Lazer showed and did a couple tricks before sitting down. I got a couple tiny front 50s on it and tried a bunch of kickflip back boardslides, but my board was too new to commit to it.

We got some burritos, picked up Jason and headed to Southern Hills for a mostly mellow session. Ollie skated a little finally. Did some pop shoves and a coffin down the handicap ramp before finding a tennis ball to shoot hoops with. What a jock. Ha. Rob, Neil and I played a game of SKATE to get started. I was the first out. I wasn’t too into the game. I started skating the ledges though and had fun. Boardslides, noseslides, crooks, a couple slow front 50s. Rob ruined his board on a wallride nollie out attempt on the brick wall and tried some 3 flips (both tricks on his ‘by 40’ list). I skated kind of hard for awhile. I have been so bad at ollieing onto stuff lately that I forced myself to ollie onto a bench for awhile. I couldn’t do it with any speed, but I did manage to get one with a kickflip off at the very end of the session. I had also landed a 3 flip with one hand down and man it rules being 40 and not even thinking I need to clean that up. Fun times. Great having Rob around again. Great to see Jason.

Ollie, Carleigh and I met up with John for an early session at Broomfield park. Yes, I said Ollie! So stoked he wanted to skate a little. We warmed up with some wallrides on top of the big bank. Then I skated the quartapotty with John and Carleigh. We tried to deck rock ‘n rolls and front rocks. John got pivot to fakie. I had some new shoes that had me feeling really weird. They are a little too small for me, but I gotta learn my lesson and skate them. They are some DC Wes Kremer shoes. Yeah yeah, DC’s I know. Not my first choice, but I wanted to get some shoes from one of my favorite shops out there, Motive, and this is what they had for me. Anyways, they were kind of slippery and feeling weird. While we skated the quartapotty Ollie was doing body varials on the steep bank. John laughed because he knew we would never do that. We played a game of SKATE. I recently remembered starting games of HORSE in basketball by shooting free throws until someone misses. First one to miss goes last, last one to miss goes first. So we started with kickflips. John missed after one and I out lasted Carleigh and we played a really long game of SKATE where tricks were rarely landed. One high point for me would be getting John a letter on a treflip. Ha! That never happens. I ended up winning it with f/s halfcab flip. I was struggling though. Struggled with front 50s on the ledge after that. It made me miss low trucks. Ugh. One of these days I’ll be happy with my setup again.

The forecast was for upper 70s so I took the day off work. I started it off by listening to Green Mind while cleaning for awhile then watched Shape Duece while setting up a new board. A new board already? Yes, Derek broke his filming so I gave him mine at the end of the night. Since everyone skates big boards now my 8″ pile is just sitting there so I decided to trim down a little and skate one of those. The plan was to meet Neil, Brett and Dave at the new new Thornton park (above). Everyone had said it’s a “Glen park” meaning it’s full of dumb, mellow stuff. Ha. I got there first and indeed it is a neat park. I’m not gonna call it my favorite or anything though. Brett showed second and brought his boombox hooked up to a Pandora station playing a few good rap songs mixed in with mostly really bad rap songs. Neil showed shortly after that and it was just the three of us for quite a while with one other dude. It was fun. Neil had lots of ollies everywhere, wallies, krooks shove first try on the ledge, boardslides and a nosegrind or two. Brett had some cool nose stall body varials on the little bank to curb (in the back ground behind the hubba/bank), but then broke his board on a kickflip fakie. He got so mad. I struggle to skate in the morning and although this morning went better than normal I still struggled with some basics like a back 50 on a little rainbow ledge and ollies into the bank. But I did do some stuff I was hyped on like a few kickflip pivots on the bank to curb, front 50 the bank to curb, fakie bigflip over a mellow hip. Dave showed up and did a lot of cool stuff. His friend Simon showed too and ripped the place. It started getting really crowded though with bmxers, scooter kids, skaters, parents letting their toddlers walk around in the skatepark, etc. We left after Dave got a couple feeble grinds on the bank to curb and I got a line with a front 50 on the bank to curb, a nose manual on the tiny manual pad and a backside kickflip on the bank above the bench then frontside 180 off the bench. Fun.

We went to a nearby light pole with a bit of transition up to it next. Neil had gone to work. We skated this awkward thing for a good hour or so. I should have taken a photo, but not having a data plan anymore and not being able to Instagram makes me forget about shooting photos. It took a bit before we got some pivots and axle stalls on it. Simon killed it with wallie, wallie melon and wallie indy to the street. He also did a front pivot and a pivot fakie. So ridiculous. Brett got a couple nose stalls and rock ‘n rolls. I did a axle stall and eventually a few frontside wallies which I was really hyped on. Dave did some smooth pivots, wallies and a awesome street plant to fakie.

Then we went to Northglenn park and met up with Bernie. Brett had left. My Vox shoes had totally died at the last spot so I was rolling in some new shoes. Emerica Liverpools. They seemed good although a bit bulky. I mostly just skated flatground with Bernie as I was really sore. Nollie tres came pretty quick. I also had a run with boardslide the ledge, treflip on flat then a bigflip on a flat bank (although I landed at 90 degrees and stalled for a second). After a bit I joined Dave and Simon skating this little qp at the top. Simon was doing switch frontside 5-0s. Dave was working on back tails. I scraped a little backside slash to fakie and threw in some flip tricks after. What a fun day. After that I went home and grabbed the family and we went to the Nuggets game which ended up being a crazy game where the Nuggets somehow won. Awesome.

After a pretty late night of partying for the Meta grand re-opening party I grabbed Ollie and we went to Southern Hills for a short session. I experimented with the panorama app on my camera and as you can see I must shake the camera a lot. Oh well. I had some new shoes, some Vox Class X. They seem good. As you can see there was a lot of snow and puddles around. Ollie didn’t really skate much. He just kind of pushed and didn’t really do any tricks. He was having fun though. I had more swagger in my step then I thought I would and was skating kinda fast. I had a line with an ollie off the ledge by the handicap ramp, turned around and kickflipped into the handicap ramp then ollied a pile of snow. I had another line with a noseslide the tall ledge on the far left, kickflip into the handicap ramp then ollie a bigger pile of snow (in the background behind the square of benches). I added a bad flatground treflip, front 50 and crooks on the main bench and we called it a day.

On a snowy night I was sitting around with the kids when Fuzz asked about Rampy. Yes, lets do it! Brett and John were supposed to join too, but they were no shows. I warmed up Rampy solo and it seemed like Rampy was eager for a good session. I was landing lots of tricks and putting together longer runs for me. I also took care of my 3 flip requirement early on which reminds me I had new shoes:

Lakai Carlo. My 3rd or 4th pair. Love these shoes. And I finally remembered to only get size 10.

Fuzz showed up and we immediately went to work laughing, skating and being hyped. It was such a rad session. We just kept going, doing tricks, trying new ones, falling for a long time. Fuzz worked on fakie front 50 body varial to disaster. Or whatever you would call it. It was silly and he had some good slams in the process. He also struggled with front feeble stalls for a bit until I offered him a beer for a make and of course he got it that try. Fuzz did a million more tricks. This is one of those sessions where tricks didn’t stand out as much as the fun that was being had. I was happy to get a few fakie pivot fakies, a front feeble with a grind, close to a frontside Joe Hamilton and happy that I had so much fun on Rampy.

On another nice February day in the 50s Ollie and I picked up Jason then headed out to Lafayette to meet Brian, Jake, Neil, SSK (Square State Kids), Fullertron and probably some more I’m forgetting. I didn’t feel like filming anymore and Brian totally understood. Ollie was in his typical shy stay in a corner mode or would just follow me around. We kind of messed around for awhile. Jake, Brian, Blake, Brandon, Alec and I did a six man front rock on the mini bank to curb. I punched Brian in the stomach on accident in the process. Ha. Blake was a good sport and filmed Brian for the most part rattle off another 10 or so front rocks. He was killing it again and took some super hard slams at the end trying to do a double front rock with Jake. Kudos Brian. Looks for the birthday montage soon. As far as skating goes I skated kind of ok, but was feeling very clumsy and arthritic. I dropped into the shallow end of the vert bowl a couple times. If only it wasn’t so slippery I would try to get tile on the vert. As it is though I just suck up all my speed and barely make it out of the waterfall. We sessioned the manny pad thing up top for awhile. Neil killed some front lips and front lips to fakie. I got a few tricks. Front 50 back 180, front 5-0 shove, manual. It sucks you can only skate it frontside. Grinding granite is really fun though. On the way back I got a couple treflps. Then I skated the double down section in the street course. Ollied the 3 then noseslide the hubba. Also got halfcab flip into the first bank, then noseslide the hubba. There was ice in the path of the frontside way so I couldn’t really hit that. I tried to get on in the flat, but didn’t have the pop to do it. Argh. It kind of bummed me out. At one point I tried to do a manual out of the little qp then boardslide the granite ledge, but I basically just ran into it and cracked my board really bad. Had to leave. Pretty fun session. Jason seemed to have fun watching. Trick Factory in effect. Oh yeah, I had new shoes. Lakai Brae. Neat. The Supras were some of the best shoes I’ve ever had, but had finally worn flat on the sole.

I was home with Ollie as Liz and India were out doing stuff. We had already played basketball for awhile and I wanted to skate. Rather then wait for the girls to get home to watch Ollie I talked him into going skating. We drove around for a bit trying to find something, but lots of spots were snowy. We found this near Ball Aerospace and it ended up being fun enough for the next hour or so. Ollie and I played around before Carleigh showed. There was a little two stairish drop behind where I took that photo and I would ollie off it to start some runs. Ollie did a couple body varials on the bank and almost a 360 body varial. That was about it for him. Other then that he just kinda followed me around or finger painted with the dirt on the car. Carleigh showed up, super hyped on the spot (not) and went to work on pop shoves to fakie, then front shove fakie, then kickflip fakie. I got a really bad one of those side rock kickflips, kickflip fakie, fakie flip. Carleigh then tried a bunch of varial flips and landed a couple. I tried a line of front 180 the little drop (weirder then it should have been due to puddles in the landing), fakie flip on flat then fakie treflip on the bank. Never got close to the fakie tre. Tried another line with ollie the drop, treflip on flat and then it doesn’t matter because I never got the treflip until later when I tried it on it’s own. Last up for me was a few ollies off the drop over a patch of snow. Not big at all. So my arthritis wasn’t too bad. I originally thought it was acting up due to the wind, but it never really got windy. Hmm.

Oh yeah, I had new shoes. Fuzz gave me permission to not skate those Hufs anymore as he agreed they felt like the worst shoes ever. These Supra Amigo’s don’t seem like the best shoes ever, but they are certainly leagues above those piece of crap Hufs.