Been wanting to do this for awhile. After Nothing came out I figured I should treat myself with a new complete. So after a little delay here it is. Suciu board, PJ trucks (Highs), Vincent Alvarez wheels (50mm stoked!!), Venom soft bushings, Bones Swiss bearings. After an intense game of indoor basketball with Ollie I went out to Rampy for a bit. I definitely had some awkward turns due to trucks that aren’t broken in, but I had fun. I avoided revert tricks so I wouldn’t flatspot my new wheels. I struggled with front tail. I was supposed to avoid flatground too, but that board flipped good. It’s supposed to be an 8.1 which are the same size I skate with Null, but it’s clearly samller then the Null 8.1. Anyways I liked it and landed every kickflip I tried, got a 3 flip and came super close to nollie flip. I ended with a couple longer Rampy runs for me and ended with a f/s ollie that was near coping.

Back in Boulder after a fun time in Omaha for Christmas. It was a super nice morning and I wanted to get out skating early. So I did. I started flatground in front of the house. I had new shoes and new wheels. Emerica Provost. Null superthane 52s. Flatground was fun. After doing several basics I started trying two tricks in a row without pushing between. Since I skate slow this was a challenge. Got fakie bigspin then front shove, no comply 180 then fakie flip, pop shove then treflip, almost kickflip then nollie treflip. Settled for my first nollie varial flip in awhile instead.

Neil arrived so we took off to campus. We started at this silly little rock wallie. Neil and I took awhile, but we both got lines we were hyped on. Back 180 up a curb, b/s halfcab flip on flat, rock wallie, ollie a 4 stair. So ridiculously fun. Both of us were set for the day at this point, but it went on. We ollied the round 4 stair then ended up at the art building double set / ledge area. Ollie, Neil and I back 180’d off a ledge. Neil first try. I tried mine in a line with a crooks then a noseslide on the ledge after. Didn’t get it, but was hyped to try. Then we went to the library. My legs were feeling pretty sore, but I tried a silly line of ollie onto the downhill ledge and ride through skate stoppers by doing the little front wheels/back wheels dance. It was fun, minus the one time i hung up and dove over the last part. Ollie did that too. Neil was too scared of hanging up. Ha. I got one with an ollie onto one of the benches after. Then we hit the plastic ledge area for a bit. Neil got front 50. I got noseslide. Ollie randomly did a perfect no comply. Then a few more to show he had it down. Then we went to go pick up my mom at the bus station and ate some food before heading back out to the streets.

Neil and I were super sore and we started off by riding down some long stairs. It was actually pretty fun. Ollie got buck first with this crazy jump over the mini rail to his board then firecracker a 3 stair then ride down a bunch of long stairs going fast. Neil ollied onto a ledge before the stairs. I did a noseslide down this weird metal ledge then front 180’d the 3, turned around and rode down the stairs. Street skating rules. You can’t do stuff like this at a park.

Then we went around the back and ended up at this thing for awhile. Neil could ollie up all 5 so easy. Ollie mostly just goofed around like in the video above or just riding down the stairs.

I mostly tried lines starting with noseslides. Got one with a b/s flip off the last stair going so slow I didn’t even roll 2 feet past the last stair before I came to a halt. Ha. I managed to ollie up all 5 stairs, but it wasn’t as pretty as Neil’s at all. Last line was front 180 down the first one, switch roll off one, switch front 180, roll off, kickflip off. So hard.

Those dudes were pretty over skating and it had cooled off quite a bit, but I wanted to try a few things back at the front of the school. First was to kickflip into the downhill sidewalk then ollie the 5 stair. Didn’t get the ollie. Didn’t even commit. It was harder then I thought. First the 5 stair is big. Bigger then a normal 5. And second, the downhill takeoff is just plain weird. Didn’t get it. But I did get something else I was probably even more hyped on. Ollie onto the tall ledge down the stairs in the very front of the school, ride around the pole, drop down a level then ride off the big drop. Hammers! Ha.

Lastly after dropping off Neil, Ollie and I went to the Louisville park for a few carves around the snake run. Kind of a nice ender on one of my favorite street skating days ever. Gotta start off with flatground more often!

After destroying my grip trying kick boardslides yesterday I decided it was time for a new board anyway. And I was sooo sick of those grey wheels that I put some new superthanes on. Lastly, since those Lakai’s were killing my feet I went with some new shoes too. Emerica Provosts. My first vulcs I’m excited about in awhile. They have Strobel construction at least though. After trying to get Ollie to go skating all day he finally agreed to it when Liz and India got home and I could have just gone skating solo or with friends anyway. Ha. We went to campus. Right out of the car Ollie sets his board down, does a fakie shove and then a f/s halfcab. Whoa! We rolled around the new dorms on the south side which were torture because there are so many new amazing ledges, but they all have that crappy flagstone finish with cracks between them. We did find a way to skate them a little though. We kept pushing, ollie’ing up curbs, off curbs, etc. Did the hill down from the basketball center which was fun. My new wheels are really really fast! Ollie foot drags with his front foot. Ha, darn mongo pushers. We ended up at the weird ledge thing that Carleigh and I kickflipped the monstrous flat gap a long time ago. This time I took a bit to get used to new wheels and did a gap to manual. It was pretty fun, I normally chicken out of manuals with drops that tall. Ollie was having fun ollie’ing down the 2 stair by it and riding through the grass. We moved on some more. I manualled one of the long downhill pads first try. Sweet. We dorked around that area for awhile. Then dorked around on that one stair ledge that you can’t get any speed for. I did a front tail off it which was still not the easiest thing for me. Oh, so my new deck was an 8.25 and I wasn’t really noticing a problem with it. Cool. The new shoes fit a little loose, but I was liking them too. We hit the art building area and I did some flatground while Ollie hid in the bushes so that people wouldn’t see him. I got a few heelflips which surprised me. I was 3-0. I forgot how awesome vulcs are for heelflips. Halfcab flips felt a little harder with the bigger board. After that we basically headed home.

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.

The weather was rainy and in the low 60s. What an unusual day for late July. I was feeling really run down and sick with a cold. Doh. I had gone to Meta earlier and picked up some new Thunders that hopefully wouldn’t have axle slip like my old ones. While I was at it I got new bearings and fruity colored hardware. So there you go, a new complete!!! I went with Null 52mms. Maybe I’ll be a normal skateboarder again.

On top of that I had new shoes! Lakai Guys. I’ve been waiting and waiting for the Nikes to die so I could wear these. They seemed good out of the box and they don’t have a stupid swoosh on them!

We went around to the side of the school we don’t normally skate. There are tons of pebbles everywhere, but we ended up having a blast and skated it in totally new ways. My shoes felt amazing. My complete felt like a new complete. I did keep my old bushings going so it wasn’t completely night and day. The bigger wheels really cruise over cracks easier, but they also gave me wheel bite as I’ve gotten used to tiny little wheels. Ollie was killing it. He did a fakie back shove out of the curb cut back onto the sidealk, front 180 off the stairs (above) and halfcab off the curb, back 180 and f/s halfcab out of the curb cut into the parking lot. The f/s halfcab was new for him and he did it really good. For how sick I was and mellow I was feeling I skated pretty good. From right to left in the panorama I worked up to a run of kickflip up the curb, front 180 off the 2 stair then fakie bigspin off the curb. From left to right I did ollie up the curb, front 180 onto the loading dock then halfcab flip on flat. Fun, brief session. Stoked to have a somewhat normal setup that makes cruising around a little easier.

While walking all over Montreal I saw a million things that would be fun to ollie over, but knew that I couldn’t ollie over any of them. So it made me want to work on the ol’ basic again. Ollies. For some reason this stupid rock on campus stuck in my head as a good place to start. It has a horrible approach. Down a sidewalk then have to turn at the rock last second. After cruising around the parking lot below it for a bit I went at it. The approach was so much harder then I remembered. Then a car parked pretty much right in the landing so I went and did a few flip tricks and cruised the lot for a bit. They stayed there forever just sitting in the car with the lights on so I went down the hill a little. Found a fun line of ollie up a curb, ollie down a 3 then kickflip a small crack to crack gap. Went back up and the car had finally left. I struggled and struggled and finally managed to get a couple ollies that might have gone over the corner. I don’t even know. Maybe I’ll learn how to ollie some day. Oh yeah, had some new 50mm STFs. They good. Not supernullethane good, but I like the little size a lot.

I really feel old lately. After driving down from my Mom’s I played basketball with Ollie for awhile and I felt so slow, uncoordinated and old. I met Neil and Blake at this spot for a weird session. Neil was in a daze for obvious reasons. Blake killed it and Neil filmed him get a rad line of ollie’ing off a ledge into a bank, ollie up the curb then gap to noseslide. Neil skated for awhile though and had several nose manuals, manuals and easy ollies anywhere. Halfcab up the first curb, ollie up the second, back 180 up the third. Sick. I struggled for awhile, but just kept skating. Kind of early on manualled the medium pad into the other curb and had a really rare nose manny the long bottom pad to front 180 out. Hyped on that. I couldn’t ollie up the tall ledge. Early on had a fun first try line of front 180 up the hard way the low curb and fakie bigspin off. Neil mostly chilled. Blake was skating the 3 curb area doing some no comply 360 attempts and halfcab firecrackers (ha). I finally started feeling motivated and tried to kickflip up and off of the tall edge (going from low to high). The kickflip up is really hard because of the weird angle in. I kept missing and tore half of my griptape up. I managed to get up a few and land on kickflips off, but not ride away. Neil kept wanting to leave and I kept saying one more and I would get close enough that he wouldn’t leave. I gave up on the kickflips up and just tried the off and got even closer. But no cigar. They left. Doh. At least the chinese nollies into the curb cut that Blake ollied into were fun. I kept skating for awhile. Tried to do some more lines up/down the lowest curb. Tried pop shove up, back 180 off for awhile and failed. Moved on to back 180 up, halfcab flip off. Got that all slow like. The angle is harder then it looks, dodging the handrails is kinda hard and I was getting on between the narrower ones. I mean I could get on later, but that would mean I wouldn’t have enough setup time for me. Started trying switch front 180 up and 360 flip off. I was sweating and having some fun, getting close and missed a 3 flip and lost my shit.

I really don’t know what happened. I’ve been pretty frustrated with a lot of things lately and I guess I took them all out on my skateboard. I literally threw that thing around for 20 minutes straight. Then after awhile would start throwing one side at the other side. It was kinda fun for awhile, but the fact that I was mad at skateboarding just made me madder and the cycle continued for a long time. I almost left them in the parking lot, but I had new wheels so I knew better. I’m gonna take some time off from skating. For me, that’s probably only a few days, but I need it. My quads hurt just as bad as ever so I don’t think cupsoles are really helping that which I’m sure added to my frustration. Getting old f’ing sucks.

Needed to make a run to MRKT and Jake, Carleigh and Jack had expressed interest in it. Jake had his girl friends car and offered to drive. I cannot even remember a trip to Fort Collins that I didn’t drive. Ever. Sick! We picked up Jack after work (thanks for the burrito!) and made good time up to Fort Collins. After stopping at MRKT we rolled right into campus and ended up at an old epic spot that I skated with Jason and Josh a long time ago. It’s two ledges going down a banked sidewalk that has been knobbed for a long time. Forever ago Josh, Jason and I did quite a few things on it. I know I got front 50. Josh probably did lipslide pop out (he’s goofy) and I’m sure Jason did boardslide popout. Next to it is a weird 2 flat 2 flat 1 flat 1. Jack ollied the 2 flat 2. Carleigh rode down all the stairs. I took a long time, but rolled down them all too. Jake started doing tricks into the bank and that ended up being the spot for quite a while. Jack did like 100 tricks into it like 3 flip, nollie heel, impossible, a bunch more. Oh yeah, I had to setup a new board after cracking it the day before. So I had a new board and decided to put my old Thunders on instead of the Ventures. I also had some new wheels. Bones STF 51s. I’ve wanted to try them for awhile to compare to Superthanes (they flat spotted right away so clearly not as good). So flip tricks to start the day were a little weird. I did get kickflip and front shove pretty quick. We were all having fun. The rain was holding off. I did a front 180 off a nearby 2 stair and got a first try halfcab flip into it. Jack backed me up with an impossible to accidental manual (so sick!). Then Jake got his back with a kickflip. Then to complete the 4-4 Carleigh came in hot with a nollie shove. Everyone was hyped. Rather then take off we stuck around. Carleigh got some kickflips. Jake and I failed at fakie flips. Jack added more tricks like switch front heel. I should have gotten the fakie flip. Oh well, ollieing up the 3 felt pretty good.

Sean, Mike, Taylor and Jason showed up and we went over to the Clark building area. Us older dudes skated the hip mostly for awhile. I managed kickflip in a couple and front shove first try. Carleigh and Jack ollied the stairs all easy. I failed getting Carleigh’s back. But after Jack ollied the rail then boardslid it I had to get his back and scratched a little 12 year old no pop ollie and landed. Felt great. Jack went off for awhile. Boardslide, feeble and bluntslide the 5 stair rail. I have video of it, but the youtube editor wont work now. Look later. I got a few more tricks on the hip. A really bad frontside flip and a halfcab flip where I popped after the hip. Ha. Jake got a solid kickflip and Mike did a few front shoves, a full cab and more. Sean was skating it like a bank to curb. Carleigh starting going for kickflip. Jake got a buttery fakie bigspin over the hip. I started messing around with a line starting with a front 180 off the top 3 and ended up doing one of my favorite lines ever. Front 180 down the 3, curve around then pop shove, ollie onto the little ledge near the 5 stair (on the left of the photo), scrape the tiniest no pop ollie off the drop (tall for me!) then did one of the best frontside flips of my life over the hip (that’s not saying much though). Seriously, one of my favorite lines I’ve ever done. The frontside flip wasn’t even in my plan, I guess I was just surprised to land the drop and kept going. Carleigh kept attacking the kickflip, but we ended up getting the boot. Off to Northside it was.

Northside was pretty packed with the Fort Collins heavy hitters and of course they were ripping. Xavier and Dana are insanely good. I didn’t really seen any of our crew skating as there were so many people. I had a couple lines around the place that felt good. Some little wallies and grind on the brick qp. Then Jack and I played a game of SKATE in the parking lot that lasted a really long time. I landed pretty much all of my tricks except for nollie tre and was up SK to SKAT, but couldn’t land anything else to win it. The treflip felt great. I liked having the Thunders. Maybe I’ll stick to them. But wow, what a fun day of skating. Thanks for diving Jake and Jack and Carleigh for being such awesome friends and being down to skate anything.

Got out of work and what do you know, my car wont start. Had that problem in the morning too and had to jump it so it looks like it needs a new battery. Rather then taking care of that I did a few things and watched the Nuggets somehow destroy OKC for their 13 win. So awesome and so nothing to do with a skate journal. But its the reason I didn’t get out until 9pm. It was way colder then it should be. In the mid 40s, but with a cold wind. I had setup some new wheels. Some little Pig 50mm wheels. They had been taunting me at Crisis for a long time so I got some. My first non-Null wheels in years. Out of the gate they seemed great. And I warmed up pretty quick and had the drive to push a little faster then normal (not saying much). I had some boardslide pop outs and noseslide pop outs to get warmed up. Then came kickflips and some stalls on the curb. The box in the photo wasn’t there initially. I got some crooked grinds on the middle section. They felt super good. So good I kept doing them. I guess the narrower wheels let me lock in a little better. I got a couple treflips after, but both were super bad. Looking back I hardly landed anything frontside. Did I even try? Man, I landed like two front 50s and a really bad front tail. Oh and a couple front noseslides to fakie. I tried a bunch of flip tricks. After bailing a frontside trick I would do a nollie heel or nollie flip attempt. Those weren’t close. Well, the first one was close, but it must have been luck. I tried a bunch of fakie big flips going fast. That trick isn’t working lately. I got one. Coming back I would try the fastest nollie tres I’ve ever tried. I got one. I landed on almost every one of them though. That trick rules. Later on I put this box after it and ollied it in a couple tries. It felt neat. I put it upright too which was way taller and didn’t have the cajones to commit. I got tired quick around then and the wind kicked in overdrive so I went home. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a bad day skating when I land a nollie tre. Love that trick.

Ollie totally wanted me to sit and watch the Nuggets game with me. I was so tempted. My legs were still really sore. But with the threat of snow a day away Liz made me go skate. Ok, well she told me I should. Good woman. I had finally setup some new wheels. As you can see those little 50mm wheels had worn out quite a bit. I’d say they were 48, maybe even down to 47. So bad! So I went back to the good ol’ supernullethane. When I got to the park there was about 5 people total there. For such a huge park that is almost nothing. I just cruised around for awhile not doing much of anything. It was a blast. I pumped the vert wall of the snake run a few times and probably got about 3 feet from the top. That thing is gnarly. Did some tricks on the tiny qp above it for awhile and ended up with a really fun run. Front feeble on the tiny qp, front 50 the ledge into the bank, ollie into the next bank, ollie into the next bank over the mini step up, ollie up the euro (missed the manual), backside flip on the blue bank. Good times. For the most part I didn’t really skate anything for longer then a few minutes. It was fun cruising around and hitting stuff. In the mini ramp it took a few tries, but I got a run with a front rock, front d and a fakie back smith to fakie. Doing flip tricks was a bit harder getting used to how the bigger wheels rotate. I didn’t land many of them. Then again it was in the low 30s and I was wearing long johns and a jacket. At the end of the session I battled back 50s on the little granite Pier 7 replica thing. It basically took until 30 second left of light to get it. Whew. I’m not sure what’s up with me enjoying skating parks so much, but I’ve never really done it solo before and it’s fun working on stuff I would never do in front of people.