We started the day at Dave Fuller’s ramp in Longmont. A decent-sized crew…
Then we went to check out this spot… pretty cool, but we got kicked out immediately…
So we moved on to another spot. I got really distracted by the sky divers though..
Such an awesome crew, good day. Thanks dudes!
Let’s see… where to begin. A friend of mine, a Trick Factory member, part of the Boulder (and beyond) skate family, etc., etc., passed away a few weeks ago. I think I’m still in denial… and actually the more I think about it, I feel like I’m still in denial about other friends I’ve lost years ago. Maybe that’s just one way to go about things. It’s almost as if they’re still somewhere being amazing and we just haven’t crossed paths in a long time.
This past weekend, his friends and family from all over the country came to Colorado to celebrate his life and say their individual farewells. It was truly amazing. What a special person to bring together so many people without even a question or thought to what it might take to arrive here for this particular weekend. I missed the Thursday night Jam ramp jam, but spent a solid three days appreciating the company of so many friends I see so rarely and experiencing a whirlwind of emotions. I didn’t take anywhere as close to as many photos as I expected, but here are the few I took…
(I apologize for overwhelming ratio of crappy quality cell phone photos to photos from my actual camera)
Friday Day
Friday Night BBQ party at Brian’s house
The Morning After – Saturday Breakfast
Saturday’s Jam jam at Arvada
(sorry about the awful white balance job on these photos… geez)
Saturday Dinner at 3 Margaritas
Sunday Morning (almost) Breakfast
Memorial Service on Flagstaff
I have no doubt Jason just cracked a joke.
I can’t think of a more perfect Memorial weekend. I only knew Jam for a little over 3 years but it was always awesome when he appeared in Boulder. Everything everyone said and talked about during the weekend was so true – each positive characteristic about this dude radiated from him and was immediately evident after knowing him for only just a few moments. And it was beyond clear how many people’s lives he touched. Farewell my friend.
This post includes photos from the last week of June til the first weekend of July. A lot of randoms in the mix!
First up, a sunset on the night of Sunday June 24th. Glen and I had just skated rock creek for a bit and were heading to a bbq/pictionary party at John’s.
… pretty awesome.
A few days later, Thursday night I believe, Jack and I had a few beers and then walked across campus to the hill to meet up with the Trick Factory and watch the Black Dots play a show at Illegal Pete’s. We had a beer or two after with Ric and then Jack rode his bike home, leaving me to walk home across campus solo. And what did I run into almost immediately?
Some raccoons! At first I only saw four, but then realized there were more…
The above picture shows the full crew. If you notice the guy to the far right on top of the trash can, there was a total of seven.
I didn’t want to freak them out so I just stood still, watching and waiting for them eventually to move past me. Two of them came so close to me that I could have pet them if I wanted… and I admit I kind of wanted to, but again didn’t want to risk freaking them out and getting bitten or mobbed by the whole crew of raccoons. So I just took photos instead…
So rad! I was stoked for the little encounter.
The next day, Jack and I dropped some boards off at Community and then headed to Crisis to meet up with Blaine. On the way, we saw a rainbow…
rainbow through my sunglasses
rainbow without the sunglasses
I have this theory that everything looks at least 10% cooler when seen through these particular sunglasses. I’m not sure the above two photos defends that theory, but you can maybe see where I’m coming from.
Once we got to crisis, I ended up walking to the liquor store across the street to pick up a few beers for Fuzz, Jack and I. Apparently I took long enough that Blaine was able to snap all the following photos with my camera. It’s always a little strange and fun to find photos that I didn’t take on my camera…
When I first saw this next photo I could only think… “uhhh Fuzz?”
And following with that, I’m sorry for posting this next photo, but I mean, it kinda looks you were posing for it. And you are well aware where the photos on my camera end up…
Again, sorry!
why so serious?
Blaine actually shot this next one as a sequence so I know it was a land!
And you gotta love ride-aways like this one:
Oh yea!
So, um, yea, I guess that was a lengthy walk to the liquor store and back. After that we had a pretty sweet Northglenn session, dropped Blaine off, watched Space Jam (!!!) and called it a night.
Saturday turned into a Trick Factory outing, party bus and all. First stop, rock creek!
Lazer and Gabe were in town! So rad.
(Brian – Sorry for posting of photo of you missing a trick, but just kinda like the photo. Maybe it’s Lazer and Gabe checkin out your butt… not really sure.)
After rock creek, we all piled back on the bus and made moves to the new Wheat Ridge park. They were having some serious sprinkler bum-out issues, where the sprinklers create mini rivers through the park. Kinda shitty, but otherwise the park looked pretty awesome. Another day (I hear they’re fixed now). After that we had a rad Arvada session to end skating on this super hot (probably atleast 95 degree) day. A few bus ride photos…
Thanks so much Brian for carting us all around!
Later that night Brian had a bbq for the whole crew and more at his place in Erie. Fun times! Summer rules.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been slacking this hard – both in taking photos and in posting. So much so that I’m able to put almost a month’s worth (ehh or a week or so) of skate photos in one post. It’s about time that I started playing catch up, so here we go…
First couple are from a drive up to Fort Collins with Glen. It was pretty soon after the wildfire in Fort Collins broke out and I was trying to see if I could get a picture of the smoke…
We stopped by Market so Glen could sell some boards and then skated Northside. Just like every single other time we come to Fort Collins, we raved about how it’s the raddest skate scene around.
Next up, one Friday night I rode my bike up to Willville to meet Glen, Derek and Chad doing a little Null filming. Well, trying… as Glen put it on instagram “these dudes have not landed shit.” So no skate photos, but a few randos…
After that I decided, out of nowhere, to start jumping and ended surprisingly successful. And beat up. It happens sometimes.
Then next day I went out with the Crisis kids, although I really had no intention of doing much more than snapping photos. Just couldn’t recover quick enough from the night before. So we made our way to some old mini golf course in Denver. And seriously, this must have been the worst mini golf course ever…
(blaine always looks so stoked. ha!)
Then to the banks and the bank… ya know! The brick banks…
That night was the first time I’ve ever met Lloyd, a trick factory dude in town visiting from San Diego. The next day we planned a little trick factory skate adventure in his honor. Starting at Rock Creek. Yes! Rock Creek… finally back to skateable…
After that we made moves to Arvada. It was actually the first session that I had a lot of fun at Arvada and didn’t feel completely overwhelmed the whole time… so pretty awesome. We stayed til the lights went off and then made moves. Good times. It was nice to meet you Lloyd, and by the way, you rip!
Last round of photos for this post… first session on Go Skateboarding Day (June 21st). We were waiting for everyone to meet at Louisville park to pile on the bus and head to Fort Collins. So the question became… would you rather skate the park or 4 inch flat bar made from PVC pipe. Well, duhhh…
(sorry for posting a photo of you missing the trick Cameron, but I still like the photo anyways)
From there we headed north on the party bus to Northside park in Fort Collins. The scene there never disappoints. Everyone was shredding and we got to catch the Sunny Daze crew video premier. I also managed to accidentally steal Jack’s board (sorry mang!). But all’s well that ends well and we were all stoked on the party bus ride back home.
I got a little wild last night… not quite sure why exactly, but it was a blast. It was a 90′s night at Illegal Pete’s with the Black Dots and a dirty few (I believe is the name of the opening band). Mucho fun. 
Fun times. I even made the walk home all the way from the attic to 30th and Colorado once the bar closed. Definitely paying the price for all the fun today…
On Sunday we all met up at Glen’s house with a loose plan in mind. The wind was blowing hard (in all meanings of the word), so we picked Valmont as our first spot of the day.
Jack, starting things off
the Null crew
Max
Jason and Glen
Jack, about to do some late shuvvvin…
Josh
Dean… and Lester
Max… in the unfocused background
Glen filming Neil waxing the curb and watching whatever action Glen wasn’t filming
Sean, casual style
Chad… in the unfocused background
Chad… with on lookers
We spent awhiiile at Valmont and then moved on to our second spot of the day, Sussex ledge.
Sean… with onlookers
Josh attempts…
so close.
Glen… Josh and Sean in the background
Sean
Glen
visualization
After a much longer session than anticipated, we moved on to get some food. Then a super fun red curbs session to close down skating for the night. Afterwards these guys helped me move my couch… (thank you thank you thank you) and we had the first beer/popcorn/skate video session at the new apartment. Thank you all for ruling.
Tomorrow I’m heading home to RI… can’t wait to see family and friends. and ocean. and stuff like that. But at least life here in Colorado still rules. Even in the cold.
On Saturday there was a purpose for our trip to Denver… but it turned into a super relaxed cruiser session through downtown.
Starting at this fountain/pool spot…
And now to this grated spot…
some weirdo photos…
Sunday was the White Elephant gift party. Delicious food, awesome crew of people. In fact, the party actually was a lot more fun, lively, upbeat than these photos would indicate. But seriously.
Seriously. Aah. well after a short day of work, longer day of cleaning, making pom poms and drinking wine… that’s all I got. I’ll be back in Colorado in the new year.
I got home super late Saturday night after a fun Black Dots show in Denver… and an equally entertaining performance by Glen. Ahh, good times. Either way, it made it pretty difficult to wake up Sunday morning. So, as usual, I was late to meet up. In fact, I was a little curious about what would happen when I arrived at Crisis, since I had told both the Crisis team and the Trick Factory I would meet up at the same time at Crisis for different skate adventures. In the end, I was anxious to take some photos and the Crisis kids were all ready to roll when I got there… so that was that. Off to the first spot.
This ol’ manny spot. I was so proud of myself for getting the guy that was working to move the truck out of the way that was blocking the spot… until I learned that he does that for other people that ask as well. Blah. ha.
manny photos aren’t terribly exciting… so why not just get super up close?
So… there was an awkward moment in this sequence… and I figured if I just sped it up super obnoxiously fast, nobody would notice! ha.
A photo for Fuzz…
Team Curb Waxing. Such a close knit team in so many wonderful ways.
More photos for Fuzz…
On to the powerslides…
…starting with this lovely out of focus shot.
Now a few driving photos by Will…
And onto a new spot. Some of it was still covered in snow. There were gaps and little weird rails all over the place, but we mostly stuck to one little spot…
Kyle did a wallie off the brick ledge down the “gap”. Here’s a terrible angle of the trick…
… and a super unnecessarily close up shot as well.
I’m pretty sure that every single time I have gone skating with Will, he has always found something to climb…
… this day was no exception.
Both Kyle and Justin manned up and jumped on the rail. Two angles of Justin’s 50…
Time for some lurking…
After a little lurking, Kyle decided to slick his hair back…
Chris was stoked for him…
… really. He was.
Enough for the day. Back to Crisis…
Fuzz, Neil and Brian arrived at the same time we did. Then we rolled out to get some delicious BBQ, as well as a stop by Target and some time for admiring the moon…
Adorable. Sorry about the orange-ness.
Warehouse ramp session. And a lovely array of super crappy quality photos. Some out of focus, lots blown out my a crappy flash. So wonderful. Love it. Enjoy.
Woohoo. Well that’s when my camera died and saved this post from any more crappy photos. Sweet. As for me I did some pushing and kickturns, but that’s a secret! Ssshhhh.
