Plane Delays lead to more Skating

So Sunday, yes, Sunday, I left you there I think. I got to Denver International Airport early in the morning only to realize that the time on the ticket said 740 pm and not 740 am. The lady who issued the ticket to me days earlier told me it was a morning flight so I was just following what she said. Long story short, the airline canceled the flight and could not schedule back to Memphis until Tuesday at 1245. I stayed in a nice hotel off of 70 Sunday night. Monday I took a cab over to my little brothers school to meet up so we could go skate on his lunch hour. We collected one of his buddies, Vedder, and headed to Walker Branch. The first session of the day went well. I took John's car after the lunch hour sesh was over and headed up to Arvada Memorial Park.

Arvada Memorial Park is just a city park that has big open fields,  a frisbee golf course and tucked off to one side a skate park. The skate park itself is fairly minimal with a sloped bank that is wicked steep, a manual pad/hand rail, a 3 foot mini and a 7 foot half pipe. The two half pipe ramps are really the main focus of the park. They are well constructed and covered in quarter inch metal plating. I have never skated on metal like this before, it was fast. I actually only took one run for I had hit the ground skating to the park it self. I was skating down this hill to a wooden bridge, I did not know that the wood planks on the bridge were wacko, so when I hit the bridge I got ejected onto the ground. The keys in my pocket along with the grenade smashed into my thigh leaving it painful to just move. So I skated one run to just get a feel for it. I got to know a few of the kids at the park, they all must have been in high school. One kid had just finished community service but could not go home yet because the guy he worked for only made him work an hour and in turn gave him 4 hours. His mom would get really pissed if she knew. The next guy was disassembling a gold ear ring so he could sell the gold. While the last kid was going on how this friends mom let him stay the night and gave him a $20 spot this morning after he left. These are just neighborhood kids and it sounds like their family life is dysfunctional, welcome to the family.

I went back to Walker Branch ( additional photos taken) after my Memorial visit, skated an hour, picked up my Bro. We then went back to his apartment. I could not take it, I headed over to the Xanthia bowl by my self for my brother had some business. I skated the Xanthia bowl until I could not see any more, night fall.

I got on a plane Tuesday afternoon and landed in Memphis. The plane was suppose to take off at 1245, they delayed my flight until after 4pm. I would suggest to never fly United Airlines Express if possible. The United Airlines staff said that delays are very common on the Express flights.

Parting shot:
If I was going to move to Denver today where would I try to find a place to rent?? I got to know the city better than I have in the past. I spent a lot of time in Edgewater, a suburb of Denver. Why this place? If you look at Team Pains's project list you can see that Edgewater is ten minutes from Arvada who have Little Arvada and now Big Arvada, also Layette, Denver Park, Glendale and Broomsfield are with in less than 15 to20 minutes depending. That's not even mentioning the smaller parks like Walker Branch. Edgewater is a blue collar neighborhood for the most part and rent is cheaper here but it looks great. Big Arvada is going to be bigger than Denver Park as well, is what it looks like, and will probably take some of the emphasis off other parks. I only say this because the amount of traffic at a park makes or breaks your experience. Less traffic, more skate time, better experience. Living around the Denver City Park is probably the best place to live because it is like Midtown Memphis, more so than not, but the draw back is location, add 25 minutes or more to a lot of driving time to parks. The traffic in Denver is the killer about the city, you can't get around it so deal with it. And don't get fooled that every one in Denver is happy to see you, because there are kooks every where.

When am I going to move to Colorado?? Not yet, gotta get totally sick of skating in the Mid-South first.
late.