Well, after a 17 hour drive some U Haul confusion and a bunch of Red Bulls later may new family and I arrived safely in NYC. A bunch of my friends met me at my house to help and I promised them I would never call on their services again. It was the hottest day in the world but we got all of the stuff moved in...

I have been sick for several weeks so I have not been able to skate too often. I feel like I am loosing my stoke a little bit. Work is grinding my down, my progress has pretty much halted and another year clicked over with my birthday celebration on the 11th. I am anxious to get my fiance and her daughter here so I can get on with life! I am flying down to Atlanta and driving the Uhaul back to NYC on the 25th.

Today I am trying to put that all aside. John from the BDS message board organized the second East Coast BDS Jam for today at the Skatepark in Sayreville, NJ.

I caught a ride with one of the list members named Tony who is an older skater like myself. We blabbed like two old women all of the way there and it is amazing how much we have in common. Music, likes and dislikes, skateboarding - it continues to amaze me the common thread that skaters seem to share.

Arriving at the park it was a Chamber of Commerce type day. Not too hot and the sun shining, and then being obscured by clouds as if to give hot skater's a break from the heat. There were a lot of skater's I met at the last Jam (June 2004) as well as some guys I have chatted with online.

It was an OK time with the exception of some of the younger guys and bewildered locals snaking people. But the conversation was good and there were many laughs.

I thought back to the jam last year and felt slightly melancholy. I seem to have lost some of my stoke for the film that I had when I first started. Life slowly beats us around at times as our dreams and goals fall short of our expectations and the steam that we had for projects seems evaporate into the ether.

I had a couple of decent runs with a few scrape grinds but between each run was a long wait. After too long Tony and I headed back to NYC stopping for pizza. We talked even more about life, skating, and music and vowed we would skate together soon...

Carving Sayreville at the East Coast BDS Jam II - photo by Mellow Cat...

I turned 40 today and my dear friend Mary through me a party at one of our favorite bars - Tom and Jerry's. Mary and her fiance Mark made me a cake with my name in a Dogtown cross and even stuck little plastic skateboards on it! It was a great time and I am lucky to have such cool friends after all of these long years...