Weston and Sam

A cool trick and 3 bad pictures of it. But you get the idea: Weston crooked grinding 

between a rail and a hard spot.

Props to Sam's pops

Nick jealously lurks in the background as the Master Slapper himself gives us the

abridged 101 of nosesliding.

Twirlybird twist grind shuv slap to 5-0, all up in your face

Today's post is a celebration of life, and more especially of youth. Weston and Sam lead the way in Bolts of Thunder as its oldest members, Weston weighing in at 31 (I think), and Sam weighing in at 34. Actually, I think Drew Danburry is also 34. Is he? Could be?... Anyway, Weston and Sam have been skating longer than Wizard's been alive, and they're still going strong. Seriously, they're showing no sign of slowing down. David Law said it best in his interview: Sam's skating better now than he ever has. I've known Sam a long time. I actually even just saw a video of us skating together 10 years ago, Sam was wearing all black, black wrist bands, and red Reynolds shoes. In the couple months that we filmed his part, I saw Sam do tricks that I've never seen him do in the 10 years + that we've known each other. He did tricks that he's never done before, like the fakie shuvit switch 50-50. That was first try and on a fool's prayer, but he did it. As for Weston, I've filmed with him quite a bit in the past, and filming with him again was like good old times. It was the same for Weston, he did tricks for this part that he's wanted to do, and finally did them. Like kickflipping over a Harley. That's everyone's dream, but Weston's the only person I know that's done it.

So Weston and Sam's part... First off, we didn't know what song to use until a week before the premier. We had a song, Harry Nilson, but it just wasn't working right. We wanted a song that Weston and Sam would really like, we didn't want to just choose a random song for them. We told Weston, and he said he'd think about it. A couple days later, he emailed me a couple songs, and we used one of them. By this point in the editing, video-making process, I had hit this mental block wall. I couldn't get myself to edit, draw, or do anything anymore. I was seriously going to have some kind of a melt down if I did. Most of the video editing was me and Matt together, or I'd work on stuff in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. But Matt ended up editing most of this part. I had a bunch of school and other crap to take care of, so I just left Matt at my house, and he edited for like 10 hours this day, it was crazy. We had ourselves an editing marathon that week to get it all done, and we put in a lot of time every day working on the video. So Matt got their part pretty much done last minute, then I helped tidy up a few little things. I was really happy when to see the finished part because it was a lot better than the other one we had edited. I don't know why, we just couldn't edit the part unless we knew it was what they wanted.

Skating with Sam is always super fun. He always helps you realize why you skate in the first place, because it's fun. And that's how filming was too. Every time we'd skate with him, he'd end up chewing up some curb to bits, slappy grinding it from every angle possible, and we'd just have to film him. It was rad for him because he had never filmed any tricks or for a part before. Sam got really pumped on filming, and he'd call me to see what days I could film and stuff. So that was way fun. My favorite tricks of his we filmed on this red curb up in salt lake. We filmed like 10 tricks that day, and a good amount are in his part. The other tricks are in his bonus section on the DVD. But he did all these crazy whirlybird grind spins, stuff none of us could do, throwing shuvits in and out at will. My role was to just film him every time he moved on his skateboard, and we ended up getting some rad footage. He even did a kickflip in a line, which I had never even seen him try to kickflip before then. That was a fun day because it reminded me of the first couple times I ever filmed any tricks. We'd try to film as many tricks as we could, whatever we could do, at the same spot. And we'd push ourselves a lot to do new stuff. That's how it was filming with Sam, and it was way fun.

Filming Weston is always a pleasure. Weston is one of the most solid skaters I've ever seen. He is super consistent, and every trick he does looks solid. He doesn't tick tack around when he lands tricks, it's just solid. He has certain tricks that he's been doing for years, and they just keep looking better. Like his lipslide pop outs and smiths on ledges. Always a treat. Anyway, filming with Weston was way fun because every time we'd go skating, he'd get like 5 really good tricks. We only got to skate with him maybe 10 times while filming for his part, and he got a good 5 minutes of footage. He has pretty much a second part in the bonus features of the video. He's super busy with work, traveling all over the world, and he has a wife and two kids, so he's a busy person. So every chance we got to skate, he made full use of it to film for his part. I've made a part with Weston before, and I've seen some old parts of him, but this is my favorite part of him I've seen. I think taking the context of how he had to film it, how long I've known him, and all this stuff, I really appreciate his part.

For both Weston and Sam, it's an honor having them in the video. They're both super good friends, cool guys, and they're fun to skate with. This part is a milestone in both of their skating career, but I like to think it's only the beginning of what we're going to see from them. We're all really busy, so it's hard to all get out and skate, but I don't doubt that we'll get out and skate soon and start working on whatever it is we're going to do next. Alright people, give a round of applause to Weston and Sam. They've been out skating for a long time, and they both deserve credit where credit's due. Good job on your part Weston and Sam!