Captain Dan

We get artsy sometimes. We suck at it, actually. We should stick to gritty, out of focus, eye-wrenching photos. That's what we do best. But every now and then, we got behind a fence or something and get all artsy on you. Anyway, I realized we hadn't had any Dan sightings on the blog for a couple weeks, and I felt a few recent Dan shots would be appropriate. So I think Dan would be a pretty awesome candidate for a pirate, if he did ever so choose to follow that route. I mean, whatever Dan, we support you in whatever you want to do. Pirate or no pirate. But I opt for the pirate version of Dan. So Dan's been underground for quite some time now, but he's starting to rear his beautiful little head again. Word on the street is that Dan is even going over to France in hopes of pursuing his career as a mime. He'd be the perfect mime because he would not crack under that white paint and striped shirt. So we'll for sure meet up with him when he's over there and get some good mime footage of him, scaring kids and what not. So keep your eyes out for future Dan sightings... On a completely different note, Matt's wife just beat me up and now my neck is burning. She's like a ball of muscle with these spring-loaded lightning fast limbs that attack without warning or provocation. Now  that she's been doing P90X, she's twice as deadly as before. Speaking of P90X, I did yogaX the other day. My balance is better and my Ohms getting louder...

Bolts of Thunder vs Alien

Drum roll please.... This is the newest line of Bolts of Thunder clothing!!!! Yes people, that's right, this is alien ripping out of your chest as you wear a custom made Bolts of Thunder t-shirt. The blood on the shirt is my own, A+ type blood, in case you have allergies to blood or something. I fainted twice while making this shirt... The next picture is a design that I put onto a white shirt of the scooter kid jumper over Matt. I always wondered what Matt would look like if he grew his hair out, so I drew a picture of it to see. I rather like it. Matt, you should definitely grow your hair out. I put this picture up a while back when I announced that Bolts of Thunder is ready to get wild and go too far. These new shirts are a small taste of how far we're taking things over here. So if you ain't on board, get off now because this train's bout to speed up! No, there is no train, I lied. Bolts of Thunder owns no train... But it does own a couple shirts. Now I'm serious, if you want a Bolts of Thunder shirt, tell me, and I will make you one. I even have a couple more blank shirts that I'm willing to give to people that want one. I've since washed the shirts after last wearing them. This is starting what will become a large line of Bolts of Thunder clothing. It's like, seriously, the coolest thing to do in the fashion industry these days, wear Bolts of Thunder clothing and drink strawberry mocha frappas.

Birds, Bees, and Babies

Nick cleaned up pretty good after the baby was born, you'd never know how much he had to go through. You've got to give it to Kim, being by his bedside, holding his hand, encouraging him and all during the entire birth. Pretty dedicated wife... Before Nick went in, I told him to stay strong, giving birth to a baby can be real tough on a man... So here they are, the Edwards family in all their glory! We're happy for you guys, and we're looking at Bolts of Thunder clothing for babies, I think it's a gold mine waiting to be discovered... My blood pressure's low, but I'm too lazy to get any food right now. I'd rather have a head ache and sit down than stand up and eat food... Back to Nick and Kim. Good luck with everything guys, have fun!

Fidlers on the roof

We had to talk Nick out of doing a gymnastics horse routine on the top of the roof in fear that he might not live to see his unborn child... That's right people, Nick Edwards is a dady!!!! He had a little baby girl yesterday. I hear birth is a traumatic experience for a man... His wife Kim was really supportive and held Nick's hand during the entire birth... The baby's name is Collette, and she weighs in at 7 pounds 2 ounces. This is the first Bolts of Thunder birth we've had, so this is big news. Actually, Weston had a kid last September. So babies are springing up all over the place, pretty crazy... Congratulations Nick and Kim!!!!!

Great and Terrible Day of Bolts of Thunder

So I've been wanting to tell this story for a long time. Seeing as how I'm sitting at a computer right now and I don't have teachers on my back demanding that I do work, I'll take the time to tell it. For it is a story that one must take time in order to tell correctly. It's a story the warms the spirits, stirs the soul, and chills the bones right to the marrow, so grab a box of cleanex and a blanket... It is the story of the premier of Bolts of Thunder. Like I've said in other posts, I was super stressed in making our first video. We all were. Dave lost astronomical amounts of sleep stressing over tricks that he wanted to get for his part. He already has insomnia, so the stress just triggered it. So the month leading up to the end of the video was a tense one, and emotions were running high between all of us. Dave had a couple tricks he had left to get, one of them being a 50-50 down this double set rail. You all know the one I'm talking about. It's the one that got Bolts of Thunder onto the Transworld website. Well, if you don't know what I'm talking about, I attached the video just above, so you can watch it. So we went to the rail a week before the video premier. The day before, Dave bruised both of his heels doing an ollie down that huge gap that's at the end of his part. It was crazy. But he wasn't deterred, he really wanted to grind the rail. So with bruised heels, Dave went for the rail. He started grinding it, but then a cop pulled up... Long story short, we all booked it and Dave got pinched... Not that we abandoned our friend, we all could have gotten away, but Dave wanted to try the rail one more time, right in front of the cop. So the cop didn't care that Dave was skating the rail, but when he ran Dave's ID, it showed that Dave had a warrant out for him for not taking care of a fix it ticket that he had taken care of. So the cops had to arrest Dave right there. Matt and I came out of hiding and were able to talk to the cops to see where to pick up Dave and pay bail. The cops were surprisingly super nice to Dave. They should have put him in jail for the entire weekend because the courthouse was closed already. But the cop called a woman he knew that worked at the courthouse to see if she could come there to accept the bail money. She did it, and we drove out to Orem to get Dave out of jail. As a having gotten out of jail celebration, we all went out to Village Inn after that... So I thought, "well at least you tried it Dave..." But that wasn't good enough for Dave. He wanted to land it. Problem was Dave and Lauren were leaving for California Monday morning for the week and wouldn't be back until late Friday night, and the premier was Saturday. That meant we would have to go to the rail Saturday before the premier and get the trick.... That's what happened. So the day of the premier, we started getting everything ready. Nick got his hands on a projector, we got the house ready and all that, then Dave called saying he was back in town and ready to skate the rail. We called up Weston and met up at my house to warm up. Dave could barely even ollie because his heels were still bruised, but he said, "screw it, I'm as warmed up as I'll get, let's just do it." So off we were to the rail. Nick staked out on the road as a watch out. We weren't getting pinched this time... Then Dave just started going for it. He's nuts. He grinded the rail through the kink, but kept losing his balance. I thought he'd get it. Then tragedy struck and he slammed on the rail. It's the first wreck on the video. I thought he had like broken his back or something, it was scary. He kind of squirmed on the grind then barely got out, "water..." so I ran and got a thing of water that we had on hand. We all thought for sure it was over there. Who would try the rail again after all that? Dave would. And he did. Yeah, he kept going for it. He only sat for like a minute, then he just started trying it again. But having been weakened by the first slam, he fell on the rail again and landed on his back in the shrubs. He knocked the wind out of himself pretty bad and couldn't breathe. He thought he might have broken a couple ribs or something. We helped him for a while, but he was in so much pain. I said we'd take him home and get him Advil or something for the pain. But Nick happened to have Lauratab (I don't know how to spell it. some kind of pain killer) on him because he had it for his broken wrist . Dave took one of the pills, then he told us, "man, I usually act really weird when I'm on this stuff, I hope it doesn't affect me too bad." (Just a side note, Bolts of Thunder does not promote the illegal use of prescription drugs).  At that point, we just didn't want him to be suffering. So we got back to my place and finished setting up everything for the premier and started barbecuing all the food. Dave was in pain, but he was talking normal with all of us. I went out of the room, then I came back and said, "I'm going to iron the sheet for the projector." Dave just stared at me like he was looking right through me, then he said, "yes, what a grand idea...." It hit him in a split second, all of a sudden he was out of it. It was almost funny except I wanted him to be coherent for when we premiered the video, and it started in like an hour. Then Dave was like, "I should call my wife and tell her what happened..." He was saying a bunch of other weird stuff, so we thought it would be best if I called and broke the news to her instead of Dave doing it. So I found his phone in his car and called his wife and told her that Dave had slammed and was acting funny. When I came back into the room, Dave kept asking me, "did you make her cry?" She came over and picked up Dave and took him home while we prepared for the premier. It was so funny to see a veteran such as Lauren tell Dave to behave. He wouldn't listen to anything we were saying, but then when Lauren was there, she pulled out an imaginary magical wand and would use it to freeze Dave and tell him what to do. And he obeyed it. Like he was wandering off in front of my house, so she froze him on my stairs. He didn't budge until she came back and unfroze him. It was pretty crazy. So with Dave in the custody of his wife, we took care of all the preparations, and everyone started showing up. It was pretty awesome, everyone from the video was there (Nick, Matt, Dan, Dave, and me, and Nick, Matt, and Dave's spouses), and Weston and his family, Sam, my mom, Rachel, and some other friends all showed up to support Bolts of Thunder's big premier. Dave showed up with Lauren about 10 minutes before the video started and was creeping everyone out with his wild-eyed staring and stories of catching jelly fish at the beach. So all the pictures you see of Dave, he looks kind of out of it. It made it fun though, and he remembers the video and experience, so I'm happy about that. It seemed like everyone had fun, so I was really happy. And it was a truly proud moment in our lives, those of us in the video. Who would have ever thought that all of us old, misfit skater dudes would have put together a video? I'll publicly say this, I'm very proud of Nick, Dan, Dave, and Matt because they put themselves out on the line to make this video. With all the madness and mayhem that led up to the premier, it turned out to be a super fun experience, and it all payed off in the end. The food was good, and we all got to chill, so it was fun. The first video was like a pilot video for Bolts of Thunder, and it's started what I hope will be a lot more videos, pictures, shirts, blog posts, and whatever other random crap we can think of. Bolts of Thunder Gone Wild is scheduled to come out August this year, and I'm already telling you that it's going to be another epic experience. We're working hard on it, and we have a little better handle on how to make videos, so things will hopefully go smoother this time 'round. When the time gets closer, we'll announce the definite premier date for the video, and we would like to have all of you Thunder Bolts out there in attendance. And, for any of you who think Dave is done grinding kinked rails, you've got another thing coming. Just a couple days after the video, he told us, "when I come back next summer, I'm grinding that stupid rail." I guess you'll have to wait until the video comes out to see what goes down...

Dave, come home

This post comes as some relief to me and others down here at Bolts of Thunder. So it has recently been brought to my attention that David Law (as seen on the right in these pictures) responds to either Dave or David when you talk to him. BUT, he prefers to see his name written as David. So next time you say his name, say whatever you want. But if you write it as 'Dave', be ready for a sharpened popsicle stick to the kidney. Now the reason this comes as a relief to me and some of us here is that this puts to end a long standing feud between David Law and Dave McDonald. Seems that there wasn't enough room on this team for two Daves, and the two violently battled it out for control and monopoly over the one true name. Dave McDonald was in such an uproar about it that he packed his bags and went to France, just so he could cool off a little bit. Well now that we will no longer have 2 Daves on the team, but rather a Dave and a David, I think some kind of cease fire will be arranged. Dave, come back home to us, come back home to your team that so desperately needs you... Well, I guess we'll see you soon in Paris anyway, then we can talk peace deals then. And for those of you who are curious, David Law's part is coming along quite well. Just like all of the Bolts of Thunder team riders' style speaks out to a different genre of people, David's skating speaks out to the smooth, stylish, switch skating population out there. Sam (middle) speaks out to the slappy grinders of the world, and Matt (left) speaks out to all terrain riding shredders. Ok, I'm way off topic now. Dave, see you in Paris.

Quality? Yes

Three posts in one day. Is this possible? Tis. I just thought I'd put up good quality pictures on our blog for once. Weston took these pictures of me grinding this barrier the other day on my camera. He actually knows how cameras work and how to make pictures look good. That's what he did on these pictures... So I've always seen this barrier and wanted to grind it, but I never got around to it. Then last year I saw Dave fall and hit his head on it which really deterred me from skating it. So we were there the other day and I grinded it. End of story. But These pictures are good quality, so I want the public to see that when Bolts of Thunder is pushed into a corner, like a trapped animal, it will lash out in animal, high quality instincts. So get of our back general public. More to come...

Photos: Weston Colton

As for me and my house

So Bolts of Thunder has been housing this Bosnian Muslim war refugee the past week or so. And she'll be around for at least another week. She's actually our link to Collin Greenwood, she sent him clips of Bolts of Thunder. Yeah, Bolts of Thunder is into charitable work like housing refugees and stuff. Looks good on our resume. And I didn't know this, but Sam has a mean crooked grind. I hate crooked grinds. I've been at odds with that trick since day 1, and the war is still raging. Not that I hate it when others do the trick, I think it's just fine when they do. But I, personally, do not crooked grind. As for me and my house, we choose not to crooked grind.

Stump this!

Since school got out, I can't stand to stare at computer screens any more. Even now, it's painful writing this post, but I'm sucking it up to bring you today's post. Just so you know, Bolts of Thunder is bumpin and grindin harder and harder each day, pelvic thrusting all up in society's face. Matt and Weston help you escape from reality by skating tree stumps that were never meant to be skated. And Weston, always ready to serve the community, bends back impaling pikes so that thieves and skaters can safely jump on the tree stump. Weston can always find something rad to skate on, even when it's a run down tree stump... So on a completely different note, we're looking at buying a bunch of blank shirts and making Bolts of Thunder clothing. You already know about that one shirt I made, but we're going to make a bunch more. So any Bolts of Thunder clothing you want, you let us know. Get the word out there... We're also getting ready to start up our 'Anus' and 'Lard' sweat pant clothing company. It's kind of like those sweatpants you see girls wearing that say 'Pink' across the butt. We're going to overtake pink and sell sweatpants that say 'Anus' in pink writing on the butt. It's going to be a new clothing empire, and we want all of you to be a part of it. Anyway, give us your clothing and we will make it cool.

SamDaq

For all of you economically conscious viewers out there, this post will inform you of import Bolts of Thunder stock info. Sam Milianta's stock pretty much continues to dominate the market, getting buyers all the way in Japan and China. In these hard economic times, it's good to know there's something and someone reliable and constant out there you can always count on. Sam has been dominating the skate scene since 1992, and he's not showing any signs of slowing down. On his off time, he eve renders service, showing Matt what it's like to have a glass eye. Life as an artist, you have to see things through a glass eye... Expect to see more of Sam out there on the open market and be ready to buy his stock when you get a chance, it's still on its way up.

Europe!

I just survived my last test. Winter semester at school is like sitting in this little rubber raft in the middle of the ocean, then these huge waves start slamming on you trying to knock you over. If you don't have a sea stomach, those waves will knock you right down and grind you into fairy powder. But if you're ready for it... I don't know where I'm going with this analogy. It sucks really bad, I know. But I'm too far into this post to go back now. Anyway, I'm just glad that school's over for now. And now that school's over, I'm getting ready for our trip to Europe!!!! I'm putting these pictures on the blog to remind us all what awaits us in Europe: Dave and awesome scenery. Also rad skate spots and just good times in general. This is yet another effort to internationalize Bolts of Thunder, as we have been quite successful so far. Anyway, I just wanted to say that school is out...

Photos: Lauren Cooper

Today's inspirational quote

Nick's standing on that wall wondering what we're all doing here. I'll tell you what we're doing here: receiving inspiration for the day. Our last post, Matt's graduation pictures, should provide you with innumerable amounts of inspiration, you shouldn't be wanting any more. But to make sure you leave with your cup overflowing, here's an inspirational quote for the day:

"Thought without action is just a dream;
Bolts of Thunder is the stuff dreams are made of."

Yeah, try to wrap your mind around that one.

Post-Apocalyptic Graduation

Bolts of Thunder is proud and pleased to announce that two of its members, Matt and Nick, are graduating from college this semester!!!!!! Matt wanted to document this epic event, so we went out last week and shot some graduation pictures of him in his gear. You know those cheesy graduation pictures you see of your roommate's cousin on the fridge? Well there's no way Bolts of Thunder would reproduce that. So we asked ourselves, "What will graduation pictures look after the Apocalypse?" With  BB gun and hammer in hand, Matt and I headed out to see just exactly what post-apocalyptic graduation announcements will look like. I rather like them. Kind of that rugged look that Western society is losing these days. You know, when grown men used to fight grown men in the parking lot of 7/11 to defend their woman's honor. Western society is losing that ruggedness and turning into a bunch of shaved-chest Jersey Shore pansies. Matt's bringing rugged back. He's bringing crazy back. He's bringing creepy back. And let's not forget sexy, he's bringing that back too. I wonder if Matt's school would keep his diploma if they saw these pictures because they don't want to release this kind of raw aggression into society. Is society ready to handle Matt with his hammer and BB gun? Not likely. But we're releasing Matt on you all, hammer, BB gun, and degree in hand. We don't have any pictures of Nick in his cap and gown to prove to you that he graduated. I guess it still all depends on him passing his American Heritage class. But Nick, the world wants to see you in cap and gown. Show yourself!

Bolts of Thunder of America

This post is big news for all of us. Bolts of Thunder has successfully infiltrated the Boy Scouts of America. Not just the fact that several of us have Eagle Scouts, that's not what we mean. What we mean is that Bolts of Thunder is the new face of Boy Scouts of America. So we were recruited to help with this promotional movie for the Scouts, and we did it yesterday. So Nick was there to supervise and make sure everything met BOT standards. They did. Dan busted a few twisted maneuvers on the corner coping grind spot, and I assisted in action sequence riding shots. Then things turned for the worse and Dan fell on his head. Not wanting blood on their hands, Matt and two of the movie making kids discussed possible ways to dispose of the body. I documented it all with video and photo so I can blackmail the scouts if they ever come after me. So stay off my back! Turns out that Dan's a better actor when his shirt is off, but the scout silver screen couldn't handle all his muscles. They made him put the shirt back on. Speaking of shirts, I wore my Bolts of Thunder shirt in the movie. That shirt had 7 of our faces on it, so most of the Bolts of Thunder team made it into the movie! Ok, I'm getting distracted by Conquest of the Planet of the Apes on TV, I'd better focus my attention on that for now...

This ends here

This post has a lot of pictures. "Less talk, more shooting" is becoming a new motto at Bolts of Thunder. We don't even ask questions, we just shoot and talk. We assume a lot of things when we don't ask questions... But our new motto is not what I'm here to tell you today. I'm here to tell you that Bolts of Thunder has never been harder at work than we are now to bring you what it is that we bring you. You're not even sure what it is that we bring you, but we're bringing it full force. Actually, I take back my earlier statement. This is not the hardest we've ever worked to make a skate video. Last summer was insane, I was so stressed. And for no reason, but I was super stressed trying to film and make our video. The way I gauge my stress levels is I count the zits per square inch on my face and the number of hairs on my pillow when I wake  up in the morning. Last summer I was at an average of 3 zits per square inch and roughly 2 pounds of hair mass fell off on my pillow at night. That's like a 9.4 on the stressed scale. Anyway, back to the issue at hand, we went skating today. It's in the 70's here in Provo, just perfect skating weather. After not seeing the sun all winter, my skin is fried and red. So we met up with Dave Law and Sam Milianta today and got some good footage. I'm happy to say that they're both filming for their Bolts of Thunder Gone Wild parts. And, if you take a closer look, you will see that I am sporting a pair of original red Andrew Reynolds shoes, spray painted black. This is good news for all of us because they protect my feet and encourage me to jump off of bigger stuff. The sun has fried my brain and I don't know what else to say. This ends here... PS Matt, thanks for adding color to the pictures with your pants, greatly appreciated. And thanks for filming too...