So, this weekend I went to Chicago for a few minutes, which will put an end to a month straight of weekends I was out of town - without Kari, haha. Rochester, Minneapolis, Orlando, and Chicago. Traveling without Kari was a little weird, a little lame, but also nice. We both enjoy time with each other as much as we enjoy time without each other. However, 4 weeks in a row may be a little excessive... So this weekend, I am in Des Moines! Where Kari, her fam, and I will eat sushi, watch movies, drink homebrew, and love life.

And now for a recap of Chicago.

I drove straight there - no need to drop off Ninja, no tolls, etc. It ruled so much, and seemed like a super short drive - especially after that Orlando trip. And now I'm to …

Welp, Rochester was pretty rad. We tried to hit all the hot spots in 1 night, which made things quite insane. It ruled though because everything was pretty much within walking distance.

So we started the night off by eating at Newt's. I had heard that Newt's has the best burgers in town. So we went in expecting to order their burger - a normal, but really good burger. We didn't realize that they had a several awesome burgers with special recipes. I had this burger with Jalapenos and garlic ground into the meat prior to cooking. Zach had a Cheyenne bleu cheese burger, and Nathan had a burger with eggs and bacon on it. Seriously, best burgers in town... or maybe even the country!!! (chalk another one up for Minnesota, Josh).

My shelves are (mostly) done (again)!!! Haha.

So yeah... Thursday, Rico and I finished spraying the shelves in my office - well, Rico did anyway. I just built the big ol tent and let the pro finish the work. Then I took half of Friday off to finsh sanding, assembling, and stocking them. I'm super happy with how they turned out. ...Now, I just need to make doors for the cabinets. Here are pics of all the construction so far.

Later Friday, Zach and I installed a new intake in his focus then Soaped a bit with Nathan. At Midnight, Nathan and I headed downtown to meet the Heelys guys and go out for a couple drinks, which ended up being a mini-party at my house, playing ping pong and soaping til 4:30am.

Saturday was also really …

What is it about Memorial Day that is always insane? Last year it was Mt Vernon and Chicago, this year it is Des Moines, Dubuque, and Iowa City.

Thursday before Memorial Day, Rico talked me into hanging out with him and the British kids that are staying at his house right now. It was a really good time, we all hung out, then went out. They are cool guys. They thought Royal Mile (our 'london pub') was hilarious.

Friday, Zach and I ditched town for a Heelys demo in Dubuque. We got into town and our hotel dude was a skater like us - so he ended up totally hooking us up - better room, cheaper, and free drinks, ha. We met Zach's cousin BJ and my friend Josh at some fest downtown. It was a fun time, then we went to all kinds of …

Sorry Cedric, but I think Chicago was much better than your party, haha. No, the visit was nice as always. I'm becoming quite comfortable with my visits to Harper and the city. It's almost routine - I love it.

So yeah, Friday I drove to Chicago, got there around 10, we hung out a bit then went to dinner @ Ziggy's. After that we went to Crobar, met up with Tag @ Hard Rock hotel, closed out Redno5, then bed at 4:30. It was a pretty laid back night actually.

Later that morning I woke up for a Heely Demo at Oakbrook mall. It was definitely a good one. The guys were cool, the Nordstrom staff was cool, and we sold 5 pairs of Heelys or so. Afterwards Harper and I played computer while watching Mischeif 3000. I totally want to do a …

Man, this was a long day. Kari and I got into Dallas at 11, then met Maddie for lunch. We checked out BJs brewery then toured the HSL offices. It was pretty awesome. I was like a kid in a candy store. I got to see a couple prototypes for new shoes. One is really dope. The other is in the super early stages, so it was pretty funny. I can't really say anything about it... But if it gets invented I will laugh. Roger (the inventor of this prototype - and Heelys) rules. He's in the guinness book for being the youngest person to rollerskate, haha. Like 8 months old or something.

Anyway, there are huge heelys and soap posters everywhere, plus the entire place has hard floors so people can heel around. It was nice to finally meet …

What a blah weekend. It had the potential to be cool, but turned out pretty weak. Friday I hung out all night, cleaned a bit, watched a movie, etc. Then Saturday I woke up and went to the Jordan Creek shopping center. It was the grand opening of the Apple store so I got a totally rad complementary Apple shirt... I heard that previous grand opening shirts were being sold for up to $200 on ebay when other apple stores opened - so I had to get one. When I opened it I found that it said "Jordan Creek" with an apple logo, which is not cool. I imagine one that said "Chicago" with an apple logo would be pretty dope, but who knows what Jordan Creek is? Oh well - we have an Apple store now.

After visiting the Apple store, I had a …

So this weekend I was scheduled to do a Heelys demo in Chicago. Kari was already going to Barrington (a suburb) to visit friends and see a Jimmy Buffet concert (dork, haha). So I rode along with her and cassie and got dropped off at a train station and played with my camera while I waited. Harper and I then went to Crobar at 2am with Jordan and Monica. It was nice to see Claudia and Red Hair Matt again too. They had some 70s disco theme going on or something - it was funny. We got back and went to bed at 5 - I love Crobar.

Saturday, I woke up early for a Heelys demo at Nordstroms In Woodfield mall. The guys I went with were really cool and the demo went awesome. After that, Harper and I met at crobar to catch our escalade limo …

So, I just got back from Saint Louis with Aaron, Zach, and Jordan... It was so much fun.

Friday, I got on the tiny plane for my hour long flight to STL, haha. The plane was small enough to where we had to board from the tarmac, hehe. We stayed in Chesterfield, which is a lame lame town. There is nothing to do at night... at all. We ended up walking around the town, swimming, and by the end of the night we were beating the crap out of each other. We got into some pretty good punching, slapping, and kicking games. We all had huge bruises on our arms, welts on our backs, sore stomachs, and sore nutbags. I even got jacked in the face by Jordan, haha.

Saturday we showed up to the demo which was sooo much fun. Xtreme Nation is …

This weekend I went to Mount Vernon for Kari's friend's (Morgan) wedding. Kari made me go to the rehearsal which was sooooo lame. I left halfway through and went to the mall. Then on saturday we went to the wedding. Let me just say that I am definitely not ready to get married. Seriously, I can't believe how the people act at them. I just do not act the way that you're supposed to at a wedding. I don't let ladies go first, I don't grab a lady's hand when she's about to sit down or go up a step or something. I don't hold hands, and I especially don't look a girl in the eyes for 10 straight minutes while holding hands. If I ever get married, I'm gonna have like 50 groomsmen so that I can just hang out with them up front and not …

This weekend Nathan and I went to Minneapolis for a couple Heely demos. For the most part it was pretty fun, but it was also sort of annoying. The roads around the Twin Cities suck... bad. Seriously, 35w does not mean 35 west, wtf. And it sucks even more that the people living there can't give you good directions to anything.

Friday night we decided to go to Mystic Lake (one of the biggest casinos in the midwest). The guy at the front desk of our hotel gave us directions that got us completely lost. It took us over an hour to get somewhere that was 15 minutes away... It made us both annoyed, frustrated, and pissed off. Once we got there we stayed for about 30 minutes... I've never really gone to a casino other than to eat... …

Nordstrom department stores started selling heely's which is a big deal because that's a huge account for us to get. So HSL asked if I would be willing to go to Chicago to do a couple Demos at the stores up there. I was orginally supposed to meet Zach and Aaron there to do demos, but they couldn't make it. So instead, Kari went with me, and I did the demos by myself.

Anyway, Chicago was really fun again. Friday night, Kari and I ate at Rock Bottom. It was fun to see the differences between the restaurants in Des Moines and Chicago. The menus were pretty much the same, the beers were pretty much the same but had different names, however everything was priced differently. For Kari and I to each have 1 mug it was $11, where here it …

So far, so good anyway... I went to check my mail and I had 2 package slips. So I went to the campus mail center and got my 2 packages. The first was from a contest that I surprisingly won at monsterskate.com, which included a new set of grindking trucks (which normally cost $50), Rims bearing gaurds, Rocketbolts hardware, a shirt, and some stickers! Me next package was from a company called Heelys. In that package was a pair of grey/blue Grails, which is their newest shoe on the market. In fact it isn't even in most stores yet.

The grails are a mix between a Soap grind shoe, and a standard Heelys shoe. They're incredibly cool looking and I can't wait to try them out tonight. A great new product by Heelys to save the grindshoe …