S outhwestern US
Sidewalk Tour, Skate Travel Journals
February 2010
to Surface Motion Skate Tour
Sidewalk Tour Feb-Mar 2010
Southwest & Plains
February 2010
Feb 17
Trying to Leave: Santa Crz CA
Feb 18
Poor Sdwks, Nc Views: Phnx AZ
Feb 19 3:30 AM
Hullucntry Entry: Amrllo TX
Feb 19 10 AM
Alongside Textures: AZ, NM
Feb 20 10 AM
Sidwalk Pics on 66: Tulsa OK
Feb 20 1 PM
Red Barrel Downtn: Tulsa OK
Feb 21
Rainy Sidewalk Day: Tulsa OK
South
February 22-25 2010
Feb 22
Skipping to Memphis: Memphs TN
Feb 23 1 AM
Waiting for Morning: Memphs TN
Feb 23 2 PM
Vance St Revisited: Memphs TN
Feb 24 2 PM
Finding the Funeral Hm: Memphs TN
Feb 24 6 PM
Encounters on Beale: Memphs TN
Feb 25 8 AM
Leaving Memphis: Memphs TN
Feb 25 12:30 PM
Familiar Aves in Nashville: Nshvill TN
Feb 26 10 AM
Germantn, Farmers Mkt: Nshvill TN
Feb 26 6 PM
Decoding at Rippy's: Nshvill TN
Feb 27 10:30 AM
Last Sidewalk Mileage: Nshvill TN
Feb 27 3 PM
Through Otherville: Xville TN
Feb 28
Looking like the east: Roanoke VA
East to West
March 12-16 2010
Mar 12
Leaving NY: New York NY
Mar 13 6:30 AM
Akron Revisited: Akron OH
Mar 13 9:30 AM
Odd Shapes Nr Toledo: Sandusky OH
Mar 14
Sets and Other Hats: Detroit MI
Mar 15
Woodward Ave tour: Detroit MI
Detroit to West
March 17-20 2010
Mar 17
Leaving Detroit: Detrt MI
Mar 18 6 AM
Skate revisit St. Louis: St L MO
Mar 18 1 PM
Brief revisit Kansas City: KC MO
Mar 18 4 PM
Kansas still: Salina KS
Mar 19 12 AM
Unreachable Salt Lake: Denver CO
Mar 19 8 AM
Force Majeure: Denver CO
Mar 19 2 PM
Red dirt under white: Pueblo CO
Mar 20 8 AM
Calif via south rte: Indio CA
Mar 20 9:30 AM
Homeward hassle: San Bernadino CA
Mar 20 3:30 PM
New color scheme: Coalinga CA
Sidewalk Tour 2009
Tour Inventory 2009
Backpacks
Clothes
Gear
Boards
Phone/PDA
Mobile blogging
Northwest: June 2009
South: Mar-Apr 2009
East: March 2009
Bridge Skate Training
Oct 08-Mar 09
February 17 - 21, 2010: Travel in Southwestern and Southern Plains, US
Central and southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - Trying to Leave Santa Cruz
Fox Theater, Salinas, CA
Wedding and flower shop adjacent to the Fox Theater
2.17 Santa Cruz, CA. First attempt to leave Santa Cruz failed. It has something to do with the county being underfunded; bus station hours are very limited. I went to the station at midnight, and it was closed. Should have figured and bought ticket in advance.
12 Noon. Near failed second attempt to leave. Usually on bus trips you get to the station an hour early, buy a ticket, and wait around. Here, you get there an hour early, the station is closed, and maybe someone shows up to sell you a ticket. I didn't see how it would be possible to get shut out of the station in broad daylight but in Santa Cruz you're always finding new ways to underachieve.
It looked bad, at 12:30 in front of the station waiting for the clerk to return from lunch, or siesta. A nervous lady said she rarely took the bus and couldn't believe the inefficiency. I could believe it all right. She really was a newcomer to bus travel, and this closed down station was the locale of her debutante ball. I had to admit this was a new wrinkle in the bus goofup roster.
The true underachieving Santa Cruz bus clerk would have opened up after the bus arrival but the guy showed up, a bit red nosed after lunch. I felt bad purchasing a complicated ticket up till five minutes before departure. But it got done and everyone had their ticket and got on.
In Castroville looked for the big artichoke but missed it, if it's still there.
In Salinas for twenty five minutes, jumped on the skateboard and went around the block, a nice chance to get a little exercise, see the downtown area, and to shoot ten photos or so. This is the luxury of skateboard sidewalk tour, I can move very fast and far during a rest stop. Sights that I got on film (digital film) included Fox art deco theater, a little wedding and flower shop underneath, and an amusing juxtaposition of Salinas Donuts under the bus sign.
Combo bus station and donut shop, Salinas CA
5 PM Paso Robles, CA. Amazing these smoker/passenger types that have to get off at literally every stop to smoke. It's outside my experience to think that being confined could cause such discomfort. I like to get off to stretch my legs, walk around, but it wouldn't bother me to stay on. These guys, they're itching to get off constantly, and sometimes they break down and go for a quick puff in the back bathroom, a move that can easily get you kicked off the bus.
Really you cant ask for better bus conditions, very uncrowded. It was a perfect seat until an overactive child sat down and immediately started a game of peek a boo with me, only it was more like a ritalin induced stare a boo. His chatty overattentive mom struck up a monologue that showed no sign of stopping. I moved back one row and was happy to be able to, most times you're stuck. Ritalin boy played stare a boo with another guy who took my seat.
Complaining bus newbie lady from the SC station kept up a steady stream of chatter. She found a companion, so you'd think she'd found the joy of bus riding, but she kept up her vow to never ride it again.
I had enjoyed a seat to myself all the way almost to LA but at Oxnard a guy got on and asked, or mumbled, if he could sit. I moved over and sat by the window but the huge guy cramped me against the cold side so I arranged to sit in the aisle seat. He was very obese and seemed to have trouble breathing. When he fell asleep I got nervous, because his labored snoring sounded like it might be bearing some disease. It's that kind of stroke of bad luck that can get you sick. Maybe I let down my guard. I probably should have sprawled across the seat and pretended to be asleep.
2 AM. A strange stop at Indio, still in California but right near the border to Arizona. The only new passengers were a couple of border patrol police. They roamed up the aisle and questioned if people were US citizens. They made the asian guy next to me pull out all his documents. I saw he had a SS card.
Thursday, February 18, 2010 - Poor Sidewalks but Nice Views from the Bus
Sunrise upon arriving in Arizona
2.18 1:30 PM Flagstaff, AZ. Phoenix had very gappy sidewalks, no good for skating, just a jarring ride. Not much to shoot, just the station which had some nice struts in the facade.
Gappy Phoenix sidewalk
Strut lattice awning on Phoenix bus station
After Phoenix I had my own seat and it got easy to sleep, even in bright daylight. The excellent sleeping conditions meant that I almost missed a peculiar Arizona sight out the window.
I woke up and there were big saguaro cacti going by. They seemed to grow in groups and they were everywhere on the hillsides along the bus route. It almost looked like a cactus farm. I tried a couple of pan shots which ideally means the subject is in focus and the rest is blurred. So I hoped a couple of cacti would be in focus. I got lucky with a couple. Pretty fun to do panning moves out of a bus window. Later it got snowy for the first time along the route, but no real interesting shots appeared.
Groups of large cactus in groves, outside Phoenix, AZ
At Flagstaff AZ there were definitely some signs of winter action. It was a bit chilly, but no reason to bundle up. There were some substantial piles of snow, but I don't think they were drifts, just piles from snow plowing. The whole scene right around the station was really picturesque, with a beautiful pyramid mountain lined up with the street the station was on.
A bank of snow across from the Greyhound station, Flagstaff, AZ
A thin guy in red flannel said he thought it was Snowbird, the ski resort. As it turned out, he was a harbinger of the many red outfits and landscapes I would see in the plains. I asked him if I could take his picture with the bus and mountain. He knelt, oddly. I would have rather he stood up, because his stature looked cool with the mountain in the candid I got of him. That shows you photo subjects have free will.
This sidewalk looked better for moseying than skating. Candid. Flagstaff, AZ
A figure of red amidst the white. Flagstaff, AZ
A rose appeared on the seat. Arizona
A girl had a rose, or a fake flower perhaps, placed on the seat in front of me. I got off one shot before it dropped off the seat.
Sitting on the left side of the bus, I had to shoot across the other lane of the highway. Might have had better luck by sitting on right side of bus, lots of funny sights and tourist traps over there. There were some interesting structures, a mine it looked like.
Trains near mine in cliffs, Arizona
Mine in cliffs, Arizona
It was hard to figure out which rock formations were piled up rocks from the mines and which were natural. I thought that was a great spiritual puzzle of the west. Is it distructive man that piled this? Or the hand of the supernatural, the way nature appears to be like a child playing very slowly, water scraping away the underpinnings and leaving stacks that crumble into a rockpile.
Natural cliff or scraped mine slope? Arizona
Natural formations or quarried rock piles? Arizona
Odd juxtapositions of rock formations and machinery popped up in unexpected ways. At one point a school bus seemed poised to fly off a cliff. Perhaps it was just parked up there at its stop, before leaving to go get the mine workers kids for school. Perhaps it had been up there for years, a bus maintaining its crow's nest outpost looking over the cliff.
Friday, February 19, 2010 - Hallucinatory Entry into Amarillo
2.19 3:30 AM Amarillo TX. Early Friday, third day on the road. Coming into Amarillo the bus followed these beautiful curves, like an amusement park ride, as if the curved track was made for the high riding bus. Not sure if it was my imagination, we'll see on the way out. I might be hallucinating; kept thinking I saw giant eucalyptus trees in the road, very dark highway and maybe I'm missing Calfornia already.
A useless and punishing stop at 3:30 in the morning, throwing us off a comfortable bus into a filthy station, for get this, a cleaning. The water here is some of the worst I've had in the US, don't see how they're going to clean with it.
Bus station, Oklahoma City
5 AM coming into OK City. A big garrulous guy who was speaking in funny and sometimes unintelligible phrases all trip had this to say. "You know we're getting close now, yo. Red Dirt." It was true, the streets had a red ochre kind of dusty signature. There were piles of it being used in construction. I now knew where all the red bricks in the houses around here came from. The legendary red dirt of Oklahoma. It was settled now, but I could see how it would make for a nasty dust storm.
Red dirt and barn outside Tulsa, OK
Friday, February 19, 2010 - Alongside Textures
Alongside texture, cactus field
Alongside texture, snowy bank
Alongside texture, red dirt field
10 AM Sun well up now. I'm an apprentice of texture, studying the texture of various types of concrete, asphalt and pavement across the land, using eye and vibration underfoot as a means of guaging the texture. Alongside the road from the bus, I'm seeing different textures. The cactus groves in Arizona, the snowy banks and pines in New Mexico, the red piles of rock from mines, the ochre cliffs, and finally the fields of brownish red in Oklahoma. There must be every shade of brown known in this area. The fields of wheat are reddish brown until the light is right then they turn gold. I think Wyeth painted wheat in Kansas but I think he would have liked the fields here, so much variety in the colors of those grasses.
