W estward Bound
No easy way to get home
Sidewalk Tour, Skate Travel Journals
March 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
NY to Detroit
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
March 17 - 20, 2010: Heading west; detoured route, trying to get home
Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California
Greyhound bus station, Ann Arbor, MI
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - Leaving Detroit
Giant tire, Detroit.
3.17 6 PM Leaving Detroit. My friend left and the bus took ages to get there. I could have sat and talked to my friend for another hour. It's hard to predict those things, but when they happen you're left with an odd sense of traveling regret.
The late start made it more difficult to mark the times in my journal. I like to download a schedule and put it in my notes. When the bus is running on time, the schedule matches perfectly and it's very easy to reconstruct when events happened and where pictures were taken. Making it more difficult was the fact that I hadn't reset the time on my camera for daylight savings. I hadn't "sprung forward." The camera date and times were all an hour behind.
Arches, bus station, Kalamazoo, MI.
9:30 PM Kalamazoo MI. There were some nice arches at the outdoor station, and a nice little stretch of sidewalk which I skated briefly. This bus has a very out of control family on it. I suppose they are all handicapped. One kid is on a leash, the other perennially cries, the mother seems slow, and she has an enormous load of luggage. As the bus loaded at the Kalmazoo station, loading the bus she just kicked her smaller suitcases along, pulled one by hand, had her son pull a bag on a red cart, perhaps a Sponge Bob cart, and guided the kid by leash.
Rest stop, Illinois, Rte 66 emblem.
4:30 AM Bloomington Pilot, IL. At a rest stop with a powerfully bright neon sign, I noticed an awning with the familiar Route 66 emblem. It was the first time I'd seen it in the east, and the first time since Oklahoma.
Thursday, March 18, 2010 - Morning skate revisit at St. L station
Ramp, metro and bus station, St. Louis, MO
6 AM St. Louis. By St L we had caught up to the schedule. There was a lengthy stopover in St. Louis and I knew the place well enough to go out and skate around. I rode over by the stadium and down a hill across from it. I came back quickly up the hill and got a few pictures of a weird sculpture of a rabbit or hare type animal. I concentrated on taking some pictures by the train tracks outside the station, where some banks of mist were very cooperative in making a nice atmosphere for some dawn shots of the train and people entering the station.
A two wheeled ride through the mist, St. Louis station.
Hare sculpture, St. Louis station.
I wanted to get a coffee at the deli in the bus station where I had whiled away the hours last year. It was a nice spot to hang out and had good food. Last year I kept a receipt that said "metro deli" when I looked at the receipt months later. I was able to conjure an image of the little stand and scattered tables inside the airy St Louis station. I was a little disappointed that they had changed the name.
Thursday, March 18, 2010 - Revisiting Kansas City, briefly
3.18 1 PM Kansas City. One year ago the cherry trees were in bloom and this time they were bare. Maybe that was only on 18th, or a few days farther into spring. On the same grassy spot across from the station where I made the plaintive call to RL announcing my fatigued end to the tour, I made some calls. I left word for RL and called HL, an uplifting bit of calling.
Sun has been on my side of the bus all day. I'm shielding my face with my jackets but I'm still getting a sun headache.
Thursday, March 18, 2010 - Revisiting Kansas, still
4:30 PM Salina KS. Afternoon was warm and clear but windy so I took both jackets and stepped off the bus. While I was struggling with the sleeves I heard a bahhhing, and saw some cows trying to peer out of a cattle haul trailer. I tried to get a photo but it wasnt giving it up. The cows only appeared at little gaps occasionally and the light was backlit. Another thing I wanted to shoot that I felt guilty about was the slow lady and her leashed kids. I was too afraid to ask, although a candid barely popped up as I was shooting trucks.
Tethered family, rest stop, KS.
Although the revisit to Kansas City, MO was disappointingly brief, the bus trip across the state of Kansas has been torturously long. Kansas is huge and always goes on forever on any road trip. What made this stint seem longer was the driver had a co driver who was speaking constantly in a very loud voice. I heard all kinds of bus driver stories, travel and being stuck up north or out east for weeks and waiting wives and tales of shortages of drivers on certain routes. After six hours we were heading for a rest stop and incredibly, it was in Kansas. Then the drivers announced they were skipping Colby KS and the stop was in Colorado. At last.
Stoves on flatbed truck, KS.
The grueling quality of this route has made me reluctant to stop in Salt Lake City, as planned. Would like to at least take a look around.
Friday, March 19, 2010 - The unreachable Salt Lake City
3.19 11:45 PM Thursday and early Friday, scheduled departure from Denver. The comment at the end of last journal entry turned out to be prescient. I meant that I was thinking of nixing the visit to SLC, but that I'd at least like to give the place a look. Maybe the tenacity of Kansas was a sign that I should have stayed in Kansas and given it a look around. That would have saved me from an even more grueling fate.
This turned out to be a Greyhound Twilight Zone episode. This is the bus that just could not get to Salt Lake City. It got pretty far out of Denver though, twice.
It became very difficult to record times for these events. The bus schedule went completely to pieces. Also, the times on my camera were even farther off because we'd crossed two time zones. On the first time zone crossing in Illinois this would have corrected the error caused a few days ago, on the 14th, by my failure to reset for daylight savings time. But the second zone change would have made the clock an hour late again. At some point I reset the time on the camera, when the driver announced the time zone change.
Deceptively light snow, Denver bus station.
There was quite a bit of snow coming down in Denver on Thursday night, with more forecast. There had to be more on the mountain roads out of here over the Rockies, but not enough to close the highways, at least not until our bus had traveled three hours out of Denver. The route was north up Rt 25, crossing into Wyoming, then west across the mountains on I 80, a pretty big highway.
2 or 3 AM Past Laramie Wyoming. As the snow came down harder and stuck thickly on the road, the driver announced our changed route. We weren't going to be able to continue west. We had been called back by the bus dispatcher and told to return to Denver.
5:30 AM Back at the Denver station we waited in a confusion, not quite a panic yet, until they sent us out again on another route, this time on route I 70, a smaller highway than 80 that went due west across the Rockies, past Vail. The logic was that I 70 was farther south and perhaps not as bombarded by snow. The odds weren't good but we straggled back on the bus, with a new driver, and intrepidly bulled on over the pass. Sure enough, after an hour or so, snow not letting up, that road became impassable as well. Maybe they were not getting good reports on the road conditions. In any case they blew it.
It was like the episode of Twilight Zone where an airplane is stuck flying through time wormholes and first goes too far in the future, then too far in the past, and keeps trying over and over, running out of fuel, pilots tense but undaunted, endeavoring to bring passengers and crew to their appointed destination.
Friday, March 19, 2010 - Force Majeure extends bus pass
8 AM Denver bus station. Third arrival to Denver. Bus pass runs out today and by Force Majeure, I have been given an extension. Girl at the window said she'd write my ticket for the distance required to get me home. I was getting skeptical of the odds of the northern route working, so reworked the ticket to go south to Albuquerque and then west to LA. I messed up by not getting my baggage claim ticket redone, but hopefully I can update that. The bus leaves at 9 AM and the first try out of Denver was at 11:45 PM last night, so I'm about 9 hours behind schedule due to the snow-in.
Maybe from not taking too long at the ticket counter, I had a little time to shave, hit the bathroom again, trying to stay away from the bottled up bus intestine. Then I got over by the payphones and got enough juice in my camera battery and phone battery to make it thru another tour leg.
Weather conditions in Denver don't lok that bad, patchy snow on the ground and windblown snow in the air. But in the mountains it was whiteout, with the bus icing up. A car or small truck had rolled over in the town in Wyoming that was the turnaround point, and you could see that the road wasnt going to open any time soon.
Friday, March 19, 2010 - Red dirt revisited in white
Bus driver spraying anti ice, Pueblo, CO
$ PM Las Vegas, NM Rest Stop. About 125 miles north of Santa Fe. I never thought I'd be in red dirt country again for a long time, but here I am. The memory of Oklahoma is strong. It's a soaking wet, snow dusted New Mexico red dirt country. Red roofed farm houses visible through the mist. Hard to get any pictures, poor visibility and little opportunity.
At the Pueblo, CO rest stop I got a couple of nice shots of the bus driver doing battle with the ice on his windshield, spraying some anti freeze stuff. It was interesting that it was actually a Mexican bus line we were traveling, called Americanos, with a Mexican bus driver. His application of the ice spray was done with a certain finesse, almost a tango dance style, with big sweeping arm gestures. With a brush of his foot along the icy road he retreated and was done.
Driver tangos with windshield ice, Pueblo, CO.
Snowfall was steady. A meadow across the way had snow cakes on the grass that looked like snow dandelions. The rest stop was festooned in snow clumps.
Heavy snowfall, rest stop, NM.
Red dirt covered in white, rest stop, NM.
5:30 PM Albuquerque. Cool pueblo bus station. Finally left the snow and caught some sun after Santa Fe. There were some accidents along the road, ambulances. Saw some of the mines and cliffs again, red this and that.
Things seemed normal again when we started seeing weird stores, like the Addicted to Deals, in Quartzsite, Arizona.
Discount store, AZ.
Saturday, March 20, 2010 - California via the southern route
Palm trees and grocery store, leaving Indio, CA
3.20 8 AM. Indio turned out to be more than just a border town. There were beautiful bright red roses along the streets near the station. This would have been some nice sidewalks to skate, but there wasn't enough duration to the stop.
Palms and roses near bus station, Indio, CA.
Outside the town, entering the mountains, there was a nice collection of windmills fronting the mountain faces.
Windmills and mountains outside of Indio, CA.
Saturday, March 20, 2010 - Home is where the hassle is
9:30 AM San Bernardino. I knew I was back in California at San Bernardino when a security guard or bus cop gave me a hard time for breaking out my skateboard and trying to make a loop around the bus station lot. "You cant be back here doing that." "but I was just trying to get a little exercise". So then I switched to getting a cup of coffee from the vending machine. It put down a paper cup and left it bone dry. So I switched to taking pics of the sign "Welcome to San Bernardino" but the cop interrupted me again to tell me to move. It reminded so much of being told not to ride my skateboard down Pacific Avenue, in the street mind you, in my home town, Santa Cruz, a surf/skate world class center. The sign should have said "Welcome home, to California. Welcome back to all our rules."
There was a funny sculpture garden visible from the San Bernardino bus stop. It was unusual in that it was spread all over the walls and roof of the artist's house. It seemed he had a studio or antique shop in the house and his creations escaped and spread out from it. I got a few shots while the bus was waiting, then leaving.
Artist's roof sculpture garden, Tio's Tacos, Riverside, CA
Note added 7.14.10. Research and analysis of my bus route done months after the tour has confirmed that the shots were taken in Riverside, CA and not in San Bernardino. The sculpture art garden is on top of Tio's Tacos in Riverside, on Mission Inn Ave, near the bus station. The hassle I had with the security guard was definitely in San Bernardino.
It took me a long time and painstaking labor to figure out that the artist's roof garden was in Riverside and not San Bernardino. This was because my camera clock had been wrong for much of the route, due first to not resetting it on the daylight savings time change on March 14, and then on the route because of the time zone crossings. I had to spend some time reconstructing the route and checking the bus schedule with my photo time stamps. When I realized that my camera clock was actually set correctly in California, and that the bus was only 10 minutes late, I knew the crazy roof couldn't be in San Bernardino.
The lesson I learned from this is to be careful to keep updating your clock as the time zones change, and correct for daylight savings time. Also it helps to keep a copy of the bus schedule detailed itinerary. This can be easily downloaded from the Greyhound site. I had gotten in the habit of doing this on my 2009 tour and it really helped correct my journal on this route.
Saturday, March 20, 2010 - Color scheme change
3:30 PM Northern California at last, nearing home. Stopped in Coalinga Junction for a rest stop. Very hot. Grassy fields and trucks in the distance. One truck signaled home, with a label from Watsonville, just a few miles from where I live in Santa Cruz.
Truck in grassy field, Coalinga Junction, CA.
5:30 PM Gilroy. Winding through hilly highways. Twisted trees lean over modest inclines cushioned and smoothed with grass. It'd be fun to picnic here. Climb up a hill, swing on a branch, roll down a grassy slope. God this place is green. Hard to believe that at the other end of this one bus trip was-- red dirt.
