M ichigan towns
Towns on the way to Detroit
Sidewalk Tour, Skate Travel Journals
August 2010
to Surface Motion Skate Tour
Sidewalk Tour August 2010
Intro
Overloaded tour plans: SC CA
Aug 9 3 PM
Rte to lost sta: SF CA
Aug 9 7 PM
Limbo in foud sta: SF CA
Aug 10 3 AM
Hitch in prfct ride: Scrmnto CA
Aug 10 9:30 AM
Photo ops Nev stops: Lvelck NV
Aug 11 8:30 AM
Co and Denvr revisted: Denver CO
Aug 11 2:30 PM
Sights in Nebrska: N Platte NE
Aug 11 4 PM
Obstcl to food: Lexington NE
Aug 12 2 AM
Emrgng fr west: Dvnprt IA
Aug 12 9 AM
Gary didn't hold still: Gary IN
Aug 12 10 AM
Bottl egg & lndmks: Btn Harb IN
Aug 16
Optimistic sign: Ann Arbr MI
Aug 17 12:30 AM
Lt nght touring: Ann Arbr MI
Aug 17 4 AM
Lt nght touring: Ann Arbr MI
Aug 17 11 AM
Seeds of doubt: Ann Arbr MI
Sidewalk Tour Feb-Mar 2010
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
August 12, 2010: Reaching the Great Lakes states
Indiana, Michigan
Thursday, August 12, 2010 - Emerging from the west
8.12 2 AM Davenport Rest Stop, Iowa, I think. Starting to look and smell like the east. A musty drywall smell in the rest stop wasnt very appetizing. I looked at the trail mix but didnt buy any. I figured if I'm sleeping might as well not throw it off with food. Saw the first east coast type girls, nice skirts, pretty hair not blonde, and thin and not athletic.
After folks left in Des Moines, wound up with a seat in the back to myself. My old seat mate was friendly, we'd both met the old codger Roy who'd been fumbling across the country and finally lost his ticket. I think they might have put him on the other bus. Seat mate said Roy told him he was shot in Italy, twice. And not to join the army, all you get is a hole to eat and shit in. Join the Navy or Air Force.
Sometimes you just hit a comfortable position in the seat and doze off as if you were lying in a bed. I don't think it had much to do with the innovative seat headrest design, I think it was that I had two seats and used my two jackets effectively as a pillow and eye mask. I was able to sleep quite a bit and woke up suddenly in Chicago, at 5:30 AM. I got off and made the transfer to the Michigan bound bus.
Thursday, August 12, 2010 - Gary didn't hold still for me
9 AM Gary, IN. The few times I've been to this town I always think of Michael Jackson, who is from here, and the song that goes "Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana." In Gary I started seeing a lot of scenes I wanted to photograph but was unable to capture much. At the station I got too distracted in shooting a sculpture and missed this very cool cherry picker with a worker in the basket. By the time I saw him the bus was moving. Alongside the road were more workers in colorful slickers but I just couldnn't focus quickly enough to get a good candid.
Sculpture, bus station, Gary, IN.
Thursday, August 12, 2010 - The bottle, egg, and other landmarks
10 AM Benton Harbor, MI. I saw an odd reunion of two of the five young travelers who'd been in front of me on the bus when we saw the golf tee windmill. One gaunt young man was having a smoke at the station when the others of his little party pulled up on the other bus. He had branched off from his friends in Chicago and though all of them went thru Benton Harbor deeper into Michigan, they were on different buses.
This party of travelers had been together since Washington state, and I'd seen them since SLC. There was one tall thin fellow with thin hair who was on a shoestring budget and couldn't even spring five bucks for a McDonald's salad. He seemed perennially undernourished. There was a guy with a guitar, who I talked with and told about the players in Nashville. There was a girl who seemed in love with a stocky guy with short blond hair who looked German. Then there was T, an actor working in the Olympia area of Washington and also a longboard skateboarder. T and the others crossed paths at Benton one more time before splitting for the last time.
The small, quaint, and slightly bleak towns of Southern Michigan are full of interesting structures. Brick, clapboard, and peeling paint typify the worn texture of these towns. A large bottle at a service station caught my attention. It looked encrusted, as if it had been salvaged from the ocean bottom. I'm not sure whether it was a sculpture of a bottle or some kind of functional tank filled with a liquid for use in service of autos and trucks. This sort of mystery is why I need to travel with a car, to scrutinize things more closely, at leisure.
Large bottle, Benton Harbor, MI.
Service station, Benton Harbor, MI.
11 AM. At the Kalamazoo station there was a little time and some space in the bus parking area. My friend T from the band of travelers got a chance to ride my board. I showed him a slide rotation technique and he zoomed around and tried some slides, and managed to scrape a little urethane, even though the cruising wheels are on the soft side and don't let go easily.
12:30 PM Albion, MI. Light has been good, bright and hazy, and plenty of alongside sights. There was a section of sidewalk and driveway in front of a tune up shop that had been checkered with weeds that looked like it would be really fun to skate on.
Squares of weedy sidewalk, Albion, MI.
Albion put its name on display in large letters on a robin's egg blue, egg shaped water tower. Fittingly eggish, isn't albion a name for the white of an egg?
Water tower egg, Albion, MI.
Garage with stairstep roof, Albion, MI.
1 PM Jackson, MI. In Jackson I shot pictures of a lonely barbeque stand, a tiny shop with the palacial name the House of Q, waiting for its lord, Mat, to show up and tend the fires, which were already smoking.
Barbeque stand, Jackson, MI.
Barbeque stand, Jackson, MI.
Almost in the same line of sight as the stand, but in the distance, was a metal bench, upon which was seated a man perhaps engaged in the same act of waiting for a bus as I was. Only one leg was visible, so perhaps he had only one, although, no cane was visible either. Perhaps his leg was crossed out of sight. Another mystery of the brief sightings of the road.
Bench and coffee house, Jackson, MI.
2 PM In Ann Arbor I said goodbye to my traveling companion T. I recognized the station from my March passage through. I had been impressed then by the brushed metal lettering intersecting the more commonly seen art deco and neon vertical "bus" sign on the Greyhound station. I had seen the attractive houses and sidewalks overgrown with trees and grass and was sure the town was worth some further exploration, hopefully on a skateboard and not on a bus seat.
