S kate Storage Training '08 - '09
Skate Training Journals
October 2008 - March 2009
to Surface Motion Skate Tour
Tour Inventory
Backpacks
Clothes
Gear
Boards
Phone/PDA
Mobile blogging
Sidewalk Tour
Northwest: June 2009
June 28
Mtns in Mirror: Ptlnd OR
jrnl_6_26_09_comp
Skate Canvas: Ptlnd OR
June 26
Green Room: Ptlnd OR
June 25 9 PM
Street Fair Daring: Ptlnd OR
June 25 1 PM
Oregon Stick: Wst Linn OR
June 23 2 PM
Vine Row Ext: Wst Linn OR
June 23 1 PM
Vineyard Hill: Wst Linn OR
June 21 3 PM
Old Village: Wst Linn OR
June 21 1 PM
Blankenship: Wst Linn OR
June 19
Assistants: Corvalis OR
June 18
Portland Exurb: Wst Linn OR
June 17
Travelin' Feelin: Scrmnto CA
June 15
Sore Ride: Mission, SF CA
June 14
Away from Curb: San Carlos CA
South: Mar-Apr 2009
April 10 6 PM
Layover: Oakland CA
April 10
Over the Rockies: SLC UT
April 9
Not Without Regret: KC MO
April 8 6 PM
Bushwhack Finale: KC MO
April 8
Hound Hotel Nt 2: KC MO
April 7
Piano Rolls Roll: St. L MO
April 6 9 PM
Econohound Lodge: Pduch KY
April 6 4 PM
Leaving Kentucky: Pduch KY
April 5
Weimaraners: Pducah KY
April 4
One More Chance: Nashvll TN
April 2
Stax Pilgrimage: Mmphs TN
April 1 9 PM
Vance St Bank: Memphs TN
April 1 2 PM
Vance St Sights: Memphs TN
April 1 11 AM
Sightfeeting: Memphs TN
March 31
Vibrated Dn Beale: Memphs TN
March 30
Bridge to Music: Nashvll TN
March 29
Seeking Music: Nashvll TN
March 28
Tornado Misses: Nashvll TN
March 27
Bushwhack II: Nashvll TN
March 26
Bus Sta Hill: Akron OH
East: March 2009
March 25
Dinosaur in Mist: Pittsbg PA
March 24
Warhol Skate: Pittsbg PA
March 23 11 PM
Bushwhack: Pittsbg PA
March 23
Penn Hills: Western PA
March 22
Drex Hill: Phila, PA
March 20
Inky Lake: Atl City, NJ
March 18
Wind Shift: Atl City, NJ
March 16 1 PM
Boardwalk Wind: Atl City, NJ
March 16
Station Hill: Wallghm, PA
March 14
Uneasy Exurb: Wallghm, PA
March 12 8 PM
Plan B: Trenton, NJ
March 12 5 PM
Plan A: Verrazano Bridge
Bridge Skate Training
Oct 08-Mar 09
March 11
Villa Straylight: LIC, NY
March 6
One Man Band: LIC, Manh, NY
March 3
The Ice Sheet Returns: LIC, NY
Feb 24
Crowd at Bay: LIC, Manh, NY
Feb 23
Familiar Load: LIC, Manh, NY
Feb 19
Sleet Footage Hack: Manh, NY
Feb 18
Sleet Skate Shoot: Manh, NY
Feb 13
Wind Alert: LIC, Manh, NY
Feb 9
Butcher Block: LIC, Manh, NY
Feb 2
Poles & Bric a Brac: LIC, NY
Jan 12
The Vacationer: LIC, NY
Dec 22
The Ice Sheet: LIC, NY
Dec 17
The Rainboard: LIC, NY
Dec 6
Tall Loads: LIC, NY
Dec 2
Memento Crypt: LIC, NY
Nov 28
Black Friday: LIC, Manh, NY
Nov 4
Election Day: LIC, Manh, NY
Oct 27
First load bearing trip: LIC, NY
Oct 24
Finding the Rt: Queens-LIC, NY
Oct 2008 - March 2009: Trips out to Queens and back across the bridge
This tour started out in Fall '08 as an idea I had while moving my stuff out of my apartment into storage. I knew I wanted to travel in the U.S. and thought about bringing along a longboard for local transportation and short distances between towns. I started to get in shape with my goal to be able to skate 10 to 15 miles in a day if I had to. I skated often between my storage place in Queens and the west side of Manhattan, distances of about 5 miles. I started carrying around a longboard and skating all the time.
In the process of these trips, often in cold, icy weather, I started to work out the techniques and put together the gear for a tour in which longboarding would be key. I planned on using the board for transportation and hill carving, but also planned to do some moderate technical skating on banks, curbs, and whatever looked good.
A project that started as a way to move some belongings turned into a way of life. Almost a year and thousands of miles of travel later, I'm still carrying and riding a board where ever I go.
This diary material first was published on surfmog.blogspot.com.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - Villa Straylight
Training period ends
3.11 The other day, 3.9 I took some shots from the 7 train going back to the city. I did this to get a shot from the el tracks that were so important in the Tour Training days, always looming above me, keeping rain off me and making strange ice in my path. There's no other hill I've skated that looks like a tunnel with bright green stonehenge pylons. It would 've been better to take shots coming toward Queens, because that 'd be over the west side path which is the one I took most often and that's what's in the shots.
From skate slalom tunnel to storage tunnel cache. Crouching and crawling into my long low narrow storage unit that is now very full feels like Villa Straylight, the cone corridor terminus of the space station at the end of the book Neuromancer. If you haven't read the book, it's at the end of the spinning axis of the space station, a crawl space of decreasing width, a place filled with strange and antique objects, where you squeeze farther and farther and work your way to the tip of the axis but there's still more. My Straylight is actually a pretty good layout but it's pretty scary going way back to get something or to put something away I'm not going to be using, like kitchenware, hangers, or posters.
The layout is clear enough and inventory is accurate enough after many revisions that now I'm finally at the point where I can go to storage with some errands in mind and it'll go pretty fast. I was able to find this Hendrix chart to show W my host in Brooklyn, find some handi wipes which got misplaced at the sudden packing and exodus in the last week of Feb, and get a tax form. In the process, I shuffled a few things around and it was looking pretty uncluttered and accessible. You can get in if you pull out some light bags and bins that sit up front, and you can spelunk into the back if you squeeze down a gap that will just about allow your shins to fit.
Corridor Terminus, Villa Straylight
This picture is from back in February and doesn't quite show how filled up it's gotten. But you can see the crawl corridor starting to form even then.
Did some nice crosstown skating from Queens to Brklyn, basically short cutting over to the G line. Hunter's Point Rd hill, one street over from the hill I rode the other day, leads to Greenpoint Av, a main road that cuts into Brooklyn. I took a side trip through a huge cemetery, very classy, serene, with great paths for skating. I was going to backtrack but ended up going on and on. It was such a relief to be so alone. I put on the sneakers but they didnt help much. It seemed a little disrespectful to be skating past the dead, but the soft wheels are pretty quiet.
Travel days coming up. Sitting here with everything checked off my check list and packed up pretty light. It looks good, I dont feel too injured, gear is good, and most things are taken care of. The question is, not can I go south, but can I go west? Maybe I dont even need to return to New York. It might be possible, but it's not really my style to just plunge. It's always been my method to probe and test, so I'll probably go somewhere and come back.
Friday, March 6, 2009 - One Man Band
Trip 27.
3.6 In the madness around 2.28 I left a couple things at a friend Rr's storage in Manhattan. This was done because I needed to clear out in a hurry, but it added to my now considrable body of knowledge about storage. We walked through the narrow aisles of his storage warehouse whch reminded me of the aisle-cramped nature of every store and laudramat in the neighborhood. Out in Queens the aisles at storage are expansive. Rr's storage unit is, unlike mine, very tall and he has his stuff piled to the rafters. Only it forms a sort of pyramid of rising stored items, since there's no real structure or shelving in his space.
Rr is a musician and he saw the humor in the objects I'd stashed, a stool and a keyboard. I also had the ubiquitous skateboard along so he suggested setting up the stool on the board and putting together an act of the skateboarding musician, a kind of micro travelling one man band.
Train was nearly empty, still managed to make it uncomfortable by dropping the skateboard and fumbling the keyboard and stool on the train floor, sort of leaning the two items from different board families on the door. Puzzled eyes wondered what I was up to, like "Is he going to play something?"
Had extra time so I took more overpass pictures. I set up a nice self timer self portrait and had the cam perfectly set and balanced in the case, propped between the black piano keys. The keyboard was in the foreground and the stool and board in background. Then during the countdown of course some wind came up and the board rolled free back down the hill. The shot shows me hurrying to grab the rig as it rolls off the screen.
Took some pics of the mini bergschrund of snow and gap that tripped my brown shelf and 54 board in December.
Traffic passes by the curb-schrund
I've been revamping my storage space and have got it working like a kind of crawl-in office where I can get different items for different jobs and occasions. The basic plan is I'm trying to keep useful stuff more toward the front. Bins are stacked three high with a corridor to crawl deeper. Seldom retrieved things go in back and in the bottom layer of bins.
It isn't only a one way road bringing stuff to storage. Sometimes I take something back from there. I retrieved my magnifying glass, want to look at the Todd Rundgren liner notes on my cassette tape, ridiculously small print.
I left the board in the locker and walked back. It felt really weird coming back over the bridge without a board. I didnt want to keep cluttering and fouling GMs apt with so many boards. Also my hands and nails were getting filthy from carrying wet and muddy boards. It sucks walking. Only good thing is I was able to walk and work, renamed the picture files I'd taken, texted a few friends.
Storage Tip: If you have a long low storage room like mine, stack bins on one side and leave a corridor to work. Put less useful and less accessed bins in the back and bottom layers. If you have a high room like Rr, put floor to ceiling shelves to make the whole space accessible.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009 - The Ice Sheet Returns
Trip 25.
3.3 Pressure is definitely off. Got all my stuff out and vacated the apartment and found a place to stay with friend GM. But there are still some difficulties. Have some more stuff to get from GM's to storage. The weather the past two days has been vicious. Bitter cold and enough snow to block any normal skate storage run. It didn't snow me in completely though. I used the rain board and just lightened the load to one green lid bin and a backpack. Over the last couple of days I took some books out of the bin and put in lighter gear to fill it in and it was easy to carry.
The trip on the train wasnt bad, only one loud bum talking to me and trying to intimidate me. I just made some jokes and got him on my side as best as could.
At Queens Plaza the stairs were snowy and that was a portent of ice on the bridge I guess. Rounding the corner I could see the path running across the bridge gradually filling in with ice and snow. I was really glad I had the rain board and only the one bin. It brought back memories of the day with the brown shelf and the big 54; that day was much icier, and a much clumsier and more fragile load. Today it was kind of slushy. I dont know how that happened because it was bitter cold. The wheels and trucks cut right through and I rolled right up the overpass. I stopped to take pictures. A pidgeon flew right up to the bin and it looked like a nice spontaneous meeting, but he hid from the shot right behind the bin. Before I could reload, he flew off.
Going downhill after the overpass peak was ok and I put the bag on the bin for a cruise ride. I was careful to avoid the La Guardia gaps, the wide cracks in the sidewalk that have tipped me and pitched me so many times. No real hangups on the snow, except at a few curb ramps which were jammed with snow. I call these ramps with a gap and a bunch of snow a curb-schrund, after the climbing term for the gap where mountain meets glacier- a bergschrund. At the schrund I carried the bin and went back for the skateboard after crossing the street.
Coming back I was cold, especially my hands since I was trying my backup gloves which are light duty. I saw the snow how great it looked and made myself take some more pics. Got the train coming and some nice dusky light on the board and backpack.
Gear Tip: Always bring backup gear and always test it. It was kind of too raw for me to test those light gloves.
Project Tip: You want to hunker down and push yourself to do the extra things on days like these. Back in Dec I didn't have the cam for the first ice day. It was hard taking that second round of shots but I got great dusk shots of the slush ice and I wasn't ever going to get another chance to get them.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 - Keeping the Crowd at Bay
Fliptops topped by poster frames, boards and saws
Trip 19.
2.24 Didn't make enough trips in January due to bad weather and the slow pace of this skate-move project is catching up with me. One big truck run would help. Many items, disconcertingly tall, wide, bulky and odd items left to get out of the apartment. Wish it were just items small enough to fit in bins.
Second trip in two days, although didn't skate the bridge yesterday. Tired, sore.
Today I drew on my vast store of subway tricks to get a comfortable ride on the train with an odd shaped load. It's been four months of squirming through crowded trains and people glaring, glowering, sneering, puzzled looks,and stink eye. I'm looking for some shelter from the storm. As I got on I saw a person who might offer it midway in the car, and thinking fast steered right in that direction. I had the two fliptops stacked up, topped by a wide piece of particle board, four framed wall posters, and laid flat on top of them were two hand saws, the blades somewhat neutralized by cardboard and tape. Wide and cumbersome with some sharp teeth; a nice topping to a heavy rolling load. Plus a backpack full of odds and ends. The person who seemed to offer support was a homeless lady, real drunk, in a puffy sweaty grey down coat, practically passed out and slumped in the seat by the pole right next to the door. She put out quite an odor. I stood to benefit from this. Her aura was my force field. She kept the people away from me who would normally be coveting the treasured door leaning spot. She actually was kind of attractive, curly hair bobbing over her brow as she slept. She reminded me of a friend of mine who has passed out in a similar slump a few times in my apartment.
It was the first time in many trips where I felt calm, certain I'd be able to wheel the stuff out quickly.
The red doors, near the La Guardia Gaps
Activity log, bin and loose item moves in storage room. From my notes, details in parens:
List of stuff in this trip; light (clamp), rug (blue), hand saws, 4 poster frames, tool bag (archive), music stand (keybd), cardbd, particl bd (for a work area)
along with fliptop bins Tft 2 & 3.
I made a bunch of moves in the unit trying to make more space and make it so I can retrieve things I use more often and bury things I'm not going to use for a long time.
Pulled a lot of stuff out from the rt side and redid layout. Put Butcher block in back rt.
Put shelves in Bblock and put in dishes. Put poster rolls back rt crnr.
Took some archive files from Fl Bx 1 Grey mvd to Tg 2.
Took wetsuits out of boardbag and put them all together.
Put hangers together.
Put music items near front, to be arranged later.
Put poster frames front right, maybe could go farther back. Hard to move them back without scratching or bending them. Will leave for now.
There were several more moves that I cut from the blog version of my tour log.
Ran out of time at 6:00. Noticed time when putting notes in phone. The storage attendant A was surprised to see me still there and asked how did I get in. I said I've been here a while.
After the drop I was not going to skate back. I'd spent too much time reorg-ing storage and there was more packing at the apartment and somehow more stuff to clear out.
Monday, February 23, 2009 - Familiar Load
On today's run to storage I had about the most familiar, natural load I've had this whole time. I had the bisect longboard that I've used on so many of my surf sessions and adventures. It's pretty heavy, but easy to carry because of the square shape of the bag it's in, folded into two pieces. I also had a backpack full of random small things, like my guitar amp and a pump for the air mattress I use. The backpack felt about the same as it would loaded with surf gear, maybe a bit heavier. The only problems were: the total weight made it hard to ride the skateboard while pushing, putting a strain on my knee; and a high wind out of the west. The wind pushed me along going to the subway, which was pretty nice.
The wind was a bit of a problem on the overpass, coming from the side. When I set up the board for a picture, a gust of wind blew it over. I didn't have gloves and I got pretty cold fingers. Nowhere near frost nip though, just cold.
One odd thing is that while it's great to set the board bag on the skateboard and push it along, it's hard to balance it. You have to get it right in the middle of the skatebaord. You'd think it would be easy to turn right and left, but it's not. It keeps wanting to go in an arc, veering off. Usually I'd get it going straight, but the surfboard bag would be held way at a list, or an angle. I'd let it hang a bit by the strap and steer it. I got to ride with the board shouldered on the downhill side of the overpass and past La Guardia.
In the storage room I had a miserable time shifting the three surfboards around so they'd fit. I just couldn't get the nose of the funboard up onto the pipes on the ceiling. Finally I put the shortboard up highest, and hanging on the pipe, which was safe. I took the wetsuits out of the board bags and piled them up in a corner.
View toward Manhattan from the overpass
This ride back I didn't ride across the bridge. Not because I didn't want to or because it was too cold. It was cold, but I could have hacked it. The trip back on skateboard takes over and hour, and I was feeling pressed for time. I have to catch up on my blogging and other stuff having to do with closing the apartment. I just didn't have the time, so I took the subway home.
It felt a little strange going the other way into Manhattan with the skateboard. I'd gotten so used to riding it home all these months. It's coming to a close, the Skate Storage Training time.
Thursday, February 19, 2009 - Sleet Skate Footage Hack
With cam to cam improv, sleet skate footage makes it onto the web
Warmup for cross grinds: standard 50-50 grind
Yesterday's skating was certainly an adventure and had a lot of training value, especially in cold weather endurance, but even more adventuresome was the followup today, the technical part, how I got the photos and footage in a form I could publish here on the Surface Motion Tour Training Blog. Getting the footage up required some imaginative photo and computer hacking, some tolerance for low res second generation sequence captures, and a brainstorm that was inspired by more cold weather training.
I had about ten minutes of footage from the shoot on DV cam. Normally it's easy to load it onto my Mac using iMovie. Trouble is, my hi res monitor crapped out and I've been using this little, old Apple monitor. It didn't have enough resolution and iMovie detected it and just wouldn't load. So the footage was on tape, was good, but I couldn't get it in the computer as clips or screen caps, in jpeg form, so I couldn't get it onto my web site. I tried to think of a way to work around. I tried other image programs but couldn't get the camera to link to anything. I thought about borrowing a monitor from a neighbor. My roommate is moving out and had just put his monitor in storage. Finally I got the idea of going up to MNN the public access TV studio where I was taking classes. I walked up there in freezing cold weather, especially the westerlies walking down the last block. When I got to the desk, the guy looked me up and said "you're not currently showing a project." Too bad I hadn't entered this tour project as an MNN TV project, but I was focusing on blogging and web site building.
I thought I'd try Kinko's and get some computer time. What always happens is, I walk around and cant find the Kinko's in my neighborhood, on 55th street someplace. As I was walking around getting more cold, after having been overexposed yesterday, I finally hit on it. Maybe it would be adequate, or even cool, to just shoot the video camera screen with my cel phone cam and get caps that way. Sometimes cold air really does get the mind to free up, or take some unusual directions.
I went home and set up the camera, propping the little view monitor as a screen, then pointed the cel cam at it, trying sequence photography with 3 or 5 capture frames, and video, just taking a cel cam clip off the running DV footage. This technique called "rescanning" goes way back to my experience in making and curating video art where home made effects were the norm. We used to shoot TVs and monitors with other footage running, to make an effect. Another similarity is camcorder bootleggers. My hack was just like a mini bootleg operation where a camcorder is pointed at the screen in a movie theater. Shooting a rescan like this gives you a crude but usable way to transfer footage that you couldn't normally. Once I got some pics in the camera, I loaded them into the computer by taking out the storage card and putting that in the USB slot. I opened the pics of the tiny screen and cropped them so they blew up a bit, and sharpened them. I could have boosted the curve and done other retouching, but there wasn't time. At some later date, I'll get a chance to load the footage in another computer, and I'll redo some of this.
Here are some notes from my log of the footage as I was doing the caps onto the phone cam from the DV cam screen.
2.18.09 Shoot on curb near the Hudson River.
Clip 3. Starts to snow lightly, then flurries, then turns to freezing rain.
Sh 3 0.40 short grind, cross, back step, exit when almost stopped, another cross and back. VG routine.
1.00 Bus comes along and almost parks in my run. He drives off.
Sh 4 1.15 Snowing harder. Straight grind is pretty long, shows snow well. Exit ok. Turns and gets back on board backwards and pushes uphill.
Sh 5 1.30 cross and back, quick step not quite on board. Shows snow well.
Sh 6 1.50 snowing harder, pidgeon crosses near bus. Step and stumble off nose.
Sh 7 2.05 Wind blowing harder. Snow falling in big flakes. Can see bird. Start in cross stance. step and cross, touch curb. Almost makes it. Good for snow and bird.
Sh 8 2.20 Bird on curb right in path. Bus driver comes up street, can see his legs. Probably checking to see where I am. Start in cross stance, step back, step forward, back. Stalled but makes it without a fall. Exit kick turn to get moving and hand jive. VG
Sh 9 2.45 Driver goes back in bus. Door open. Cross start, crash into weeds. Door shuts.
Sh 10 2.55 Tail lights go on. Turning to freezing rain. Straight gr, cross late and stumble. Can see wet pants forming. KJ looks wet, tired.
Sh 11 3.20 Bus starts up as if it's going to move away. Straight gr, pretty controlled and slow. Kick turn twrd curb.
Sh 15 4.40 Lighter rain. Cross and back, touch curb, stops. Shuts off cam.
Caps with phone 2.19.09 technical settings.
White bal daylight. Florescent was ok too. Used 60 fr flicker.
Used 5 shot seq sports mode, trying moderate. Bird seq 3 shot slow. Cross step seq 5 shot modrt.
Project Tip: You don't have to have perfect footage or ideal technical conditions to get the article or documentation done. Try to find some way to get it out there, published. I like dirty, improvised stuff and I know lots of others who do. The original DV footage was very clean and shows the snow really well. I'll try to get it posted. But I like these blurry rescan caps and clips, they have a certain texture. Plus it took some imagination to figure out how to do it at all.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - Sleet Skate Shoot
Useable project footage obtained despite bad variable weather
Truck pulls up and almost ruins my shoot
This skate session was planned and carried out as part of my Cross Academy project, which mixes longboard style tricks with street skate tricks. I put the photo sequences and explanation of what I was doing on a page in the Cross Academy Curb project section of the site. This tour training blog entry is a diary of how the shoot went and how it related to tour training. The photos here are different and illustrate the conditions and the progress of the day rather than the breakdown of the trick routines. Some material from this entry is also included on the project page.
I've been working on a project for a long time involving cross stepping while grinding along a curb. Other longboarders are doing this sort of this in their grinding, but I believe I have added more complex footwork and more variations than I've seen. I often go to a low curb on one of the hills that runs down to the river. When I put soft wheels on my board for my overland tour project, it made the curb grinding different, actually easier because the bigger wheels make it easy to grind this low curb. I would advise looking for a nice slick curb, ideally a metal edge curb, to try these walking tricks out, because it's basically learning to grind all over again.
Today was a cold day, but it didn't seem like it would turn into bad weather. Cold weather is nice for trick skating, because on the technical side, the curb is really hard and grinds without hangups. This particular curb gets overgrown with weeds in the summer and can be like riding in a green wave when the weeds are high, but if they get too high it can be completely unrideable. I'll try to get summer footage so you can see. The curb is really isolated and no maintenance people come by. In the winter, the weeds dry up and mostly fall off. There are still a few left, which gives the curb a little personality.
On the social side, the cold weather keeps away people who might interfere with your skating: homeless people, pedestrian passersby, police, cab drivers, and truckers. There was one bus parked on the spot, but it didn't mess up the run too bad. I just had to turn past him, which put me out into traffic, but there wasn't much.
I set up the camera on a tripod and let the footage run. I put my jacket around the tripod in case the cops came by. Sometimes they see a tripod and ask if you have a permit to film. If you're by yourself, they usually will not see a camera if it's on a backpack or jacket.
It was really fun at first. I did a straight grind, a cross step grind and exit past the bus into the street, and one with an exit into the curb using a slow kick turn. I reviewed the footage and set up for a second clip and that's when the weather started to turn bad. First there were some snow flurries. That was no problem. When the flurries turned into snow with heavy flakes I started worrying about the camera a bit. I should have closed the screen which was out, but I forgot.
At one point a truck pulled up and almost parked right on my curb, which has a driveway I use to mount the curb. It would have messed me up, because this was the specific spot I practiced all these moves on. I stood there in his way and he drove off. Then I noticed other spectators. The door of the bus opened up and the driver stood there a while. I guess he was trying to see if I was in the way in case he backed up. Also there was a funny pidgeon crossing the road.
Curious pidgeon gets in the shot
The snow was turning wet as I performed my cross stance entry routine. This is where I start riding in a cross stance as I mount the curb, then step into a straight stance. It's a pretty easy move, but it makes for a nice longboard only move, and it grinds really well.
The pidgeon spun away from the road, fluttered, and flew onto the curb and I was heading right for him on the grind. It didn't seem to care and kept pidegeon walking toward me.
Bird flutters up on curb and walks on my grind path
I started getting wet and cold. You can see in the sequence where I walk past the camera that my pants are getting wet. I didn't have gloves on, and for this shot, no hat. I also didn't use long johns for this shoot, wanting to be as unemcumbered as possible for walking the board. The lack of proper clothing definitely cut the shoot short and probably messed up my skating at the end. I knew I had some good footage, I'd made plenty of grinds all the way through. Plus the snow would look great.
Have to cut the shoot short as pants get wet
It was becoming hard to concentrate and relax. I kept trying to make one more full cross step, but I started making mistakes a lot, especially on the dismount. Finally I shut the camera off and packed up quickly. I didn't even close the view screen, since it was wet with snow. I put the tripod in its bag and shouldered it. Then I skated down the hill.
It was pretty much freezing rain at this point. I noticed that if I picked up the board and walked, I got colder, because the board was wet and hurt my bare hand, and my feet (in skate shoes not boots as I've been using for the storage runs) were in contact with the wet ground. So the more I skated, the warmer it felt-- relatively. I pushed and pushed and probably got more exercise than I really wanted.
When I got home I was pretty cold and tired, but not really that bad. I figured I was pretty much in shape from all the skating, and used to the cold. The cold wet weather and sudden weather changes made me realize that I need to include warm clothing and spares in backpack for trip. In a sense this shoot and skate session was one of my most important training events. I certainly got more out of this day's project than I ever could have expected.
Gear Tip: Bring extra clothing when the weather looks bad, especially winter variable. You can get hyperthermia or frostnip; a nasty cold burn on your hands, legs, or face. On this day I didn't want to have long johns that would mess up my cross stepping, but maybe I should have brought some extra pants or sweats. Bring backups of certain gear. This is something I learned many times from cold water surfing. Extra gloves, even little liners, extra socks, and a face mask are super light items to have in your bag, and make a world of difference when something like today's weather change happens. In addition, if you're with someone else who's less prepared than you, it can save them. In a way, I'm glad to have made this mistake this day, so close to home, because it woke me up to set up a better gear kit in my travel bag.
Project Tip: Push yourself to get footage and documentation of your projects. It was great I got this footage, but I waited too long. My skating was compromised by the cold. Also I wish I'd gotten summer footage, just because the curb looked like a wave with all the weeds. I may never get that shot now.
Friday, February 13, 2009 - Wind Alert
Careful subway maneuvers almost work
Yesterday would have been a bad day for storage training skating, especially with the kind of weird loads I've been carrying. There was a very high wind. It would have been bad crossing the overpass, as that wind comes from the west, blowing sideways right across the path.
Today there was some wind, but it didn't seem like it would be a problem to bring some oversized object. I took part of a bookshelf, the back piece which was maybe a five foot by three foot piece of white particle board. Along with that were a couple of smaller shelf boards taped together. Also I had a group of three metal shelves coated with white rubberized plastic. These were about two feet square and taped together. These were part of a wire rack, a tall kitchen thing that the microwave oven and other kitchen utensils were on. I padded the shelves with a towell. I also brought the blanket I usually use to pad loads and cut down the vibration of skating over sidewalk cracks. The whole package of shelves sat on a plastic bin, which contained some books and other stuff. It was a little bit of a wide load, but no problem to steer down the sidewalk.
Problems with this training routine are rarely with the street and bridge skating part. They are always with the train riding part, or the entering or exiting the train or station part. Today I opted to carry the stuff down into the station which went ok, No good samaratains tried to help me. I made the move of going downstairs at the entrance more efficient by carrying my skateboard on my shoulder with a harness strap from a pair of Roller Blades. I left the shelves and racks upstairs and brought the bin down first. Then I got a two dollar refill metro card ticket at the machine and stacked up the board, then rolled it through the entrance. No problem so far. Then I rolled the whole thing down the handicap ramp, which is no easy trick because the ramp descends very gradually and goes through about five turns to get down one flight. I hold up the tail of the board in kind of a wheelbarrow move and it's really fun taking the turns. Still so far, so good.
At the base of the ramp I hit some crowded conditions on the platform. I realize it's a little late. The best time to do this is between 1 and 3:30, before it starts to get crowded on the E train. It can be crowded at 3, because kids get off school. There was a problem with the A and that added to it. I got a little relief when the C came along and most of the people on the platform got on that in place of the A. It was looking like the E could be empty when it rolled up. Not quite, it was just crowded enough to be annoying, with the odd size shelves. I pushed the load on and moved left to avoid a pole, the type that people hold on to, from floor to ceiling. Unfortunately, that pole was in the way if I wanted to cross the car to the other side, where I wanted to be because at my exit stop, the doors open on the other side of the car. I had the shelves taped up for just this reason, so I could set them down propped up and not laid flat, to maneuver them in the car. The metal racks sat on the bin.
A middle aged black lady, kind of stern looking, was leaning on the pole reading a paper, and posted right in my way. I tried to adjust the bin, which was sitting on the board, which could roll freely except for the pressure of my legs on the bin. This was one of many moves I had been practicing now for three months with very few errors. If I could get across to the other door, I could brace the bin against the door and it would be very secure. But I was stuck, because of the paper reading lady and a few other strap hangers standing in front of my kaboodle. As I reached to adjust the racks, they fell right off the bin. They bounced off the floor. I stared in horror at the paper lady's foot, wondering if it had hit her shoe. It looked like a sturdy running shoe, but the racks would have caused some pain. I said "did I get you? Sorry, sorry." She glowered at me but didn't yell, speak, or show any other sign of injury or lawsuit-happy anger. I was very relieved.
Another glower guy in shades was a bit of an obstacle, but at Queens Plaza I steered through the crowd without too much additional imposition on them.
Outside the entrance I spread out the load objects to show their diversity in a pic, see above. The stack of boards and rack made a nice steering rudder and the trip to Storage went really well. I walked alongside the dolly and did almost no work pushing it.
The cluttered steel and concrete below the el makes this part of New York look like a giant mixed media sculpture. I'm not sure you'd call it pretty, but I really like to look at it and shoot pictures. No matter how many times I come out here there's always something to see that I've missed. A view up at the ceiling under the overpass, the safety islands in the middle of the street, and on and on.
You can see how the storage room has gotten filled up since November and many trips with a piled skateboard's worth of belongings. Notice the butcher block near the front from the last trip. I can crawl along the right side clear to the back if I need to get something stored deep.
When I came out of storage, it was dusk. The pic I took up the hill could have used a little more daylight, but with the night white balance on my cam it showed pretty well the unworn black asphalt. Out here in the boroughs, pavement doesn't get abused so much in places, and you can find a super high quality hill like this one. If I get a little time and there's not much traffic, I'm going to bomb or carve this hill.
Coming back across the bridge, the wind did become a bit of a factor. It was blowing due west, right in my face, but it wasn't high, maybe 15 knots. After all this time I was getting in pretty good shape and tried to push all the way up the uphill upwind side of the Queensborough Bridge bike path. The ride down the hill was pretty fun. When the wind is right in your face going downhill, you can get almost perfect speed control by catching wind and carving eSSes. I stopped and walked toward the base of the hill where it gets steep. I'm using boots to ride, so the braking is pretty bad, very grabby rubber soles. There's one more obstacle at the foot of the bridge. There's a rail you have to squeeze through, unless you want to follow it back east an entire block to York Ave; which is absurd. I always take off my backpack and hang the board over the rail and squeeze along it to where I can step off near the bridge exit ramp. Today I saw a guy, a pedestrian on the path, climb over the rail but that seems not too stylish. I always go for style whenever I can, although it wasn't too stylish on the train with that lady's foot.
Skate Tip: When descending a hill into the wind, use your open jacket or spread your arms to catch wind. Add an Ess pattern and you should have perfect speed control. You should be able to take moderate hills at the speed of someone running. This will make for a very comfortable descent, and plenty fun.
Monday, February 9, 2009 - The Butcher Block
Drafted on mobile phone, trying to type on the subway while keeping butcher block on skateboard from rolling around the train car, and edited later on the home computer.
This is perhaps the last big piece of furniture I'm moving. Although I've been throwing a lot of furniture out, a few items I don't want to part with. This is a nice butcher block that my friend GM had left in my apartment.
The challenge was to wheel the butcher block through Port Authority Bus Station down into the subway there. The block had its own wheels, but I removed them for travel and rigged it to rest on the skateboard. Then I would push it along. Moving parts like the doors and drawer at the top were taped up for travel. It was pretty well rigged, but like most of my skate dolly training trips, it was an unwieldy, somewhat clumsy load. It also looked bizarre and of course attracted the attention of pedestrians, cops, straphangers, and folks milling around the subway and Port Authority.
While waiting for the elevator to the train level, a homeless man and his wife were moving some stuff in taped up garbage bags on a roll around. He spoke to me in spanish and I did my best to communicate. I told him about the butcher block, the skateboard for travel and steering, which I stated as "para ir a la izquierda y al derecho." I said I'd been to Spain and learned spanish in California from Mexicans.
Two cops in Port Authority gave me a hard time for taking pictures but I got two good shots, including the escalator. Guess there are restrictions because of terror threats.
Took more pics on the overpass and experimented with my backpack as an ad hoc tripod and used the self timer. I got a nice pose with the block. The first a guy got in the shot but number 2 was good.
This shot shows the tape holding the drawer near the top.
3:50 PM In storage hall now. These skateboard trips are pretty rough on furniture it seems. The butcher block got banged up and down going over cracks in the sidewalk and one of the side panels is getting loose. Lost a couple of nuts and bolts. No amount of taping, securing, or removing little loose hardware seems to help.
On the way back, I looked around and lo and behold I found a bolt that had worked its way out and dropped. That'll help keep the butcher block from falling apart in its new home. Took a self portrait riding the downhill part of the overpass and got one more shot on the Queensboro Bridge, midway, looking north.
Skate Tip: This project involves a lot of straight line skating, which I'm not used to. Normally I skate patterns on flat ground or skate "lines" (improvised paths) on ramps or do tricks into or onto objects. But you have to straight line if you're going to do transit or transport skating. You want to get really smooth braking with your dragging feet, and have perfect speed control to avoid accidents. There are always pedestrians on that overpass, and I skate it downhill in a combination of straight line with foot dragging and carving Ess patterns for braking. In an Ess pattern, you should always be in a turn, in one arc to another, linking them like a chain of connected Cs, or a helix. Do not go straight then turn. Keep turning and keep your board leaning rail to rail.
Monday, February 2, 2009 - Poles and Bric a Brac
Another odd load. The 4 poles that were part of the rack in the kitchen the microwave was on. These white poles were about 7 feet long, taped together for easy carrying. There were also 4 pieces of shelf from the white shelf used for shop materials. This was disassembled and taped up for carrying. A bunch of clothes in the backpack made for a full load. I tucked a few pieces of bric a brac in the clothes for cushioning, including Xav's conch shell from the trip to Chesapeake; also a tiny tequila bottle from Mexico, and a hip flask, both props for a film project I was recently working on.
The skateboard was able to handle the shelf and poles, although steering was exceptionally hard and weird. I would shift the poles from one side to the other, steering like a gondolier oarsman.
On the way down Ninth Ave, a guy in a truck saw me with the stuff on the board and said "why don't you ride the board and carry the stuff." At first I ignored him but when I caught up I said "I've done some of that, but this is easier." And it is, it is tricky to steer but takes the full load off your arms.
On the way over the overpass I took some pictures, using the Dash phone camera for the first time. I snapped the board with poles and shelves on it, with the bridge view in the backgnd. Later I got pics of the storage hall, with the red/orange corrugated doors.
Monday, January 12, 2009 - The Vacationer
This was a fairly odd collection of objects. I carried a surfboard, a fairly large funboard but not a true longboard, in a board bag with shoulder strap. I also had a guitar case, hardshell with no guitar in it, and a backpack with some kitchen utensils packed up in bubble wrap. And of course I had the skateboard. I must have looked like a musician and sports enthusiast on the way to some vacation spot.
I took the number 7 this time. I usually take the E. I like the E because its very quick on the train and not too crowded. The 7 has the advantage of being the last stop when I get on at 42nd St. station, so it should be easier to get in an uncrowded section of a train car. I took this into consideration having the big surfboard, potentially not a crowd pleaser. Also, the 7 lets off closer to storage in Queens.
It was pretty clumsy getting on and especially off, but it went ok. I walked mostly over the bridge and down Van Dam, sometimes resting the surfboard or guitar case on the skateboard for help. At one point I got on the skateboard and carried the surfboard and guitar and just cruised along. It is amazing how much leg wear the rolling board saves. When I was walking with the boards, for some reason the surfboard really irritated my leg and knee. It seemed to be the blue pants, which I was testing as being potentially good ones to have along for the trip, as they were sturdy polyester. They failed the test miserably, being uncomfortable at least in these load bearing circumstances, and for that reason they went into a storage bag after the trip.
I've been trying to remember when I came up with the idea of this tour. Way back in the summer maybe. I remember thinking that I'd call some of my sponsors, like the guy from Harbinger, or maybe NY Pipe Dreams to try to get some gear for the trip. Also was thinking of a Surface Motion Tour sticker. More recently I started thinking about having a guitar along too, and having the stickers on the guitar case, or maybe a sign that said "Surface Motion Tour, Memphis or bust." That kind of thing.
Monday, December 22, 2008 - The Ice Sheet
After the trip of the 17th it snowed and stuck. I certainly wasn't going to take the Budro, even though that's the rain board, because if there was any snow on the ground those wheels would hang or slide. I decided to take the big 54 inch board with soft wheels, and take a book shelf that was pretty manageable, but not exactly light. It fit perfectly on the board and rode like a nice smooth dolly.
To see the more conventional ways that I have used this board follow these links:
Classic 54 description
Cruise Power project
Waves project
At least, so it went until I got out of the subway by the Queens trainyard overpass. There was some ice which I rode over effortlessly. Around the corner and onto the overpass, a lady saw me and said "watch out, it's a sheet of ice up ahead. I said, "I know, I've already encountered some." But I didn't know how right she was. Apparently there was no plowing whatsoever on the overpass, and the temperature and snowmelt dripping down from the tracks elevated overhead had created a layer of moisture which had frozen. It was indeed an ice sheet.
It was still pretty smooth going. Just slow. The ice was thin and there were bare spots where I could get footing. I was using my Tims for boots, not skate shoes. I could have used my cross country ski boots, which would have been great for traction, but they would have made pushing and riding a skateboard almost impossible. I pushed along and stayed very close to the wall on one side, which had a hand rail. There was a very narrow strip of bare ground, which I followed to get some footing. Of course the pedestrians coming my way were doing the same thing, and for the most part I yielded to them, letting them have the better footing. The board slid a little, but it was ok. I was pretty worried at the halfway point, for the path actually goes down hill and that could be a disaster if I let it get out of control.
I used my gloves to grab the rail and descended carefully. Actually all went really well on the most difficult terrain and it was only on the easier ground by La Guardia that I started to make costly mistakes. It reminds me of mountaineering stories where the accidents alway occur on the easy, less steep ground, or on the descent. You let your guard down and bam, you fall and slide for a thousand feet.
Taking a break by the college, I took out the middle shelf which had been rattling. I put that board, now loose, down flush with the bottom. After a few feet I knew I'd made a mistake, fiddling with the load. Remember- if the load rolls, don't rerig it. I heard a ping. There were four little rods that held the middle shelf, only I didn't know it. I realized that one or two had fallen out. There were two left, which I pocketed. It was just getting dark. 15 minutes earlier it would have been possible to see where they'd gone, but now, no. At this time of solstice, the day is so short it's over in mid afternoon. And right there, there happened to be no street light. I was never gonna find those rods. I looked around a bit, noticed there were some red doors to mark the spot for later searching, then pushed on. I was kind of thinking at that point that I should have just thrown the shelf out. Now it was going to require finding stupid rods that would fit. Maybe I could make some.
The goof with the rods threw off my concentration and I was due for another blunder. I was using a blanket for a cushion for the shelf, the same beach blanket I used on surf days for standing on while changing. All was well until I rode down a curb slope to the corner, where the ice met it in a gap, like a mini bergschrund. A bergschrund is a gap at the foot of a mountain where the mountain hits the icy glacier. This was a curb-schrund. The front wheels hung up, the blanket slid, and the shelf banged into the snow and tipped over. I pulled it out of the way before a car could come skidding around the corner.
On the way back I looked around by the red doors. I set the board down and walked around. Some kids, students from the college walked by and one ecstatically saw the big board on its side and rolled it flat and started to jump on. He looked like he wanted to ollie it. I walked over and grabbed it from under his feet, still pissed about the rods and not in a good mood.
The trip back on the big board wasn't the greatest. It is so heavy it was hard to push up the bridge ramp and it was hard to slow it down going down. My push foot got a lot of contact with the cold ground. I switched pushing feet, but it wasn't much help, my right toes got cold. My right foot has a circulation problem. The toes need more air space and occasional heating. After this trip I got the idea of putting foam in my boot toes for insulation.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008 - The Rainboard
The weather looked like impending snow, but there was no need to bag the trip out to Queens. I have a board I use when the weather gets bad, known as "the rainboard." It's an old Jeff Budro model that Scott nearly broke the tail scraping it on the banks one time. It has hard wheels on it, which I didn't think would be a problem.
I took a shortboard surfboard in a board bag, and some cross country skis in a ski bag. Both could be shouldered, but not comfortably at the same time. The board would have to do some of the work. Putting the skis on the board was a tall load. The tail end of the skis went on the board, and steering could be done by shifting the weight of the skis on the board. It was like steering the board down the street with some giant rudder or maybe a gondolier's oar. Also put the surfboard down on the board for a rest, but mostly I carried it.
It wasn't a bad ride out there, the weather held up. It was getting dark, but I felt full of energy and was in no hurry to get home. I decided to head out farther into Queens and look for more storage tote bins. I thought there must be a home depot out there on Northern Blvd, although I had no idea how far.
On the way out I looked in an over-decorated restaurant and wondered if it was the charroscuria that I'd been to with Aaron, Mark and the gang a few years back. I looked for signs of mariachis but didn't see any.
I went into a Pathmark, a giant store of the type I rarely get to see in my Manhattanite existence. A huge store clerk blocked the entrance and gesticulated while giving orders and showing off to the shop girls, barely noticing me. I remarked (to myself) that Queens people are every bit as me-first as Manhattan people. Finally I got past and went in the store. I looked around for storage totes but they were small and pricey. I walked by the dollar area, something you'd never see in a Food Emporium, and picked up a nice sized pound cake. That would be good for the road and there'd be some left over.
Heading further east, skated through some parking lots, banging over the road on the beaten up, hard wheeled, rusted bearing (from many rainy day rides) Budro 40. Finally came to Home Depot. There were a ton of bin choices and I spent way too long choosing. When I got to checkout I was dismayed to find no clerks and a scanning system. How was I supposed to get tote storage bins on the scanner? A Depot helper finally showed me how to swipe the bin over the scanner and somehow it worked.
Now it was time for the final leg, the ride home. I had a nice stack of 6 bins, light to carry, but very unwieldy. I stacked them up, trying to nest them and stack them with the lids on. Nothing worked real well, but it sort of worked. The best was a stack of three on the board and carrying three. I kept thinking how much easier this would have been if I'd used the BE 40 with the soft wheels. The Budro wouldn't steer straight and sometimes the small hardies would hang on a crack, always causing trouble going up the curb crossing at an intersection. The traffic was pretty light, with only an occasional aggressive acting car cutting in front of my board/bin contraption.
The bridge path was a rattle trap, with the drainage pattern on the path banging the wheels and bins like crazy. Once you get to the middle section of the bridge, the path is smoother. It was pretty cold but I had layers of poly, turtleneck, fleece, and shell jacket. I passed a lady who looked at me with admiration, trucking this heavy load on a skateboard. She had no idea the bins were completely empty and it was a super light load.
This was a very long trip, but I hadn't exerted all that much. I had gone very slowly and walked a lot. I accomplished a lot, getting plenty of new bins, exploring the outskirts of Long Island City, and figuring out how to use the self checkout with oversized items.
Saturday, December 6, 2008 - Tall Loads Steer Funny
First tall load. A six foot narrow display shelf. White particle board. I guess it's supposed to be a CD and tape case. Gerry left it at the apt and it was great for displaying the bric a brac that went in the little drawers that went out just other day.
Wheeling along 44th St and then the overpass in Queens with the shelf on the board, a big pendulum, making the steering exaggerated. It was easy going. The only thing tough was I had a backpack loaded up with my scanner, which is outdated and heavy.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - The Memento Crypt
Went out to storage with one bin, a backpack with my old antique manual typewriter, and a small Container Store drawer file full of tiny little mementos. Dan G used to call the junk I had around my old apartments "bric a brac," so that's what I've called my souvenirs ever since.
I'm noticing that I like my storage room now that it's filling with my stuff. There's something sacred about the place, chilly, with white halls with grey concrete floors. It's very quiet, with just the ghosts of all these people represented by their abandoned belongings. You can hear pidgeons coo somewhere in the rafters, which is kind of unnerving. Pidgeon crap is highly caustic and could do some real damage to goods. Hopefully they have a nice roost and won't have to come in my storage unit.
I climb up in the upper deck, crawl in, open a few bins and savor the memories the stuff conjures in this memento crypt.
Friday, November 28, 2008 - Black Friday
I made trips out to storage and rode back on Nov 10 and 17.
Today was Black Friday which kicks off the shopping season. I spent the afternoon storing, skating, and maybe weaving through some shoppers but didn't participate by buying a thing.
This was the first big shopping day and it was pretty crazy when I came back to Manhattan.
I had the bright idea of using the elevator in Port Authority to get down to the subway platform. Heading for the elevator with the board fully loaded helps avoid the "good samaratains." I'd rather carry the stuff down into the system one bin at a time, but I've found it inconvenient to do it that way. It's not unsafe to leave the bins, alone, no one steals them. What would often happen is if I entered the subway at a stairway entrance, when I carried one bin down the stairs, some showoff would grab the remaining bin and carry it down right behind me. This disrupted my training and sequence I was trying to do, and made me worry about mishaps such as; a lawsuit from some dumbass throwing his back out lifting a 40 pound bin, or the likelihood of having the contents of a bin dumped down the subway entrance stairs.
This brings up an odd phenomenon in my life. Something I just have to live with, and it's popping up in this project as guys always trying to help me lift my stupid tote storage bins and carry them for me. Drives me nuts. Leave those heavy bins for me, guys, you're going to get hurt. Looks can be deceiving, I guess. Many guys look at me and think I'm this meek little stub and underestimate me. If they're not out to push me around, they'll do me the charity of helping me in my need. If they knew the crazy stuff I've done, documented on this site, they'd see how silly they look. They'd just let me lift stuff myself, or maybe ask for MY help. I've done plenty of weight lifting and I probably know how to do it alot better than most of the guys trying to carry my stuff. And a lot of gym rat guys as well. I'm a trained athelete, not big, but a solid lifter; I learned how to distribute energy to maximum efficiency. These guys are usually outclassed and have no business trying to help me or compete with me, but I guess they feel they have to because I look like a skinny little, over the hill schmuck.
Since Black Friday means shopping lists I'll substitute my storage inventory list for this trip. I won't give complete details, just some annotations that might give you a clue as to the history and personal significance of some of the things I'm storing. After two years of throwing stuff away and eBaying and Amazoning anything valuable that could be converted into cash, the only things left are archival materials and mementos of high personal, and most likely low material, value. To see the type of service the Gravity Brad Edwards 40 inch street longboard has done for me in the past, follow these links:
BE 40 description
Cross Academy project
The load that I stacked on the BE 40 this afternoon was one blue plastic bin with a hinged lid, and a cardboard book box on the large side, a legal size file box. Contents were fairly carefully packed, although with no packing material. This arrangement is for storage not shipping. I keep an inventory using a coded system for the different types of bins and boxes to go into storage. Here's a list from my inventory then an annotated copy. The annotations will give you some idea of my work, travels, and hobbies.
Bn B 3 Materials archive
Mag archive
Howard Stern tapes, box
Surf and skate mags also in T 1
Longboard mags PLB
Weather bks
Old electronics bks
Small Sony tool bag
CC Ski wax kit
CC Ski tuning kit
Guyana sandals
5850 5800 manuals
9850 instructions
Mag archive - some longboard magazines, skateboard mags
Howard Stern tapes, box - a collection of my favorite HS shows from when I used to record the show daily. I recorded them on cassettes, then switched to VHS which was easier to fit a 3 hour show. Sometimes I'd dub off cassettes of the better shows. Listening to these morning radio shows, along with the humor, is a good way to get in touch with all pop culture and lots of tech ideas too.
mags also in T 1- refers to similar items in another bin
Longboard mags PLB -these were heavy magazines, Pacific Longboard, and had to be broken into two piles to distribute weight
Weather bks- I got into reading about the weather as part of surfing and water knowledge. Some ideas and articles on Surface Motion refer to them.
Old electronics bks
Small Sony tool bag- I had an old Sony kit from the shop I worked that I had taken on my Spring 1989 job tour in the West Indies which meant a lot to me. This tour got me started on being an international traveller. Before that I'd only travelled in the US. Somehow Surface Motion owes something to that early travel experience.
CC Ski wax kit- I liked Cross country skiing and always used wax skis or metal edge skis rather than the scale bottom skis commonly used by many ski tourers in NYC.
CC Ski tuning kit- a file and some ski repair p-tex and other wax kit stuff.
Guyana sandals- These were webbed hand woven leather sandals from that same tour.
5850 5800 manuals
9850 instructions - refers to model number of obsolete equipment I made a living off repairing for many years. Pretty well made decks and fun to work on.
Fl Bx 3 Legal size brown box
Test box with Syquest, Palm cradles, Korg effects
Box, Tek wipes
Invoice envelopes - tech and office stuff for repair business
Carlos box, mounted mirror- odd bric a brac from my household in Astoria
Kook trophy - KO's trophy of a guy on a longboard, disassembled
Bozo phone - odd bric a brac from household with good friend PK in East Village. You put the clown's hair to your ear and speak into his butt.
Last Supper oval painting - bric a brac from early roommate group from 9th Ave household
Storage Tip: Make an inventory. Number the bins and list what's in them, at least approximately. Eventually you'll need something that's deep in storage, and it'll help tremendously to have the inventory to retrieve it.
Storage Tip: If you use bins and move them yourself, make sure you distribute the weight of stuff in boxes or bins, because carrying them is much easier if books and magazines are on the bottom, and clothes or other lighter items are on top. It's natural to try to group things for your inventory organization, but sometimes it's a bad idea, because it concentrates the weight in one spot. That's why I split up the surf magazines into two bins. It made it harder to find them, but it was too hard to lift a bin filled with surf mags. If the bins are done right, you can transport them yourself easily in stacks on a dolly or roll around, or on skateboard.
Project and Training Tip: Thinking about overall speed and not short term speed is a sign of class. Learn to pace yourself. Slower now may mean faster overall. Short periods of speed or small tasks quickly done are highly overrated. If you get through a session with style and uninjured, there will be a higher overall speed to the project.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - Election Day
Getting on the train can be tricky. I have to hope there's a car without a real crowd first of all. Then when the door to the train opens, I push the board close to the lip of the train car floor, lift the nose, push it half way into the door, reach back for the tail, lift it and push the rest of the way in. Hopefully noone will have been bumped or hurt by the bins. Then the load is rolling around, and because they are super low friction bearing skate wheels and not clumsy dolly wheels, it'll roll all over. I've been taking the bins off the board and putting them in a stack, then putting the board on top. Maybe I can find a better way, because it's a slow method to get the bins stable. Then I'm stuck when my stop comes, because I have to load up the board again. I try to relax and not let the train and crowd bother me, and I've been reading Stephen King's "Insomnia", which sounds like a pretty tense thing to be reading, but it's absorbing enough that it takes my mind off my effort on the way under the river to Queens Plaza.
Today's load was a bin and a big legal size box with books in it. The box was a problem because it had to be stacked on top of the bin and was quite heavy. This made steering pretty uncomfortable.
When I get to the storage, I wheel the stuff down a long hall to my storage room. You have to get a rolling stepladder to get to the upper rooms. There's already a sense of familiarity to the place, and the little room has a feeling of being mine already. I have a couple of bins and my goofy Con Edison hat on the bin pile. I spent a little time sweeping and cleaning it out with a dust pan and hand broom I brought.
Work all done, got on the board and took off down the return route, which I'm starting to get the hang of and picking out terrain to do turns and banks and wheelies off on the way back. The real fun started crossing the overpass. It's a long overpass going over the trainyard. When it got to halfway it was downhill and the big pylon girders made a nice set of slalom markers. I was doing these linked S tuns for speed control. The board whipped and I raised my arm up for balance. It felt really surfy, like a longboard ride on some small rolly day at good break. But the view was strictly urban all around. You can see some Manhattan skyscrapers to the west but you really know you're in Queens with all the el trains crossing overhead and doing those swooping turns and maybe crossing a foot to put a little weight on the nose. Then the last few deep turns and the subway entrance comes up at the foot of the overpass. I don't use it, I head toward the boulevard and the bridge entrance.
When I came off the bridge I rode across town in the low 60s where some nice relatively untrafficked streets are. Then I part rode and part walked down 5th Ave. I arrived at Rockefller Center and planned to go look at the ice skating rink, but was surprised by the complete redecoration of the square for the occasion. They had kind of made a backdrop for the rink with an election display. On the RCA building there were two sides lit up like flags, one red and one blue, with elements from the US flag. I got to Times Sq and saw the election results come in. At first it seemed like McCain was getting more electoral votes, and it seemed like the polls might have been wrong.
Storage Tip: For valuable work or personal items, use high quality plastic bins that are basically square and that stack very neatly. Use the type that clip shut. They will cost like $20.00. Also, the more you transport the bins around, the more you'll appreciate the better bins. For less valuable stuff and stuff that you will not be looking through or moving often, use cheaper plastic bins. I got some for under $10, even $5 at Home Depot. Boxes are OK too, but may crush or be affected by moisture.
Monday, October 27, 2008 - First load bearing trip
Boards used for the training part of this project
Skateboard as Dolly to Storage
Gravity Brad Edwards 40" longboard. Wheels; Gravity Snaps, black or off white, 66mm classics, soft.
Gravity 54" Classic all wood longboard, for walking the board and carrying long furniture objects. Wheels; 66mm classics, soft.
Gravity Jeff Budro 40" model. Wheels; 62mm, 97 duro. Very worn board and trucks, used only for rain or snow.
Here's a link for descriptions of these boards as they were used in past projects. Some wheels have been changed and other modifications or repairs made since.
The type of riding I'm going to be doing requires a road board. I set up the Brad Edwards for this series of visits to storage that I've got planned. I cleaned up some bearings, put them in 66mm spare soft wheels that I haven't used in ages, and switched my small hard wheels for the big softies. Rolled them to test, seems pretty nice. Should be easy to wheel loads over cracks and bumps. And the trip back oughta be a blast.
It's not the first time I've used a skateboard as a dolly to haul stuff. I've taken furniture down to Salvation Army, down 46th St, on a longboard before. It works great because you can steer by leaning. I've used them to move stuff around in the apartment. But I guess this is the first trip of any real distance I've ever made using a skateboard as a dolly. I had two blue plastic bins full of old papers, notes, records, statements.
One thing I keep noticing as I take these papers, put them in plastic boxes, and remove them from my living space. I feel better. And I don't mean in some emotional sense of unburdening myself from my records of accomplishments and failures in New York-- none of that philosophical crap. I mean it's easier to breathe without those rotting papers crumbling to dust and putting dust particles and paper acidity in the air. It's an irony that I became this writer and artist, and collector of paper literary and arts memorabilia, but I can't stand to be around paper anymore. My lungs are sensitized to it. I guess I have to go totally digital. I need to scan every bit of paper in those bins some day and put them on a disc for viewing. That's how I can be around my favorite papers again.
The bins weren't much of a problem, but the goody goodies that try to help were. I took one bin down the subway steps and of course some good samaritan picked up the other one and followed me down the steps. First of all, I'm trying to train and I want to carry all this stuff myself. Second, I'm a paranoid who is lawyer-phobic, and I don't want some dope pulling a back muscle carrying my bin or tripping down the subway steps with it and getting crippled, while sending my bin contents flying. It's a problem, because I can't carry the two bins at once.
Trip across the overpass was no problem, wheeling the skate with two bins stacked up, steering left and right. Behind the bins there was enough room on the tail to stand on and ride along. With the top heavy load, it's so loose a squirrely that I couldn't really ride very well. One foot on the tail, the other pushing and coasting seems to work the best.
Once I dropped off the bins at storage and headed back north up Van Dam I felt really light. Now there was just me and the board, unloaded. When I dropped the board and got on and took off for the bridge it was so liberating. It was the first time I felt really free in months, and maybe because it was the start of freeing myself from my difficult housing situation, taking belongings out of the apartment being an important first step. But it had something to do with the board. The same loose trucks I always use, but switched to soft grippy wheels gave it a familiar feel, yet so different. It felt so great with the give in the bouncy wheels smoothly tracking over the cracks, instead of the hard wheel clatter I'm used to in my usual trick longboarder skate life.
There was a cross street up ahead that looked really new and well paved. I pushed sharply to pick up speed down the curb ramp, hit the asphalt, which looked like had just been put on. A beautiful Queens street, no cars, solid black asphalt, skateboard paradise. I banged up the other sidewalk ramp and did a kick turn and picked up the board and walked for a while past La Guardia College.
On the way up the bridge ramp, I saw the handlebar mustache longboarder again. I kind of waved in recognition. He was taking the two lane bike path in a helix at a good clip, turning from arc to arc, flexing his 50 inch pin nose board. He was concentrating so hard he didn't see me wave. And it's a good thing too, he was about to pull off a hard move and I'm glad I didn't distract him. When he hit the grate, with metal drain slats spaced a couple inches apart, he lifted up his weight in a slight jump. He brought the board across at an angle. The board clattered but didn't hang at all. He just bumped over it. The big wheels, the angle of the carve, and his upweight made it work. When I looked at the grate I saw how tough it was and I had to respect that ability. I sure wasn't going to roll over it going uphill. I wouldn't ollie it either. I was going pretty slow, so I pretty much had to bang the tail down and step hop over it, a kind of low hop no comply, stepping with my left foot and shoving the board over with my right.
Skate Tip: Putting different durometer wheels on your same board can give it a completely different feel and give your skating some new life. Also try putting a new springy board on your old well broken in trucks.
Skate Tip: The other skater rolled over the grate by taking it at a 45 deg angle, unweighting and staying over the board. I would have stepped down and used my foot to boost over it, a more conservative move.
Skate Comment: Hopping a moving skateboard over a drainage grate at speed is no easy trick, requiring skill and just guts. The guy on the big pin nose must be respected.
Friday, October 24, 2008 - Finding the route
Oct 24, afternoon. I took the E train out to check out some storage spaces in Long Island City. I used to live in this area, so I thought I'd know where I was going, but I really didn't. I bumbled around in Queens Plaza looking for Van Dam. I had a nice map. Finally saw that there was a bridge or overpass of some sort over to Van Dam. That was the first time it was worth putting the skateboard down and pushing. Turned out to be a pretty cool overpass with a nice view of the trainyards and excellent skating surface. There were some big girders that held up the roof of the overpass, which made nice markers to skate S's around.
Got the storage. Very chilly place with huge long halls. Kind of an odd acrid smell. I guess that's what people's old stored clothes smell like. Not bad, cause there's no people there, with body odor, just their cast off stuff.
Back over the overpass, very cruisy skating with speed control linked S shapes and maybe a foot drag or two. Some people in the way, not getting too upset over my carving past them. I crossed over Queens Boulevard, an extremely wide and dangerous street, looking for the bike path and walkway over the bridge. I'd been over the Queensboro Bridge before, but not in a long, long time, and probably by bike or on foot, not ever by board. It's got kind of an on ramp where bikes come screaming down and turn off into the Plaza. Then you go up an incline on the first half of the bridge. It's even harder to push because there's a pattern of rain drainage grooves that make the wheels clack, but not hang.
Skate Comment: Coming down my way to Queens was another skateboard rider. He was a stocky guy with a handlebar mustache standing feet close together on a huge maybe 50 inch pin nose flexer with big soft wheels. He was carving his way down, going pretty fast.
When you look down off the bridge you get a real bird's eye view of the riverbanks, you're way up there. There were some signs of fall, yellow leaves on the trees in the park on the Long Island City side. Midway on the bridge I put my glasses on and looked over the East River. The path is on the north side, so you look up the river at Roosevelt Island and the Harlem River upstream a ways. On the other side I walked around looking under the bridge. Years ago when I first visited New York we used to play ultimate frisbee with teams right under the bridge. I remember how far above us the roof was as we ran on hard, dirty ground with glass bits all over. It was rough back then, but now they'd turned it into a fru fru tennis center with cloth domes.
That evening I went to an awards dinner in the Times Square Hotel for the housing activist group that I work with. I saw Susan, my lawyer who helped me with my apartment renovation project. I didn't tell her I was leaving.
