Still bummed...

Still bummed that I didn't get The Red Bulletin job at Red Bull. Not that I'm a big consumer of energy drinks, but Red Bull just does some fantastic stuff—in the literal sense of fantasy. Check out the mini velodrome.



Plus anything that works against Monster or Rockstar energy drinks (and associated bros with flame tattoos) is great to me.

Jalama Burgers

Phil loves Amurc'n food.

 
My friend Philipp came all the way from Indonesia to surf with me in California. Which is an idiotic thing to do. Indonesia has the best waves on the planet.

Naturally, the water in Southern California was cold and flat due to La Nina.

Cold, small waves with Point Conception in the background.

At 4 am we left for Jalama, which is just north of Point Conception, below which is considered Southern California. Above Conception, you can catch north swells which are blocked by the point. (Point Conception's a real dick cock-blocker for SoCal surfers.)

After surfing, while we enjoyed a couple of life expectancy-shaving Jalama burgers, a local told us some shark stories. A guy had recently been sawed in half by a great white just a few miles north at Vandenburg Air Force Base. I was glad to get the story after surfing.

They say Southern California is full of pussies.

Phil is pretty funny. He doesn't give a fuck.

Why is there a monkey in a cage on the side of a river? It's Indonesia, that's why.

Utilism

Jason Lee using a trashcan as a high-jump bar.

At its best, street skating is an urban art form, or at least utilism. It repurposes the concrete wasteland in ways that its architects and planners never intended. (Shit, the innovators of street skating like Natas, Gonz and Jason Lee even abused skateboards themselves in never-intended ways.) With a little creativity, fallow afterthoughts like drainage ditches and dams, handrails, and any awkward slabs of concrete transform into playgrounds.

(If you can't see how prepackaged most sports are, ask a serious tennis player to play someplace that isn't a fenced-in, crack-free tennis court, with the net set at regulation height. Any serious tennis player would make a confused dog face, panting "Where are the lines?!")

One thing that always bothered me, though, is that a skateboard's wheels are so small. While it takes advantage of the paving over of everything, its functionality is entirely dependent on overabundant concrete. A skateboard is useless without urban sprawl — unless you build a structure on which to use it. Then you have a wooden half-pipe or something similar, and you're basically playing tennis in a confined court. (Watch someone skate a halfpipe and you'll find your head turning side-to-side just like you're watching tennis.)

This is also why I think most of the new skateparks suck the creativity out of skateboarding. In reality, the obstacles are already telling you what you're supposed to do on them. You may learn new tricks, but the obstacle doesn't change. It's concrete. (Yes, double-entendre, hmm?)

Road bikes, while some pretend they explore, are also dependent on concrete. Mountain bikers fake being rugged and off-roady, but they're entirely dependent on trails. Just try to get a mountain biker to bushwhack through undergrowth on a ride.

This guy rewrites. While I don't really want to emulate him in any way, I think what he's doing is street skating on a bike. He's taken his tricks and influence from skateboarding as obviously as snowboarding has (I don't remember any natural handrails, boxes or superpipes in the mountains), but adapted them originally.

I dig: he's using a bike in way most industrial designers never imagined, in nooks and crannies no one else studies for their potential for play. Genius.

Just Be Glad You Weren't Walking

Chris is always smiling, always positive, and everyone likes him. I don't know how we're friends. He almost makes me wish I was from Africa, too, instead of the 51st state.

Chris hates eating. I still don't understand how this is humanly possible, but I've seen him push away food after climbing 25 miles up to Mt Baldy. His disregard for his taste buds shows, too. He bragged to me about hitting the gym and putting on weight; he's up to 136 pounds. (That was a braggadocio for him, that's how humble the guy is.) Needless to say, at his weight, Chris is built to climb. And what better way to parade your prowess than with the ultimate climbing wheels?

Chris directs motion graphics for a living (thecore.la), and I would assume from the wheels he just punctured on a ride to Palos Verdes that business is good — Campagnolo Hyperon Ultra Carbon wheels retail for over $3200. Don't worry too much about the wheels, though; that money is probably small potatoes next to what he's spent customizing his other raced-out ride, a track-ready VW R32.


Oddly enough, Chris was smiling again very shortly after he got the nail out and put a new tire on. Jimmy Cliff had it right: you can't keep a good man down.

Let It Snow

I look good in purple.

I am antsy for snow season. I miss listening to people whine about lift lines and ticket prices, when the backcountry is always free, untracked and uncrowded, if only they knew how to walk through snow.

Call a Chiro

Outside the commercial shoot in San Francisco.

Mt Baldy the Brutal is Conquered

Storm a'brewin' on that there mountain.

Pancake rattlesnake.

Snowballs -> Prison.

These cute li'l fanged fuzzies were everywhere.

Chris trying to hitch a ride up into the morning clouds.

Dam.

Last weekend, me and some of my fellow Westside Velo dudes made our way up Mt Baldy. (I also tried to invite Brian Dolen, but he claimed he might not have the legs; he made a smart call.) For the most part, Baldy isn't a terribly hard climb. It sounds tough because it's 25 miles of continuous climbing; but it's not that steep until it really has a chance to hurt you. Basically, you do 21 miles up to Baldy Village, the basecamp of the ski resort. That wasn't so bad. Then it gets absurdly steep for the final four miles of climbing into thinner air, up to 7300 feet. After 21 miles of climbing, those last four kill you — it's just burning legs and lungs and desperately trying to catch your breath but you can't. Some guys even had to stop for oxygen. Personally, I find that offensive, yet I understand. I've never turned back or stopped, because I'm afraid if I do it once, I'll do it twice; I don't want to start that kind of habit. But in this instance I understood. The last four miles were that fucking hard.

People often look at me sideways when I mention that I can't go out Friday night because I want to wake up and do something like this. Clearly they don't see what I see.

We climbed a traffic-free road into a secluded mountain range — practically in the middle of Los Angeles — to a ski resort. We saw rattlesnakes and tarantulas crossing the road. We challenged ourselves to our limits, and succeeded, accomplished. Sometimes I prefer making memories on the bike to the repeat cycle: seeing the same people at the same parties in different places.

Climbing a mountain is fulfilling on one hand; on the other, it's purely conquering an invented challenge, and one you choose yourself. It's not as if you have to scale the mountain; it's a choice. Yet in this Nerfed-out world, this is how we express wanderlust in the most classically human way. We now explore not to claim, not to conquer, but to achieve and discover... Almost to relive and reimagine what it could've been like the first time. Maybe it's simply a celebration of testing one's limits.

Go skiing without a chairlift sometime. You might rediscover the real essence and purity of sport, the way it was before skiing became snowy rollerblading.

"Gladiators! Nerd up." Tall Paul conspicuously absent.