Thanks, everyone, for forgiving me Monday.
I get disappointed when the webcartoonists I admire have to miss a day here and there, and I really don’t like to think about myself disappointing any of you.
But damn, did I have a lot to do. And still do, but tomorrow looks manageable, so here’s a comic strip for you!
Enjoy.
There are some very fine people who skate at the Memphis Tobey Field Skatepark. Chad is one of the best. He’s skillful, enthusiastic, humble, and he’s really good at teaching- always taking time to help out the little guys and girls who come to learn.
We were shooting a little video to go here the other day- just an iPhone thingy- when he spilled off the board fairly high up a wall. Here’s a still frame for you to see. I had to crop the bottom, so in this shot, you can’t see how high up the wall he is nor how far he’s got to go to get to the bottom. So… is this a teaser or a spoiler? I didn’t hang around long enough to get really good vid, just enough to try to see the line he’s teaching me to skate in ‘The Bowl’.
Chad’s also helping raise extra funds for the Hernando MS skatepark soon to be built. Go HERE and check it out. You might wanna skate there someday. Chuck ‘em a dollar and the skatepark will be better for it.
It’s legendary among surfers, if I understand right. There’s a line you wait in until it’s your turn, and if you’re new there in some way, you might get pushed back in line a bit. There’s a code… an etiquette… to these things.
I haven’t experienced the surfer thing. I wanted to. I told my buddy Mike Ramirez, who had been a surfer before moving to Memphis, that when Hubris hit it big and got a high-money syndication deal, that we’d go to the beaches he frequented through college and he’d teach me to surf. Gosh, that was a long time ago.
I have experienced it in whitewater kayaking. At a play-wave, the downstream traffic has first call at the wave. You get out of their way as they come through. You find your place in line in the eddie at the river’s edge. You see who was there before you, checking both sides of the river. If there are two entry points to the play spot, you’ve got to watch and only get in when it’s Your Turn. There’s always going to be some jostling and some inexperienced boaters just aren’t going to be able to avoid jostling forward and back. Apologize. And let the guy you’ve jostled past slip around you to claim his turn at the wave.
Mostly, you’re not going to be called out for jumping line the first or second or even the third time… Mostly, you’d better move your ass on down the river if you’ve jumped line without looking as though you’re really really sorry about it and not at all the self-important jerk you obviously are. You hear stories about what happens to the cars and campsites of people who chronically and snottily jump line as a matter of course. DBAD, dude.
It happens at the skatepark, too, of course. I usually like to go so early that no one else in his right mind is interested in being awake. I’m not very good at scanning a crowd bunched up around the Serpentine or the Bowl and figuring out whose turn it is. Also, I’m not a very good skater and I feel like the little things I’m capable of are wasting other skaters’ time in there. Other skaters are usually really cool about disabusing people of this notion- they know everyone has their skill level, and don’t mind you learning. You’re using YOUR time in the bowl, not theirs. They don’t mind waiting their turn.
Even when the little kids with their TarMart bikes come and ride through the Serpentine. People watch and wait and, if the occasional kid seems to be slowly circling around at the end of the run over and over again, the kid doesn’t get an earful of expletive. There’s usually some teenager that’ll wander over and say, “Good run. It’s time to come on out and let the next guy in, okay?” and the kid pushes his bike out of the run. The next skater typically does something so amazing you feel it was worth the wait.
So. No matter what your non-team sport might be…Play nice, right?
So there’s this big steel wave at the skatepark- put there on the first anniversary of the park, or thereabouts. Anyway, I’ve been told it’s eighteen feet tall or so.
And it’s got stickers on it. I’ve watched as people ride up it and slap stickers as high as they can get them. It’s fun to watch.
Today, I had a bunch of Hubris stickers and some young enthusiasts willing to get them as high up as possible.
Here’s a photo for scale. It’s a big thing. And some of those stickers are really high. Lots of the highest ones are put there by in-line skaters (you know- the guys with wheel-bearing boots on their feet) They’re sometimes looked askance at by the skateboarders, but by golly, they can get really really high up that wave. And they can’t ‘bail out’- if they land badly, they STILL might roll away. The skateboarders and bicyclers? Tougher to get higher, and more chance for bailing out- intentionally or otherwise.
Like this:
Yeah, that’s the kid’s skateboard way up next to him in the second shot. He got some decent height, and made a huge reach for the placement of a sticker, but there was zero chance of landing back on the board. Boom.
The guys were real troopers, though, and went through a lot of Hubris stickers on the wave.
