Steve Crandall

Coffee sipping pilot of a red FBM frame and a Nikon camera.

Posts from Steve:

Daytona Van Party

The first time I remember ever flipping over in a van, while driving down a highway, was sometime around 1996 give or take a year on either end, after attending a Hoffman BS comp in Daytona Beach at Stone Edge Skatepark.
‘¨I can’t remember exactly, But I think I drove down to the event withe the late great Colin Winkelmann, and hitched a ride elsewhere after the fact…

Paul Murray, who had been working for Mat Hoffman previously, was heading to his hometown in Wilmington North Carolina after the event, where my parents lived, so I jumped in with him. I was living in Ohio at the time, and hadn’t seen my family in a long while.

‘¨Paul was driving an off white late 80’s Mitsubishi van outfitted as a work vehicle with a raised floor that doubled as a tool box, for power tools and the like. On top of the particle board structure was some indoor/ outdoor carpeting. With Paul were 2 other young riders, Andrew Lorek, and His cousin Ahman, who lived in the same area, also heading back to Wilmington after the event in Daytona.’¨

I had my BMX bike, and a back pack, loaded up and headed out with some new traveling companions, That I barely knew…
We left on a sunday afternoon, heading up interstate 95, tackling a 500 some odd mile drive, in a freighted Japanese 4 cylinder utility van. I kicked off my sneakers, and made a makeshift sleep spot on the tool box, with my bag as a pillow, and off we went.’¨

We travelled a good distance north, up near Jacksonville Florida in and out of traffic on a busy highway, I tried relaxing, while preparing for a long journey, half paying attention to the road behind the driver. I was balancing somewhere between, exhausted, anxious, restless and happy to see my folks. In-between small talk, I started dozing off shortly there after, and was quickly rattled to consciousness by a swerving van.

‘¨In front of us was a loaded pick-up truck, with lawn furniture, and a couple plastic lawn chairs flew out, into traffic. Paul, doing what any driver would do, tried steering around a foreign object in front of him on the highway, unfortunately the weight, and handling capacity of the van didn’t work in Paul’s favor, and he started losing control of the vehicle.’¨A turn left, a hard turn right, and before anyone could really react, the van had tipped over, rolled onto its roof and slid to a halt on Rt. 95.

Imagine quickly transitioning from the normal sound of the highway underneath the wheels of the van, to ctually being underneath the wheels of the van, upside down, and listening to metal scraping, the pop of windows shattering and bits of glasses dispersing to the back drop of ssliding steel and human terror across asphalt.

‘¨I don’t recall exactly what happened with the other passengers, but I was upside down, with no shoes on, under the weight of a particle board tool box, draped by carpeting, completely discombobulated, and quickly registering the sound in my brain of a battery operated power tool that had turned on mid tumble. All of this was pretty overwhelming, and hard to process, with passerby’s trying to help, the mystery power tool, broken glass everywhere, with me trying to maneuver under the weight of the toolbox, and suffocating in the florida heat under a carpet. Frantic shouts from outside the van made me more nervous, would the van catch fire? Was that buzz a sawz-all aimed at my neck? And more, where were my shoes?

‘HEY MAN YOU GOTTA GET OUTTA THERE!’

Ya, but where are my shoes?

I remembered pretty specifically after getting from underneath the contents of the van, not wanting to step on the hot pavement, peppered in glass shards, barefoot, and simply asked for help finding my shoes.

‘¨Traffic was backed up for miles, as friends heading the same direction passed by, noticing we were the cause for delay, as they witness the over turned Mitsubishi van, and 4 BMX kids standing in the bees nest of flashing lights and chaos. I eventually found my shoes, gathered my belongings, as did the rest of the guys, and we ended up, later that evening, renting a sedan to continue the journey. Luckily the power tool was just a cordless drill, and the Van never went up in flames, It could have been a lot worse.

‘¨We were all relatively unscathed, maybe a bit shook up, and drove into the night aimed at the Cape Fear river basin. The rest of the trip was spent buzzing from Adrenalin, listening to radio Music, and passing through one of the worst thunder/lightning/torrential rainstorms I had ever witnessed. My nerves were shot, the van was totaled, but we made it…

Bound for Nowhere

Driving down the road, an interstate supercross of the mundane, I looked up at the bright shining moon, 11 o-clock in the sky, while listening to an album, the same one since I was teenager, and I realize the moon is not some ambient lunar reflection of the sun, but a giant lit up Shell logo a few hundred feet up on a hill, on top of a giant pole, across the freeway, over the on ramp for traffic headed the other direction.

This was one of the moments out in the wild you don’t usually read about in tales of glory and profound enlighten- ment on the road. Times like being stuck in Oklahoma City, broke and hungry on Thanksgiving, and getting caught stealing a biscuit from a truck stop buffet, or pouring diesel through a makeshift beer can funnel into the intake on the side of a highway, in the rain, when you run out of fuel. You also aren’t likely to read about how there is no shoulder and 18 wheelers are flying by in thread the needle proximity at 75 miles per hour!

You rarely read about the times before smartphones, where a few close friends all quit their jobs, and pile into a 750 dollar van, with belts exposed in the tires, an outdated map, a few 12 packs of cheap beer, and pile of bikes. Half way aimed to head out across the country in the worst storms you have ever seen. Looking back, amidst modern conveniences, I can’t believe my friends and I drove drunk through cities like Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore and beyond, searching the locale for spots we had heard about, in neighborhoods we had never been to. The kind of neighborhoods strangers aren’t typically welcomed.

You hardly ever read about drunkenly replacing serpentine belts in a parking lot, doing a brake job in a field, or looking on the bike rack at a bike with a pedal missing that must have wiggled off after the traffic jam in that snow storm outside of Erie, Pennsylvania. Times like driving up the eastern seaboard with the windows busted out after the vehicle was robbed, or leaning out the window, becoming your own windshield wiper, with the squeegee stolen from the Flying J, after using the hot air dryer vents in the bathroom to thaw out and warm up your shoes.

You seldom read about a panicked dash for the state line after being let out of county lock up, and doing a semi controlled high speed , hi-way re-arrangement of all the vans contents, after a warranted search by state police, only to get to a late night campsite, where one passenger ingests all the illegal mind altering dugs the police missed while tearing our road trip vessel apart.

You might not read about the traveler accidentally sipping from what he thought was a beer, but was a can filled with what was beer an hour earlier, from another road-worn travel tavern patron. Road beers, piss jugs, and good times turned arguments when belongings get tossed out of a moving vehicle or a haymaker is tossed over a bench seat, in an instantly forgotten misunderstanding about a playlist, or a quarter snack or a missed left turn…

I don’t know if you’ll read about the drunk passenger thinking it would be okay climb to the front of the vehicle using the steering wheel for leverage, or the one dancing up front in the van only to fall over into the driver and regain their balance by yanking the wheel, forcing everyone into a ditch… Or the times spent spinning through medians in snowstorms, chased by rednecks out of a small town, or being stranded in some lost city in the middle of nowhere..

You don’t often hear about the cop, or the mechanic, or the corner weed dealer that ripped some one off, or the battle cry of regret from the dude getting dropped off to a crowd of onlookers by the least desirable late night decision of a trip. Road Trip hot, and a game of How many steel reserves come to life, and the high speed hazing to the next destination.

They don’t have DUI check’s for hallucinations brought on by dehydration and sleep deprivation, or getting stoned off fumes from an open hatch back with bikes hanging out of it, but the decisions made in that kind of haze, are both unforgettable and hard to remember, after hundreds of miles sharing stories, modest portions of inexpensive food, punk rock sing alongs and bug splattered windshield landscapes between where we all started and nowhere in particular.

The best times, and the longest lasting friendships all spawned out of some of the worst times, on the road with no money, no direction, no certainty, and an unreliable vehicle at best. We didn’t need much else, and we always still managed to get where we were going.

A life on wheels, with or without speed wobbles, these are the kinds of stories you’ll live to tell when you are Bound for Nowhere in particular…

Oasis

My first time going to Kuwait put me there over Easter, somewhere near the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, or whatever you wanna call it. The land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, emptying into the Persian Gulf. It was windy, hot and like no other place I’d been before, except maybe Salton City or a truckstop outside El paso after a windstorm.

I’d gotten a call from ‘˜Rooftop’ a month or two earlier, letting me know their might be an opening on a trip to visit troops overseas and asked if I’d be interested. The dates were pretty close to another trip to Spain that I had already planned, and the lease on my my place was up. I weighed my options, and accepted the offer. I’d be gone over a month, so I let go of my apartment, and packed up everything I owned into boxes. When I would return, I’d be living in and out of my school bus. I was up for some pretty dramatic changes, on top of a trip like nothing I had ever experienced before. I was excited at the idea of everything, I was also quietly hoping I was cut out for it.

Flying across oceans and continents, to the land of oil and sand, I arrived in Kuwait City, 3 flights and 30 hours after leaving the States. I was greeted by a security team of ex-special forces, Americans living in a foreign land, hired to escort the group I was with safely from point A to point B. They were hardened veterans who almost wore humble smiles, faded ranger tattoos, civilian clothes, and ear pieces and communication devices. They said we could be considered ‘˜soft’ targets (I think they were messing with me), and that the journey from the airport to Camp Arifjan was likely the most dangerous part of our stay. And not because of an insurgency or terrorists, but because the locals drive like maniacs and are known to get in pretty wild car accidents. I wasn’t sure what to make of it all? It hadn’t occurred to me we’d need security when I accepted the invitation, especially the same dudes who protect DV-6. (Aka. High level distinguished visitors, aka. The US military generals)

Being on base was surreal. We wandered around, jet lagged, to a commander’s call to start the day. There, we would learn the basics regarding where we were, and how things worked. Kuwait was really far from the world I lived in on so many levels. Totally fried and wide eyed, I had no real idea what to expect. It was a huge operation, at least to me it seemed that way, serving as the forward logistics base for the entire region. It also had a coffee spot that served the MOAC

‘Mother of All Coffees’ ‘“ which is like a high octane truck stop coffee with four shots of espresso. And there was a Taco Bell fashioned out of a Conex shipping container.

I was in the Middle East as part of a group bringing entertainment to Americans deployed in a conflict zone. Part of that was in the form of shows, but most of it was meeting soldiers, airmen, sailors and so forth. Men and women from every walk of life, their duties handling every detail imaginable to keep this kind of operation in motion. Often times we just listened as people told us their stories, where they were from, what was waiting for them back home, how long they’d been here, and how long till they left.

We spent the week traveling from Arifjan, around Kuwait to various bases, some within just a few miles of Iraq. We were escorted anywhere we went by the security detail, and our convoy was usually a few cars deep. Traveling north, passing oil fields, and a dusty bunch of not much else on the left, the Persian Gulf, Kuwait Bay and Kuwait City. It was like eager sightseeing without much to look at. As we got further from city limits, the amount of debris and post war junk increased. One of the men from our security detail pointed to a section of the water, and to all of its flotsam and jetsam, and told the tale of remnants of the first Gulf War essentially being bulldozed into the sea.

As we travelled further inland, looking left, I gazed on the horizon to wire fences, power lines running parallel to our path, some temporary structures and tents, and a caravan of camels. It was unassuming and underwhelming at best, minus the random dumpster, burned out vehicle or pack of wild dogs. Getting closer to an Air Force base, there would be helicopters circling above the windblown dust that seemed to be intermittently endless. The base we were headed to was owned by the Kuwaiti Government, with the United States Air Force, and the U.S. Marines running operations against a proto-state of fundamentalists that were destabilizing the region.

We arrived and saw even more remnants of the first Gulf War, bombed out bunkers sitting like some dusty reminder of the Iraqi invasion. Only 20 some odd miles from the Iraqi border, they called it the ‘Rock’ ‘“ to my best estimation, a lot of what I was seeing in the headlines in other parts of the same region, started out here. On a quick tourist walkabout we were shown, by a soldier pointing a few hundred yards away, where Iraqi troops hung a Kuwaiti General, his remaining soldiers shot. The building, bullet holes and all, sat there unused.

Regardless of politics, policy, and social conventions, we met men and women from the most far reaching corners of Americana and beyond, all types, all colors, creed, shapes and sizes. We talked about anything and everything, from daily responsibilities, the monotony of some of it, and all things in-between. We saw everything from dogs that bite, to robots that disarm bombs, to chow halls and pool halls,the basics of the quick reactionary force, the base fire department, the control tower, and underground tunnels that connected various posts, headquarters or who knows what.

Back on the road, it was more of the same, although two of the vehicles from our convoy were totaled in a wreck during a windstorm when a water truck making a delivery to one of the bases could not see them at a turn… and all hell broke loose. Two of the guys I was with were in one of the vehicles. They were hurt, but not seriously. Camels being raised by a nearby Bedouin tribe were the only witnesses, they walked by unconcerned.

We would spend another week in a conflict zone, surrounded mostly by vast nothingness and uncertainty, juxtaposed by people who are the most hospitable, genuine, caring and appreciative. The duality of it all was subtle but striking, a world away from everything I knew, a real lesson in humility and sharing.

On our way out of the country, the men on security detail suggested that if anybody hits a camel with a vehicle, to just keep going straight to the airport, because the trouble wouldn’t be worth waiting around for.

The first time I went to Las Vegas was in the mid nineties. I was twenty one years old and semi-stranded in Huntington Beach, California, in winter time, at the infamous HB house. A friend named ‘Comcast’ was moving west and had offered to buy my ticket back home to Indiana if I helped him drive across the country. The journey west in the cold months was drab and dull. Peering at the horizon through a windshield down Interstate 40, everything was like a grayscale painting. When we got to California, he let me know he was out of money…

The crew that I was couch surfing with in Huntington Beach was a wild bunch of party go-ers, and amidst a weekend bender, it was decided we’d all road trip to Sin City, a few hours east. If we left soon, the night would still be going by the time we arrived. Quite a few of us packed into a mid 80’s Toyota single cab pick up truck. 3 up front and a few in the bed, under a cap, with beers, gear and a well known bike rider of the time smoking speed out of a tinfoil and glass contraption. He would hold an index finger to his lips, gesturing for me to keep it a secret, before exhaling. I was so naive I wasn’t even sure what was being smoked, let alone how outrageous my entire situation would end up being, thousands of miles from home, all but broke, with no real plan. I think a pattern was forming.

Wandering around Las Vegas, we arrived at the same time as the grand opening of a new casino fashioned to look like a tiny New York City, with small skyscrapers and a miniature Statue of Liberty. I was now possibly in the weirdest desert in the world. Making the rounds, everything was vivid, electric, noisey and full of energy.Everything seemed alive, flashing lights, loud speakers, pamphleteers, tourists of all ages, mothers, grandmothers, entire families, all in one of the most rapidly growing cities in the United States.

The people who walked by us were adults dressed like kindergarteners, donning plastic jewelry, novelty visors made of tinted plastic, wearing sunglasses indoors, and holding refillable drink containers filled with booze. Amidst an endless sea of tourism and gamblers, all in at least as much of a haze as anyone I was with, we ended up at a craps table. Rolling bones across from us was a well dressed man with a bodyguard, groupies, and various random people staring. One of the guys I was with started saying, “Hey, it’s the singer from Soundgarden.” He and his entourage were not stoked, to which a man with a lisp proclaims, somewhat annoyed ‘“ ‘It’s not THoundgarden, its METALLICA…’
We were playing craps with Kurt Hammock. He had his hair cut short, nicely manicured facial hair, and would be playing the grand opening that evening with the rest of his bandmates.

Making our way after midnight to a sprawling semi suburban desert neighborhood on the outskirts of Las Vegas, we discovered a stark contrast to the welcome of the high wattage nightlife of the Strip. The only thing that seemed pretty well lit were our new friends that welcomed us to their dim post party luminescence. Here, people gathered around a hand me down TV and VCR watching a recorded broadcast of some cable news. The scoop revealed a dead body found hog tied in a spare bedroom of a beat up neighborhood home. The newscaster, in front of a familiar looking house, was in the forefront as a young man got undressed in the far right corner of the background. Total hijinks.

Turns out the prankster was also our host, and the house being reported in the news was the one we were staying at. The dead body was the girlfriend of an estranged roommate they hadn’t seen in a while. To just about anyone this news would be shocking, I know I was startled. And when asked how long ago this happened (we were curious how many months had gone by since this tragedy), the response was ‘“ ‘Like 8 p.m., the news trucks just left a couple hours ago…’

That night I stayed in the back of the pick up truck, in a front yard. If I slept at all, it wasn’t much.

I had been in the desert for a couple of days, feeling sorta lost, tired and uncertain, so I called my father. After some small talk, I said, ‘well Pops, I stayed at a place where they found a dead body last night, it kinda weirded me out…’
He paused, like he was either half listening or didn’t really think I was being serious and said ‘that’s kids stuff,’ eluding to all the craziness he must have seen in his younger days.
He concluded, however, with ‘don’t tell your Mother’ and ‘make sure you get home safe…’

In just a few words he reaffirmed he was listening and understood, but also knew I’d be fine.

A bloody car was found in the desert soon after this, empty and abandoned. It belonged to the mystery roommate from the house we stayed at. Eventually we were back on the road. Behind us, one of the most depraved, manufactured absurdities I had ever witnessed ‘“ Las Vegas, and many of the people who pass through it. I was glad to see it fade off in the distance, through the tinted glass cap, while I sat in the bed of a pick up truck headed west.

TOWN AND COUNTRY

Bound for Nowhere…

I look down at my hands. They look different now than the first time I set off for the west coast. Each, no longer a teenage grip for an anything goes pursuit of who knows what. They’ve now seen some miles. Fingernails dirty with grease and dried up acrylic paint, faded scrappy tattoos and a couple handfuls of permanently scarred and broken knuckles. These hands that started clearing the path that led me here today, are now just as prone to simply hold on for the ride, one I had set myself out on as a wild teenage version of myself years before.

Not much had really changed, but rather than hustling across state lines in a beat up old car, I’m hurrying to make a connection so I can pick up a rental car, a Chrysler Town and Country, power windows, unlimited mileage and all the modern perks for family travel. Still strapped for cash, gearing up for more Lo-Fi adventures into the unknown, where my friends and I will rely heavily on the currency we’ve built up over the years for shared rides, floor space and hopefully a meal or two. Just as it’s always been, times are lean in the land of plenty…

I felt like I was joining up with my old gang for another caper. Nothing criminal, just stealing some fun from the overlords of institutional boredom and monotony. The same beat scene, our kids bikes helped us escape from years ago. The same reason that led me to the land of milk and honey as a kid. Day Dreams of being free.
This trip wasn’t unlike a hundred others except the headlines were going haywire. We arrived the same day the news broke of a mass shooting and two deadly wildfires, and immediately beelined it for Yuba City, over the Golden Gate, past Sausalito, through Vallejo and Vacaville, past Sacramento and right to a Travelodge in a town whose statistics boasted that 1 in 250 people were likely to be a victim of violent crime.
Right off the bat, the continental breakfast behind the cardboard cut out of a bear, named ‘˜Sleepy’, was hopping. Standing room only, when I noticed the one character that was even more out of place than the people I was with. He was a short, almost stocky man, pants rolled up towards his knees, mismatched shoes, hat pulled over his eyes, and a giant crescent wrench sticking out of his back pocket. Normally I wouldn’t have paid much mind, but after just learning the crime stats, I was on heightened alert. I watched him as he hovered between the packaged danishes, and the fire exit that lead to the rear parking lot, weaving with his wide stance, half nervous like he was pacing in one spot, eyeballing the griddle, the coffee carafe just past it, and doing a terrible job keeping an eye out for ‘˜Sleepy’s’ co-workers.

Looking like either an old pool skater or a low level prison gang member, he appeared ready for anything, except getting caught by the hostess, distracted by the impatient stare at the griddle timer, he’d left his defenses down.
‘Morning guys…can you snag that waffle for me when it’s done?’ as he’s being escorted away. The ballyhoo of of Yuba City’s seedy reputation was proving not to disappoint.
From there, we would go to meet some new friends at a long standing local retail spot down the street, cozied up next door to a fresh donut shop and Sun’s cafe ‘“ a small handful of independent holdouts against box store and franchise bulldozers that have bled small cities like this one dry across the landscape. We traded coins for coffee in styrofoam cups, and got to know our new friends.
‘You see those storm clouds over there!?’ Glen said, pointing due north over the horizon, ‘that AINT a storm, it’s the smoke from Chico heading this way…’

It was a smoggy, dark, giant marshmallow that you could taste when you breathed in. For the entire week, we’d be in an air quality advisory. It was my first glimpse at what would keep our lungs burning and the sunlight dim and bronzed until we got indoors and coughed like coal miners in line at the company store.

We headed south, driving towards the East Bay on roads so congested that they might as well have been handwritten liner notes on every punk album I’d ever heard, with the driver almost as erratic as any bass line that echoed the walls of 924 Gilman. Matt trying to describe the limit of his ability, to the static pulse of the music trying to bring us to our escape, resisting despair in this world is what it is to be free. Finally, while on the lookout for our exit, we break free of the traffic. It was totally hectic.
Eventually, we end up in a small coastal town just south of the city on the 1, across the street from a fast food taco joint on the beach. I am sure Matt was on his way or had plans to get another burrito, when a skateboarder called the police on us for loitering in the park. The cop showed up, kicked us all out and left to respond to an overdose. We hit the road again…
The next few days were spent in Santa Cruz, where we had the best bus station dinner of my life. A Ramen spot called ‘Betty’s Noodle House’ ‘“ where you can get PhÆ¡Ì‰ or green onion pancakes and watch people come and go. We spent afternoons among the redwoods, or roaming industrial areas mixed in with crowded residential districts, before wandering seaside on the northern side of Monterey Bay. Watching the water crash onto the jacks shaped pylons, (they call them tetrapods) from the Santa Cruz Harbor, we could see the beach boardwalk amusement park, which had been here since the turn of the previous century. It was late autumn and mostly closed down, yet almost crowded with gothic beach bums, and tweaked out street folks who would only be rivaled by the giant seagulls in their assertive demands. Aside from the rough crowds, the casual seaside atmosphere of the whole place made our group feel welcomed, and most of the locals only reinforced that with smiles and courtesy.

Now at a seaside cafe directly across the street from the Santa Cruz municipal wharf, for a cup of coffee, looking left you can see the off season tourist postcard, a row of tall palm trees, nearly blocking the view of the Giant Dipper, Fireball, The Cyclone and The Sea Serpent. A quiet, vacant, giant carnival playground. The lighting was a hazy mix of the wildfire smog, and light ocean breeze fog, or some kind of low isolated overcast tint, making everything look like a movie screen memory. If you looked right, there was an old train trestle being used as some kind of makeshift amphitheater, repurposed by the dregs of this quaint beachfront community. The day ended watching the rehearsals for drug deals and life decisions gone awry. In this exact moment, amidst the sounds of the beach and the seagulls, one of the troupers under the bridge screeched, holding the right side of his face, walking half aimlessly down the train tracks, in what I can gather was the aftermath of nearly losing any eye. We stared at the commotion for a few moments, and then pedaled off in the opposite direction.

Before wandering towards Watsonville, we met up once again with Ron Wilkerson for fruit and granola mixed with peanut butter, and story time with the local legend, where we joined him and his family at the Brazilian/Argentinian style health food restaurant they ran. In his earlier days, Ron was THE magazine cover boy for the California dream. A professional bike rider, who in many ways defined a good part of an entire culture. Now in his 50’s, he showed us videos on his smartphone of him trying to reach his goal of getting a 50 foot air, as a 50 year old rider. By his count, a twenty something foot air on a twenty something foot tall mega ramp would put him roughly fifty feet in the air. His goal, starting at age 50, now two or so years later, was being pushed further by the few months of recovery for each piece of math he had figured out along the way. This time a dislocated thumb, almost healed as he talked about how he would land his next attempt. It was ridiculous hearing him explain it, and at the same time made perfect sense. Anything was possible.

After a nice breakfast we headed out to get a good view of an empty swimming pool in the hills, once a country club type place that burned down decades earlier ‘“ a swim club that would give way to a piece of wayward transitional history. We spent the afternoon enjoying the fruit of the vine, re-enacting our own daydreams, listening to music, resting in between runs in the shade of the one nearby tree, taking cover from the sun which was both muted and amplified by the thick wildfire tinted haze.

After nearly a week of spending most of each day outdoors, the air pollution from the natural disasters up north started to take their toll on the group I was traveling with. Everyone was kind of shy to admit they felt a little off, asthma like symptoms, itchy eyes, flu like congestion, fatigue, everything the advisories warned us against. We did our best to ward off the effects of ash, smoke and thick air with bad jokes, laughter, and more bad jokes.
As dusk crept in, after a day spent hanging out in the deep end with a raffish band of ne’er do-well dreamers, we rejoiced on getting to share this empty swimming pool’s legacy with each other, and the countless errant counterparts before us. We were just west of Eden, as we made our way through the trees, down the manmade gulch to where we parked the Town and Country. We loaded up our gear, and cracked more bad jokes before heading over another hill, and not without some kind of road trip irony, to get dinner by a campfire at Rancho Hernandez.
This was the pinnacle moment of the trip for me, shared food around a fire, tacos and talk of all the tall tales that were all true, recounting every absurd interaction, and half planned mishap, while staring into the combustible abyss of wood scraps, making dancing light and throwing tiny glowing embers into the atmosphere. Looking across the fire at the glowing faces of my travel companions and gracious hosts, I decided the lit up smiles weren’t just from the fire, but also from the times we were sharing. This was it.

The last night of the trip, we bunked at the Beach Motel on the end of Judah Street, outer sunset San Francisco, where the fog calls home, right near the beach. As we settled in, the proprietor loosely choked his dog collar at Shane (Leeper) while faux sicking his hound on him, and asking what room he was in. Evening was like a ghost town, idled trolley cars, an opened door to a mostly empty bar where a woman danced by herself as we walked by looking for an after hours eatery.
The trolley lines end here, a half a block from where the morning surfers and end of the line vagrants coalesce with coffee shop locals and our band of traveling Wilburys.
A refill on the coffee I just had would cost the same as a new one. I had two cash dollars left. As I tried to bargain with the woman, leaving it on the counter as I walked away, she yelled ‘No more refill, this last time… you pay!’
I’d never been here before, and would likely never return. The coffee was almost as burnt and smoky as the air we had been breathing the past week…
Due to a week of poor visibility, endless delays, and the general chaos and aftermath of a natural disaster, our plane left almost an hour late. The connecting flight from San Francisco wasn’t taking off til 8:30. We got there at 8:23. The airline customer service representative kindly let us know we ‘just missed it’ as if we meant to, while she shut the door to the corridor that leads to the plane. This was the last flight home of the evening.
For our troubles we were each awarded a ten dollar food voucher and a biodegradable blanket. We were told we could keep the blankets, but warned not to wash them as they would disintegrate.
Sleeping on the cold floor of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport to the sound of cable news, and cleaning equipment under fluorescent lights, was atonement for not grabbing that guy his waffle in Yuba City…

Check out Matt Coplon’s side of the same tale here!

The Boredom Diaries

The world renowned Matt Coplon and some of his tales- seen here on the Least Most via the Boredom Diaries! (more…)

P-38

Bound For Nowhere…

I looked down at my hands, calloused, dirty and holding a brass loop keychain with a spark plug gapper, a can opener and a few random keys. No idea what the keys were for, maybe my folks place back home, and the house on Fairfield, although I never remember locking the door, I would this time however, no telling when we’d be home…

I had never driven so far in my life, wobbling and weaving with bald tires between the ruts on the highway from over freighted semi’s. I was on Interstate 40 somewhere between Laguna Pueblo and the Zuni Reservation in New Mexico before the sun would start making its face known to the rearview. Barely Awake, speeding across America, listening to the the rhythm of the seamed pavement, as it interrupted the half sleep of my two traveling partners, and the jangled racket of a jam packed beater car.

I had saved up enough money for the trip working second shift at a plastic injection molding plant. I got the job through a temp agency making minimum wage. Late autumn evenings standing around in low top vans on a concrete floor, separating and sorting plastic parts not unlike the pieces of a model car when you remove it from the box. I worked with older women, they were sassy and loud and made light hearted jokes about me being a young white man. Together, 4 or 5 of us would take warm plastic pieces out of a press, snap and sort, working around a table, the women gossiped like they were at hair salon or a sewing circle. They were great, I was merely a bystander.

I must have not worked there very long, because back then everything was cheap, gas was under a dollar a gallon, and split three ways would end up costing us 30 dollars each to get across the country. Three of us, three bikes, our gear, and a couple of cassette tapes all piled into a 1980 Datsun Sentra hatchback with worn out tires, bad shocks, and and what would we would learn, a tired battery and an alternator on its way out.

It was a winter drive, crossing state lines on interstate 70, through cities like Terra Haute (the home of Larry Byrd), St. Louis, down I-44 into Oklahoma, eventually on to 40, through Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff and eventually Barstow, a dusty town where 40 ends, and I-15 takes you into Southern California.

The drive was a marathon run for the sun, taking shifts, the backseat passenger nestled between bikes with the front tires removed, resting on a stack of backpacks and sleeping bags, head leaned against the window, nodding off and waking up with each bump in the highway, each pothole a myoclonic jerk, suspended animation, a sleep deprived trance of bad suspension, rutted roads, and the 13th consecutive loop of Naked Raygun’s ‘Understand.’ Do you Understand?

Up front, the driver and navigator would trade stories, sort through the road atlas and stepped on magazines, fiddle with the radio, count the mile markers and shoot the shit. The next shifts driver would pretend to catch some ZZZ’s while whoever sat shotgun, keeps an eye out for highway patrol. Passing time watching convoys of trucks driven by maniacs on speed, the same creepy degenerates that write on the walls of truck stop bathroom stalls. The same dudes that litter the highway with half full bottles of piss. You wonder who would do such a thing until it’s 5 am In New Mexico and you just drank 3 Pepsi’s within a hundred miles to stay awake.

The state trooper pulling us over at dawn would soon find the same kind of bottles under the fronts seat, disgusted ‘” he doesn’t acknowledge the fact that we at least had the decency not to litter.
At the next gas stop, we recounted our run-ins with the law, likely eating uncooked canned food, with road trip bread, that had inadvertently smushed into the shape of a spork. I hadn’t realized it, but the can opener on my key chain that my father had given me the year before when I had left the nest, had proven to be quite the life saver when it came to non perishable food items on the go…

I remember my Pops taking his P-38 off his own keychain and gifting it to me. I had no idea the simplicity and practicality of this gesture would come to symbolize such a right of passage. When he was my age he used the same thing as he shipped from the west coast to South East Asia. A simple tool for survival issued by the U.S. Armed Forces designed for opening a C- Ration, Tough and dependable, named either for its length (38 mm) or how it punctures 38 times to open most cans. Either way, the budget meals cooked on a radiator, or in the coals of a campfire, or in this case, cold with the most dense parts at the bottom of the can, broken up by tapping the bottom of it on the curb we sat on.

Like My father, the p-38 and its understated useful nature and functionality would end up playing a key role in my travel life.
Once we made it to the coast, we stocked up on supermarket essentials and explored towns we’d never heard of, La Mirada, Garden Grove, Fullerton, Tustin, eventually making our way to the Pacific Ocean by way of Huntington Beach. A media blitz of seaside imagery seen all of our youth in magazines and movies, now in real life while ordering regionally franchised tacos off the dollar menu.

My first foray into California dreaming was spent half passed out on a bathroom floor closer to the inland empire. A victim of fast food poisoning, blurry vision sickness and regret, a harsh welcome to reality from a fantasy created in my high school reverie. Whether it was just economics, or superstition, eating out was mostly off the menu. Here I was in the land of golden sunshine rolling out the red carpet to what would become a couple weeks of no frills supermarket bargains. Canned food opened one puncture at a time, in 38 motions around its sealed seem circumference.

A night in the bus…

In the evening sometimes I’ll hear the usual back alley barking dogs, revving engines, and scattered and random gunshots, depending on the season. Often times I’ll hear the buzz of a circling Cessna above the city, an eye in the sky causing noise pollution.Â It’s an outlying metro neighborhood, there always seems to be some sort of commotion.

I’d been laying in my bed in the bus for a while, after another day of distractions. The nightfall starts showing up early, before 5PM, and it’s almost quiet, although the evening chorus of my summer surroundings play fresh in my memory. The sounds of silence during the winter solstice are something else altogether.

Sometimes I’d hear a not so distant rumbling of a train, followed shortly by the horn and passing of its cars, otherwise just the noise of the wood stove and the evening drone of the neighborhood winding down for the night. By the time the last of the stacked logs have fallen into a pile of embers in the stove, the only racket is in my brain, and maybe the wind and weather if there is any.

A low pitch hum in the distance sounds like the hydraulics of a far away and powerful waterfall, and although the James River is less than a mile away, I know it’s not that or another Norflok Southern freight train about to pass, it’s simply the lack of sounds that kind of unsettles me. The feedback of my restless thoughts inside my mind, trying to find some semblance of peaceful evening, maybe even some sleep.

I wake up and notice some smoke from the wood stove rolling past one of the opaque bus windows, before crawling out of my sleeping and stepping onto the cold floor. The ground outside is frozen, the crunching of the leaves is in unison to the creaking of my cold joints, another day starts as steam rises up from the bushes and the ground beneath near the alley way…

Shitty Garfield’s Revenge

A DIY BMX event in Richmond Va.- photos by Matt Hovermale!

A Community event organized and supported by these Friendly Bicycle Maniacs-

Over 150 photos of the FBM Crew on tour…

Some random photos of the FBM crew on tour, visiting folks, bike shops, riding spots, at events, jams, truck stops, parking lots and loitering in most places in-between here, there and nowhere in particular…

9000 feet

Tucked in the mountains of Summit County Colorado, dating back to the mining rush in the 1800’s, lies a spot of precious valuable resource unlike anything else dug from the ground. Frisco- and some serious jumps, set to a wild mountain back drop.

These photos are from a Recent trip with the FBM crew, all smiles, a mile high…

Photos by Matt Coplon and Steve Crandall.

Holding People

50 or so well known BMXers… Being held, around the globe.

Matt Hoffman, Ron Wilkerson, Daniel Dhers, Sean Emery, Chad Degroot, Ryan Nyquist, Rob and Charlie Tibbs, Corey Martinez, Ian Morris, Aaron Ross, Trey Jones, Tyson Jones- Peni, Chad Osburn, John Lee, John Corts, Kaleb Bolton, Dennis McCoy, Darryl Nau, Official Big Boy, Brian Venable, Jeremy Reiss, Big Island, joe Daugirda, Dakota Roche, Ryan Mills, Garrett Reynolds, Pete Augustin, Dennis Enerson, Matthias Dandois, The Fids, Fat Head, Jason Watts, Vic Bettencourt, Stew Johnson, Leif Valin, Clay Brown, Matt Coplon, John Tillman- AKA Chunk, Jackson Allen, Jesse Bower- AKA Fisher, Jeff Zielinski, Garret Guilliams, Eric Holladay, Shane Leeper, Dillon Leeper, Jay Schlie, Declan Murray, and Ruben Alcantara

Generational Madness- 25 Years of POSH

Photos from the 25 year anniversary of POSH Woods, showcasing the faces of several generations of dedicated bicycle DIY enthusiasts…