Day Fourteen
Ok, I didn’t finish it right away. A lot of people have emailed me asking for the final installment. So here I sit typing this out instead of applying for jobs like I should be. When my wife complains, I’m going to direct her to those of you who demanded closure.
Last night I went to sleep with faint visions of drywall screws and an endless dance of securing Skatelite. You know how when you spend the day at the beach or on a small boat, when you start to fall asleep you feel like you’re still in the water? Same thing here, except the sound of waves was replaced with the “BuhRRRRR” of drywall screws being stripped out. In the morning we went back to the scene of the crime for one final look in the daylight. Rather than explain what we accomplished, I’ll tell you what was left for Gordo to finish. The final layer of Skatelite would require pre-drilling and more screws on every sheet, probably about a days worth of work for one individual, if not less. Again, our thinking was that if we got everything in place and secured to a minimum it would be a simple matter for one person to finish if he didn’t have to hold and bend the final pieces by himself. Actually, we left one sheet on the outside top undone. The last two layers of the surfaced needed to be trimmed level with the top of the ramp. The coping still had to be raised and attached to the top of the ramp. The platforms needed to be more securely fastened to the trannies and then surfaced. And last but not least, additional support ribs needed to be added on the backside of the trannies for Carl the Ramp Critic, as well as some additional shimming. The business with adding the extra ribs is really one of a difference in design philosophy. Would the ramp still serve it’s function adequately without them? Yes, although it might get a little spongy after extended and epeated use. This could have been addressed when we originally built it or it could be been fixed as needed. Our friend Carl was probably not used to the one-time-use disposable ramp. On a permanent structure, it’s a must.
We went into the Orbit Café one last time to distract Gordo from trying to get us to haul out the coping pieces and raise them up for him. He’d deffinately need help with that later. Who wants to do sweaty work a half an hour before they get on a plane? Not us. We got in Gordo’s car and he preceded to get lost on the way to the airport. One bright side of Gordo’s impromptu tour of SLC’s industrial wasteland was seeing what appeared to be two bald eagles standing on the middle of a frozen pond. They had white heads. If they weren’t eagles, they had to be large vultures or something. Someone get out your bird guide and get back to me.
Once at the elusive airport we got to stand in line for an hour and some change. After about a half an hour, a Delta employee approached Grover with a security guard and stated “We have some concerns about your belt.” He had the bandelero belt with the fake plastic chromed bullets. It was so obviously not real, but in these times of national paranoia, Grover felt compelled to comply and remove it. Grover’s delayed reaction was “I have a some concerns about your out of date hairdo, Rod Stewart.” She was sporting a modified Rod the Mod look from say… the 1984 Infatuation era. In front of us was a chubby kid who kept powering down Slim Jims. Grover was tempted to straighten the kid out, but instead he amused himself by engaging the kid with conversation about his uncle’s dog that he was transporting. It was pretty small and high strung, but it looked cool. A lady walked by and asked if it was real. Grover explained that it was one of those new expensive and realistic robot dogs that you buy in order to pay the airlines extra money to transport it by plane. A short time later another woman approached me and asked me what the symbol (Independent Trucks logo) meant on my backpack. I explained that it was a logo for a skateboard parts manufacturer called Independent. She said “Yes, but doesn’t it also mean something else?” I explained that it was among other things, a very old Germanic symbol that eventually became used in medals of honor during WWI and WWII. She got a look on her face like she had just smelled one of Grover’s farts, and then she said in a judgmental tone of voice “Oh, so it’s kind of scary and evil too.” I quickly lost patience with her told her it had nothing to do with that, and she should go read a history book. She’d probably mess in her pants if she knew that some American Indians used a form of the swastika in a religious manner. Then again, she’d probably think that’s why decent white American Christians crushed them in the first place.
While we were in SLC, a federal law went into effect requiring that all check in and carry on baggage be examined for explosive traces and also x-rayed. Because SLC is hosting the Olympics, it was one of the first airports to receive the new equipment and the accompanying ill-mannered and often English-as-a-second-language employees. Don’t get me wrong. I believe that most of the ideas that our country is founded on are great in theory. It’s just the implementation of those ideas that is corrupt. I also believe that nationalism breeds hate. I don’t care what country you are from (except France), if you’re over here trying to make a living, more power to you. I hope you become a multi-millionaire. It just seems like you’d want well-educated, English-speaking employees handling security functions at US airports. I can’t imagine that a lot of the guys we saw had gotten much in the way of competent training. Oh well, the pay is probably crap anyway. Here’s the point of my tirade. Grover pointed out one passenger extreme-budget luggage. This gentleman was checking two snowboards that were wrapped in a kind of crinkly cardboard and strapping tape. This suggestes tone of several things: The boards are so crappy that they don’t warrant a decent carrying bag, the boards are good but this guy’s too cheep to buy a bag, or this guy doesn’t own or know how to operate a sewing machine. Either way, Grover thought it would be a funny picture. Apparently the snowboards were too close to the ultra secret but exposed-too-all bomb sniffing machines. The security staff adamantly informed him that he was forbidden to take pictures. Is there a manual somewhere that says “no photographs” in the airport? I doubt it, since there aren’t any signs. If a nightclub or concert hall can get it’s act together enough to post such a sign, you’d think an airport could as a matter of national security. The incident caused a nervous bystander to ask Grover of what and why was he taking pictures. I guess he planned on jumping Grover if he admitted to trying to take the airport out. The incident also caused me to turn off the flash and take a picture anyway. Perhaps they should have been more worried about the brand new x-ray machine that was broken. Thankfully the staff decided to blow off the malfunctioning x-ray requirement to give everyone a chance to catch their flights. We spent the rest of our time in line trying to guess which people sporting skateboard related logo clothing actually skated. We decided that most of them were too pretty to skate and therefore probably only snowboarded or were just fashion conscious. As we checked in we got a firsthand look at the trace explosive detecting process and were not impressed.
From the check in line we moved to the security line at the gate entrance. A snotty chick in front of us had on a Santa Fe Film Festival jacket. I asked her if she was at Sundance and she responded positively in an irritated manner. Just to annoy her, I made a conscious decision too keep the conversation going. I asked if she had seen the Dogtown Z-Boys film. She said she hadn’t. Because I knew she still wasn’t enjoying the conversation, I asked her if she had the vaguest idea about what I was talking about. She reluctantly admitted that she had heard quite a buzz about it and turned her back to me. As our bags went through the x-ray machine, one of the young security monitors exclaimed “What the heck is that?” I told her that her comments weren’t installing a lot of faith in her training with the passengers. She said she knew it wasn’t dangerous, and took the passengers word that it was a hair styling device. The same security girl took issue with an unidentified bag of camera equipment. I said that it was probably mine, since I had an Indy backpack stuffed with a digital camera, 35mm camera, video camera, and various rechargeable battery backs, cords and devices. Film Festival girl quite vocally insisted that the bag in question was hers. I relented and said that it at least could be mine, but Film Festival chick emphatically said “No, it’s got to be mine.” I was victorious when it did indeed turn out to be my Indy bag that caused concern. She left, shame on her face. But it was I who had won the booby-prize. I had the honor of having all my camera bags and my laptop bag searched, as well as having to take off my shoes for another inspection. Grover asked if he could have my camera to take a picture. English-as-a-second-language employee said no. When she gave me my camera bag to search the laptop, Grover took a picture anyway, which prompted an older gentleman to do take a picture of his wife as she was being lead to a quarantined search area.
Finally released, it was less than ten minutes until our plane was due to depart. We hustled down to the gate and were the last two passengers to get on the plane. We were in the midst of handing them our boarding passes as they announced our names over the intercom. “Will passengers Grover and Guwallicky please come to gate C-14. Your plane is about to depart.” Grover burst out laughing at the verbal mangling of my last name and tried to get the woman behind the counter to make the announcement again. She thought he was making fun of her and warily refused. Our laughter increased when as the last two passengers to get on a plane that they were already holding for us, both of our boarding passes tripped the random security check. This led to another unpacking of our gear by more English impaired security staff who got flustered by how much electronic gear I had with me. They eventually got tired of unpacking it and moved on to the part where I get to take my shoes off again. They must have cranked up the sensitivity on the handheld metal detectors. The security guard was concerned about the warning emanating from my knee, so I pulled up my pant leg and showed him the foot-long scar from surgery and assured him that it was the bolts in my bones. By the time we got to the warning from my elbow pins he just accepted my word. When we finally got to the door of the plane, the flight attendant informed us that the overheads were completely full and we would have to check our baggage. I knew there was no chance in hell that we’d see our bags in Portland with the pilot and passengers already chomping at the bit. I reasoned with the attendant that the entire plane was probably not completely full, and surely there must be some room somewhere. She bitterly agreed to do her job and quite easily found room for all our carry-on luggage, although they tried to get Grover to check his skateboard again. If you want to avoid airline skateboard-phobia, Element makes a backpack with a separate compartment that entirely encloses and therefore hides the fact that you are carrying a skateboard. Our flight was uneventful if you discount the smaller than a Grayhound bus seat that Grover had to squeeze into, thus making the passenger in front of him and next to him (me) the target of constant body jars and endless complaining about seat design. When I say body jars, I’m not talking about the good Rob Roskopp kind. When we dropped Grover off at home, his dog was afraid to come outside and greet him. Let the beatings begin!
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