Day Four
Work day three. Tempers flare as the work continues. This time we forgot to charge the drill. Work continues on the remaining transitions. Other contractors start to get on our nerves when they re-nig on our allotted indoor time. It seems we have to make room for some kooks to make large, crappy looking fake icicles. Apparently, this is something they could only do in the 16 square feet of real estate that was in the middle of our lurking 12 ft tall transitions. Fortunately, we were able rig up a sketchy device that enabled a three man team with a fork lift to move the transitions, one 8ft wide, 12ft tall section at a time. The forklift trio worked well on concrete. The road to the parking lot was an unpaved mixture of snow, mud and bumps. No matter how slow you drive a sketch forklift contraption, bumps are good for breaking the temporary transition fasteners. On the plus side, the powers that be couldn’t decide where they wanted the final resting place of the ramp. They had a Swedish guy draw up the exhibit floor plans but they failed recognize that he was using the metric system. Suddenly there wasn’t room for the three story tall snowboard launch ramp extravaganza. That was OK since we had the use of the forklift for that day only. It was either move them outside to one of the two diametrically opposed potential sites with the aid of a forklift, or move them all out by hand the next day. Forklifts are fun. Good thing this one had headlights. We took a break from yelling at each other towards the end of the day. Soon, a young man walked up to us and did not notice the fully ribbed transitions of a monster half pipe sitting out in the middle of a parking. We then did not say anything about building a vert ramp for the Olympic Village. We also did not mention that it would sit fully covered in Skatelite in an open, unguarded parking lot. Before he turned around and left, we made certain not to tell him to make every effort to engage in skateboarding in the very same parking lot in the weeks before the Olympics.
The local news was full of stories about increased security for the Olympics. Gordo insisted that the myriad of helicopters overhead was some sort of crime dragnet, but we feel they were more likely to be traffic copters. Due to the proximity of a local goth/industrial/punk rock/frat boy night club, we crossed our fingers and performed a short ritual to ward off the drunks.
Next Day: Broken down autos and Rock and Roll High School.
