If You're Ever In Oklahoma, You Better Move Around the Law

I got through a skatesession without shitting my pants. It wasn't much of a session, but it was fun. I got off the good work (bad one starts in the morning) and rode the blue line to ximen to meet up with scaryt. Dozens of skaters were already there. It was seething like a beehive. I saw a ***** on the tall tall ledge and some ** *****s on flat. Some homies were trying ***s down the three stair, but I didn't see anyone land it.

They left as we warmed up. Sorry all yall, I didn't mean to be a dick, but my back was stiff from not skating and you looked busy, eating all those pizzas. Oh, I also saw a styled out ******* ***** on the curb. It ain't what trick you do, it's how you do it. And good lord does that marble roar when you hit it at speed.

Having the spot to ourselves, SCRYT and I took to ***** ***** on the upper ledges, seeing who could go further and knock the juice box down the road. Neither of us could quite come off the end, which was frustrating, but he had never made the trick before tonight, so I guess he wins by default. It was blustery and he had to do whatever young people do in the morning, so he went home, and so did it. I skated across the tiles and the asphalt and the cracks and the clicky clack and the whackwhackwhack and the hhrrrrrrr and the AOSIDFAS;LDKFJASD;FLKJASDF;LAJSDF;LKASJDF. that last one is the sound of the loose metal plate I ******ed while cruising, Orion in hand. The security sat up like I had electrocuted him. I gave one look back, and he was standing in the middle of the endless sidewalk, neon lights reflecting all around, staring at me rolling away into the night.

If you're ever in Oklahoma
You better move around at night
'Cause they don't like no transportation
Slipping by in-and-out of sight
And they don't care about Dallas, Texas
And they don't care about Wichita
If you're ever in Oklahoma
You better move around the law
They got fines and they got plenty
They'll hold you up for days on end
Threaten your life and take your money
Make you think you're there to stay

A Hirsute Mystery

In the last 72 hours; a woman on the sidewalk walked up and gave me a rose, then ran away laughing when I asked her what it was for; an attractive ER doctor asked me if I'm single as she KY jellied my chest hair; and just now, a sawty walking the other way nearly broke her neck looking, turned around and ran up behind me, but was too shy to talk on the crosswalk. Beards are weirds. Why do they get so much attention around here?

Update: the nurse who pushes the old woman in the river park smiled at me.

Forest, Kelly, Seaweed, Sea, Mint, Shade, Jade, Army

I have been jettisoning a weird shade of green for 24 hours. Although some skaters featured on this blog don't agree, street food is actually the safest food in Taipei. I routinely eat at outdoor foodcarts alongside families of rats and armies of cockroaches. RMJ doesn't like those spots, because he thinks that the rats and cockroaches walk all over the stalls at night. This is true. They also walk all over the stalls in the day. However, in five years of eating at nasty spots next to semi open sewers (the stalls always just dump their refuse into the sewer, where it stagnates next to their stall), I have never once had the dreaded laduzi from eating at any of those places. IS sides with RMJ on this topic, but he is also wrong. In the history of Taiwan, I don't think anyone has ever gotten sick from roadside or nightmarket food, except in that one nightmarket run by Chinese gangsters that only Chinese tourists go to. In that place, they got caught using recycled cooking oil (oil recovered from the aforementioned open sewers). But I only went there a few times, and recycling is good for the environment, right? Anyway, the only times I've the crippling, doubled over, febrile, don't-bother- wiping-anymore-just-take-another-shower-and-crawl-back-across-the-floor-to-bed-again kind of food poisoning has been either from convenience store vegetables, has been from either convenience story food or western chains. Once, was from a bowl of left over rice that I didn't realize had grown a layer of white mold on it, but that was at home. Oh. Time to go back to the lab. 

IronMike Steps Back Into the Ring

I just realized he should have been mikecheck all this time. Either way, he's rearrived in Taiwan. We met at the bridge, but it was rush hour. In fact, it's one of the most crowded nights I've ever had there. Since I'm breaking in a new deck (I hate when they're too crispy) and I'm out of shape and was exhausted, we dipped on out, since all I was gonna do was get in the way. IM said he hadn't stood on a board in 10 months, but it didn't show. I introduced him to all the other people who randomly are here and skate and are from his tiny country (it's bizarre that four of them could show up under the bridge tonight). All I could was get in other people's way, and IM wasn't feeling it either, so we cruised north and then east, out to the arena, where scaryterry and JA were fooling around. On the way, I tried a ******* while cruising and as I crouched, had the premonition that it was going into traffic. I popped, and kicked, and landed slightly too far back and it immediately went into traffic. I ran out after it, praying that no one was going to die, especially me. Scooters roared past and miraculously missed it. This new skateboard must want to die. We met up at the arena and looped around back to the hillbomb. It was too gnarly for our mood, but the bottom made a pretty good uh, very mellow manny arena with a mirror smooth surface, and IM went right into turning something that isn't a skate into something that is a skatespot, by doing manny variations around the ground lights and around the light posts and just being generally playful. I tried to be generally playful and my suicidal skateboard zipped out from under me for the second time and I dashed into traffic again, and all ended well again. Then we got kicked out.

Then we cruised to the bronze stairs and had a solid little session, and then we pushed far far across Taipei to main station. IM got on a bus for home and JA wanted to ******** a wall that I honestly didn't think he was gonna ******** at all, but he did it first try. Then we hit the Main Banks for a minute and beered up in the lee of Mitsukoshi, where we discussed UFOs and my love life and our favorite powertools. I'm glad ScaryT is back, he got fucked up on a scooter and is finally skating again. I'm lucky to have all these friends. I'm lucky to be skating in Taipei.

I walked by skaters but I didn't say hello

I walked by a crew of foreigners sitting on the steps by zhongshan, but I had a on a suit and was in a hurry so I didn't talk to them. I hope yall had a good session.

you can't skate without some self-belief

skateboarding is like trying to paint with a weighted paintbrush, and everytime you hesitate, it falls on your toes and rapes your shin on the way down

Against complacency

My morning work cancelled (jetlag is a bitch for students as well as teachers). That meant I had a free morning to ride my new deck. I'm still so excited about the graphic that I only did one *********, because I didn't want to fuck it up. I also did some ******s and assorted flatground for about an hour. The little manny pad was treating me right, so I started in on *****s (it's just a tall curb with metal coping). Fresh grip tape always fucks me up because I lack the finesse to take full advantage of it, but things were going well (despite the filthy filthy air from the traffic. I forgot how much that place sucks to breathe in during the day) so I started trying them faster and faster.

The thing I like about skating is that if you get complacent, it will bite you like a venomous snake. I would make a bad snakehandler, because of complacency like today: I went faster and faster and respected what I was doing less and less.

There is a certain kind of fall that happens on a ***** when you don't lock in and consequently fall forward as soon as your trucks touch the ledge. It usually happens to me when my mind is elsewhere and I'm not focusing on the moment, which is a pretty stupid thing to do when you're skating, but I have the ADD so it happens to me frequently. I took the slam evenly between two wrists, and I was going fast enough that momentum carried me onto my front elbow as well. It was a good reminder to pay attention, especially when you're actually doing a trick.

On the cruise home,  I saw what was nearly a negligent homicide/suicide. Both people involved were fucking idiots. First off, the traffic was extremely heavy. The car in front wanted to turn left, but was in the far right lane, so the driver just swung across the road without hesitation or warning. He will kill someone one day. The absolute fucking loser behind him was riding his chainsaw-motor scooter, the kind with the obnoxious aftermarket straw exhaust, like he thought he had to skills to avoid crashing, probably weaving in and out of traffic (I don't know because I didn't notice him until he was under the car) but certainly too fast, because when the homicidal car driver chopped him off, the suicidal scooter rider only had a second to lock his brakes and go down.

I rode sports bikes for more than a decade in the US and I have ot say that at the point he was going to crash, he handled it textbook. You always want to do down, with the bike going first. This probably saved his life, because the scooter obliterated the back of the car under its bumper, and this gave him some thing to keep his own body from being ground to hamburger under the car, and it kept him from sliding under the rear wheel. The scooter wasn't as lucky, but fuck that dude, his scooter was a nuisance. Still, I'm glad he wasn't able to suicide himself today.

The driver got out to check on him, which I thought was nice, until I realized he was just checking to make sure the scooter rider didn't have a helmet cam. He didn't even help the rider move his trashed scooter out of the road. Instead, the bald fat attempted murderer just got back in his car and drove off.

When people say Taiwan is a safe place, they mean, you won't get robbed in the street here. But they're ignored all the people are murdered by complacency and negligence in the traffic. I hope that Taipei bans all private vehicles, except skateboards. They could make rental spots called UBoard, where you swipe a card and check out a skateboard to take you from place to place. Also, walking should be banned.

You're Hard on Yourself, Well You Can't Always Be Right

I went for a seatrials cruise on the new deck. It's an abstract painting with a lot of motion in it. I'm kind of sad to skate it, but I guess that means I like my graphics. It's got a lot of pop, relative to poor ole spongey pants, whom  I left in the skateboard graveyard up under the bridge. Some grave robber has been by and cleaned out all my old decks. I landed some halfhearted ******s and cruised around for a bit. At one point, I didn't see a weird crack and I fell forward, not hard, but the skateboard rolled back under a trash tricycle. Propitiously, very little trash juice dripped on my brand new griptape. I got back home a little sweaty, and got two messages on line: morning class is cancelled, and early afternoon class is cancelled. I don't have to be out of bed til 13:00. I have a salmon steak in the fridge, and some burger meat. I have some Tigers that I should be saving for later, but this breezy easy night is too good to be true. So it's Chastity Belt and buzzing and making a fire.


All those little things that keep you up at night
You should take some time to figure out your life
But you're stuck indoors and thinking poorly

You'll find in time
All the answers that you seek
Have been sitting there just waiting to be seen
Take away your pride and take away your grief
And you'll finally be right where you need to be

Take all of it, take everything you're owed
'Til you finally feel okay being alone
Yeah it's different now
Yeah it's different now, you're old

And you try and you try and you try and you try

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ntfEZySu1A

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Last day of holiday before descending back into the mines of the English language, boring out meaning from sheer rock and soil.

Lzyk and I met up for supper. I picked pasta because she likes that. She gave me a bag of shit I had apparently left behind on a sinking ship, the second of such kind of bag. She was almost 30 min late, because that is her habit. We had what would have been a bad first date, but we also didn't really show hostility towards one another, so it's an improvement over every date we had for maybe two years.

I carried the flotsam and jetsam of my marriage across Taipei and got a message from IS that he was heading for a session. fuck yes, when life bucks up, you gotta go skate. So we met at ximen marble plaza, with a couple of homies already there. I don't have a fake name for this dude, but I might go with LSM, because his *** *****s were fucking monsters tonight. Among a wide variety of pink marble terrain at the spot is a medium height ledge, with impossibly rough and rugged cobblestone for about 10 feet on the landing, then a smaller ledge that jukes out from it, into the street. I've seen footage of professionals **** ****** to ***** on the juke out bit, or other stuff. LSM was going *** ***** for ten feet, to pop up onto the juke and into the street. I saw what turned out to have been his first one ever, and he got another quickly. We were cheering and spanking out skateboards on the ground, as we tend to do in such times. He tried it for hours, to get a better one for video.

IS got in on the game, and ** **d it to pop up onto the juke and into the street. Then he got it *** off the juke. I got a lame ** ****, but I was secretly pleased because I didn't think I could pop my old ass up onto the ledge.

Later, I filmed IS ** **ing to *** out and *** ***** ** out on the down ledges that grind like literally smashed your trucks into actual butter. I assboarded down backwards and it turned out to be a pretty good angle. We beered up and then my dreams came through. SpongeBob SquarePants was a good skateboard that lasted for many months beyond its intended lifespan, mostly owing to not skating enough because of protodivorce and all the misery that comes with it. Eventually, the nose split and delammed across three layers, which was pretty funny, like a cookie monster skateboard. Then I stuck a coin in the middle of the nose, and it sounded like a motorcycle rolling around. Then I *****d a lot, landing hard on the nose, and it snapped. It is the first deck I've broken that wasn't broken in the middle. Bittersweet. It was a weird night. I sent Lzyk a beatles song. I don't hate her. I don't even feel angry anymore. Maybe that doesn't bode well for rekindling the relationship.

I got home and listened to this while I dismantled spongbob and set up the new deck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOFWHty4XFQ

we are 138

we are 138
in the eye
of the tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiger.

it rained. I was lazy. skating happened, but by friends in other places and, some friends under the bridge.

I lost my debit card, so I m on current cash until Monday because of lny. I made it on $60/day until today, when I bought a shit ton of meat and tiger beer. I hope it lasts until Monday morning.

I Park For Free

One stop shop life for the quick fix
Before you get a ticket
That's the way I live my life
I park for free

It was cold and everyone else went south on a skatetour. For a variety of reasons, I met CCC at the river ledge. We're both out of the skate loop, so it wasn't much of a session, but somebody had to keep the flame burning in Taipei city. We can't all be going to the plethora of new skateparks popping up all over Taiwan. Seriously, there are at least a dozen new parks. One day, I'll have to get around to investigating them.

Midsession (turned out to be end of session, but we didn't plan it that way), we scooted on his gogoro over to the best nightmarket in Taipei. The Gogoro is probably Taiwan's best product. It's an electric scooter that's actually well designed and well made. We changed batteries at a battery station and tripped through the nightmarket, accidentally whacking people in the river of humanity with our skateboards. Later, I heard IS busted his leg. Get well soon.

The Forest of Forgetting Sorrows

This has been my first Lunar New Year since lzyk kicked me to the curb. I was a little excited about the prospect of skating Taipei during the holiday though, because I had heard it would be a ghost town. This didn't turn out to be the case, and I still haven't skated so far. Instead, I bought camping gear and went for a hike with wpn to a remote spot in Chiayi near Alishan. We actually went to Alishan first, by accident, where we hung out for a while and absorbed the mountain cliffs and I accidentally mimed gun violence at an old lady, who looked shocked. Several hours later, we were in the right town.

The hike is a 200+ year old road, linking two little mountain towns together. History being the fluid and truthless material that it is in asia, the signs all told about how the glorious Qing Dynasty had rousted up the locals to improve the initial road, then "in 1931, the locals decided to improve the road again." No mention was made of who else was involved.

Anyway, on this very not Japanese engineered path, I climbed stone stairs at well past 45 degree incline for an hour. I was afraid of a cardiac event, but all went well. Then we got to the gap, where a little platform was waiting. It was roofed, but we set up the tents anyway and went for a night hike after watching the light fade out of the world in a monochrome fog. Bamboo forests are cool, especially at night. Our flashlights played through the foggy shafts that reached up 20m into the sky, mostly out of sight because of the opaque fog. We stomped around and scouted other camping sights, none of which we ended up using. Back at the basecamp in the gap, chunks of clouds were flying past only a few feet from us. They were the size of pillows.

Sleeping on the wooden floor wasn't as bad as I had expected, and in the morning, we made a fire and grilled the shit out of some steaks. The walk that day was mostly on a rideline, and we enjoyed perfect blue skies, until the afternoon, when the rain set in. The road takes you by a canyon valley, which echoes yeehaws very effectively. In fact, it was one of the longest echoes I've ever heard. We stashed the gear and ran a few klicks down the city to beer up, and camped in the middle of the path. A little up the hillside, we made a bamboo fire out of the fallen spears, and I slipped and smashed my thumb. I still can't touch anything with it and it's all bloody under the nail. Maybe it'll fall off. That would be cool.

It was a six hour journey home, first by bus, then by train. At the station, we had excellent turkey rice, with giant turkey egg yolks, and then we saw a hilarious fight between some assholes who blocked the road in their blackout german sedan, while police and security enforced on them. It bothers me that I'll never know what the fight was about. At point, a tiny girl in a red dress walked out in front of the honking bus and waved stop, like a tiny version of the Tianamen Square tank guy.

Back in Taipei, my legs don't work because of walking too much. I hope I can skate tomorrow, but I think it's going to rain.