What would Fox say?
One of the last times Ryan and I went slacklining, we met a character that has had a profund effect on my actions. His name was Fox. He is a heavy set lad around my age with shoulder length black dread locks and tatoos. For the last couple of months he has been traveling around America in a van with his friend Zoe. They don’t have much in the way of money and just get offered food from people. He’s also done a fair bit of hitch hiking and I asked him wheather he was ever worried about having some bad experiences. He said that if bad things happen, then they happen – there’s no use fearing them. We then began talking about slacklining tricks, and he mentioned the same thing again – about how fear is not an excuse for not trying a trick. And he then demonstrated it by doing a backflip on the ground. He’d never done one by himself before, just with other people spotting him. The condition was though, that if he did a backflip, I had to do a front flip. So I lined up and just before I jumped in the air he yelled ‘you gooooot it’ in his American accent. And I did. So we both did it a couple more times, and each time just as I was about to leave the ground he yelled the same thing again.
We exchanged numbers and later when I was in San Fransisco I called him to see if he was in the district, but he had already moved on to Oregan. But that is not the last time I connected with Fox.
Ryan, Devika, Claire and I went camping at the Redwoods about five hours north of San Fran in a a very picturesque place. There were amazingly tall and wide trees that created a canopy over Ryan’s families little cabins. And there was also a river. This river meandered down past some cliffs, which according to Ryan, are great for jumping off. At the base of the cliff is a ledge that rises at a diagonal up to around forty feet (13 m) and being adventurous we all climbed up to the top. Ryan jumped first and landed in the river without a problem. I was next and was very scared. I knew I could do it, but was struggling to through myself over the edge. But thanks to Claire I was given the impetus I needed. She asked me how I was feeling, and I knew that if I had a response, and then jumped, then I would look cool. I responded ‘I’m terrified’ and leaped off the edge. That was the plan anyway, but instead I willed myself to lean forward but my feet didn’t exactly follow willingly, so when I landed in the water I was leaning a little too far forward and slapped myself mildly.
I felt some what triumphant at jumping off this ledge but that feeling quickly diminished as I remembered that this was actually only the baby ledge. Higher up at the top of the cliff is a 70 foot (23m) drop, one that Ryan had been talking up for some time. As I lay on the bank contemplating it all I felt trapped. I was very scared at the 40 foot drop, so 70 foot must be terrifying, and in order to do the 70 foot one, I would have to do the 40 foot again to perfect my fall and I just didn’t want to do it. But what I didn’t want more was to drink the cocktail of failure and regret. I felt like I was trapped.
But just like the squirel in the White Stripes song, I broke it down into sizable chunks. I swam through the cold water to the cliff (this was actually the first thing I dreaded) and I climbed to the top of the 40 foot ledge. And looking out towards my mates sitting on the bank I found my impetus to jump. The first time I did it, I swore very badly, so I thought I should rectify it. Just as I leapt off I yelled ‘LOVE’ and landed beautifully in the water nice and vertically, brushing the sandy bottom with my feet ever so slightly.
With that out of the way Ryan and I trekked to the top of the cliff, and upon looking over the edge for the first time I knew that I wasn’t going to do it. In fact my first words were ‘there’s no flippen way’. As Ryan was preparing though I crept forward and perched near the edge and just focussed on the water and how much of it was there to catch me. I then tried to draw comparisons between it and a large pillow – which was actually easy enough to do. Then Ryan after a few deep breaths leapt off and it was just me. I’ve alwasy wanted to try bungee jumping to see if I could really get mind over matter and force myself to do something that I really did’nt want to do. What I didn’t think about was just how scary and uncomfortable it would be. I then started to think about what would happen if I just passed out with fear on the way down – I realised that this was a silly thought and that I just had to do it as my thoughts were holding me back. And it was here that I felt the most fear. It was the transition from knowing that I would do it at sometime, to knowing that the time to do it was now. And I really don’t look back fondly on this moment. I needed a catalyst, some cause to act. And I found it.
“Hey Ryan”
“Yeah”
“Wha.. What would Fox say?”
“You goooot it!”
And I jumped, landed with a splash and felt like a King.
Lets all live together!
My friend Ryan looks like a hippie, and there’s no denying that he also has a penchant for some hippie-esque activities – eating rice, wearing brown pants, riding a bike and climbing trees. So it shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise that he has friends of a similar nature. On Wednesday after work Ryan was invited to by an old friend to have dinner with her, and her eleven house mates at her house. And Ryan being the gentlemen that he was asked if some of us could come as well – which we jumped at.
The house that Ryan’s friend lives in is like a big old homestead. It has two stories, nine bedrooms and four bathrooms. It was chosen specifically to accommodate a large group of people who wanted to live in a communal way. They take it in turns cooking dinner for each other, and doing chores like cleaning the bathroom, the dishes and dumpster diving….. Over eighty percent of their food comes from trash bins (ahhh how American am I) outside supermarkets, resulting in the total cost of each person for food per week being under $20.
Ryan’s friend Mariah adorned with lip ring was very lovely indeed as were all of her house mates. As it turned out none of them were in business or finance, instead most were students, teachers, musicians and graphic designers and thankfully good cooks. For dinner we had a nice vege stir fry with rice and afterwards we were invited to come back on Friday to take part in their 80’s cross dressing themed party. I’m interested in going to see some of the members perform in their band, a hip hop out fit that produces concept albums. Their latest is taking off where Will Smith left – in his first few movies he provided the theme songs to his films such as Men In Black and Wild Wild West, but lately he’s been slacking. They have him covered – writing songs for I am Legend, Pursuit of Happiness and Bad boys.
It really was a great experience meeting people who live in this way, sharing a meal with them and understanding that there is a different way to live. But I live with 14 other people and spent $33 on my last fortnightly grocery shop, so I guess I’m sort of doing my own communal thing at the moment – without having to dig in the bins for my dins.
4 reasons I like America
1. Venice Beach – this is where we go slacklining – there is so much culture and cool people about. Here’s a list of the different activities that go on in one small area: skateboarding, skate dancing, bike tricks, graffiti painting, basketball, muscle building, hand ball, street performers, slacklining (that’s basically just us) and there are always people getting by on wonderful contraptions – like three wheeled bikes with boom boxes rigged up to them.
2. Diddy Reece – this is a shop that gives you a cookie and icecream sandwhich for $1.50. And when you ask for a cup of water (for free) they say ‘would you only like one?’. Brilliant.
3. Taco Bell – this is a Fast Mexican food chain which serves great food (keep in mind I am no food snob) at really really low prices. The other day I got a meal for $1.89 – and it was a fiesta of fun and flavour.
4. From my house where I live I can walk at any hour of the day to a doughnut store in the nieghbourhood and get almost anysort of doughnut I want. I think I might walk there tonight, mmmmmm.
A dangerously good Friday.
So Americans don’t get Good Friday off. For an ostensibly Christian country, you would think that they would at least reap the rewards of the Christian faith! But we were actually allowed to leave two hours early from work due to Jewish passover being during the week as well. So to make use of the gift of free time with sunlight Ryan and I decided to go and scout out a cool place to do some slacklining. See someone read the TOMS blog where slacklining was mentioned and they would like to meet up with us. These people are making an extreme sports show and would like to feature us in it. Cool eh? Not too sure if it will actually happen, but the idea to scout out some cool places was quite appealing as is, so we went for it. We rode our bikes in a new direction and found an awesome place to set it up on a pier – but instead we decided to do it on some volley ball posts on the beach. Now I”ve done this once before in Newcastle and was asked to move along because the posts were bending a bit, so we asked an on patrol life saver if it’d be alright. He said go for it, so we did. It was very cool, indeed and we had a nice little crowd watching us from the pier. At one stage some teenagers on bikes yelled out to us to do some tricks, so we called them over to have a go. A couple of them did briefly, while the others got pizza. They offered us some and we all chilled out eating pizza and talking and then slacklining. Some were pretty persistant and made some alright progress even when the poles started to sag in a little. Just as they were leaving I jumped on to have a little play and Ryan jumped on the other end. Normally this is pretty tricky but because of the extra length that we had on the rope it was actually quite easy, I walked backwards towards the end of the rope to give us more distance between us so that it would be easier. But just then, WHACK, the post behind me fell down, straight on the line, probably missing my head by 30cm or less. The force of the slackline with us both on it had broken the big wooden pole off at base level. We quickly packed up our stuff and I wrote a sorry note with my email address on the pole and we scampered off. It was quite the action packed afternoon and certainly made my Friday very good indeed.
traffic and accidents
Day: Thursday
Time: Night
Event: I was invited to a Bahai event at a friends friends house in Hollywood so I decided to drive there that night in my friends beetle armed with some instructions that I wrote down from the net and a mobile that I decided to bring as an afterthought. I got a bit lost going there, and very lost coming back. Lost to the point of having absolutly no idea where I was or how I was going to get back. After a little while of asking people at servos and calling a friend, and lucky guesses I managed to make it home. And when I arrived home I hugged people and touched walls to make sure it was all real and that I wasn’t dreaming… I drove for over 3 and a half hours – truly an authentic way to see and experience LA – though I hope I don’t have to do it again.
Highlight: Asking two different service station workers and a homeless person how to get back to Santa Monica and getting given three different direction to go…This is when it started to really sink in that I was in trouble.
Day: Saturday
Time: 9:30am to 10:30pm
Event: Visiting Six flags (a giant theme park) with Ryan, Larry and Joe. There were the craziest roller coasters that I have ever been on, and also the craziest waiting times – one lasting 2 hours. But we filled the time in with much merriment. Joe was on crutches which was hard for him, but it helped us make some money. The queues were covered by shade cloth, upon which were many coins. We used Joe’s crutch to push $4.20 worth off over the whole day – enough to buy us a cookie and icecream sandwhich from Diddy Rheese on the way home.
Highlight: Joe had just bought himself an icecream as we were walking over to our next ride, but it was along way away, so I decided to carry him on my back. Ryan who was holding Joe’s ice-cream decided that now that Joe didn’t have any crutches, this would be an optimum time to offer joe a bite. Yet while Ryan was feeding Joe some spilt on his arm, Larry then offered to clean it up. It was here that a 13 or so year old boy walked past us and muttered ‘Well that’s not gay at all…” . Fair call we thought.
how much time do I have?
Last weekend I travelled to San Diego, Santa Barbara, went out for dinner and to a club, slacklined, attended a games night and got some midnight Thai food….and I was exhausted. By the time Monday came I was really crook and the whole week I’ve been craving staying at home having me time and catching up on odd jobs. This weekend rolled around, and with it came other opportunities to do things, and I took them up, even though I would have preferred not to. It’s hard to justify staying at home instead of going slacklining, or to a soccer game. I made excuses up, saying to myself ‘oh I can get it done later, it won’t take long to do my washing or change the cupboards over’. And all the activities were good fun and I enjoyed myself, but much of the time I was thinking of being at home, and what I would like to do next.
I’ve really wanted to follow the Carpe Diem idea. Sieze the day. Live for the day. Enjoy the moment. And these action packed weekends were not doing it for me. Actually my whole life right now seems to be racing from one thing to another – it’s very fast paced. I”m finding that in order to get things done I’ve got to schedule them in and every fifteen minutes in my life counts. And with this in mind I need to prioritise my agenda – socialising vs learning, keeping my relationships in touch vs unwinding. Perhaps this is something that I am learning about living in this environment – that it is very action packed, and that maybe I don’t enjoy it. I’m almost finding myself being a little stressed at times, and this manifests in me not being as easy going and friendly as I’d like to be. I guess this is all part of life so I’ll try to learn from it, endure it and make the most out of everyday.
Things that make me happy
Human curiosity is a marvellous thing, and at work recently I got to see it in it’s prime. Due to some construction, just ouside the TOMS doorway we have a wide diameter poly pipe sticking 30cm out of the ground with a brightly coloured yellow lever on it. The sort of yellow lever that says – push me and something will happen. And when this sort of lever is attached to a large poly pipe, it is pretty easy to guess what will happen. But you can never be too sure… Someone pushed the lever and water spurted 5 metres up into the air – it was very good fun indeed. Who would have thought?
Just as much fun as spontaneously seeing a fountain in your work place is slacklining on Venice beach. I’ve mentioned it before, but it really is the place to be. The slacklining itself is great fun – I’m learning many new tricks such as the Prince of Persia (jump and slide), electric slide (leap and 360 step), sitting on my knees and falling off on my face. But it is not actually the slacklining that makes the experience so much fun, it’s the people that you meet.
As slacklining has a bit of a wow factor, people watch and also come up and ask for a try. I don’t think there was fifteen minutes that we were in our spot when we weren’t joined by someone new. And the people that we met were really interesting, and we are likely to see them again down there as we exchanged numbers (and business cards). One of the people who I’m hoping to see again is a chap called Wyatt. He fell off his bike right infront of us and lay there passed out for about a minute. By the time we’d told the paramedics how to get here he’d regained consciousness, but was still a little shaky. He was new in town and looking for a job and some pals – hopefully we’ll see him next week!
I even got to star in not one but two videos: The first one with Joe promoting a not for profit organization( everywun.com ) for some people that hung out with us for about half an hour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQda4mJnKTY
And the second for an organization that makes organic t-shirts. Apparently they work with TOMS which is a bit of a coincidence and they think I look a bit like our founder Blake.
http://thegreenloopblog.com/bctv-what-does-organic-mean-to-u/985
Culture – America has it!
I discovered a part of America over the weekend that I didn’t think existed. It was full of so many different cultures and activities all so densely packed – I could have stayed there for hours absorbing it. Venice Beach was where it could all be found and it really did have it all; graffiti artists, skateboarders, roller skate dancers, hand ball players, basket ball courts (the same ones used in White Men can’t Jump) complete with tough looking black guys like in the movies, Muscle beach gym made famous by Arnold and gymnasiam ring and bars. And all along either side of this stir fry of activity are street vendors and performers.
On Saturday Ryan and I set up the slackline near the bicycle path that runs passed it all facing the beach and on Sunday we were joined by Claire, Larry and Joe. Every fifteen minutes or so, someone would stop by and ask for a go, and it proved a great way of meeting new people. And the people that walk by here are fantastic, it surely must be one of the best places to people watch that I’ve been to. After several hours of slacklining we rode our bikes to the drum circle that was happening actually on the beach a few hundred metres away. It was fascinating. So many different characters from all cultural backgrounds – Black people, Mexicans, Native Americans, Cowboy hat wearing Americans and hippies. There must have been about 30 or 40 drummers in a circle with about 150 people surrounding them and 40 or 50 people dancing inside the circle. I got to try out all three positions, first standing around watching, then dancing, and then playing a bongo and a cow bell which a nice man with an afro lent me.
I would really recommend anyone who visits America to check this place out – it’s literally only about 150 stone throws from the LAX airport.
Stuff I’ve done
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Becky arrived with her friend Anushia on Thursday night which was very exciting. Anushia was just as friendly as Becky and we got on instantly well. They had ridden around all day on bikes that I lent them from my house mates. On Friday they chilled by themselves around Santa Monica, and Friday night we all went out to see some crazy musician guy play. He did some loop stuff where he plays something on the piano, records it so it plays over and over again, then goes to the drums and records a beat which does the same, then he plays the guitar and sings over it. It was all very interesting, but not necesarily fun. He did do some good covers – two of them – I kissed a girl and a Nirvana one, and he also played with a pretty good band with an amazing singer. This singer looked really awkward – he was a larger chap and dressed in a suit, the sort of suit that people dress in to draw attention to himself. He looked visibly awkward standing on stage when he wasn’t singing, and it made me feel awkward, but then when he would sing it would really justify him being there – he was amazing. The show ended with the main guy who we came to see playing random notes on an electric guitar for about 8 minutes – it was really funny because we’d all paid $25 to see this chap, and he was making this noise that not only did not sound like music, but was actually really unpleasent. Although, I then realised that he plays here every week and fills out a decent sized room, so it must be me who has the problem with the music, because he is certainly popular enough. The next day we went for a really sweet hike – Becky, Anushia, Ryan and I and then that night we went to a fellow intern’s Aunt’s place for dinner. It was in West Hollywood at a really nice spot. The house was really trendy and cool and out the back they had a heated lap pool. We sat around for a while, I drank a fantastic Apple spritzer or two with lime juice and talked about travelling, then had a fantastic meal, played some table tennis and had a nice old dip in the pool. It was just such a great experience – hanging with cool people at a great location and just feeling really good. After a while we all went to a hotel in Hollywood. Behind the bar there, they had ‘living art’. Which was a girl lying on a matress behind glass. Apparently at this particular place they have a girl there 24 hours a day. The girls can do what ever they want, but can’t interact with the audience. When we were there, this girl (decked in singlet and undies) was looking at facebook and listening to music. Crazy eh? So we hung at the hotel for a little while, do a bit of dancing and then I drove us back in Kate’s car. It was about 3:30 when we finally got to sleep. The next morning we woke at a quarter to 8 to go to Disney land, but Joe slept in so Becky and I had another nap for an hour, while Anushia got caught up with the internet, then Joe was a bit late again, there was lots of traffic getting to Disney land, and once we finally got in, Joe had to update his pass which meant more waiting – so it was about 11 or so before we were actually in Disney land ready to go. By this time I was starting to think that the day couldn’t go any worse – but my mood changed very very dramatically. We went on ride after ride, and because we were all so lacking sleep, we got sillily excited about things. In between rides we skipped and danced, and on the rides we sung and yelled and the whole day we surfed the waves of extreme happiness and excitement. We did though all have our lows where we needed a break and some food to eat. But all in all I probably haven’t had so much fun in one day, possibly ever. It was just the right group of people, the right time, the right place and the right mood. At one point, I think the second time that we rode Space Mountain, my voice was so saw from screaming and I was just thinking, ‘I wish I knew other ways to express my happiness, I feel trapped in this body’. So I just started pounding the air with my fists as hard as I could. The whole day was soooooo much fun.Another highlight of the day for me was meeting Mary Poppins. We saw her from a distance and rushed over, and then she came straight up to me, passed the other people that were lining up and introduced herself and asked for my name. We shook hands, and she asked me in her proper english accent if I would mind doing a favour for her. Well, I would have walked on coals for her to be honest, she was so pretty, proper, and in control that I had a massive crush on her in that instant. She asked me to put up my hand and tell everyone that I was the last in line to see her. I took my role very seriously and she thanked me when we got a little closer, and also told me that I could put my hand down. I was initially a bit scepticle as Disney is such a large brand, I thought the whole thing was just a money making venture, but at the bottom of the Walt Disney statue there is a saying that he said once ‘I just wanted to make a place where children and their parents could have fun’. And my word, he really nailed that.
Then on Tuesday Becky and Anushia left and I got right into my last assignment for my online course. It took up all of my free time but I think I got it done to a pretty good level. Turns out that I didn’t actually need to do any of it in order to pass as I’d done well enough in my other assignments to garantee that. I got a distinction in my last paper, which I was stoked about. Yesterday I submitted my paper, and when I told Ryan that, he said that we should have a graduation. So he found the music on youtube, I put on a hat, sleeping bag and towel as a gown and we walked around the house, I shook everyone’s hand, recieved an envelope and a drink bottle from them and then through up my hat in the air to everyone’s applause. It probably meant alot more to me than they might think. The significance of finishing Uni and graduating from Newcastle doesn’t actually mean that much to me. But I know that when Hay graduated the whole fam and Phil’s fam went there to see her and we all got pics together and it was very lovely. So now at least I have a pic of my graduation that can go up on the wall next to Hay’s. It seems pretty silly, but I’m really gratefull for it.
It’s fun how some things just seem to work out the way they do for a reason. When I was just about to start work on that last assignment the internet wouldn’t let me access the university web page on my computer. So I asked my friends here and their’s wouldn’t let it happen either. So I thought I’d go for a walk down to Deandra’s house – the girl that Ryan and I were introduced to by the lady who we randomly bumped into twice almost two weeks ago. I haven’t talked to Deandra since then, but I thought it would be worth a shot. I also didn’t know where she lived, and was just planning on walking down the street and knocking on the door of the house that had a brown Prius infront of it. There was no Prius to be seen as I walked down the street so I kept walking. When I reached the end of the street, low and behold I saw the Prius parking and it was timed so beautifully that when I was walking up to it, Deandra was just getting out. We started chatting, I told her my predicament and we walked into her flat, which was actually behind one of the houses. I jumped on her internet and did my thing as we chatted about her job and then topics leading off from it. She’s a therapist and also teaches pilates. It was really cool, and I wanted to play it right – not necessarily for any sort of romantic intensions, but just because I’ve never been in a situation quite like it. I sipped the water that she offered me, she folded her laundry on her bed and we chatted about life, LA, travelling and facebook. I was conscious that I really shouldn’t overstay my welcome as I really was the one who invited myself in, so I said thanks after 20 mins or so and went to leave. But we just kept chatting for another 10 mins or so after, so I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t intruding too much. She is 29, which is a funny age really. It really hinges on the line for me of being a real adult, or being a peer. We’re now facebook friends and email buddies, and she invited us to go out with her and Paige (the girl we ran into) and some of her friends next Thursday for Paiges birthday at an African themed bar. That sounds quite nice, but really I’d like to go and chill with her in her unit. I think that part of the appeal there is that I’d be doing it by myself, seperate from my interning friends and friends that I’ve had before. Also maybe because it is fun and interesting talking to her – and exciting.
