73 Westfalia photos
Spent part of this weekend on kids birthday party — skater party with everyone hanging out on the halfpipe.
Still doing a few things here and there on the bus. Mostly little trim work. Wife’s new curtains look great and she has bought the new upholstery fabric for the back seats. Also hunting down solid flooring for the back … Still debating linoleum over wood or carpet over wood or some sort of hardwood laminate. Details, details.
As promised here are some pics.
Notice the Freebord. Got the Slasher wheel set in this week. A welcome replacement for the stock wheels. Kill the stock wheels learning. Then buy slashers. It took a couple of hours riding and tweaking the setup for the board to feel right again. The new wheels are amazing. I thought by 70 Flashbacks on my Sector 9 were good, but for sliding, nothing beats the slashers. Make sure you also get the upgraded centers — then throw out the stock bearings and replace them with something better — Bones Reds at the least. Props to the folks at Freebord for putting out these wheels. If there is anything better for combining slide with grip, I have not seen it. Well worth the added expense.
Also, on the old school Ashes to Ashes deck, I picked up a set of Zflex Smooth wheels. These things feel like butter for park and ramp riding. Love em. Again, not cheap, but well worth the price. Thanks to Brian Kelly and the folks at Ride Skate Shop and Veterans Park in Alabaster for keeping me supplied locally with stuff for my boards. Check out the park if you get the chance. They have a fantastic bowl and the park has some great runs for Freebording/Longboarding.
Wear your damn pads; new Juggernaut shirt at Art Life Collective
Ok, proof positive, wearing your protective gear — full-body prophylactics for boarders — make the difference, sometimes between getting back up and riding or laying on your back getting tube fed until they come to harvest your organs.
Got back on the Freebord for the first time in weeks — ever since eating it catching a downhill edge on a mouth-breather-level-easy run. Felt like a nube. Serously, just a few weeks, four actually, and it took me half a day to where I could comfortably link slides. Back to the old practice, practice thing. Started out carving on the old Sector 9 longboard to loosen up, then graduated to the Freebord once the frontal lobes realized I wasn’t going to eat it too bad.
Still, looking back on the last bail where I sprained my foot, if I had not been wearing elbow and wrist guards, plus helmet, I probably would have gotten another ride in an ambulance and more casts, plus surgery. Not to mention, looking at the gash in the helmet, if that had been my head, I might have added incontinence and drooling to my list of talents. Especially since I landed on the arm that I shattered a six months ago — wrist guards did the job. No reinjury. Not even a twitch.
I keep seeing youtube videos and folks posting on the Freebord and other skateboard sites about how they never wear their helmets or pads. That’s just retarded folks. Stupid.
Sorry if you don’t think its cool, but both from personal experience and covering such stuff as a journalist, pads can help keep you from getting turned into hamburger or taking a dirt nap. I was wearing my knee pads and helmet, but not my wrist guards when I broke my arm — which I now only have about 70 percent use of forever now, the joint is mostly synthetic, plust ran up more than $40,000 in medical bills, no lie. Those guards would have prevented the break.
Just about all the old school skaters I see at Ride in Alabaster wear helmets and pads and I have seen them eat it hard with no injury. I also see the veteran riders on the Freebord forum telling people to wear their protective gear, especially the helmet. It makes me all warm and tingly inside. They are absolutely right. Doctors can fix just about every part of the body — except the brain. Unless you like pissing yourself and eating baby food, wear your helmet, always.
Now, getting down off my soap box.
Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, in addition to passing the 100th artist mark, has been graced with a new I’m the Juggernaut, Bitch shirt from Mr. E.
Pay attention here: Art shirts are great, but if you want to sell lots and lots of them online, at least have one commercially popular, read pop-culture-icon stuff, design to draw traffic to your page. The Juggernaut shirts have proven to be a huge draw for Ed Ferrusquia, and a few of our other artists have learned from this.
It’s great to have so many different designs — from photo art to simple line drawings — but getting traffic to your page can get a real boost from one piece of commercial art that has keywords that will show up in the search engines. Once people are there for one design, the tend to at least browse — and sometimes buy — your other work.
So, just something to keep in mind.
VW Westy pop top replacement
Since I am still too banged up to Freebord — or longboard or Flowboard, hell I can kind of walk, sort of — the Wife and I have turned our attention to my 73 Westfalia.
We have the interior almost complete, which gives me a warm, tingly sensation. The outside of the bus is a patchwork of body repairs and other work that will take a little longer, so right now, as it lumbers down the road, the camper looks more like it was sneezed into existence that the fine piece of German engineering it was ment to be.
This weekend, though, we managed to replace the crummy cloth someone had stapled up on the pop top with real canvas — thanks to the people at gowesty.com who have a huge online selection of Volkswagon camper gear for sale, from split windows all the way to vanagons.
The top, including hinges and tiedowns, needed a buch of work, not to mention a sound cleaning … so we took it off.
To do this, I highly recommend having a couple of tall helpers in good health on hand. The Wife and her gimp husband managed somehow to get the top off … and much more difficult, especially when it comes to lining up the front hinges, back on again.
Getting the top cleaned — it was growing penicilin and something that looked like leprosy on top — and new seals, also from gowesty.com, all the way around were much easier tasks with the top completely off. Also, the two-piece pop-top seals are very simple to put on. I understand from some of the online guides that the single-piece gaskets can be difficult to the point of having to trim the fiberglass where it goes around the corners to seal with the luggage rack. Use the two-piece sets.
Also, with the top off, stapling in the tent was a breeze, no sweat. Again, this is a two-person job. With a minimal stretching, the canvas fit perfectly, though the Wife found out good, strong wood clamps to hold the fabric in place right where you want it are almost a must. Also, we used an electric staple gun which also made quick work of the task. Be careful when using one of those, though, because they can damage the wood if you are too close to an edge. Also, make sure the staples are the right lenght.
Putting the top back on the van sucked. Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, sucked. We really needed those tall, healthy — without a sprained foot — helpers to get things in place. They would have been especially helpful holding the top at the right angle, in the right place, while we put in the first bolts holding the front of the top down. Still, we managed — after teaching anyone with in earshot exactly how many cuss words a newspaper editor picks up over the years — to get it back on and lined up right.
Also replaced the fold out top cot. A no-brainer, four bolts on and off and that job is done.
One point of advice here, aside from having help, check the front hinge bolts for rust and the wood under the top they mount to. We found ours had rusted and the rubber washers shot, so the wood on one side was completely gone … powder. While you have the roof off is a good time to deal with such repairs.
It’s also a good time to clean under pop-top and around the roof of the bus in those areas that are impossible to reach with the fiberglass in place.
Expect to spend between six and eight hours on this.
Brilliant … reporter closes case for city
Things are finally settling down at the office in our new building and are almost back up to full staff after some of our young tallent went off to other jobs … always the bane of small papers (Though we also take pride we are one of the few newspapers willing to give journalists a chance right out of school. We have had some amazing talent walk through our doors that way).
So, at last we have time to really get caught up on our police reports. This one does not so much fall into the category of stupid criminal — though that, as usual, plays a part in it.
One of our city beat reporters was working on a pile of incident and offense reports this morning and came across one where the suspect was nabbed with drug paraphernalia — in this case a crack pipe. A seemingly minor report.
Later today, the reporter was in the police chief’s office going over anything of interest. The chief said things had mostly been quiet, but they were working a missing person case. The individual in question was the same guy busted Sunday with the pipe. The reporter pointed out to the chief that the suspect/missing dipshit, might have not wanted to share with his family he had been busted with a crack pipe and, therefore, would not have been able to make bond.
Reporter: So, he may still be downstairs in the jail.
Chief: Surely the investigators would have checked that.
But … no. The guy was still in jail. Our reporter not only closed the case, he got to sit in on the conversation between the chief and the investigator.
Chief to investigator: You still working that missing person case?
Investigator: Yeah.
Chief: Getting anywhere with it?
Investigator: Not much so far. We have some pictures and are going to go around town and see if anyone has seen this guy. His family has not seen him since Sunday.
Chief: Well, before you do that, you probably want to walk across the hall. In the jail. I think you will probably find him there.
Small-town journalism does have its perks.
On the Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, front we have several new t-shirt designers. Our list of contributors is slowly creeping towards 100. Jules has some fantastic new designs of a darkly humorous nature. And, amazingly, the Juggernaut, Bitch shirts continue to sell well. Got to love underground Internet fads. So, check out the site … Do it, do it.
This ink infusion press is making all the difference for us. It uses technology similar to an ink jet printer. This lets us do single or multiple runs. Having worked with this and systems using seperations (like printing a newspaper or screen printing), I highly recommend these new printers for anyone looking to do any sort of fabric printing. As far as the Art Life Collective crew can tell, the printing is just as durable as screen methods, though there is something of a learning curve with the technology.
As for Freebording … or anything else, thanks to a nasty fall I’m off the boards for a bit. X-rays came back clean, but I have one hell of a sprain on my foot — it looks like I have been playing soccer with bowling balls. After breaking my wrist into very small pieces earlier this year, I’m running kind of low on working appendages.
Though it’s probably kind of karmic, since, if I had not screwed up my foot Friday, I probably would have tried some of the bigger hills this weekend. That’s great, except the trees have covered the roads with acorns and other fall plant crud, greatly increasing my chances of becoming a quivering mound of red paste and exposed bone in the gutter, and I have so had my fill of that for the year.
I’ll give it a week to let myself heal. Once my foot looks a little less leprous and can take my weight better I need to practice riding switch. Still don’t have it down very well. Can 180 into it, and occassionally spin back out, but usually end up bailing. It just feels wrong. I may have to make myself content with just doing beautiful soul carves on long hills.
Riding switch on the Freebord
Hah…. hah, hah.
Managed to ride into — and back out of switch on the Freebord today. Always been able to ride into switch before, but then, thanks to coordination skills that must harken to a severly damaged hind brain, it was always time to catch an edge.
So, like the guys at www.freebord.com’s forum suggested, practice riding switch on an easy hill, over and over and over and over and over and over again. Of course, one dude advocates the baptisms by fire method — find a huge hill and ride into switch about half way down, then let the reality of the situation force you to master switch or die. Makes about as much sense as teaching people to learn how to fly by throwing them out of planes.
Took the first route. And again, they were right — practice. The Freebord is one of the safest boards to ride once you master it because speed control and the ability to stop, not to mention make sick turns give riders a huge advantage over other boards. But, and any potential riders take note — especially anyone who does snowboard or wake skate or some similar edge driven board sport — mastering this thing take time and common sense. Also highly recommend talking to more experienced riders on the Freebord forums on the company site under the Community section.
I will probably never be insanely comfortable riding switch, but I am getting more comfortable with it. Besides, riding in and out of switch looks cool and it’s something most other boards don’t do easily or at all.
All is well at Art Life Collective. We are up to about 91 artists now and selling a fair amount of shirts. I have come to the conclusion that promoting individual artists seperately — especially with some of our standouts like olive47, Edward Ferrusqui, Jamie Weare and others — is essential to the success of such a cooperative effort. It seems to be working. Since the artists, with a little help from ALC, started promoting their work, we have seen more of them moving their custom T-shirts.
As for stupid criminals: Nothing terribly remarkable to note, except that we have one guy who is up on charges again. This is nothing of its self, except that the last time he was in court, after pleading guilty, the gravity of some prison time hit him during sentencing. He freaked out, ran across the courtroom and did a front flip into the jury box, breaking several chairs off their floor mounts. The assistant DA said that, if someone had given him a football “there was not a defensive line in the country that could have stopped him.” Be curious to see if we get a repeat performance.
Freebord vs. Flowboard … both have their place
Not much to report on the Art Life Collective t-shirt design front — been too busy moving the newspaper into our new building, a real contemporary/deco facility: It makes me so proud.
Also, continue to nail the slopes on the Freebord. I may never go back to traditional longboarding again. Naw, there are still some places my Sector 9 works better than the Freebord, but still, when it comes to carving long hills and controlling speed, being able to link slides and ride into switch is the best way to go. For someone who has a buch of experience on things like wake boards and an early verison of wakeskates — standing on a hydroslide — but no experience snowboarding, learning to Freebord is a ton of work.
Until you master it — and the guys at Freebord.com are right, it takes loads of practice — it is much more dangerous than a regular long board. But, once you get it down, being able to stop and control speed makes it a much safer way to carve up a hill — that’s especially true since I shattered my arm in a fall four months ago and there is no way in hell my hand will ever take enough weight again to slow my longboard with slide gloves.
That being said, we also got our Flowboard last week, a 36-incher, so my kids could do some serious carving. They want to ride the hills with me but don’t have the experience or the weight to manage a Freebord or safely carve on the Sector 9. Because of the Deep Carve System is based on the angle of the board and does not need weight to push the bushings to one side or the other, even my 6-year-old can carve the steepest hills with me. Lots of fun. The board turns on a dime but because of the multi-wheel design, it keeps speeds reasonable and carving easy.
Also of note, the Flowboard is much easier to ride — almost like a regular skateboard — than some of the other hybrids like the Freebord. I still prefer the Freebord ride, but having both boards in our quiver is a blast.
No stupid criminals to report — I have been way too busy to go through the police reports the reporters bring in.
