Entries this day: Skate_transcription skate_Exxon_tunnels_Jesus_Saves

Skate transcription

(transcribed from Book Six 11:02pm JST Friday 26 June 2009 (day 14338))

(actually continued from previous entry in Book Six, with no break in writing)

I went down into the garage under Party on the Plaza with two little dudes and we got busted. The cops made us take our skates off and walk out.

Then I was screwing around on PotP and going down the steps & stuff and showing off when groups of parade girls walked by.

I found another group and we cruised to the tunnel that links PotP garage & stuff. (This is the tunnel we did when I first went skating.) It seemed WAY smaller this time. We got busted. Shit. We got all the way to the garage & some cops were there so we bolted back the other way. They were telling us to stop but no way. Then there were guards on the other side and they got us. Shit shit shit. They recognized me and knew but I told them "you said the garage." "I didn't even know these were linked..."

5 or 6 guards escorted us to the supervisor dude and he said, "Get them out of here." So they just kicked us out and we cruised. (Had to take our skates off again.)

The other skater dudes cruised so I was hanging out with 6 or 8 Greyhound buses were cruising by being escorted by cops. Cool. So I skated alongside the buses and pretended I was being escorted too. I like to think that people on the bus noticed me. Buses stopped & hundreds & hundreds of girls poured out. They all looked to be between 14 & 18 years old. They were a dance group from "all over the place" I talked to a girl with braces; there were a bunch of them with braces. I got pictures of them as they were practicing. There were actually 2 groups and I met one girl in the second group. Her name is Gina and she's cute and blonde.

Now - the cheerleaders were UCA staff - the same ones that I met a long ass time ago in may. There was Devincent & Jim & a dude and that was cool to check them out again. I got pictures of a girl being thrown about 40 feet into the air and a picture of 5 girls doing splits way up in mid air (picture from behind) Cool cool cool.

I also got a picture of Gina's group when they all bent over & all I could see were girls' butts. Cool. I don't know if she is in the picture.

I talked to DeVincent & Jim briefly afterward and they remembered me. Cool.

I also met a little dude named Bill who will be in a double stunt.

Then I cruised over to where the floats were being set up. I met Farrah, who will be driving the first float of the parade. (The big turkey I also met a 13 year old cutie named Ann who has braces. her whole family is intimately involved with the floats & stuff. I talked to her about her favorite float & stuff. She has braces. Her favorite is the gorilla. I took a picture of it.

Then I found some more dudes and we went skating everywhere.

We did the Exxon garage which is the spiral across the street from YMCA, which I've been wanting to do for a long time. It was cool. It's just a big long right turn slide all the way down. I did it without a problem. We got yelled at on the way out but we cruised.

We did a garage near Passport Photos. It's 6 stories tall and we just ran up the steps to do it. We did it twice. It has really short steep inclines & then long flat straight parts. We didn't get in trouble.

Then we cruised to Jesus Saves. Dude. I had never been so I was really glad to do it. We cruised into the elevator and people were like "which level?" There are 13 levels. Someone said "5." Someone said "naw." I said "13." We cruised to level 13. We search a moment for the ramp & then we found it. People were like pausing at the top until one dude cruised & so I cruised.

Each ramp goes down two stories. The ramp part of the ramp has plenty of traction, and the turn parts have much less traction but enough to scrape a knee as I found out once. It's a fresh garage. We got to the bottom and were like dude. Go again. So we cruised to the elevators and a little speaker in the wall announced, "You all need to leave the garage." Dude. So we cruised.

We checked out some stuff near the Video Christmas Tree thing and that was cool. Then we cruised home.

There was a baster on my counter so I knew someone had been in my apartment. Molly had left a turkey in my refrigerator and a note saying Maggie will call me at 6AM to tell me what to do with it. Dude.

I showered & here I am.

Almost 3AM Thursday 25 November 1993 [Day 62]

skate Exxon tunnels Jesus Saves

24 November 1993

On Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I went roller blading (what I call terrorizing the city) for about 6 hours. Major major fun.

I got busted (twice) for going into a pedestrian tunnel system that connects Jones Hall with some parking lots. The second time, six security guards trapped us down there... Crap! They made us take off our skates and go see the supervisor. He just looked at us and said, "Tsk. get them out of here." He meant to say, "don't waste my time; they were just skating." Heh. So we went outside and cruised.

That group of skaters went to a bar, so I found another group and we skated about 4 different parking garages. First we did the "Exxon" garage. (most garages are named by whatever prominent business is in the bottom of the building.) I had always wanted to do this one, because it's a 6 level continuous spiral all the way down. However, this was the first night I had been with a group that knew how to get into the building. We slipped by the little guard house, in which there was a guard, but he was either sleeping or reading or didn't care. We hit the elevator up to the 6th floor and headed down the ramp.

The entire 6 levels was a continuous slide-turn all the way down. The thing is pretty steep for that tight of a turn, so there was no use in trying to go faster, so we just cruised smoothly all the way down it.

When we got to about the second level, we began to hear shouts of, "Hey! Stop!! hey!!" We never saw anyone by the time we rocketed out into the street and bolted to about 2 blocks away.
Cool.

After a few minutes, we were joking about, "Oh, here comes the guard stumbling and panting: ' I finally found you kids.. ' Yeah? bye!" and we would simply skate away. Heh.

We then went to the "First City" garage and skated it twice without incident. We decided that no guards were there because the garage wasn't very fun anyway.

Then we cruised to "Jesus Saves." The garage is so named for two reasons. First, nearby is an *old* church (old for Houston, but not old for, say, Europe) with a gaudy as anything sign at the top that says, "Jesus Saves." The sign really ruins the effect of the coolness of an old church.
The other reason is that if you make it down this garage without wiping out, Jesus saved you from oblivion. There is no other way about it.

We skated into the building and found the elevators. The garage has 13 levels and only 6 ramps going down. Do some quick math to figure out that each ramp goes down *2* levels instead of 1. Do some quick physics and figure out that a skater will be going *fast* by the time he or she gets to the bottom.

There is some more physics pertinent to the situation. Cars going up or down the ramps need plenty of friction on the actual sloped part. They don't need quite so much friction on the flat curve to get to th next ramp. For us on skates, it's the opposite. We don't need friction on the way down, but we would like some friction in order to facilitate our turns. For a week after it happened, I could show you my knee which proves that although there is not sufficient friction on the curves to keep one upright, there is sufficient friction to skin a knee. (It wasn't too bad, though.) I fell on one curve on the way down, and my knee pad took most of the skid, but it slid off my knee a little bit. Oh well. I zipped down the rest of the levels and waited until everyone else had come down.

After many high fives, we went to the elevators again. Just as I pressed the up button, a voice came from a speaker in the wall, "You guys need to leave the garage now." "Okay! Thanks! See ya!" We cruised.