Wigwam 12

Have you ever slept in a Wigwam before?

Um. . . No, I thought to myself as the manager asked me in a thick Indian accent. My eyes darted around the dimly lit, wood paneled cone. Boxes of old Native American souvenirs, artifacts and memorabilia surrounded me, as the Totem Poles looked on. He then slid me a key-Wigwam 12.

Our Buick slid into parking place 12, adjacent to our temporary home. Ours was just one of 15 concrete Wigwam built in a semi-circle pattern by a bold architect in 1935.

Inserting the key, I ducked into the 5'10'' doorway, remembering that I was much taller than the past travelers. Inside was a time capsule, straight out of the 1940's. Nothing had changed, and I realized that that was just how things should be. After getting myself settled, I stepped out into the moonlight night.

Passing the humming neon sign boldly proclaiming "SLEEP IN A WIGWAM" to those passing by, I made my way to a shoddily-constructed swing set. I began swinging, and I suddenly realized that this place was just like going back in time. Gone were the 2002 Toyota Corrolas, cell phones, pagers, Ipods, and whatever else. The people around me were just enjoying themselves, spending time with their families and taking in one of the strangest roadside destinations in the United States.

So now next time someone asks me if I've ever slept in a Wigwam before, my answer will be a resounding yes.

The Edge

Staring into the clear blue California sky, my brother and I were ready to take on our second adventure as terrain experts. The day before, we had scaled 35 foot rock ledges in Los Padres State Park, waded across rapids, and jumped from ledge to ledge in order to gain a better vantage on the surrounding landscape.

Today, we would be facing a new challenge, a trail with rattlesnakes, cliffs and a roaring river to cross. With a hint of cockiness, we set off onto the dusty trail into the valley. As we descended towards the alleged river, the trail became dustier and dustier. The sun baked down on the two teenage boys from the suburbs, thousands of miles away from home, who were ready to take on an adventure.

"Where's the river?" we asked each other. We had become bored with the trail, figuring that we had been dooped by the Park Ranger hours before. Then a slight rumble could be heard, and as we walked towards it it became louder. The river.

With the exception of two burly Mexican men, straight out of Saints Row, we were the only ones at the river. After scaling some large sandstone rock faces for about an hour, my brother and I needed to head back.

Our Asics securely tied, we hopped right on the path dust path to where we started. Or so we thought . . .

We continued to approach the opposite side of the valley where we had started, following a crude path that was covered in various vegetation. Neither of us had remembered passing the rusty barbed wire fence. Oh well, lets just climb over it.

Up and over, we continued through the tall grass until we came upon a dry river bed. In the middle of it was a Kris Kraft speedboat from the early 1960's, bathing in the California sun. That's weird.



From there we could see a rusty door from a 1961 Chevy Apache, along with various other car parts.

Upon further inspection, we found out that we were in a hobo camp.

An upside-down hot tub covering a ditch with a hatch cut in the top was one of the few structures in this shanty town. The various pieces of junk spewed about made up some other shelters. Good thing the hobos weren't home.



We then passed a ramshackle tree house, ducked under two barbed wire fences, and ventured through some farmer's livestock to a drain tunnel on the side of the valley. We decided we would scale the 60 foot side of the valley up to the street. Hopping some more fences and dodging poison ivy, we made our way up the crumbling slope.



Finally at street level, we were as good as safe. My brother calmly walked towards the gate, as I followed behind. A sigh read "NO TRESPASSING:Violators Will Be Prosecuted"Not aware of my junkyard surroundings, I heard a dog growl. I stopped dead in my tracks. A giant German Shepard, without a leash came charging at me, foaming at the mouth. Struck by fear, I ran back to where I entered the yard. I grove of cactus' lay behind me, with the 60 foot embankment behind that.

Then I had to make the choice: Jump
into the cactus' and down
the steep, steep,
embankment, or take my chances with the junkyard dog.

I knew I wouldn't escape without some sort of injury. Then, my brother got the dog's attention. In a split second, the two of us sprinted out of the yard and onto the street. Safe. So I guess the boring path turned into a bigger adventure than the suburban boys could imagine.



We both lay there on the the corner of fairview street, covered in dust, dirt, sweat and poison ivy, peering at the 'BEWARE OF DOG' sign posted on the front gate, 3 miles west of where we started.

The two teenage boys from the suburbs had taken it to the edge, litteraly, and came out virtually unscathed. Talk about an adventure.

"Welcome, You've Got Mail!"

Four months ago.

Four stinkin' months.

That's the last time anyone I follow has shared their thoughts on their blogspot. What has happened to them? A better question, what has happened to me? It's been so long since I've typed anything for fun, and having forgot ton my GOOGLE password, I had to have it emailed to me. Now, this seems like standard fare for people who have short term memory loss, or just plum forget things. To the contrary, I went to open my mail to get my password changed and to my surprise the friendly electronic cousin of Steven Hawkings greets you with the "Welcome, You've Got Mail!" 3,531 new messages. Holy smokes.

Where do they come from?

Why are they here?

Then I had a thought, why not look through this mess of emails and see how things have changed over the last four months. Scrolling through, I found thousands of Facebook notifications regarding accepting friends who were just merely names at the time. I'm now close friends with many of them who I hardly knew a third of a year ago. Invitations to parties, get-togethers and shindigs of the past, where now only the memories loom in my mind. My status was liked by 14 different people from 4 states and 2 countries on August 25. This trip down memory lane just opened a flood of memories of the past, and how much my life has changed. Seeing these thousands of emails made me think about how different things were, and how different things are going to be. Where will I be in four months you ask? Your guess is as good as mine.

A Boy and his Bike

I feel as if inspiration can come from many places, or sometimes you just find it necessary to satisfy that itch that is the “what if” in your life. I have recently found my latest “what if” and decided that I had the means to make it work.

What I wanted was a road bike. Yeah, like those used in the Tour de France, or those ridden by European people in spandex who constantly seem to think they’re cars out on the road. No 16 year old boy would ever want a bike like that when they could have a top of the line mountain bike used to conquer all obstacles in the general area around it. Skinny tires, lightweight chrome-molly frame, curved handlebars and suicide shifters all come with the package that is a road bike.

My father, being the high style man that he is, purchased a brand new Schwinn World Sport Road Bicycle in 1986 for the then pricey sum of $400.00. He got many good years of use out of it, and then parked it in the garage for nearly a decade. Cobwebs and dust built up, tires rotted and dirt accumulated on the once glorious bike, and I decided that I needed to revamp the bike at all costs. I brought it to D & D Bike Shop in Northville, where I asked them to do all they could to fix it. After returning several times throughout the course of the week, I returned to the shop to pick up my bike. It glistened in the sun, the gunmetal grey frame casting shimmers of light off into the distance. The red grip tape matched the Schwinn logo perfectly, and all the running gear was tuned to perfection. There was one thing left to do.

Swinging my leg over the frame, I began to pedal. My legs moved faster and faster as the buildings around me began to turn into a blur. Trees, cars and everything around me lost importance, and it was just me and the bike. Moving forward, and not looking back.

I thought to myself, I don’t have a dollar in my wallet, but I couldn’t be any happier.

Perfection

This blog hasn’t been updated for the past few months, and I am surprised I still can type. I suppose one could make the statement that I was too busy living my life, and not spending any time recording my thoughts. Isn’t that how summer is supposed to be?

For the first time in my 16 years, 2 months, and 25 days of existence, I have felt like my life couldn’t get any better. I know I have had countless good times, which are awesome but the euphoria that encapsulates them wears off within a matter of days. However, my life recently has been on the upswing. All the elements that I could ever want have been handed to me, all within this glorious 77 days of freedom. My reintroduction to hockey is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is my complex teenager life, which I will look back upon and yearn for the days of the past. This is now, and I will ride this wave for as long as I can, because I don’t know how much better life can get.

No More Pencils, No More Books

The last day of school has been idolized in American pop culture ever since the countries' founding. Bells ringing, papers flying and kids screaming all enter our minds as we envision the day in which every student receives a pardon from the governor, a free ride ticket for several months of freedom. Quoting the famous song by Alice Cooper "Schools out for the summer, schools out forever!", a tremendous weight is lifted from the student's shoulders knowing that the toil and burden of pencils, books and dirty looks is done, only to be resumed in September. But that's a lifetime away . . .

Me, Gearns and Trotter decided that we were going to be different. Make the last day of school something that we would be talking about for days, weeks or months. We would be attempting a feat that not many students attempt, and it involves rule bending. But hey, were going to be juniors, so why not take the risk? We would be wearing our Rollerblades to school, and maneuvering through the highly populated Northville High School hallways. Probable, we thought so.

As we arrived at school, my brother being the strict rule follower decided that I was crazy and irresponsible for attempting to bend school rules. I gave him a "who cares" shrug and told him if he didn't approve he could just leave me alone. So he did.

I laced up the good 'ol Missions with Rink Rat wheels (Property of Ryan Trotter) and began my journey from the parking lot to the inside of the school. I found that climbing the stairs on Rollerblades was not as challenging as one would think. Into the Math wing I rolled, gaining speed. I recieved high-fives from various students and in a blur I could hear the "You can't do that!" from teachers. I didn't let that stop me, because I felt invincible.

That feeling didn't last long however. Gearns skated a mere 10 feet before a teacher took him aside and told him that rollerblading wasn't allowed in school. Who would have guessed? I attempted to bail him out by explaining some hodge-podge of roller hockey reasoning to the teacher, but she wouldn't budge on her reasoning. The skates returned to the lockers.

As a kid in a pirate costume, riding a loose-trucked 1970's long board straight from the film Lords of Dogtown rolled by, I could see Trotter in the distance attempting a spin move. Nice. The two of us talked to Megan and Haley and continued our mission throughout the school. RoShambleau (pronounced RoShamblo) was mumbling in his walkie talkie about hooligans and shenanigans. We gotta get out!
So we went our separate ways, carrying our skates. Joyce, the hall monitor, who had already repossed the long board, approached me. Being myself, I decided to maneuver myself out of any trouble by the use of big words, historical references and persuasive skills. This time, however, I failed. My skates ended up in the office with all the other items that didn't comply with Northville's "Tradition of Excellence". Ha.

School ended and I went to collect my skates. On my way out I encountered our roller hockey coach, and he approved of our idea, which was satisfying. But most importantly, I did this for the experience and decided to make this last day of school memorable.

What its all about

Step Right Up!

And Go For It!

This weekend wasn't destined to be something important. There were no special events, no parites, no championship games, nothing. Just a regular 3 day weekend. However, it just didn't work like that.

As the formaldihide smell finally left my nostrils, I left my 4B Bio class with the thoughts of the "Baconater" still sloshing around in my head. I needed to clear my mind. After talking to Ryan on the way out of school, I figured out that he had "bent" the rules and found a way around the strict rules issued by "Ro" Shambleau about sophomores driving. Anyway, I got to duel it out with Haley for riding shotgun. After a good bodycheck and a quick rock-paper-scissors match, I found myself up front. Awesome.



After reviewing some video footage, which we found futile, Ryan had to go do more important things, which can be read on his blog "Trot Spot". Anyway, Kevin and I decided that we head up to the Northville Swim Club. It was opening day there, so we decided that we would take Gearns along in the Lumina. Uppon arrival, we put up some crazy shots on the b-ball court, then decided that we needed to go back to our naural enviornment: the diving pool.


A note to the reader: The three meter board a.k.a. high dive is the highlight for any little kid's visit to the Northville Swim Club. A chance to scream your lungs off while falling from 12 feet up is enough to give anyone a boost of adreniline. Anyway, Kevin, Ryan, Victor and occasionally Timothy have complete rule over the high dive. They work their majic day in and day out off the towering board, doing flips and similar activities. I would watch from the low dive, and decided not to attempt anything crazy from such a high height. I had attempted a one and a half last year and broke my ear drum off the high dive, so that's why I remained slightly scared . . . ok terrified off the high dive.


So there I was, doing my usual dives off the 1 meter low dive, and I decided that today, things would be different. Not just today, but for the rest of the year. After some helpful hints from Kevin, I was ready to go for it. As I approached the line, I asked the small boy in line behind me if he wanted to jump first, but he said no, it's your turn. It was my turn.


I positoned myself on the board, and completed a perfectly excecuted reverse, or at least a very nice one. I then realized that if I believed in myself, I could do whatever I wanted. I know it's cheesy, but it's true. Conquering your fears, thats what the summer's all about.