The S&M Bikes "Behind the Shield Book Jam- Sheep Hills- #9

 Not "good for a girl," just good. 

 This was a lot cooler half a second earlier.  Like I said, my timing sucks taking photos with a phone right now.  I need ot get back to shooting video with an actual video camera when I can.

Double tailwhip.

The Story of my Keychain- Part 5: I meet unknowns Josh White, Joe Johnson, and Mat Hoffman in one weekend

One of the first pro freestylers I met, Martin Aparijo, in the Dallas/Forth Worth airport, on the way to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, AFA Masters contest, in 1986.  This clip is the from the Ohio AFA Masters contest in 1986, a few months later.  Flatland freestyle was still in "ride a bit, do a trick, ride a bit" phase, before rolling tricks started linking everything together.  This is definitely one of the first times a bar ride was done in a contest as well.

Looking back from 33 years later, it almost seems like it was the plot of a B movie.  It wasn't just that I flew to a plains state, went to a contest, talked ot a few people, the wrote an article about the contest.  I got a baptism by fire into the world of the BMX freestyle industry in the spring of 1986.

A BMX freestyler from B.F. Idaho (there actually is a B.F. Idaho, by the way, a tiny town called Bonner's Ferry), moves to the Bay Area because his dad gets a new job.  Suddenly I was riding with the Curb Dogs/Skyway team, and part of the whole, legendary, Golden Gate Park scene.  I started a zine because I didn't think I was cool enough to actually just hang out and ride with those guys.  I sent zines to the individual guys at the big BMX magazines.  A few months into my zine, I introduced myself to Andy Jenkins, editor of FREESTYLIN' magazine, at a velodrome contest, and he says, "Hey, we love your zine."  I definitely didn't expect that from a few pieces of Xeroxed paper every month.  Completely out of the blue, a few weeks later, Andy calls me up to see if I want to cover the coming Tulsa AFA Masters contest for FREESTYLIN'.  At that point alone, I was already past most of my freestyle dreams.  Mind freakin' blown.

I flew solo to Tulsa.  In the Dallas/Forth Worth airport, I ran into Eddie Fiola, Martin Aparijo, and some unknown kid, new to the GT team, named Josh White.  They were on the same flight into Tulsa.  I flew into Tulsa, completely clueless, I had no idea where the contest was, was too young to rent a car, and had no motel room booked.  A seasoned traveler I was not.  I met a mild mannered, unknown, East Coast rider in the airport.  He told me he rode for Haro.  "Yeah RIGHT!" I thought.  Until the Haro tour van pulled up, and Ron Wilkerson jumped out.  Sure enough, Joe Johnson really did ride for Haro, but he was unknown to the larger freestyle world at that point.  I hopped in, and started talking to veteran skatepark rider, and Haro assistant team manager, Jon Peterson.  He helped me find a room to crash in, one of the Haro team rooms.

I got to the motel, and next thing I know I was hanging out in the "borrowed" motel room where Mike  Dominguez and Brian Blyther were staying.  When the newlyweds who actually rented the room showed up at one door, I helped Mike and Brian bail out the other door.  Later that night, I beat Woody Itson in pool, ending his hour long run on the motel  pool table (OK, he scratched on the 8 ball, but it's still a win).  I also rode out with Rick Moliterno and Billy Hop to help waterproof Rick's pick up truck cap, with duct tape and trash bags, in a hardcore Oklahoma thunderstorm, so I talked to them a bit as well.

The next morning, I was standing alone in the arena, scoping out the scene, and Eddie Fiola came up and just starting talking to me.  I just met him the before, and he was still the best known name in the sport then.  As we were talking, and I was trying not to act like an idiot, two young punks interrupted us.  A couple years later, while retelling the story, I realized those kids were none other than Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope.  A bit later, Jon Peterson walked me around, and I met most of the other pros and industry people.  I met FREESTYLIN' photographer Windy Osborn for the first time, and had a quick, cool chat with her.  I got on top of the ramp, and shot some photos of all the vert riders, including the big talk of the weekend, new guys Josh White and Joe Johnson.  I also got some pics of the kid we called "The Stormtrooper" that weekend, because he was wearing a full face helmet, shoulder pads, knee pads, and elbow pads, which nobody did then.  The unknown kid was doing no footed can-can's the hardest trick on vert at the time, as well as his unique switch handed airs.  That was Mat Hoffman.  But I had the ASA set wrong on my camera, so the photos were grainy.  Man do I wish I had those grainy pics today.

All of that happening randomly on my first trip as a magazine freelancer, is kind of like being a good high school basketball player, going to Venice Beach, California, and walking up to a public ball court, and seeing Lebron, Steph Curry, Shaq, Pau Gasol, and Charles Barkley playing 3 on 3.  When you walk up, Lebron says, "Hey, you guys get Barkley, we'll take this new kid on our team."  Seriously, it was like that crazy of a weekend.  OK, BMXers aren't as famous as pro B-ballers, but you get the idea.  I seriously couldn't believe that weekend was actually happening.

I took notes, I talked to pros and top amateurs.  But I forget damn near everything that happened in the arena that weekend.  I do remember I signed 9 autographs, including one local girl's arm that everybody was signing.  She told us, "Hey, it's Oklahoma, you guys are the most famous people we've ever seen in real life."  I've signed two autographs in the 33 years since.  One of those was signing the first page of the article I wrote in Chad Powers' copy of that issue of FREESTYLIN'.  Oh, and I competed in that contest.  How'd I do?  Lame, I imagine.  I don't remember a thing about my run.  It doesn't matter.  I became a part of the BMX freestyle industry that weekend, which still amazes me, to be honest.

I wrote my article, and it came out in the epic August 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN', with that eye catching, tiny photo of Josh White on the cover.  You can check out that issue at oldschoolmags.com.  The zine article is on scan page 11, and my zine, San Jose Stylin', is listed first.  Josh White's article, that made him an instant freestyle star, is on scan page 19.  My article for the Tulsa contest starts on scan page 24.  In my article for the Tulsa, Oklahoma AFA Masters, where nobody expected much to really happen, little Matthew Hoffman (as we spelled his name back then), got his first ever editorial photo, doing a no footed can-can.  Haro rider Joe Johnson got his first editorial mention in that article, and went on to become one of the best vert riders of the 80's.  Todd Anderson, always underrated, got a photo.  Oleg-fucking-Koning got a photo (put your helmet on Oleg!).  NorCal up-and-comers Chris and Karl Rothe got a mugshot.  In addition, there were photos of the heavies of the time, Martin Aparijo, Eddie Fiola, R.L. Osborn,  and Dennis McCoy, as well as Steve Broderson, Rick Moliterno, and Rich Sigur, and little Scotty Freeman, showing off the quickspin. 

The last thing I remember from that weekend is sitting in someone's motel room, and hearing a car squealing tires out in the parking lot.  The noise just kept going on and on, and we looked out the window, as several other riders in other rooms did, and we saw a big cloud of white smoke in the middle of the parking lot.  The noise stopped, and the Hutch rental Lincoln Continental, driven by Woody Itson, pulled forward out of the cloud of smoke.  Mike Dominguez was in the passenger's seat laughing his ass off.  The car peeled out, and headed off to the Tulsa airport.

As Joe Johnson, me, and the whole Haro posse were getting ready to pile into the Haro van, for our trip to the airport, Jon Peterson, my tour guide for the weekend, told me he had something for me.  He handed me a Tech 2-style brake lever, with a key ring on it.  He said something like, "We had a ton of these that didn't sell, so we made keychains out of them."  At the time, It seemed weird.  But Jon totally helped me out that weekend, took me around, and introduced me to pretty much everyone, riders and industry people.  That was really cool of him, so thank you Jon, for that.  Ron Wilkerson dropped Joe and me off at the airport, and they went back to the business of summer tour.

I got off the airplane in San Jose with 76 cents in my pocket.  I went back to work at Pizza Hut on Winchester boulevard (right down the road from the Winchester Mystery House), and told Erin, the 6' 2" young woman I worked with nearly every night, about my crazy weekend.  When it came time to write the article, I couldn't think of a clever way to start it.   So I started it with me at Pizza Hut telling Erin about my crazy weekend in Tulsa.

Twenty two years later, in late 2008 after taxi driving took a dive, I wound up living on the streets of Orange County, California for a year.  Unable to get any job or make any small business ideas to happen, I finally took my parents' offer of a plane ride to North Carolina to live with them.  It was November 2008, and the economy was collapsing.  I had everything I owned in a 5 foot by 5 foot storage unit.  I had a chrome Dyno bike I hadn't ridden much because I got fat driving a taxi.  I had a complete collection of FREESTYLIN' magazine, and tear sheets, the pre-production prints, of 3 or 4 issues.  I had probably 100 other BMX, skateboard, snowboard, and rock climbing magazines, ranging from 1982 to 2008.  I had all my raw video footage from 1990 to 2008, over 40 or 50 hours worth.  I had all my master video tapes from The Ultimate Weekend, some Vision video promos I'd produced, and a few others.  I had my own collection VHS tapes and DVD's, including the copy of Headfirst Eddie Roman himself gave me.  I also had a Mac Powerbook in one pawn shop, and my Sony Digital 8 video camera in another pawn shop.  I had my whole zine collection in there, maybe 50 zines from 1986 to 1994, along with copies of my own poetry zines with about 150 of my original poems in them, including "Journey of The White Bear," the poem Chris Moeller made fun of which led to my nickname/pen name.  I also had 10 years worth of poems I'd written, 165 of my best poems, in their original, hand written form.

When I got ready to fly to North Carolina, I told my mom I needed to borrow about $150 to pay the back payments on my storage unit, to pay the pawn shops, and to have some friends ship the important stuff to me.  My mom said that would be fine.  So one day I took several buses and a train, and made my way to LAX airport, and I flew to North Carolina, a place I'd never lived.  My family was form Ohio, but my parents and my sister and brother-in-law wound up living in the Greensboro, North Carolina area.

 After decompressing for a couple of weeks, and kind of getting my bearings, I asked my mom to borrow the money to get my stuff shipped to me.  Through all the the crazy times being homeless, a taxi driver, and a homeless taxi driver, the thought of one day making a really cool freestyle documentary from all my personal footage is what kept me going.  When I asked my mom to borrow the $150 to get my stuff, she said, "Oh we don't have money for that."  She's kind of weird like that.  I couldn't find a job in NC, the economy was mid-collapse at that point.  So I lost every single thing I had, everything that had to do with BMX and freestyle, as well as all of my creative work, except for some of my early Sharpie drawings.  Everything from my BMX life, 20 years worth of riding and writing, and creating, and collecting.  It was all gone.  Poof.

Except for one thing.  I still had the Haro brake lever keychain, that Jon Peterson gave me, on my first freelance trip to Tulsa, in the spring of 1986.  It's in my pocket right now, as I sit in a library in Costa Mesa, California, writing this blog post, 33 years after that trip to Tulsa.  When I lost everything in 2008, I lost all hope of making the documentary from 18 years worth of BMX and skate footage.  About a month later, in December of 2008, living with my parents in North Carolina, and in a near suicidal depression, I started blogging, telling weird little stories about my life in the BMX freestyle world.  Weird little stories like the one you're reading right now.  And that's the story of my keychain.

Check out my new mash-up book/blog thing about the future:
Welcome to Dystopia: The Future is Now

I have another new blog, check it out:

Crazy California

I Was Wrong... the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 27,000

Here's Jim Rogers, in an interview from two days ago (7/10/2019), with a much less rosy picture on the world economy, than the day traders enthusiastic about the Dow surpassing 27,000 for the first time ever yesterday.  Jim gained fame with founding and managing the the Quantum Fund with George Soros in the 1970's.  In a decade where the S&P 500 index went up 47%, the Quantum Fund soared 4200%.  He's now living in Singapore, because he sees Asia as a dominant force in the future, and wanted his kids to be hard working and driven, and speak Mandarin.  He's officially retired, but is chairman of Rogers Holdings.

"We're in precarious times."

-Jim Rogers in the interview above

While most of this blog is stories from my days in the BMX freesytle world, futurist thinking, and where the U.S. is headed economically and socially, is a huge interest of mine.  Since I was a little kid, I've looked into the future, and tried to figure out where things are heading, and how to adapt and prepare for that future.  I'm still doing that. 

Since 2017, I have believed we're building up to one hell of a big recession, and economic downturn for a number of reasons, SOON.  Some of those are financial, like the astronomical amount of private, corporate, and government debt around the world, like Mr. Rogers speaks of above.  Other reasons are ultra long term social trends and technological disruption, also major forces in today's world.    Because of that, somewhere back in this blog, well over a year ago, I wrote:

"We'll see Dow 17,000 before we see Dow 27,000."  

It turns out, I was wrong.  Because yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index surpassed 27,000.  That's a nice big round number, and a new all time high, and it's gone over 300 points higher since.  It's a little rally, and it proved me wrong. 

Here's what I got right.  I said and wrote, months beforehand, that the stock markets would run out of steam after President Trump signed the much hyped tax cuts, which were a huge handout, to major corporations and the ultra-rich.  Hey, whenever the tax laws get changed, it will be in favor of the super rich, ask Robert Kiyosaki about that one.  He's written a lot on that subject.  Anyhow, as I predicted, Trump signed the tax bill at the very end of December 2017, and the Dow went up to 26,616 on January 2018.  That's less than 400 points from the mark it surpassed yesterday, 1 1/2 years later.  So while the business news is applauding this thriving economy, the stock market is really only up 700 points, less than 3%, in 17 months, and most of that has been in the last 3 or 4 days.  That's actually fucking pathetic.  Gold, for example, is up nearly 9% in the last six months alone.  

In that year and a half since the Dow hit 26,616, it dropped to 22,445 right before Christmas 2018.  The Dow was down 12% 7 months ago, and the Nasdaq was down even further.  So while they are creeping to new highs lately, those highs are just barely above the tops the market hit three or four other times in the last year and a half.  As I've mentioned over and over and over, our economy is being propped up by every trick The White House, the financial elite, The Federal Reserve and Wall Street can think of, and is basically riding on unicorn farts at this point.

For nearly 30 years now, I've been watching the stock market indexes as a sort of pulse of the U.S. and world economies.  But after 2008, we went down the rabbit hole, and things are being manipulated at absurd levels.  In addition to that, roughly 35% of our country, after watching and listening to decades of pure propaganda, refuse to believe proven facts are even facts.  So we're in an Alice in Wonderland world and economy at this point, where old relationships between one thing and another, like government debt and inflation, don't react like they would in a well run, functional economy. 

For this reason, I've decided it's pretty much a waste of time to try and perfectly time the coming economic collapse.  It's coming.  As Jim Rogers says in the interview above, several things are happening in places people aren't looking that remind him a lot of incidents in 2007, before the collapsing economy was obvious to everyone.  So it's coming.  Weeks?  Months?  A year, or a bit more?  Who knows?  But a collapse like no one alive has seen before, is coming fairly soon. 

To me, what's really important is trying to find ways to get "average" Americans making a decent living again.  Roughly 60% of this country is struggling paycheck to paycheck, and many of those are in abject poverty or real close to it.  Others  are making good wages, but suffocating in huge amounts of student loan and other debt. 

Personally, I've had an 800 pound gorilla (metaphorically speaking), standing on my neck for about 18 years now.  I'm homeless, yet I understand things many don't because of my lifetime of study along these lines.  As I work myself out of this homeless situation, I'm also looking at how the tens of millions of people who have either lost their jobs, or are losing their jobs to new technology now, will find to earn a living.  We got at least 10 to 15 million people on Social Security Disability, half of whom are lazy pieces of shit who've scammed that system so they never have to work again.  Your tax dollars pay for all those people's rent and food.  We don't need any more people in that pathetic category.

The tens of millions of jobs being lost to technology is an issue I've been thinking about for a while.  In the very second blog post on this blog, this post, two years ago, it's the issue I was really seeing as one of our biggest problems as a country.  It's become much worse since.  For example, 20,000 retail stores have closed in 2017-2019, or are scheduled to by the end of this year.  That's just in the retail industry.  It's happening in many other industries as well.  So I'm going to focus a lot more of my time on helping people understand what's going on, why all this is happening (that's my futurist/ultra long term thinking perspective), and how to find new ways of making a living in this fast-changing world. 

The stock market, real estate markets, and the rest will crash when they crash.  And that will wipe out a lot of people's wealth, retirements, jobs, and security.  But it will also provide opportunities like we've never seen before modern human history. 

Long story short (OK this wasn't too short), I was wrong about the Dow hitting 27,000, and it will rally for a bit.  But I know what's coming.  Smart investors like Jim Rogers, Robert Kiyosaki, Peter Schiff, and a few others know what's coming.  No one else seems to want to know.  Your loss. 
But I'm going to quit trying to time the downturn exactly, and I'll focus on doing things that will help bring some of us out the other side, when it does happen. 

Sharpie art reminder to simply enjoy the great days that come along

There's a lot of really crazy stuff happening in the world today.  Sometimes we need a reminder to just enjoy a bit of a great sunny day, and get out minds off the chaos for a little bit.  I wanted to draw something with a California vibe, since I'm back here and roaming Orange County these days.  This drawing is 11" X 14," and I plan to sell (and give away a few) 100 signed and numbered, quality, color copies of this.  The first one is shipping out today, a couple more tomorrow. You can get one for $20, shipped in the continental U.S., anywhere else, $15 plus shipping costs. Pay by Paypal, only option I have at the moment.  I'm trying to work my way out of homelessness, and get to being a writer/blogger/artist/social media guy, and stop being a "homeless artist."  Selling some of these will help me get back on my feet after a couple decades of dealing with some serious headwinds in life.


To order a copy (or a few), hit me up on Facebook, or email me at: stevenemig13@gmail.com  Thanks again for checking out my blog and artwork everyone.  #sharpiescribblestyle

The Story of My Keychain- Part 4: Eddie Fiola and I meet Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope without realizing it

 Blog post: The Story of my keychain: Part 4- Eddie Fiola and me meet some local kids

In the last post about the story of my keychain, I talked about hanging out with the Haro riders and the Hutch riders, at the Holiday Inn, the night before the contest.  That contest, again, was the AFA Freestyle Masters contest held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in April of 1986.  On the strength of my zine, that I'd been sending to the guys at Wizard Publications, FREESTYLIN' magazine editor Andy Jenkins had tapped me to write a freelance article about the contest for the magazine.  It was my first job in the "real" BMX freestyle industry.
 
I caught a ride to the arena, Saturday morning, with the Haro team, who I stayed with all weekend.  I wandered off by myself, as practice was going on.  I stood alone near the table of trophies that Saturday morning.  I was trying to figure out what I actually had to do, who I had to talk to, and how to do a good job covering the contest for FREESTYLIN'.  As I stood alone, Eddie Fiola walked up and started talking to me.  At the time, Eddie was the biggest name in the sport.  He was the original King of the Skateparks, the first big freestyle pro I ever heard of, and the best known name in our weird little sport.  Most people didn't really know BMX freestyle existed then.  But if people knew one name in the sport, that name was Eddie Fiola.

So I was freakin' out inside when Eddie just walked up and started chatting.  He was just talking about normal stuff, but I was thinking, "Holy Shit!  Eddie Fiola is talking to me!" It was a fanboy moment.  So I probably stammered like an idiot.  But I tried my best to act as cool as possible.  We'd been talking for a minute or two, when two young kids, maybe 14 or 15 years old, rode up to us.  One had a mop of curly brown hair, and the other a bit more normal of a haircut.  The kid with the curly hair totally interrupted us, and I kinda wanted to strangle him at the moment.  On the inside, I was shouting in my head, "Dudes!  I'm talking to Eddie-freakin'-Fiola, fuckin' go away!"  On the outside, I just kept quiet for a minute.

The kid with the curly hair asked, "Eddie, you ever seen somebody to an air like this?"  The kid took one hand, put it on the opposite side of the handle bars, then took his second hand off.  At the time, 540s, high one hand on footers, and Mike Doninguez' no footed can-can, were the craziest vert tricks.  No one did the air the kid was talking about.  Eddie smiled, "Nope, I've never seen that one before."  It seemed like a ridiculous variation then.  The two kids both got huge, ear to ear grins, and rode off stoked.  I was glad, and Eddie hung out and talked to me for a few more minutes, and then walked off, to go get ready for pro ramp practice.  My crazy weekend, of actually talking to and hanging out with the top pros, kept going.

Not long after that, Jon Peterson, the Haro assistant team manager that I met the day before, came up and took me around and introduced me to several of the pros, to Windy Osborn, the FREESTYLIN' photographer, and other industry people.  Later, during ramp practice, I got on top of the Haro quarterpipe, and shot three or four rolls of film on my Pentax ME Super, which I was just learning how to operate.  As luck would have it, I set the ASA setting wrong for the indoor lighting, and all my photos came out grainy.  That sucked, but I wish I had those photos now, even as grainy as they were.

Among other things, I saw this kid actually doing those switch handed airs that he told Eddie and me about.  All weekend we all called that kid "The Stormtrooper," because he wore a Bell Moto full face motorcycle helmet, a chest protector, elbow pads, and knee pads to ride vert.  In those days, most vert riders wore a T-shirt, Levi's, an open face helmet, and no pads to ride.  So the kid totally stuck out.  But none of us knew his name.  He was doing variations four or five feet out on the Haro quarterpipe, and straight airs a couple of feet higher.  The kid was definitely really good.  But Josh White was the new, standout rider at that contest.  He was the new kid most people were talking about.  Joe Johnson was turning heads as well.  The top vert pros of the time, were the early skatepark riders, Eddie Fiola, Mike Dominguez, and Brian Blyther.  It was obvious the transition from the skatepark contests to quarterpipe contests were producing a new wave of up-and coming vert maniacs, Todd Anderson, and Dennis McCoy, and a few others, were already well known, and new guys Josh White and Joe Johnson were rising up right behind them.  Vert riding was evolving, and 8 foot plus airs were becoming more and more common.

Here's the funny thing about this story.  Every now and then, through 1986-87, and into 1988, I'd talk to other riders and tell them about the time Eddie Fiola came up and started talking to me in Tulsa, when I was just some unknown guy who happened to be writing the magazine article for that contest.  It was just a cool little story to me, the first time a top pro walked up and talked to me.  Then one day, a couple of years later, I was telling someone the story, and it suddenly hit me what trick the curly headed kid had showed us.  I went, "Holy crap, that was the switch-handed air!  Those kids were Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope."  Then it became an even cooler little story.  The biggest name in freestyle at the time, Eddie Fiola, came up randomly, and just started talking to me.  Then two random kids interrupt us, and of all the kids in freestyle, they were then unknown Oklahoma kids, Mat and Swope Dog.  So that was was when I met Mat and Steve for the first time, without realizing it.

But the story keeps going.  Two weeks ago, late June of 2019, I finally made it down to H.B. Tuesdays, where Eddie Fiola and Martin Aparijo show up to ride and hang with other old school freestylers.  Everybody was cool, and they knew I was down and out right now, so Eddie invited me to pizza with them, and they hooked me up.  As we ate, and we all traded stories for a couple of hours.  It was then that this story popped in my head, and I told the story of how Eddie came up to me at Tulsa, to Eddie Fiola himself, and a few other old school riders.  Somehow, I happened to be talking to Eddie Fiola when the kid who would become the most influential vert rider... EVER... rode up to meet Eddie Fiola.  It was the first time Eddie met Mat and Swope as well.  And neither Eddie or I had any idea it happened.  It was two random kids, like the thousands of other random kids Eddie met at contests and shows over the years.  By some random bit of serendipity, I happened to be there and witness that moment.

Eddie didn't remember the incident, he's had so many interactions with people over so many years, that the moment didn't stand out above the others.  I remembered it, because it was the first time Eddie Fiola had come up to talk to me.  Somehow, 33 years later, with Mat Hoffman and Steve Swope now middle aged guys as well, I got to tell Eddie of the first time he met Mat Hoffman.

Like I've said many times, and one of the biggest things I've learned from all these BMX freestyle blog posts, is that it's the weird little moments, mostly, that we remember best when looking back at our early riding days.  Those weird little moments are the things I blog about.  Just another of the epic moments from the weekend that I became part of the BMX freestyle industry, the weekend that changed the entire course of my life.

It took a 7.1 quake to make me ask, What happened to the Richter Scale?

It's an overcast, June gloom (in July), Monday morning as I write this.  Last Thursday was the 4th of July, and I was sitting in this same McDonald's when I felt a jolt.  Consciously, I didn't think much of it.  If you had asked me, I would have said someone must had bumped into the back of the booth I was sitting in.  But then a woman sitting nearby said, "Was that an earthquake?"  We felt a mild aftershock a couple minutes later, and decided, "yes, that was an earthquake." 

That's usually how earthquakes go here in Southern California.  You feel something, you think someone is shaking the bed, table, chair, car, whatever you're in or on.  Then you look up, see no one, and say, "Oh, that was an earthquake."  Then you turn on the TV, or these days the phone or computer, and see a news video of a woman at Cal Tech telling you how big that earthquake was, and where the epicenter was.  You figure out, roughly, how many miles away you are.  After that, maybe 10 minutes later, videos start coming in that show lights swinging, windows rattling, and some store, somewhere near the epicenter, where a whole bunch of stuff fell off the shelves.  That's what nearly all the earthquakes I've experienced have been like. 

Personally, I've always found earthquakes pretty interesting, and kind of fun, but they scare the shit out of a lot of people.  I guess it's the surprise factor, and the fact that you can't really do much, but run to a doorway, run outside, or hide under something big, halfway through one.  My whole life, we hear the number of the earthquake, the magnitude, and we always thought that it was the Richter Scale number we were hearing.  But looking into the July 4th (2019) quake, I learned that earthquakes are now measured by something called the Moment Magnitude Scale, not the Richter Scale we've all heard of, and thought was still in use.

The Richter Scale was invented in 1935 by Charles Richter, as a way of measuring large earthquakes in Southern California.  By measuring the seismic waves on a certain type of seismograph, and knowing the distance these were detected from the earthquake epicenter, Richter could use an algorithm, and put a number on the quake that could be compared to other earthquakes in a fairly accurate way.  But the Richter Scale worked best with larger earthquakes, not ones below a 5 on the scale.  Each number designation was a 10 times bigger waves than the previous number.  So a Richter Scale 6 earthquake had waves 10 times bigger than a Richter Scale 5 earthquake.  But the Richter Scale needed to know the exact location of the seismograph from the quake epicenter, it didn't work well on smaller earthquakes, and the highest number on the scale was a magnitude 7. 

As with all technology, seismographs improved over time, and became better at recording earthquake data.  In 1978, the Moment Magnitude Scale was invented by Tom Hanks (not the actor), and Hiroo Kanamori.  Their scale used the actual rock break in the earth, the length and width of the break or slip, along with the strength of the rocks that broke, to develop a better, more accurate scale, the Moment Magnitude Scale (Mw).  This scale focused on the amount of energy released at the moment of the earthquake.  Like the Former Richter Scale, the Moment Magnitude Scale has waves about 10 times bigger for each whole number of the scale.  But the Mw scale really measures the energy released, which is about 32 times more energy for each whole number of the scale.  So a Mw magnitude 6 earthquakes has seismic waves 10 times bigger than a magnitude 5, but releases 32 times more energy in that moment, than a magnitude 5.

On the evening of July 5th, I was sitting at another McDonald's, mostly because I'm currently homeless, and they have $1 Diet Cokes and wifi.  With the 6.4 quake happening the day before, earthquakes were on all of our minds.  So when I felt a weird bouncing feeling, I looked up, wondering if it was an after shock.  Another guy at McD's looked up as well, and we both asked, "Was that an earthquake?  We decided it was.  The rolling feeling, like being in a small boat as waves roll under it, faded slowly, then it came back, MUCH stronger, and it just kept going and going.  The hanging lights in that McDonald's were swinging wildly, the big windows next to me rattled, and someone pointed outside.  The big poles hanging over the nearby intersection, which held the traffic light, were visibly bouncing about a foot up and down.  The quake kept going for what felt like far more than a minute.  I actually started to get motion sickness before it ended.

The guy who noticed the quake first got on his phone, and got the magnitude before I could on my laptop, 7.1, quite a bit bigger that the day before.  It definitely lasted a lot longer, maybe 2 to 3 minutes or more of shaking.  I know from experience, 15 to 30 seconds is a long earthquake.  This one went on much longer than that. 

As I looked it up online, I found this Cal Tech earthquake map, Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada- Index Map (link below), which I've been geeking out on since.  As I sat in that McDonald's, I kept checking the map, to see that we had like 18 earthquakes over 4.0 magnitude (Mw), in an hour.  By clicking on the big earthquake, and then updating, I saw that we didn't just have a 7.1 earthquake.  From 8:16 pm Friday evening (July 5th, 2019) to 8:25 pm, we had multiple earthquakes with magnitudes of 5.0, 7.1, 4.6, 5.0, 4.0, 4.3, and another 5.0.  So we must have felt the initial 5.0, looked up, started talking, and then the 7.1 hit and the others kept us rolling and bouncing, about 150 miles from the epicenter in Ridgecrest CA, for 2 or 3 minutes.

By clicking on one of the squares on that map, representing a single one of the many earthquakes, it brings up the most recent quake over 3.0, and then a whole list of all the quakes around it, a long list.  There have been 5,777 measurable earthquakes in that Ridgecrest area (and all of California/Nevada), starting a little while before the July 4th 6.4.  Even now, 2 1/2 days after the 7.1, there was a 3.2 quake out there an hour and a half ago, and 20 or more smaller ones after that.  The rocks, heck, the whole mountains, are moving.  A lot. 

So that's what I've learned from our pair of big SoCal earthquakes these last few days.  Here are some links on the Richter Scale, the Moment Magnitude Scale, and Cal Tech, along with links to the major earthquakes I've been through in my life. 

The Richter Scale- wikipedia
The Moment Magnitude Scale explained (or watch the more techie oriented video above)
Cal Tech's Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada- Index Map

1983 6.9 Borah Peak earthquake- Idaho-  120 miles from epicenter

1987 5.9 Whittier Narrows Earthquake- L.A. area- 10 miles from epicenter 
1989 6.9 Loma Prieta Earthquake- San Francisco Bay Area - I wasn't there, but my sister Cheri was 10 miles from the epicenter, far closer than the freeway bridges that collapsed in Oakland.
1994 6.7 Northridge Earthquake- North of L.A. - 60 miles form epicenter
2011 5.8 Virginia Earthquake - Northwest of Richmond, VA -  175 miles from epicenter, I didn't feel this one, but many people nearby did, entire office buildings were evacuated in downtown Winston-Salem.  This earthquake was felt by more people in North America than any other modern earthquake, and it's the one that damaged the Washington Monument. 
2019 6.4  July 4th Ridgecrest Earthquake, 120 miles NE of L.A.- 150 miles from epicenter
2019 7.1 Ridgecrest Earthquakes- 120 miles NE of L.A.-  150 miles from epicenter, this cluster of earthquakes included 5,777 earquakes (so far), including quakes with magnitudes of: 5.4, 5.0, 5.0, 5.4, 5.5, and 5.4, as well as dozens of quakes in the 3.0 to 4.9 range.

The Story of My Keychain: part 3

Blog post: The story of my keychain: part 3- Fart lighting and Oklahoma honeymoons

At the end of the last post about the 1986 Tulsa AFA Masters contest, I was riding from the airport to the hotel in the back of the Haro freestyle team van.  That happened because I met some East Coast kid named Joe Johnson in the airport.  Yeah, Joe turned out to be one hell of a rider, but I didn't know that in the van.  He was some quiet kid I met in the airport, who happened to be a new Haro rider.  Jon Peterson, the Haro assistant team manager started talking to me in the van, and I told him FREESTYLIN' magazine editor Andy Jenkins had tapped me to cover the contest for the magazine.

At that point, I had been into BMX riding for nearly 4 years, and serious about the emerging sport of BMX freestyle for two years.  That whole time, most of it spent in Boise, Idaho, I had been dreaming of becoming a big time pro rider, going on tour, having fun, and, mostly, meeting girls.  I did local shows in Boise with Jay Bickel for about a year.  Then my family moved to San Jose, and I started my first zine, and became a part of the NorCal/Golden Gate Park scene.  I had met a couple of girls because of my riding.  But the whole, "go on tour and get crazy" thing that a lot of teen and 20-something guys had as a goal, was still a pipe dream.

Then, somehow, I was suddenly riding in the back of the smelly Haro tour van with crazy driver and vert pro, Ron Wilkerson, at the wheel.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I felt like I had won some sort of BMX freestyle lottery.  We got to the hotel, I followed the guys in, and dropped my stuff in one of the Haro rooms.  It was a Holiday Inn Holidome hotel, a big "U" shape, with the middle of the "U" under roof, and a two story wall of windows in the open end of the "U".  Inside that big open area was a large swimming pool, a few miniature golf holes, and two levels of open space by the big windows, with couches and pool table.  Everywhere there were the riders I'd seen in magazines for the past four years:  Ron Wilkerson, Woody Itson, Brian Blyther, Mike Dominguez, Tony Murray, and several others.  Jon Peterson introduced me to some of the guys, and gave me some ideas on covering the contest.

He went off to take care of some things, and I followed someone into another rider's room.  Right as I walked in, a factory rider walked over to a chair in the corner, sat down, lifted a leg, and ripped a huge fart.  "I'm marking my territory," he said, "that's my chair, nobody steal it."  Then he walked out to get a Coke from the machine or something.  After that, I witnessed my first fart lighting exhibition, something I'd never tried or seen performed before.  I'm not even sure I knew lighting farts was even possible then.  But two or three riders laid down on the bed and someone else, another rider, I can't remember who, but an experienced fart lighter, took the Bic lighter and the dangerous duty of making ass flames happen.  Another guy explained in detail about the time he had a friend light his fart while naked, and the serious burns that ensued.  Lesson learned, never light farts in the nude.  I didn't want to ask why he was hanging out with another dude nude.  I was overwhelmed.  Suddenly I was hanging out with a bunch of the craziest guys I'd ever seen, in a hotel, far from home, with no supervision.  It was like I stepped into my freestyle dreams, minus the hot and horny women.

I followed another guy out of that room, and we wound up going into Brian Blyther and Mike Dominguez' room.  Mike and Brian both had rooms paid for by their sponsors, but decided to get their own room to hang in, since they were good friends.  The hotel was only about half full, so there were plenty of empty rooms.  They didn't pay for the room, someone distracted the guy at the front desk while one of them, Mike I think, reached over the counter and grabbed a random room key. Hotels had actual brass keys then, usually hung on numbered pegs behind the front counter.  But I didn't know that had "borrowed" and unused room at the time.  

 

I think there were three of us chillin' in their room, talking to Mike Dominguez, as he put his bike together.  That alone was pretty amazing to me, I was hanging with Mike-freakin' Dominguez!  I kept thinking, "that mellow dude does ten foot airs."  As if that wasn't crazy enough, Brian walked out of the shower with a towel around him, and looked for some clothes in his suitcase.  Suddenly we heard the door latch click, and Mike and Brian shouted, "Grab everything and get out!"

The rooms at Holiday Inn holidomes had one main door that came from the hallway, and another door, on the opposite side of the room, that opened into the big holidome area. I didn't know what was going on, but I grabbed a suitcase and dragged a bike box out the door facing the holidome.  We all ran down the narrow walkway, Byther still in his towel, and someone shut the door to the room.  We quickly dragged all the stuff into some random rider's room to hide.  I wasn't sure what we were hiding from.  It was only then that I learned they had "borrowed" the room key.  There was a quick informal meeting, and somehow it was decided that, since I was the most normal looking guy, with no bike company T-shirt or anything, I should be the one to go down to the front desk, and see if the guy who actually rented that room saw any of us, and if someone was going to get kicked out of the hotel.

Nervous as hell, but not wanting to let down vert pros Dominguez and Blyther, I walked down to the front desk, and waited behind a young couple.  My story was that I just needed another pillow for my room.  As I stood there waiting, I heard the story of this young couple, on their honeymoon, who had just driven from their wedding reception.  The guy yelling at the front desk guy had walked up to the room they rented, and the door had the chain on, and he heard people in the room, it sounded like a few guys.  He left his brand new bride in the hallway, and walked all the way around to the Holidome entrance for the room.  The couple's hotel room was a mess, someone had taken a shower, the bed sheets were pulled open, there were towels on the floor, and it smelled like someone had been smoking weed.

I stood there trying to keep a straight face, as the young groom, who was starting his married life by taking his new bride to a Holiday Inn (OK, it was Oklahoma) for their wedding night romp, found the room they rented was a mess.  The guy yelled at the poor front desk clerk, who had absolutely no idea what was going on.  The clerk gave them a discount or something, and gave them a new room key, apologizing the whole time.  The young couple calmed down, and finally went off to their new room. 

I did everything I could to keep from laughing as I asked the hotel clerk for an extra pillow, and showed him my room key (for the Haro room).  I then went back to the room where Brian and Mike were camped out, and reported the whole story, which had everyone laughing like crazy.  What were the odds that the room Mike and Brian "borrowed" would be given to a couple on their honeymoon?  I guess that's Murphy's Law, Oklahoma style.

By that time, an Oklahoma thunderstorm was rolling in, and we got a big light show through the wall of windows in the holidome.  Haro rider Rick Moliterno said he needed to run to the store, to get some trash bags and duct tape, because the cap on his pick-up leaked.  He asked if anyone wanted to go help him, and me and Billy Hop, the Haro team manager, rode along.  We stopped at the first mini mart he saw, as the thunderstorm pelted the truck with rain.  Under the roof over the gas pumps, Billy and me helped Rick duct tape trash bags over the gap between his pick-up cab and the cap on the bed of his truck, to waterproof it as much as possible.  I rode back to the hotel with them, and spent much of the night hanging with the riders and industry guys, who played pool and goofed around, as the storm raged outside.

Woody Itson was flat out ruling the pool table, and played for over an, hour without losing.  He beat nearly everyone there, proving skills on the table comparable to his flatland prowess.  Finally my turn came.  I was "the new guy" by that point, that no one really knew.  Being incredibly shy by nature, and totally out of my element, I had been sitting there, pretty quietly, listening to everyone else talk and joke around.  While I'm in no way a pool playing ace, I did play a lot of pool in high school with my friends, ranging from regular 8 ball to finese bumper pool, to a three man game we called Cutthroat.  So I gave Woody a pretty good game.  I had one ball left to hit in, and Woody was lining up on the 8 ball.  I was about to be another victim to Woody's pool skills.  But Woody Itson scratched on the 8 ball.  It was a technicality, but I won, and took Woody off the pool table, and a whole bunch of the guys hooted and hollered as Woody sat down, mostly the guys he beat in the previous 10 games or so.

I managed to win one or two games, and then Woody came back for a rematch, beat me soundly, and took over the pool table again.  I wound up back in the a Haro room, where I took my pillow and a blanket, and fell asleep on the floor, amazed by the events of my first day in the BMX freestyle industry. I didn't dream that night, because the whole afternoon and evening already seemed like a dream to me.   .