The New Boredom

There will be a running theme of Less Is More here on The New Boredom for a little bit. Could be a week, could be three days, I dont know.

Today’s topic is on vacation, particularly what you should do with one. You should do less on your vacation. The crew just took a trip down to Mexico for some much appreciated rest and relaxation on the beach. Each day was spent following no particular plan. It’s not a vacation if you are stuck being governed by an itinerary. You can’t ask mapquest for directions to “fun” so why bother.

One day Steve Wentz pitches the idea right when we get to the beach that we should all dig a hole down to sea level, carve chairs in the hole and sit there with our feet in the water and relax. I thought it sounded like a great idea but pretty much every one else scoffed at the concept and went straight for the water. When was the last time I just dug a hole for no good reason? I used to do that all the time when I was a little kid but the last time must be 12 or 14 years ago.

So we started digging, clawing at the sand at our arbitrarily selected spot. We worked up a quick sweat and the scale of our endeavor hit home when Steve’s narrow tunneling expedition to find water was fruitless after a meter’s depth. Did I mention that we gave ourselves the condition of digging this hole completely by hand? No tools would be used in this dig. We would end this day with a much better appreciation for The Great Escape, Escape From Alcatraz, and The Shawshank Redemption or any other dig yourself out of a hole story.

Our operation shifted to taking turns in the pit for the next couple hours until Steve finally hit water. The process seemed to go much quicker at that point but it wasnt until late in the aftenoon that the walls of the hole could be carved out enough to fit the both of us in the hole to excavate simultaneously. The layers of sediment peeled away revealing what looked to be the ashy remains of past fires, crushed and rather abrasive shells, and a shiny gold flaked layer that everyone pointed out should appeal to Steve.

The underside of fingernails packed with grit and arms becoming noodley with fatigue, we were nearing photo-op time when Matt Thompson’s poorly placed step along a fault line at the edge of the pit caved in half the hole on us. A series of set backs would result in the next futile hour being spent digging out cave in after cave in until we finally had something worth shooting. The sun had set and finally in the twilight we took a shitty self-timer photo of our goal, finally achieved thanks to a piled up tee-shirt used as a tripod- all of our friends willing to take the shot long since gone home for showers and dinner.

The Hole.

The Hole.

The Hole.

We carved a little flat screen tv into the opposite wall of the hole but it didnt show up too well in the photos. It featured the hit show Man With Dog from the early days of stick figure cinema. Another cave in would shallow out our water level while shooting the photos and it was at this point we decided the Hole was done.

Surely the thing to do at this point would be to burry one of us standing up in the hole just for scale. Steve had the honors.

The tortured head of a thirsty Steve.

And so on that day, probably a Friday, of our vacation, the one thing we did was dig a hole. We did less with that day than any other day of the trip but somehow, both in my mind and my aching, tired body, we did so much more.

I just spent the last 5 days in Mexico with a good group of friends- or “amigos” as they say- and it was amazing. But no matter where I go, I am always excited to come home to Colorado. Landing in the plane with a huge epic golden sunset over the mountains was a welcome treat.
Another welcome treat was the Nike 6.0 video being released while I was away and watching the whole thing online with many rewinds due to the sheer level of holy crapitude in the video.

Watch it here is you havent already seen it 50 times:

http://www.nike.com/nke6/v4/writingonthewall/

There’s an article here on why you should spend money on cameras that I dont completely agree with:

http://content.ridemonkey.com/blogs/blog/20081125/how_to_take_better_mtb_photos___part_1_-121.html

and then there’s good old fashioned american fast food. oh how i love destroying myself.

here’s some stuff you should know about mexico:

-digging a huge hole in the beach can and will take you ALL day.

-you cant get away from that horrible papyrus font.

-clocks do not exist, consequently, time donesnt seem to exist.

-all food is tasty, especially when dragged out ofthe sea earlier that day.

-the ocean is a fickle beast.

-everyone is pretty nice and hustles every day.

-you should consider a trip for yourself: http://www.sayulitalife.com/

Where the dirty gets clean

The other day I was in the laundry room of my apartment building with my buddy Wentz and we were talking about some rather mundane everyday life type stuff while folding laundry  and it dawned on me how much stuff really only happens in the movies. Take for example the situation we were in at the time, folding laundry, something everyone does. I was saying that in a movie there would be some neighbors scandalous underwear some how mixed in with the jeans and tees of my stuff. How did those get there? Must have been left by some hot neighbor and now it’s my duty as a man to go find that neighbor through some clever gender roll reversal Cinderella crap and then probably get laid out of the deal. (I think this seriously is the premise for some turd of a movie)

Nope. just my regular tee shirts and jeans.

And even if some one else’s undies did some how get mixed in with my stuff it would likely end up being some plain jane white cotton granny panites.

But then this week when I went into the basement to do some much needed laundry of my own when- bam. There on the ground in the middle of the room was a pink thong. Right about the spot where the mundanities of my life were discussed just days earlier. Reality set in quick though as I realized how completely not hot some stranger’s dirty ass floss really was. There would be no gender-roll-reversed Cinderella story to track down the owner of these forgotten undies. There would be no cheese ball montage of the pending investigation. There would only be me, grossed out and pondering the coincidence of my conversation and the subsequent discovery. But not so grossed out that I couldn’t grab some pictures of the zany stuff and post it here for you to see (and then conclude that I am a total weirdo).

I suspect the undies may belong to the neighbor who has the huge reminder written on their wall that I posted a while back.

Ew.

So there you have it. Another example in the endless pile of examples that movies are full of shit and that real life can get pretty real sometimes. I dont know if even I could make up some of the crap that happens to my friends and me.

It’s a regular Wentz-o-thon here at The New Boredom this week.

And here’s Steve’s section from Polyester Fashion, the critically slammed bike video that no one knew existed until it was posted here on the interwbes for free.

I spent most of that summer traveling with Steve and Matt and have lots of zany memories from the whole thing but most of it has blurred together into a big streak of “dang, that was fun!” and other such sentiments. What Steve talks about in his interview bit about his friends going off to work in an office job and hating it is exatly what I didnt live that summer. Instead of going to get an internship being a tape bitch of coffee go-getter for some production house in the area I decided to make and try to sell my own mountain bike video. I learned more from the project than I had in all my film classes and came away with more real world know-how than most of the classmates who got shitty internships. Unfortunately it didnt immediately come with a post-graduation job. But who needs jobs? Wasn’t that the point in doing all this- to avoid getting one of those for as long as possible.

It was super tricky to come up with a song for Steve’s part. Two things Steve cares little for are movies and music which is unfortunate becaus eall of the rest of us in the circle of friends are super into both. So finding something that I could tolerate in music from Steve was hard considering he listens to top 40 radio in So-Cal if his radio is ever even on- he usually basks in hours of silence in his van. I finally came down to a few options. I dont remember what they were but I know Madonna was one of them, I think material girl. Steve couldnt handle that and we settled both very agreeably on Dancin’ With Myself.

Some of Steves stuff was shot super early one morning before the Keystone dh race in 2006 at another near-by mountain. We hiked up the mountain at about 6 am and were done shooting by 8:30. I almost broke my ankle trying to stand on his chainstays going down the fireroad. The other stuff was so-cal footage shot over Thanksgiving break or somehwere abouts there. We also went to Hidden Valley when it was still around and Carter Holland yelled at Matt and Steve to get smoother tires befor they come back so they wouldnt fuck up the jumps so much. I remember laughing about that because I swear I couldnt tell if he was serious.

And the video part:

Everyone else is doing top 5’s so The New Boredom might as well do it too…

This is Steve Wentz.

Steve Wentz lika-da-oj.

My first memory of Steve was riding street with him on CU’s campus in probably 2004. He was riding some nasty stuff on his Turner 5-spot or something and then we all went to go eat at Cici’s Pizza which is some chain that used to have this awesome $5 all you can eat special for students. I sat down to eat and Steve passed me the peppers and cheese shakers. I shook the cheese out and the lid popped off and dumped the whole thing of cheese on my pizza. I was kinda pissed but mostly just in awe that some bastard sabbotaged me like that. Then I noticed Steve laughing like a school girl and he cracked and confessed that he rigged it. So two hours after meeting the guy he was pranking my pizza and covering it with a half pound of pamersian cheese. Extend that for years and that’s been Steve and my friendship. It’s been fun. -Kevin

Here are Steve’s Top 5’s:

Places:
1- Loch Ness- Jumping into Loch Ness after Fort William practice session was awesome. Unfortunately it was super cold, and I did not see Nessie.
2- Brazil- Having the DH finish a few hundred feet from the beach was great. Perfect views, warm water and a fun course, beautiful waitresses too.
3- SolVista- I feel like everything I’ve made well, poorly, done well, poorly or anything else has helped to make this place work. I feel it’s a perfect fit for me, and I’m stoked to be on top of the mountain, look out and think “I’ve helped make this happen.”
4- Top of the World, Laguna Beach- The view from the top of Telonics is perfect.
5- Minersville- The best jumps I have ever been too, awesome area and rad locals. I would ruin the family responsible for suing and tearing down the jumps there if I could without going to jail.

Close Calls:
1- Mammoth 2004- Almost died, really.
2- Vermont 2003- Almost killed a guy, but blew off track at 40 mph and crashed to avoid a spectator that had his back turned.
3- Ecuador 2007- Lost in the fog in Quito. It was past midnight and I was in an area where people said tourists get stabbed all the time. I was scared, but finally found my hostel.
4- Breckenridge- Overcleared a jump, landed 55 feet past the lip on flat ground from many feet up, no injury.
5- Tonopah, Nevada- I drove into a huge cow over a blind rise at 65 mph. Killed the car, killed the cow.

Movies:
1- Braveheart- It’s got just about everything.
2- The Princess Bride- “Inconceivable!”
3- Ice Age- Whatever critter is chasing the acorn is hilarious.
4- Headliners 2 Transcontinental- The best DH racing film yet, circa 1999.
5- Cannibal the Musical- “Shpadoinkle!”

Tools:
1- Knipex parallel push pliers- If you’ve ever used this specific tool, you know.
2- Metal zip ties- You can fix stuff from exhaust pipes to cables to other tools with these.
3- Awl- Invaluable if you end up cutting cable housing, need to push bearings around or need to mark on a seatpost, steerer tube, bar or anything else that needs cutting.
4- Park Crown Race Extractor- It’s a tool that is so over the top it’s awesome. It weighs more, costs more, takes up more space and can be slower than a hammer and screwdriver, but is oh so much better.
5- Caterpillar 305C- It’s wonderful. With the right know how, this machine can wreck just about anything and build something better in it’s place.

Wastes of Money:
1- Women- Sometimes.
2- Useless Stop Signs- Waste of money putting them in and gas money.
3- Clothes that aren’t worn often
4- Cell Phones- It costs entirely too much to have a device that allows people to flake out on you and not feel guilty by saying “I left you a message…”
5- Bar Drinks- It’s like paying 400% of retail. Stupid.

Things I forget:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Things to bring to a nasty street fight:
1- Brick- Do you know how much it would hurt to get hit in the face with a brick? I don’t either, and nobody really wants to find out.
2- Axe- I’ve gotten good at throwing them in the last two years being surrounded by bark beetle deadfall.
3- Potato Gun- Time out… give me time to load…
4- Trebuchet- Just because you could hurl a horse at someone.
5- Diseases- I don’t want any, and I’m sure others don’t either.

Things to hate:
1- People thinking they are entitled- It annoys me when some people think they deserve the world just by being. I’ve learned more and more that if you want something, you have to go out and work for it, and nothing will be laid at your feet.
2- General incompetence- This is different from ignorance, when somebody just doesn’t know or has never learned. That happens to everybody at some point. What I do despise is when things are done wrong, especially a second time or because someone is lazy.
3- Crappy orange juice- Orange juice from concentrate is one of the biggest let-downs I have ever encountered. Why would somebody take juice, take out the water, and then put it back in? It probably saves money on some step due to shipping weight or something like that, but it tastes horrible and has a texture of liquified paste.
4- Bad diners- Especially when I make one and it just doesn’t turn out right.
5- Not meeting my own expectations- Bad dinners could fall under this category, but whether it’s riding, work stuff or life in general, I don’t want to come up short.

Achievements in 2008:
1- SolVista- Being able to make people stoked and happy there was one of the best feelings ever.
2- My Van- I can carry all my possessions with it. 5 bikes, one motorcycle, all tools, clothes, golf clubs, and everything else with room to spare. And it finally runs like a champ.
3- 360’s- I was able to do both regular and opposite 360’s, over doubles, no foam, no lake, no pads, it was a huge achievement for me, and I’m excited about refinement.
4- Stayin’ alive- As of this interview.
5- Not losing many tools at SolVista.

Goals:
1- Countries- I want to see the world, see other people’s ways of life and learn from it. I have been to at least one new country since I’ve been 18, and I want to keep that up as long as I live. It’s going to be hard (or dangerous) once I start to get older, but I figure that if I can really accomplish this, by the time I’m 60 I’ll have seen a lot of different things and have some stories to tell the grandkids.
2- Not die from goal number one.
3- Health- I want to remain healthy enough to do what I want.
4- No regrets- I don’t have any yet.
5- Do what I want for work on my own terms- It’s going well so far.