L ongboard Tour 2010
Previous tour '08 - '09
Skateboard Travel, Transportation, and Touring
The board is a springboard for all that happens along the way.
to Surface Motion Skate Tour
Tour Inventory
Backpacks
Clothes
Gear
Boards
Phone/PDA
Mobile blogging
Sidewalk Tour 2010
Southwest & Plains
February 2010
Feb 17
Trying to Leave: Santa Crz CA
Feb 18
Poor Sdwks, Nc Views: Phnx AZ
Feb 19
Hullucntry Entry: Amrllo TX
Feb 19 10 AM
Alongside Textures: AZ, NM
Feb 20
Sidwalk Pics on 66: Tulsa OK
Feb 20 1 PM
Red Barrel Downtn: Tulsa OK
Feb 21
Rainy Sidewalk Day: Tulsa OK
South
February 22-25 2010
Feb 22
Skipping to Memphis: Memphs TN
Feb 23
Waiting for Morning: Memphs TN
Feb 23 2 PM
Vance St Revisited: Memphs TN
Feb 24
Finding the Funeral Hm: Memphs TN
Feb 24
Encounters on Beale: Memphs TN
Feb 25
Leaving Memphis: Memphs TN
Feb 25 4 PM
Familiar Aves in Nashville: Nshvill TN
Feb 26
Germantn, Farmers Mkt: Nshvill TN
Feb 26
Decoding at Rippy's: Nshvill TN
Feb 27
Last Sidewalk Mileage: Nshvill TN
Feb 27
Through Otherville: Xville TN
Feb 28
Looking like the east: Roanoke VA
NY to Detroit
March 12-16 2010
Mar 12
Leaving NY: New York NY
Mar 13 6:30 AM
Akron Revisited: Akron OH
Mar 13 9:30 AM
Odd Shapes nr Toledo: Sandusky OH
Mar 14
Sets and Other Hats: Detroit MI
Mar 15
Woodward Ave tour: Detroit MI
Detroit to West
March 17-20 2010
Mar 17
Leaving Detroit: Detrt MI
Mar 18 6 AM
Skate Revisit St. Louis: St L MO
Mar 18 1 PM
Brief Revisit Kansas City: KC MO
Mar 18 4 PM
Kansas Still: Salina KS
Mar 19 12 AM
Unreachable Salt Lake: Denver CO
Mar 19 8 AM
Force Majeure: Denver CO
Mar 19 2 PM
Red Dirt Under White: Pueblo CO
Mar 20 8 AM
Calif Via South Rte: Indio CA
Mar 20 9:30 AM
Homeward Hassle: San Bernadino CA
Mar 20 3:30 PM
New Color Scheme: Coalinga CA
Sidewalk Tour 2009
Northwest: June 2009
June 14
Away from Curb: San Carlos CA
June 15
Sore Ride: Mission, SF CA
June 17
Travelin' Feelin: Scrmnto CA
June 18
Portland Exurb: Wst Linn OR
June 19
Assistants: Corvalis OR
June 21 1 PM
Blankenship: Wst Linn OR
June 21 3 PM
Old Village: Wst Linn OR
June 23 1 PM
Vineyard Hill: Wst Linn OR
June 23 2 PM
Vine Row Ext: Wst Linn OR
June 25 9 PM
Street Fair Daring: Ptlnd OR
June 25 1 PM
Oregon Stick: Wst Linn OR
June 26 2 PM
Skate Canvas: Ptlnd OR
June 26
Green Room: Ptlnd OR
June 28
Mtns in Mirror: Ptlnd OR
South: Mar-Apr 2009
March 26
Bus Sta Hill: Akron OH
March 27
Bushwhack II: Nashvll TN
March 28
Tornado Misses: Nashvll TN
March 29
Seeking Music: Nashvll TN
March 30
Bridge to Music: Nashvll TN
March 31
Vibrated Dn Beale: Memphs TN
April 1 11 AM
Sightfeeting: Memphs TN
April 1 2 PM
Vance St Sights: Memphs TN
April 1 9 PM
Vance St Bank: Memphs TN
April 2
Stax Pilgrimage: Mmphs TN
April 4
One More Chance: Nashvll TN
April 5
Weimaraners: Pducah KY
April 6 4 PM
Leaving Kentucky: Pduch KY
April 6 9 PM
Econohound Lodge: Pduch KY
April 7 7 AM
Early Roll: St. L MO
April 7 1 PM
Piano Roll Seance: St. L MO
April 8
Hound Hotel Nt 2: KC MO
April 8 6 PM
Bushwhack Finale: KC MO
April 9
Not Without Regret: KC MO
April 10
Over the Rockies: SLC UT
April 10 6 PM
Layover: Oakland CA
East: March 2009
March 12 5 PM
Plan A: Verrazano Bridge
March 12 8 PM
Plan B: Trenton, NJ
March 14
Uneasy Exurb: Wallghm, PA
March 16
Station Hill: Wallghm, PA
March 16 1 PM
Boardwalk Wind: Atl City, NJ
March 18
Wind Shift: Atl City, NJ
March 20
Wide Streets: Atl City, NJ
March 20
Boardwalk Sleet: Atl City, NJ
March 20
Inky Lake: Atl City, NJ
March 22
Drex Hill: Phila, PA
March 23
Penn Hills: Western PA
March 23 11 PM
Bushwhack: Pittsbg PA
March 24
Warhol Skate: Pittsbg PA
March 25
Dinosaur in Mist: Pittsbg PA
Oct 2008-Mar 2009
Oct 24
Finding the Rt: Queens-LIC, NY
Oct 27
First load bearing trip: LIC, NY
Nov 4
Election Day: LIC, Manh NY
Nov 28
Black Friday: LIC, Manh NY
Dec 2
Memento Crypt: LIC, NY
Dec 6
Tall Loads: LIC, NY
Dec 17
The Rainboard: LIC, NY
Dec 22
The Ice Sheet: LIC, NY
Jan 12
The Vacationer: LIC, NY
Feb 2
Poles & Bric a Brac: LIC, NY
Feb 9
Butcher Block: LIC, Manh NY
Feb 13
Wind Alert: LIC, Manh NY
Feb 18
Sleet Skate Shoot: Manh NY
Feb 19
Sleet Footage Hack: Manh NY
Feb 23
Familiar Load: LIC, Manh, NY
Feb 24
Crowd at Bay: LIC, Manh, NY
March 3
The Ice Sheet Returns: LIC, NY
March 6
One Man Band: LIC, Manh, NY
March 11
Villa Straylight: LIC, NY
Truck and Neon on Broadway, Nashvile, TN. 2010 Tour
Skateboard Sidewalk Tour
Winter 2010: Travel with new gear and motives
February 17 - 21, 2010. Southwestern and Southern Plains US.
February 20 - 22, 2010. Tulsa, Oklahoma.
February 22 - 24, 2010. Memphis, Tennessee.
February 25 - 28, 2010. Nashville, Tennessee.
March 12 - 17, 2010. West to Detroit.
March 17 - 20, 2010. Westward. The long trip home made longer.
The 2009 tour was pretty spontaneous. It was planned in terms of gear and training but not in terms of artistic and personal objectives. I was discovering what it was all about along the way over the course of six months. After more time reflecting in Santa Cruz I knew what I was after on a tour. I was looking for sidewalks and terrain I could skate, but I wanted to go slower and more carefully document what I was seeing alongside those streets and roads. I wanted to share what I feel underfoot and take in visually while riding. I wanted to depict the peculiar challenges and unusual micro destinations.
With destinations in mind that would support some of my work in music as well as photography, I started a new tour route. I passed through Arizona and New Mexico, with the first extended stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I then travelled eastward, to Memphis, Tennessee, a city I had visited exactly a year ago. As opposed to the spontaneity of the first visit, I had the clearly planned sidewalk tour goal of revisiting the same sidewalks and seeing how they'd changed, and getting better photos.
Next stop was Nashville, Tennessee. I planned this time to include along with new sidewalk photography, some ventures into the interior of music joints that had drawn me to the city in the first place.
In Pennsylvania and Ohio there was more revisitation as I hit some stations and cities I'd visited in 2009. Detroit offered several examples of the automotive landscape and oddball Americana that draw me on these quests.
June 15 - 26, 2009. Northwestern US. After a stay in Santa Cruz Calif, I went on the road again with my board. States visited include California and western Oregon. Cities included San Carlos, San Francisco, West Linn, Corvalis and Portland. Various stops in northern California on the bus route.
March 26 - April 10, 2009. Southern US. From Pittsburgh I traveled south on the bus. A stopoff in Ohio, the gateway to the south. States visited include Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. Cities visited include Nashville, Memphis, Paducah, St. Louis, and Kansas City. Trip continues west across the Rockies and Sierras, ending up in Oakland, Calif.
March 12 - 25, 2009. Eastern US. After months of preparing and training, I finally left New York. States visited include New Jersey and eastern and western Pennsylvania. Cities included Trenton, Philadephia, Wallingham, Atlantic City, and Pittsburgh.
October 24, 2008 - March 11, 2009. Training period. Moving furniture and belongings to storage via skateboard as dolly. Practicing skating with heavy loads in backpack. Long distance skateboarding from Queens across the Queensborough Bridge to Manhattan's west side. Rolling heavy and odd shaped loads in the cold, sometimes over ice covered sidewalks on the overpass.
Tour inventory page. Detailed list of skate equipment, tech gear, and clothes packed on tour.
This longboard skate project involves using a longboard as a means of local or travel transportation, as a substitute for walking, riding a bike, or driving. I started the project by skating a relatively long distance across the Queensboro Bridge and across Manhattan, and used the board to bear loads while moving belongings out to a storage unit in Queens. That preparation gave me the endurance and knowhow to begin to use the longboard in a series of travels and tours across the U.S.
This is a project journal based on skateboarding, but that is just its central theme and ground floor, just as the skateboard is the vehicle that transports me to skate spots and other destinations that have no skateable features. On these pages, organized in reverse chronological order like a blog, you will read a lot about my routine skate travels between Manhattan and Queens and my more complex journey across the U.S. You may certainly gain knowledge here about longboarding, transportation based skateboarding, longboard tricks and tips, and surf related skateboarding. But my other interests have encroached on and sometimes taken over this skateboard site. You will read about my efforts to gain mastery of or at least cope with the subjects of; storage of belongings, sports endurance training, endurance attitude, travel, budget travel, various types of American music, mobile blogging, and digital photography. I have tried to highlight comments and tips that may be useful and searchable to the reader. I have included tags so that the reader may sort or note pages that may be worthy of a return reading.
This tour diary and blog started as a simple, informal project designed to give me something to do to take my mind off the stress of giving up an apartment I had lived in for a long time, my base for many projects in New York City. The initial plan was to set aside all projects except the move and storage of my belongings in a Queens storage building. As I started to use my longboard skateboard more to help me with my move and storage runs, I got the idea of training more seriously for a long distance skateboard ride, or at least a tour in which transportation and distance skateboarding would be very important. I began to push myself to skate the four miles from Queens over the bridge back to Manhattan's west side whenever I could.
After months of running loads out to Queens, I had developed quite a bit of stamina and a tolerance for the rugged ride and fairly slow speed that is road skateboarding. I also found I could ride fairly comfortably with about twenty five pounds of weight on my back. The destination for some of the tour had been made almost a year before. I had planned this tour once before and had to abandon my plans. I wanted to visit the south, where much of the music I am interested in developed. I figured I could reach Tennessee by train, bus, or car if I could get a ride. There were other cities I wanted to visit, including St. Louis, New Orleans, Jackson, Mobile, and Kansas City, all places that played an important part in the development of jazz, blues, country, and other indigenous U.S. music.
The decision to bring along a guitar as well as my skateboard was difficult. It made the load on my back much more difficult to negotiate, if only a little more heavy. It proved to be worth it, as I was able to practice the musical ideas I picked up along the way. I tried my best to find a way to travel with both guitar and skateboard. I must add, for at least the first leg of the tour ending in April 2009, that if I had to chose between bringing the guitar and the skateboard, I would surely prefer to take the board and leave the guitar behind. The skateboard proved to be a help many, many times over, and the guitar was only a convenience and a means to start conversations and make friends.
You can read my journals as a form of travel diary, and there should be plenty of good stories to keep you amused. It may be that the project is so centered around the skateboard that no non skater could maintain interest. I hope that's not the case. It's true that I kept the writing and the whole project focused on skating, but I also constantly brought in other observations; cultural, scenic, aesthetic, whatever reference came to mind. Perhaps it's a sort of skateboard "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," where it's about skateboarding but it's really about the world, or at least the world passing by my slow rolling chariot, filtered through my imagination.
For those who are willing to scan and search, the journals are a resource center for tips on skateboarding transport style, travel gear, packing, budget travel, mental preparation and attitude, and a lot of the other sorts of technical skateboarding and sports theory that connects with my other surface motion projects. In the journals there are notes in italics that point out gear, skate technique, travel, and other tips that can be studied if you want to plan a similar trip or just get into longboard roadwork.
As with many of my skate and surf projects, the tour is designed to be something of an alternative to mainstream pursuit of skateboarding and surfing. Perhaps there's something tongue and cheek about the whole thing, that even though I covered thousands of miles and constantly wrote, shot pictures, and thought about technique, I was basically goofing off on a skateboard. I look for ways to be creative and original with my riding, and sometimes being the greatest or flashiest rider hitting the toughest and most picturesque spots is not the way to do it. In this project I felt that the way I was looking at shaded sidewalks or gently inclined roads with no cars on them was similar to the way a surf traveller looks at an uncrowded point break in some foreign land.
This diary material was first published on surfmog.blogspot.com
Longboardus Apatosaurus, Pittsburgh PA. 2009 Tour
Fall 2008 - Summer 2009: Training and Travel
Background On the Tour, Training, and Journal
