The Promised Post

So, I promised you a post about dropping in, so that those of you who have know idea what it is can have some idea of how awesome I am. Additionally, it's 7:30 on a Saturday morning, and I can't sleep in because I'm a teacher, but I definitely don't feel like diving into my grading yet, either. This gives me the perfect time to blog.

So, dropping in. Dropping is a pretty essential skill for a skateboarder. Without it, what you can skate is severely limited. However, everyone I've ever talked to was scared to death when they first learned to drop in. I was no exception. What I was was old enough that I could ignore the peer pressure and put off learning to drop in for a very long time. Teenagers don't have the luxury of being afraid in front of their friends, so they are constantly hucking themselves and their boards off new drops and trying new tricks and hurting themselves. Because of this, most teenagers are also much better skaters than I am, since I content to roll around in my comfort zone for quite some time before trying something new--if it's not too scary.

Dropping in is hard to explain if you don't know what coping is, so here's a picture to illustrate:

http://www.bmx-zone.com/articlePic.php?id=398

The metal bar at the top of the ramp is called coping. Most quarter pipes, half pipes, bowls, etc. all have coping.

http://www.coastalbc.com/skate/photos2007/70212wmw64.jpg

This means that if you can't drop in, you can't get down the ramp or bowl from the top. You'll have to slide down on your rear and then roll around from the bottom, which will both mark you as a total noob and mean that you'll never have enough momentum to go very fast or very high.

In order to drop in, you put your board over the edge with the wheel over the coping but the tail still on the flat part of the ramp. This angles the board up toward the sky. Then, you put your back foot on the tail and one foot up toward the nose, balancing on one foot on a board balanced on the edge of a slope.

http://0.tqn.com/d/skateboard/1/5/L/B/Dropping-In-Ready-Tailset.jpg

Then, in one fluid motion, you lean waaaay out into space and put your foot all the way down to the sloping ramp below. You need to get that board from tail position, with those front wheels hanging out a foot above the ramp, to rolling position, with all four wheels on the downward sloping surface of the ramp. You and the board are going to make a controlled fall more than ninety degrees, almost like a quarter turn on a horizontal axis. At the same time your board starts to move forward and, if you've done it right, you roll down the slope. If you don't lean forward far enough, you'll fall backward and hit the pavement and/or the coping with various parts of your anatomy. If you lean to far forward, you'll fall forward and hit the pavement with various parts of your anatomy, possibly including your face. Keep in mind you'll have all the momentum in your fall you would have had on your board, so you'll be hitting that pavement nice and hard. It's probably gonna hurt. And when you first learn to drop in, that lean into space feels about as smart as throwing yourself off of a concrete cliff riding a plank with wheels on it so that you won't be able to make a stable landing, which is pretty much what you're doing. This is what dropping in looks like if you're cool:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/dont_miss/2003/07/bury_skate_park/images/skate_drop_in_270.jpg

http://tumyeto.com/images/uploaded/elijah-drop-in_opt.jpg

This is what dropping in looks like if you're me:

And there you have it. Dropping in. Not really that exciting because everyone can do it, but I'm pretty darn excited that I can finally do it. Now the only problem is that when I drop in I have a lot of speed, and because I've been rolling around and the bottom of things for so long, I don't know how to turn when going that fast yet. So I tend to drop in and either coast till I'm going a comfortable speed or just bail. But bailing while moving that fast is also a risky process, as the scrapes and bruises on my elbows and knees can attest. But, who cares? I can drop in. The rest will come.

This is me looking more cool:

And this is Cuny. My skatecoach and inspiration.

Make-up

Make-up, a collection of powders and pastes used to augment, draw, or conceal facial features. My relationship with make-up has spanned a decade or so. Over the years, I have worn a little make-up or a lot of make-up. There were times in my life when I wore green stick, foundation, powder, blush, eyeliner, mascara, and eye shadow every day. There were other times when all I needed was the green stick, powder, mascara, and eye-liner. But for the last ten years, I have nearly always worn make-up. Since make-up--especially mascara and eyeliner--takes a few days to wash away completely, there have been very few times in that decade when I saw myself completely without make-up of any kind. After a camping trip or a ski trip or if I'd been sick I might see myself make-up free, but as soon I was back to civilization and health, I would quickly reapply. I liked make-up; I liked the way I looked when I wore it. I didn't feel like I wore it for other people; I wore it for me.

However, this past spring I realized that I no longer liked the way I looked when I wasn't wearing any make-up. I felt like I looked strange, blank, unfamiliar. And this bothered me. I don't mind wearing and liking make-up, but I didn't like the feeling of needing it. I didn't want to feel dependent on it, uncomfortable in my own skin without a few artificial touches. After ten year with make-up, I found myself self-conscious without it, and not liking the face I saw in the mirror. So I decided that make-up and I needed to take a break. I refused to let myself not like my own face without modification. If I wanted to wear make-up, that was fine, but I couldn't wear make-up because I couldn't accept my own natural face.

So I decided to give it a try. Last spring break, I gave up make-up for a week. And I loved it. After the first few days I got used to my own face again, and found little bits of additional freedom that wearing no make-up gave me refreshing. I could go exercise or swim without worrying about my make-up. I didn't have to periodically check my eyes for circles or lines of mascara or anything. It never got in my eyes or stung. If I cried I wouldn't have to redo my make-up. If I wanted to, I could wash my face part way through the day without having to carefully remove the make-up and then reapply.

I returned from spring break and found myself increasingly reluctant to put on make-up. Not only that, but I started questioning the face wash and zit creams I'd been using since my 16th birthday. I decided that during the summer I would go natural all the way. No face wash, no make-up.

And I did. And without the make-up, I didn't get as many break-outs, and all summer long I just wore my own face without modification. At first, I would still put on make-up for church, but soon I disliked waiting a day or two for the last traces of eyeliner and mascara to disappear. So I gave that up, too. I thought I would return to make-up when school started, and I did for a week. Then I stopped.

I haven't stopped wearing make-up on moral grounds, or as a feminist statement, but simply because I wanted to make sure I didn't become unfamiliar with my own face. I've kept no wearing make-up because I'm lazy and I like the extra amounts of liberty that no make up gives me. I still like the way I look with it. I'll probably pick it back up again some day, and I still wear it on special occasions. But I like that I once again like my face just the way it is, and that my eyelashes never feel stiff, and my face is always clean, not covered.

Zombies in My School

At my old school, I knew exactly where I would hide if zombies attacked while I was there, or if they attacked and I could get there. I knew I couldn't hide in the apartment I lived in--it was on the ground floor and had a huge sliding glass door through which zombies could pour quite easily. So I settled on the satellite/trailer where I taught at Lehi Junior. There were no windows that wouldn't require climbing that were big enough to crawl in. I could live off of the food and candy in the classrooms. It wouldn't be nutritious, but it would keep me alive. And, if the main hall was breached, I would retreat to the bathroom. It had both a key lock and a bar you could pull across. I would have water and a place to use the bathroom, although, if the water supply was shut off, I would go to the bathroom in the sink because it had a drain and drink from the toilet tank. This would let me live for at least a month or more.

At my new school, the nearest bathroom only locks from the OUTSIDE. Meaning that it would be a good place to lock a rogue zombie, but a bad place to hideout myself. No, at American Fork Junior, the best place to hide in case of zombie attack is the faculty lounge. It has no windows, it locks, contains couches for sleeping, vending machines for a food supply, and has two separate bathrooms. These could be used as sources of water a final retreat since they are an additional locked door.

Anyway, I need to go enter grades.

Happy

Today I am overwhelmed by awesomeness. Today I get to go to the wedding of one of my best friends since the fifth grade. That puts us at about 13 years of friendship. I've told all 250 of my students just how very excited I am for today. Then, on top of that, I just read her blog and found out that she got a job and is probably moving to Salt Lake City soon. I can't even express how happy I am.

So, despite having to teach the Holocaust this week, today is pretty much the best day ever. Ever. Ever.