US Tour IV: Vegas & LA

So, we finally made it to Vegas. The city you always hear so much about! It was night when we arrived, and the temperature was a welcomed 55 degrees - this was heaven compared to the drive through Utah. The city is all lights and people and cars and business! There are casinos inspired by Paris, NYC, Rome, Venice, Ireland...you don't need to travel all the world, just go to Vegas ;)

We decided to find a cheap hotel and split the price amongst the 6 of us. Somehow, probably with Kornie's influence we decided on the Hooter's Hotel Vegas. Everyone hung out in the parking garage while Jordan and I entered the Casino part of the hotel looking so out of place, two dirtbags coming to rent a room. The room was only about $40 total for a night, not too bad split between 6 people. So, we took our bags up to the room, then came down to sneak all the other guys in. So, imagine a crowd of dirty people with huge hiking backpacks passing through a casino with Hooter's girls and people gambling. It was some scene.



Inside the room there was some soft-porn magazine with Hooter's Girls, a giant king sized bed, and plenty of room for dirtbags to sleep on the floor.





The guys all wanted to go out and slackline, but Janek and I ended up staying at the room to shower and take a nap.






The next day we packed our stuff up and checked out, then went to slackline a bit before driving to LA. We first went in front of a Harley Davidson Motorcycles Cafe, since the night before the manager there had no problem with the guys slacklining out front. However, this day they told us to leave, as it was a matter of LIABILITY. Slackliners favorite word. So, we walked for over an hour looking for a good spot, finally setting up next to the fountains in front of the Bellagio. We slacked for maybe half an hour on a couple short short tricklines, then the security came and gave us the same Liability bullshit. So, apparently slacking in Vegas is difficult! We saw the fountain show, synced with the American Anthem blasting loudly. Oy, Vegas.

Finally, we all packed in our cars and headed for LA to visit Rick and Maria from Slackline Brothers Inc.

The drive to LA was not too bad, much shorter then previous drives, and warmer.



We dealt with the usual traffic, but eventually found ourselves at the bottom of the biggest hill in LA, on which Maria lived. I wondered if my car would make it. So, I told everyone to prepare themselves, then started driving up the hill. This was no small one! Halfway up my car just stopped moving forward. Shit. So, we reversed down to try once again. This time I gave myself a running start, gaining speed before pushing up the hill, and we made it! Barely. I pulled into the parking spot and we all headed towards Maria's house; a beautiful restored cabin made from redwood.

LA was an amazing rest week for us. We spent our days lounging around the house, hanging out with Maria and/or Rick, talking about Slacklife, cooking dinners for the whole group each night, longlining in Sycamore Park nearby...



...and going to Maria's SBI workshop to see how she does it all. I also finally recieved the clothing from my sponsor Freewalker, and the boy's were happy to model them for me:




We also went to Santa Monica Beach to slackline in the classic spot, muscle beach I believe?



There were some other old school slackliners setting up their tubular lines on simple system, while we used a Gibbon 1" with pulleys and Free Feet Tubular threaded.




It was fun. Jordan practiced back flips over the sand.



I tried my first butt bounce (after 15 minutes of standing there too afraid) and Jordan took some amazing photos of everyone.






It was a great day. There were also rings there, and some gymnists came to train, doing amazing moves on the rings. Traffic was a pain on the way back, but it is LA.





One terrible occurrence in LA was the attack of the stomach flu! Kornie had it first, and for two days he did nothing but throw up, shit and sleep. Poor guy. A couple days after he had it, Jordan caught it, and went through the same spell. Maria caught it last, right before we left for Joshua Tree, poor woman!



In the yard at Rick and Maria's they have a great slackline rigged up, tubular on A-frames. It was nice to go do laps whenever we felt like it.

The days we spent Longlining were lovely. We rigged a 100m line with White magic, and everyone had some great walks.




I on sighted the line, and felt quite pleased, and it felt good to longline again after so many highlines. It is a more relaxing physical activity then highlining, especially in the mental aspect. Janek also invented a new bit of slackline technology: The Missing Link!



It is a piece of webbing sewn with loops on each side, that winds around 3 times to form a link between a Slack Banana and a shackle. This is great. Maria had Kornie design a package and plans to sell them on her site. The Missing Link will make using rigging even simpler and cleaner. So, we tested it on our longline, and it worked beautifully.




Finally, we were ready to head to Joshua Tree, the desert a few hours south of LA. We stopped at Jordan's Aunts house on the way and they fed us a great dinner of Enchiladas and burritos, they had a beautiful house in the mountains. We drank wine, chatted, then slept one night before finishing the drive. The next morning the guys played some basketball on a very small child's hoop, and we packed up and began our drive to the last part of the US Highline Trip: Joshua Tree.

Thank you again to Jordan Tybon for the photo's from Santa Monica Beach and more!

US Tour III: Indian Creek, Utah

The next part of our trip ended up to be a big bummer. We left Terry's for Indian Creek, in good spirits.



Brian, Kornie and Damian went in Brian's car, and Janek and Jordan came with me. It was just a few hours away from Terry's, in Southern Utah. The drive was cold, but we knew it would be. When we reached the turnoff to Indian Creek, we followed the directions Kornie had given us (they had the guidebook) unfortunately, we were unable to find the Superbowl camping place. It was supposed to be on the left side of the road, but we saw nothing. It was nighttime as we were driving up and down this stretch of road, and there were no other cars around. Indian Creek appeared to be deserted. Eventually we pulled over and pitched the giant old tent in a clearing at Newspaper Rock, made a fire, and went to sleep.

Jordan was the fire master, and we at least had some good laughs. It turned out that Brian had my sleeping bag, and we had Kornie and Damian's. Good planning. At night, the winds were so incredibly strong that the tent poles poked through their pockets. It was even difficult to sleep well with the howling it caused.



In the morning we were woken by Brian's car horn. Nice joke. He told us that farther up the road there was a gate on the left, and to open it drive through and close it behind us. We slept another hour, then followed his instructions. To my Honda Civics delight, upon driving through the gate we found ourselves on a dirt road with ditches in it a foot deep here and there. It was a challenge to drive down it in once piece. At the camping area there was one other car in the whole place. It was basically just a large, flat red sandy area with some sad looking trees here and there.


One welcoming factor were the giant Mountain Lion prints all over our campsite, as long as they didn't also attack my car...



In the distance we could see all the beautiful red towers with vertical cracks running up them, all the photos we had seen in the guidebook were now alive and in front of us. The other guys had set up a longline nearby our site, but it was cold and I was more interested in setting up shop then longlining.




I explored the area, and even found an old wooden toilet in the bushes. I was excited, and dragged it to a grove of huge bushes and set up our new shitter. No one used it though, I am not sure why.



We put up our tents...



...talked about the lack of communication between our group, then cooked macaroni & cheese. The weather that day was not very good, as some rocks in the distance would disappear in a cloud of white, then reappear, over and over. It was a cold day, even things with liquid in them were frozen.

To kill time we began playing with our headlamps and Jordan's camera, taking long exposures, they turned out great! Afterwards, we finally retired.







In the night I heard the soft sound of snow falling on our big tent. I fell asleep again. The next time I woke it was not so pleasant. The tent was an inch from my face, collapsed. What the heck? I got up and put on my shoes to find out what exactly was going on. Upon exiting I saw that there was snow everywhere. It must have been 4 inches already! I shook off the snow and the tent was erect once again. Back to sleep. This time it was not such a soft sound, but loud as a lot of snow was falling. From that time, every half hour Janek and I had to wake up and shake the 5+ inches of snow off the roof of our tent. The last time I saw no longer our friends tents, only small white domes in a dark sea of white.



After very bad sleep, it was morning. Everyone woke and saw the winter wonderland with a mix of surprise, humor and disappointment.




The forecast had been updated, a blizzard had rolled through. Overnight the skies had dumped almost a meter of snow on us. Now we knew why there were no other campers; season was over!




I was feeling a bit disgruntled about the weather, and lack of sleep, and was eager to get out of Indian Creek. It was beautiful but also extremely cold! Without proper gear a meter of snow is miserable. I began breaking camp, while the others gleefully set up a slackline between two trees. I now regret feeling so disgruntled because I did not get on the slackline, just continued to pack up my car. The guys meanwhile had a good time. Jordan took some nice photos as well.



Janek had bags on his feet because his running shoes were not exactly snow-proof.





The next mission after camp was packed was to get my car out of there. The roads which were awful to begin with were now covered in a meter of snow, and my car had no such thing as 4 wheel drive. So, Brian led the way in his Element, creating tire tracks for me to follow. My car was doing OK, though several times the tires just spun out and did not move. Also, the steering wheel would just spin around by itself as it went over bumps covered in snow. Kornie actually had to lay on the hood to put more weight in front as I drove in the lowest gear. Finally, we reached the paved road. We passed some big Longhorns who were roaming in the snow.



A few other cars had already driven down the paved road out of the park, so at least there were tire tracks. It was much better. I have to admit for some time I thought we would be leaving my car there.



Once on the highway the road conditions improved, since snow ploughs were in use. We drove back to Terry's house in Fruita, CO, needing to warm up a bit before the long journey to LA.



At Terry's, he welcomed us back for a night of warmth, and funny enough Phoxx showed up (a slackliner we met in Moab) with his friend Inch And Three Quarters (some nickname) and we hung out for one night.



The next morning the temperature was a lovely -5 degrees F. Everything was covered in snow in Fruita, too. We headed for Vegas, planning to stay one night there as a break on the way to LA. Janek and Jordan were in their sleeping bags in my car, as you can imagine -5 is not nice with no heater.



I also had to keep the window cracked while I drove so the windshield did not fog up. Halfway to Vegas I stopped at a gas station somewhere in Utah and asked the clerk what the temperature. It had warmed up to just 5 degrees F. Shit. I ended up getting in my sleeping bag too, driving the rest of the way like some giant worm, with just enough room at the feet to push the accelerator and brake. At least I began to feel my feet again. So I continued to drive, awaiting warmer weather and sleep in Vegas.



Thank you to Jordan Tybon for the professional quality photo's in this post!