Transportation

Mom and Dad bought David and me skateboards in 1970 when our family made the 3 week round trip from west coast to east coast in our new VW bus. This is it, and it has the same wheels David bought for me in the mid '70s.



I have kept the vintage skateboard in my car since the late '90s, breaking it out for whatever short jaunt I needed it. For example, I ended up in a parking spot far from the entrance of the grocery store on a hot day. Why walk the distance when I could cut the travel time to about a third of that? So, I got out the board and starting pumping toward the building. A sharp-eyed teenage girl saw the board at a distance and called out, "Hey! Old school. Cool!" Old school. Loved that.

You can't miss hearing me coming. The board is 3/4" thick and has no flex like today's boards. It is a sounding board that pronounces every crack in the sidewalk.

In 1996, I sometimes took the train to work...and often went in late enough to miss the shuttle ride available to earlier risers. I'd ride my skateboard for the half mile or so, dress pants and shoes and all. One time I had a spill in such clothes. I'm sure I looked goofy enough riding the skateboard in nice clothes before splatting on the ground.

It would be a safer ride if I got a new flexible skateboard with larger, softer wheels. But I like the old skateboard because of what it is. I'm now at eBay whose buildings are spread over a long narrow campus. The meeting is in the furthest building? Dang. But, hey, I get to ride the skateboard. It catches people's attention; "Hey, you could sell that on eBay!"

How not to make a mask

When I wrote about how to make my face, I had completely forgotten about a crazy event from the late 1980s, a time when I got Paul's help in making a plaster-of-paris casting of my face, a time involving peanut butter, blood, eyelashes, a bathroom floor, and a laptop.

My brother David was given an assignment in art school in the late 1970s to create a mask. He created a mold of his face and then used that to form a flexible latex rubber mask that fit his face. He then added hair and paint to that to come up I heard a crunch inside my head. with this great Hollywood-like mask.

That inspired me to make a mold of my face, but my goal was far simpler. I would (1) make a plaster mold of my face and (2) make a latex rubber mask from that mold and be done with it. I would then have a mask of myself that I could wear to a Halloween party. Sounded straightforward enough.

Way back then, I asked Paul if he would help me make the mask. I wanted him to apply the plaster to my face while I lay on ground.

I explained to him that I would insert some straws in my nose for breathing, Dramatic recreation mix up some plaster of paris, and lay on the ground; he would then spread the plaster on my face and I'd lay there until it set.

I wanted to be able to communicate while he was applying the plaster but didn't want to move my facial muscles, so I planned on typing on a laptop on my tummy for him to look at and respond to.

I had a mustache and didn't want it to get stuck in the plaster, but I couldn't find Vaseline. Hmm...what else was available that was greasy or oily that could fill in the gaps in my mustache and prevent hairs from getting stuck? I thought of peanut butter. Soon, I had worked peanut butter into my mustache.

Next were the straws. Here comes the blood part. As I stood at the bathroom sink, I cut some short lengths of plastic straw and inserted one on one nostril. I cut the next one and was reaching up. My hand caught the edge of the first straw. I heard a crunch inside my head. Oh MAN that hurt. Soon, blood was dripping out the end of the straw. This was a great opportunity to make Paul laugh, so I maintained my composure and calmly said to him, "Hey Paul. Check this out." Yep, he burst out laughing. (And that was the memory he brought up the other night, when I showed him the paper mask.) Not wanting to experience that again, I cancelled the straw idea. Paul would just leave my nostril area open and I'd figure out how to close that part off after the mold had solidified and I'd removed it from my face.

Okay, down to the bathroom floor, laptop at the ready. Paul spread on the goo. It was rather warm. Plaster of Paris heats up when mixed with water; there's a chemical reaction. He applied it over my eyes at some point.

The goo was soft enough that some seeped into my eyes. It's gritty. So now I had grit in my eyes and it was uncomfortable and all I could do was let my eyes water and yell via laptop. I typed a lot. I told him what I was feeling, what I was guessing, how I didn't know what I was going to do, but to keep going. We'd gotten this far.

I think I lay there for at least 15 minutes with the grit in my eyes, all the while wondering aloud via laptop whether the material was stiff enough for me to remove. I had had Paul apply a first layer of goo, then apply strips of gauze and then apply more glue, with the idea that the gauze would hold pieces together in case cracks developed.

Eventually, I decided it was time to lift off the mask. As I lay there, I lifted lightly on the edges of the mask near my jaw. I felt the mask tugging on not only my mustache but also my eyelashes and eyebrows. Now able to speak, I described this new predicament to Paul.

I got onto my knees with face toward floor so that gravity might assist as I tried to figure out how the mask would come off. Earlier, my eyes ached from the grit, and I found minor relief from not moving my eyes. Now, my tear ducts kicked into action again as my eyelashes were being pulled, mustache was being pulled, eyebrows were being pulled.

I paused. "What am I going to do?" I felt a bit more panic. I've got this big chunk of stone for a face, anchored by many hairs.

I tried tugging again. Perhaps, I thought, each peanut-butter greased hair would eventually slide free from the mold if I kept up consistent tension, like pulling corks out of wine bottles.

After a few minutes of not getting far, I considered how women tweeze their eyebrows. Geez. They pulled hairs out of the follicles. I was willing to pull harder, even pull out hairs. But I had no interest in yanking, though. I wanted to give the mask a chance to let go of its ends of the hairs. So, that's what I did. I started pulling on the mask. My eyelids, eyebrows and upper lip stretched.

For the most part, the mask won the tug of war. I was missing about a third of my eyelashes, a third of my mustache and a third of my Many of the dark spots are hair follicles, rich with DNA eyebrows. It wasn't evenly distributed thinning, either. There were places with no hair, no eyelashes.

My first action after getting the mask off was to put my face over the sink and splash my eyes with water, attempting to bring relief from the grit. Soon after, I had slight swelling in my eyelids from eyelashes being yanked.

The white plaster mask had its own hair! It had eyebrows, eyelashes and mustache! We laughed. I got some tweezers and began pulling the hairs out of the mask. Wished they were still on my face.

Eventually, I did clean up the inside of the plaster mask, painted uncured latex rubber on it and baked that. And then I had the rubber mask I could put on over my face.

The plaster mask, by the way, easily illustrates the effect I was trying to create with that paper mask I Click for enlargement made in the make my face post. You know how it is with some photos of craters: your brain makes you think they are sticking up instead of going down? That is true of this image: the nose is NOT sticking out towards you. Look at this image upside down. The plaster mask is leaning against the lamp on my desk.

Treasure hunt

This morning, Paul and Alta informed me that they'd left their camera here last night and would be coming by to pick it up. I wasn't sure that I would be around when they dropped by, so I told them I'd leave their camera in a gold box in the large wooden toy box on the front porch.

It dawned on me that they would not be there for some time. I thought it would be fun to create a treasure hunt for them that would lead to their camera, I was sooo looking forward to taking a picture of tall Paul riding the kid's bike down the street. so I spent the next hour creating a 15-clue treasure hunt that would lead to them finding their camera under an abalone shell in the same toy box, inches from the gold box (where I left their first clue in place of the camera). Mom and her friend Anna learned about what I'd set up and were the most excited about this event, looking forward to finding out what the clues were, etc.

As it turned out, Paul and Alta were behind schedule and needed to hurry off, so they needed a shortened version. While they were figuring out a clue elsewhere, I swapped out one of the other clues so that they would find their camera within 3 or 4 clues. After they left, I gave Mom the clue that they would've gotten next. She had a blast completing the rest of the hunt, finally finding the original clue that mentioned the final location of the camera, and she knew she was done.

I hid their camera under the abalone shell. I then wrote "Look under the abalone shell in the toy box" on a slip of paper.

I hid the clue about the abalone shell under a plastic orange pot on the porch. On a new slip of paper, I wrote "Look under the orange pot on the porch." (There are several such pots, so that was a simple "complication.")

I looked around for a hiding place for this new piece of paper and then wrote a clue about that hiding spot, etc. After about 15 of those, I had a piece of paper I could give them as their starting point...and since I'd already instructed them to "look in the gold box," I just put that note in the gold box where they expected to find the camera in the first place. Then I waited for them to come so I could see their reaction. (Okay, so it didn't work out because of the time pressure, but they got their camera.)

Most of the clues were pretty straightforward (to keep the feeling of success high and not associate frustration with what was meant for good):

• Find the electical outlet on the front of the house. [It was under the spring flap.]
  
• By the front lawn sprinkler is a hole on wall. [It lined the inner circumference of that hole.]
  
• Above the hummingbird feeder. [There are two. It was sticking out of a crack in the board above one.]
  
• Find the shovel in the side yard. [It was slipped into the little gap where the wood handle fits into the metal spade.]
  
• Under the gravel by the firehydrant. [They had to scoot gravel out of the way.]
  
• Find the gray sewer access on the side of the house. [It lined the inner circumference of the hole in the lid, sticking out slightly to ensure it was easy enough to see/grab.]
  
• Find the flamingoes on the front porch. [There is a windchime that is ornamented with little flamingoes. I curled up a note and inserted it in one of the tubes.]

Some were a bit more complicated:

• Find the naked lady at the edge of the front lawn. [I added a small sketch of the flower of that name. I curled up the note and stuck it inside the bell-shaped flower.]
  
• By the street side gate are blue flowers. Near those is a smll geranium under a tall bush. Dig it up to find something that doesn't belong there. You'll need the shovel. [A foot and a half of digging later, they'd find a squished coke can with the rolled-up note weaved through the pop-top tab.]
  
• God provided what when Abraham was about to kill Isaac? It is within eyesight. Look in the back. [Nearby was a Dodge RAM pickup. The note was floating around in the truck bed.]
  
• Across and down the street is a black Volvo. On the way are poppies. There is a tennis ball nearby. [The note was under the tennis ball.]
  
• Ride the little bicycle (found in the side yard) to the nearby school tennis court driveway and find the No Exit sign. [At the base of it was an empty soup can with a note in it.]
  
• Near the front porch is an extension cord with a trouble light [a lightbulb in a protective case with hook]. Hook the light onto the flag pole mount on the front of the house. Stretch out the rest of the cord down the driveway. As you walk West with the cord, the end of the cord follows an arc. That arc lines up with a short plant. [Wrapped around the base of a little oak sapling was a note.]
  

When Mom started tackling the treasure hunt, I took off with the little bike to fetch the distant clue, not wanting Mom to suffer the task I'd aimed at Paul. (I was sooo looking forward to taking a picture of tall Paul riding the kid's bike down the street.) A neighbor, driving out of the neighborhood, pulled over near where I was and called out of her car to point out how silly I looked riding that little bicycle. We laughed.

Making a treasure hunt
Starting with whatever it is you want the person to find when the hunt is over, repeat these steps over and over: (1) hide the thing; (2) get a slip of paper and write a clue about the thing you hid; write the clue number on it, starting with 1 for the first one you write.

Thus, the second thing you hide is the clue you wrote about what you just hid. When you're all done, you will have a piece of paper with a clue that you can give your friend. (The numbers help your friend know how close he or she is to finishing.)

Knowing Mom would eventually get to the task involving the shovel, I then went and grabbed that and was heading to go dig for her, once she discovered the geranium location. When I rounded the corner, there was Mom, bent over a one foot deep hole she had already dug with her bare hands! She was into this! But she acknowledge shovelling was needed now, and I took over. Soon, the dusty coke can appeared and she grabbed it and worked on its clue.

Mom says her favorite was finding the note rolled up inside the flower. (She also kidded, "Naked ladies. I figured you'd work sex into this puzzle for Paul, somehow.").

I do hope that this story--and perhaps the mere mention of "treasure hunt"--motivates you to create some fun for a parent or niece or nephew or grandkid. And come back and tell me about it! :)