Hey! Watch this!
GenX code for something awesome is about to happen
Photo courtesy of Eric Skadson
These days, I look around at narrow-faced, thin, 1000-yard-stare basement dwelling boys and cannot help but feel sad. They’re missing some things. Freckles, sun-burned necks, calluses…and most of all that fire-in-your-belly good-natured look of curiosity and adventure.
Young men are afraid. The world around them has been softened. Nerfed, I call it. No sharp edges. The list of people and things to blame is exhausting, and isn’t the purpose of this trope. Doesn’t matter, frankly. Truth is, kids don’t have it. Fear, perfection, malaise, and grooming by society all play a role.
Growing up in the mountains of Colorado featured epic adventure opportunities AND boys, raised by men, who were willing to take risks. My circle of friends and relatives were stupid fearless. And, we did it all without the internet to tell us how, when or why.
As I’ve reviewed the tape, I hear the echoes of adventure and it always starts with, “Hey, watch this!” (also known as HWT)
Here’s a taste of the HWT life.
Skitching
During the cold Aspen winters, we adored the opportunity to vacate the warm dairy delivery truck cab and skitch. What is skitching, you ask? It is the white-knuckled, frosty-breath bumper ride on icy streets. We would latch onto the bumper of the truck with our gloved hands, sit back on our haunches, and allow our feet to glide down the streets. Oh, and keep track of the manhole covers - the snow never accumulated over those lids and if you caught your feet on those… elbows and assholes.
Skitching evolved into King of the Bumper, where we would try to dislodge a fellow skitcher by striking their forearms with ours, and belly laugh as they tumbled off into the darkness. The motivation to maintain one’s bumper position was this: If you fell off, you had to run to the next stop.
Daredevils
In the summer, the El Jebel trailer park boys would hike their BMX bikes about half way up Missouri Heights road. Steep. I mean, super steep. As our quads burned, one of us would stop, turn around and start pedaling.
The goal was to keep off your brakes as long as you could, before you came to the 90 degree turn that led back to the trailers, and ending up Evel Knievel, casted up and limping. One of us, Hayes, declared he wasn’t going to touch the brakes at all, and he set off, legs splayed. His feet ended up touching the ground once his tires sailed over the spilled gravel on the inside of that 90 degree turn, vaulting his bike sideways, and giving him a very serious case of road rash on his right hip that made strawberries blush.
Wheelies and Trampolines
The kid across the street, Skip, was a madman, BMX racer, and wore coke bottle birth control goggles so that he could see like the rest of us. One Christmas morning, we all gathered in front of my grandparents house in Sopris Village. Santa brought Skip a brand new RedLine bike, and he was anxious to show off his wheelie skills. As he took off from our location, he kept looking back at us - likely to make sure we were watching. We were, and we began shouting at him to stop. I’m sure he thought we were cheering him, and he pedaled harder, eventually catching the rear bumper of a parked Subaru (driven by a peasant). The arc of his launch propelled his forehead into the ski rack perched on top.
Stitches. New glasses. New rim and tire… but not deterred, Skip had another trip to the Aspen ER after attempting a trampoline backflip at Peter’s house. I remember seeing his leg bend at an unnatural angle and breaking the skin as Peter vomited, and Alan screamed out. This time Skip was gifted with pins, a wheel-chair, and a full-time butler named Peter.
Stacked Snow Tubing
The gravel pits were perfect for snow tubing after a storm dumped several inches. We’d grab all the tubes we could find, a shovel for packing the descent, and don our required layers. It wasn’t enough to ride one tube, so we decided to stack them. Two, then three, and why not…let’s go five high.
Hayes and I climbed in, braced in place by Timmy and Chad, our backs against the uphill side of the tube stack, feet pressed on the downhill. Before we could shout “go!” those two let go and we were off. Whirling dervish, frost, snow, and raucous laughter accompanied our descent. The bliss was short-lived.
The angle of the hill met the ground at about 47 degrees, exploding tubes, legs, snot, and snow boots into the spray. Hayes and I roundhoused one another in the face and I woke up with my nose full of snow, dripping crimson on the white gold of Colorado.
We decided to stack four, and that ended up being plenty.
Pound cake
My cousin Dave and I spent years together. Without going into detail, he was much better resourced and mature than me, in many ways. In others, not so much. We successfully welded a grappling hook out of spare rebar. This was intended for ice climbing and it turns out far too heavy to toss and find purchase on the ice falls near his home. Our repelling harnesses were made out of webbing for strapping shipping loads. And, those worked.
We built forts in impossible locations. We tested the arc of a bowling ball shot out of a homemade catapult - we borrowed trampoline springs. We witnessed Uncle Lance hand shoot framing nails into the gas pumps with his pneumatic nailer. We skied out of bounds more times than we should have, and slept under the summer stars on the trampoline fewer times than I wish.
Rocket fuel
Have you ever used your Old Timer pocket knife to grind out the solid fuel of a D model rocket engine and try to light it with a magnifying glass? Well, you need three engines, a lot of patience, and make certain you’re not standing/looking down at the pile of fuel when it finally ignites.
I lost hair, eyebrows, pride, and couldn’t get the smell of that powder out of my nose for days.
Lunch trays
I’ll end with this claim. We Aspen Valley kids invented snowboarding. There, I said it. I’ve never seen a penny from this invention, but I can say that the DeCarlo twins were part of it and they got their due when featured in Skiing Magazine, shredding on Aspen Mountain.
Do you doubt me? I can explain. We grew up skiing. The then Aspen Ski Company gave our parents a year pass - $2 weekends, free on weekdays (with a drink, hot dog, and candy bar) for the low price of $12/year or something like that. We skied. All. The. Time.
It got boring, frankly. Same runs. Same routes. Same ski patrol yelling at us. So, what’s a teenager to do? I will tell you. Park your skis at the lodge, grab a vintage metal cafeteria tray, go outside, stand on it, and… shred. You can steer by dragging your boots and hands, alternatively. Or, you can just crash on purpose if things get sketchy. Just don’t get caught.
Advice
If you want to adopt the HWT protocol, here’s some advice;
BB guns ricochet, wear eye protection.
Eggs ruin paint.
Sunburns go away: grow an aloe vera plant.
Scabs form, heal, and give you story scars that help make friends with girls.
Knives are sharp: carry band aids.
Fishing hooks can come out with a pair of needle-nosed pliers.
You can walk it off because the difference between being hurt and injured is being able to do it again.
Lots of things are flammable: keep a hose and a fire extinguisher close by.
8.5 Saying a prayer before you say “Hey, watch this!” is a really good idea.
Onward.