My Tweets on 2008-07-17
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Skindependence ‘08
This year, Skindependence took place in Billings Montana with our host MontanaPiercer. There were three days set aside for the festivities. July 3rd was the Chill, July 4th was the Festival, and July 5th was the Calm. For myself, t3chdzyn, and my girlfriend nicolonoscopy, the adventure started on the 1st.
July 1st:
We met up at Laguardia airport in NYC for our 9:30am flight to Denver. When we landed, we headed downtown to grab some grub. I found a Jimmy Johns and made a b-line. They have such great subs!
After lunch, we meandered around downtown for a little while and then headed out to Boulder. We had plans to meet up with a friend of mine for dinner. Turns out that he lives on top of a mountain… literally. We drove up into the mountains for about 30 minutes outside of boulder curving around rocks and trees. About 2 miles before we were to arrive, my GPS deal-e-o let me know that the battery was about to die. Awesome! Lost at the top of a mountain where there is zero cell service. Thankfully we made it without getting lost =).
Dinner turned out to be an interesting new form of eating. Some type of Swiss cooking device. It was kind of like a griddle with a broiler under it. There were separate spots for everyone to cook their food, and we each had our own little skillet / pan to cook with too. The closest thing I’ve had to this is Tsukiyaki in Japan. Lots of fun, and super delicious. I have to get myself one of those things!
We wound up taking off early evening, just as it was getting dark. Our next stop was Casper Wyoming, 4 hours north. We were going to spend the night at a friends place, and check out their new procreational success (new baby). The myth was that he is cute. I wanted to verify this myself.
On the way up, we wound up chasing / driving through a huge thunderstorm. For about two hours straight, we saw lightning about every 10 seconds or so in front of us. It was pretty intense looking. Before we drove into the storm, I stopped to take a couple night shots of Wyoming at night. I thought I had a couple really cool lightning shots, but they turned out to suck when I saw them on my laptop. Amazing how good a photo looks on a 1×1.5″ camera lcd =).
After a couple gas stops, and pee breaks, we made it to Casper. I think we arrived somewhere around 1:30 or 2 in the morning. This trip was also my first interaction with stupidly high gas prices. Living in NYC, I don’t really have to buy gas, so the prices never affected me. The last time I had to purchase gas for my car, it was just under $2 a gallon. Now it’s almost $4 a gallon. LAME!
We snuck inside, and hung out for a little bit with my friend Jack. We were pretty tired, so our next stop was bed. Finally!
July 2nd:
The next day, we planned on doing some sight seeing around Casper as Nicole and Mike haven’t been there before. Before hand, we had to make a couple stops. First we hit up Jacks tattoo shop to say hey to everyone there, and to get a map on where all the sights are. I figured, what a better person to draw up a map than an artist =).
Next was onto lunch, and then to the printers to pick up the merch that I ordered a while ago. I didn’t see any proofs ahead of time, so I was a little nervous about how they were going to turn out. Thankfully they more than exceeded my expectations. Now on to the sights! Our first stop was a waterfall. Well, it was supposed to be… Turns out the map wasn’t exactly right. We wound up getting lost and helped a bird commit suicide. Well, I hope it was on a suicidal mission. All I saw was a giant splat right in front of my face all over the windshield. Jeep at 70 mph + Bird = big feathery mess. A couple phone calls later we get back on the right road and head into the mountains towards the waterfall. We missed it apparently, because next thing I knew we we on top of the mountain. Whoops.
Back down the mountain and up the the dirt road, we finally made it to the waterfall. t3chdzyn then decided to climb up the waterfall. It looked pretty easy going up, but coming down slippery rocks didn’t cross his mind until he was up there =). On the way back to the car, nicolonoscopy asked if I was going to boulder the rocks we were walking past. It looked like fun, so I tried it out. I didn’t go very high, becuase the rock was all slate and would just crumble at my fingertips. Without proper gear / crashpads, I decided to stop midway.
Our next sight to see was the hill you can roll UP! It’s a weird optical illusion thing where when you park at the bottom of this hill and throw the car into neutral, the car starts to roll up the hill. We made a stupid ghost rider video clip of it, but I haven’t even gotten close to editing all the video I took yet.
Onto our next and final sight… the deer. We were told that just past the roll-up-hill, there’s a spot where there’s a ton of deer. As we drove through the spot we counted… two. Yep, two little deer. Totally not the ton of… WOAH! A giant buck darts in front of the car as we were looking out the windows trying to find all the deer and almost killed us. I decided that was the end of our interaction with wildlife and headed back into town and meetup for dinner. During dinner we all made t3chdzyn try Rock Mountain Oysters… yep, bulls balls =). They’re really not that bad. Kinda taste like beefy chicken nuggets. A little more chewy though. What? You can hang from hooks, but can’t eat a bulls ball? Live a litte =). After dinner it was back to the house for some chill time and then to crash for the night.
July 3rd:
Up bright and early (read: noon), we packed up the car and went downtown for brunch before we headed out on the road to Billings Montana. I had a seriously bad ass cinnamon roll =). Before jumping on the road, I checked the forums real quick to see if there were any updates / issues with the event. And there was… the venue burned down! After a few panicked phone calls, I found out that yes, the venue burned down, but that it was ok, because everything would take place outside instead of indoors and out. Phew…game on and on to Billings!
I drove through the mountains and desert(ish) area for about 4 hours. I did stop to buy some fireworks though off an Indian reservation. My friend Jack told me about the behind-the-counter stuff they sold there, so I had to pick up some =). We arrived at MontanaPiercer’s place with enough time to meet everyone there before we were to go out for dinner. I forgot who all was there when we arrived, but there were a couple photos snapped, so that helps…
After some brief introductions, we all headed down to Red Robin for dinner and drinks. This is were were all met up and got to start talking with one another. Everyone there was really cool, even the shy ones =)
Once we scared the locals enough, we headed over to MontanaPiercer’s studio, Oasis Tattoo.
He went over all the details with the next days festivities and gave us a tour of his shop. Most of us then headed next door to The Wheel (local biker bar) for some drinks and such. As the night progressed, t3chdzyn decided that he wanted to get the Skully tattooed on his calf. MontanaPiercer agreed to do it right then and there. How cool!
That would make 3 Skully tattoos (so far) done during Skindependence. ihaveonlyme was the first, getting it done on his inner bicep, and then linkraver21 got a little more detailed one (custom by MontanaPiercer) on is forearm. I have to say that I was pretty flattered, and envious. I want to get one myself, but I’ve already decided that I’m going to get it done by Robert Hernandez. Have him put his personal touch on it.
eatenplacenta and her man were pretty exhausted from all the traveling and early departure times, so I drove them back to the house so they could crash. Lesson learned: wait until they get inside before you leave. Apparently, the door was locked and they couldn’t get in. When I returned to the studio, MontanaPiercer was leaving and told me that the couple I just dropped off were lock out. Oops… Sorry!
I think we wound up staying at the studio until almost 4 in the morning. I was starving, and thankfully, there was a 24 hour Burger King just down the street. A long night of Jager and a BK breakfast sandwich and hashbrowns sounds awesome! I don’t even remember getting ready for bed that night.
July 4th:
I woke up in the mid-afternoon and got ready for the days festivities. We left for the Yellowstone Perk sometime around noon I think. I didn’t know where the place was, so we just followed MontanaPiercer’s wife. On the way there, I’m pretty sure we got put on some kind of a terrorist watch list for almost running over a park ranger =). Long story short, we made a wrong turn into a park where there was a line to get into with a park ranger checking cars at the front gate. Instead of waiting, I tried to floor it through the exit so I could turn around and leave. The ranger jumped in front of the car and started yelling at me. I couldn’t understand her, but she didn’t look happy. I threw the car into reverse and peeled out back onto the main road. No sirens, so I figured we were ok. Probably looked a tad suspicious though =).
On the way up the hill to the Yellowstone Perk, we could see a massive amount of smoke coming up from the distance. There was a raging forest fire going on that was destroying everything in it’s path. I found it kind of interesting that while this fire is just leveling the forest, everyone around is partying and setting off fireworks. You think they’d be a little more concerned and / or trying to help put it out. Nope.
Once at the venue, we met up with a bunch of other people, and then busted out the Frisbee. That was all well and good for a while, but running around in 100 degree heat just wasn’t my bag of tea. I wound up chillin over by the suspension area (read: a roped of section with a tree to hang from) for the shade. Then MontanaPiercer pulls me aside and tells me that the venue has lost all power. Actually, the whole part of town was down due to the forest fire. Great… no power = no bands. Now everyone is scrambling for generators. Unfortunaly it is the 4th of July. So everything is either closed or already rented out. Everyone got together and called up friends and friends of friends until they got enough generators to power everything. Woo Hoo! We’re back! Partying continues. Untill… Someone tells me that it’s about to rain. Awesome. The backup plan for the “if it rains” scenerio was to move everyone to the indoor stage area, but with it burned up, that wasn’t going to happen. We just had to wait it out.
Now that the party was in full effect, it was time to start with the suspensions. First up was piercedphreack. He wanted to suspend from his shins whlie holding his kid and swinging around. I’ve never seen a shin suspension, nor a baby being swung around, so this was going to be interesting =).
MontanaPiercer and Nicoleslavich prepped and pierced piercedphreack, then hoisted him into the air. After some time of swinging around, he picked up his kid and swung around some more. It was an interesting sight to say the least.
When piercedphreack came down, stuffsh was next. She flew all the way from England for the event, and this was going to be her first time suspending. When they pulled her up, she took a little bit to get used to it, but then was clearly having a good time up there. Swinging around, kicking he legs and smiling away. A couple minutes went by before she was lowered for some water. Then right back up again. This time not as long, but still looked like she enjoyed it.
It was starting to get dark and I was pretty hugry, so a few of us decided to take a break from the heat and go have dinner someplace with air conditioning (= Olive Garden). We had a good dinner, but wanted to get back to the party. When we returned I found out that I missed a couple more suspensions. Dammit… no one told me they were going to do more. Oh well.
Now that night has come, it was time for the fireworks. We got a got amount off before the owner asked us to stop. Something about how his place just burned down yesterday, there’s no water around, it’s super dry out, and there’s already a forest fire headed this way. So we packed up what was left, but not before firing off one more of the big-bang behind-the-counter things we bought. They were an arial that made a huge explosion. Every time we shot one of those off, you would hear cheering and clapping from all over the place. Good times.
It was time again to head back to the house for the night and get our beauty sleep before the rest of us were to suspend (included my first).
July 5th:
Today is the day of all the modding festivities. A full day of various suspensions, a guest tattoo artist and piercer, and a lot of people hanging out and enjoying each others company. I don’t have a full list of everyone that went up, but I do remember a few. There were a total of 14 suspensions of various form. I hooked up a flash photo feed of all the suspensions for live coverage. I think the photos will better describe the days events that what I can say in words:
With all the suspensions done, and mods beginning their healing processes, we called it quits somewhere around three in the morning. It came close to 14 hours of suspensions, tattoos, piercings, and other fun activities. I think it’s safe to say that we all slept well that night!
July 6th:
On the last day, we all gathered up at the park for a BBQ. There was some delicious home-cookin’ BBQ food and AMAZING cupcakes. I’m not kidding. It’s possible that they were the best cupcakes I’ve ever eaten! After a few hours hanging out, and talking with everyone, we headed over to Oasis Tattoo for more mod work. For some of us that suspended the days before, we opted to get the Off the Hook logo tattooed. I got it done just above my foot.
After hanging out a little bit longer, we had to get back on the road to Denver. Our flight was the next day, and I wasn’t really keen on the idea of missing it. I think we left somewhere around 9pm. We stopped again at my friends place to crash for the night, and then continued on to Denver the next morning. Once I got home, and read more details on here, I found out about all the other mods that took place after I left. I really with I was able to stay longer.
For Skindependence Weekend, I would have to say that CheeseStix was definitely the MVP of the event! He started out with a Coma Suspension, then got a custom old-school Skully tattoo on his leg, then multiple micro-dermals in his eyebrow, followed up with a Suicide Suspension, the Off the Hook logo tattoo and last but not least, a flesh removal scarification on his back. Way to go man!
Overall, it was a great time, and I enjoyed the company of everyone, and made a lot of new friends whom I won’t soon forget.
Thank you everyone, that helped make it happen and that showed up! It was an awesome time!
.: Adam