Snow Ruckus

Snow day in South Carolina? Whatt?! That's right everyone, we got about 5 inches of snow last night. My friends Leighton and Yaw decided to raise the ruckus with me and do some urban snow sledding around midnight. Thinking my underbed storage bin would be perfect I named it the 'Rukus Rider' and proceeded to fail miserable at sledding with it. We all experimented with getting in trash bags or wrapping them to our feet as skates or riding them like a snowboard. Right by Bates West is a steep hill so we hit it up. The most dangerous / fun method of the hill had to be body sledding. You just wrap the bag around your arms, get a running start and dive out into the air above the hill.
Going just about anywhere from Bates West you have to take this bridge that we thought would be perfect for some snow fun. You could kind of skate down the hill or get a running start and slide pretty far.
Even with my bike covered in snow I wanted to ride it. I had just gotten it fixed that day. Well, they couldn't fix my front break so I only had a back break. Not getting hurt wasn't really an option, but I figured it'd be worth it. So, I peddled through snow slush trying to gain speed while the handle bar is jerking back and forth. On a normal day you can get pretty damn fast on the hill ; believe me I've almost ate asphalt pretty bad before on it. Sliding down the hill the back wheel was fishtailing badly and making balance a jerky affair. I wanted to see how far I could push the bike and so I dug into the peddles and began swerve. That didn't take long to spin the bike and make the wheels kick out and toss me on my hip. The fall wasn't bad at all. So worth it. Yaw was yelling 'Rukus!" while I was riding. Great night

Exam Trackstar

It's exam week here at USC. Everyone is uptight, stressed, and suffering a severe lack of sleep. At times like this that the community needs a pick me up - a little laugh to cheer them up and lighten the mood. Enter Exam Trackstar, because what better than a kind of strange dude in your class to come to your final exam dressed like he's about to run in a 1980's track meet only to rip off his breakaway pants and reveal ridiculously too small track shorts, sit down and take the exam?
This morning at 9 am I had my Spanish final exam. Last night I went out to Wally World in an attempted to find the missing pieces of my get-up. Luckily I already had the shoes, jacket, wrist bands, glasses and sweatband. I just had to get real small track shorts and breakaway pants. Now the problem with that is that Walmart doesn't sell breakaway pants or small track shorts in Men's sizes. So I had to delve back into my childhood and shop the boy's section where as luck would have it I found the shorts and pants on sale. Oh, I picked up those slow-pitch-baseball-esque socks there as well.

Explain to me this: if you're going to make breakaway pants why would the top have fake buttons that don't breakaway on the side? Just don't make no damn sense, but that's how mine were. Nothing a few snips with the scissors couldn't solve. Torn apart at the top, I had to binder clip the pants together and wear suspenders under my jacket to hold the pants on.

So here I go at 8: 30 am a loud mess of red 80's track attire biking to class on a white and black striped bike. A few heads were turned to say the least. I made sure to arrive right before class started so everyone would already be sitting down. This was it, I open the door say "Exam time, baby!" rip of the break away pants, and sit down. A few people busted laughing, but mostly confused chuckles played under someone saying "you would." My teacher came in late and only saw me when I went to turn in my test. If you can imagine an older Spanish woman awestruck, confused, and speechless, that is what it was like.

This is one of those moments I think I'm going to look back on and wonder what the hell I was thinking. But hey, I got to lighten up some people's day so I'm glad I did it.

p.s. in regards to the censor bar: You see I've got what my family refers to as Nelson legs, aka real thick legs. Take into account those shorts are boys mediums and you may start to grasp the dilemma of the lack of space I had in the crotchal region. That polyster sheen doesn't hide much to say the least.

New Art IV

The walls of our dorm still felt a bit lacking so our good friend John Youngblood came out and schooled us with some downright awesome graffiti skills. Check it:

Speed Racer!

John heard we liked Mudkips.

Thanks again JYB.

But that's not all! Getting back to Bates West after Thanksgiving break I had the gumption to knock out a third installment to the gallery and draw our good friend Evan Forbes.

from left to right: Evan Forbes, Tim Shipp, Gorilla with moustache and monocle

New Art III

OMG! BRB! Tim Shipp's in my hood and he's after me!

The Big Comeback

Oh snap! The two man adventure crew is back in action, and oh baby did the Dog Faced Horse Man strike again. Ben and I are always looking for bigger and better adventure and to be honest I don't know how we are going to top last night. Last night at 2 am Ben and I set out to summit the highest point in Columbia - the Radio Tower. This project had been in the works for weeks now and before that it existed more as a joke than a real idea.
When the time was finally right we put the plan into motion. During the day Saturday we made sure we had all our supplies prepped : camera, warm dark clothes, and a flag to hang at the top of the tower if we made it. Grim as this may be, we both wrote goodbye notes to leave in our dorm in the off chance that something went terribly wrong and our bodies had to be scraped off the pavement.

2 am we set off into the night. We wanted it to be late enough to where there wouldn't be too many people / cops out. That is kind of impossible on a Saturday night in Columbia, but by that point in the night the cops are too busy dealing with all the drunk people out.

First step : Scale this wall that I swore wasn't this tall last time I saw it. Free climb a pole attached to a 20 foot wall. No problem. Luckily, we ended up on a roof after the wall. Not knowing what was on the other side of the wall, I brought a rope in the off chance we had to climb our way out. On the roof the ladder for the tower begins and I start climbing.

Let me give you a scope of this tower. It's divided into 7 painted sections alternating red and white. Each of those 7 sections has about 45 rungs, and the rungs are about 2 feet apart. Figuring in the initial wall we had to climb it all comes out to being about 650 feet high. The good news is the tower has three platforms so you don't have to be a complete beast and climb all 650 feet at once. However, it is a little more than 200 feet between each platform and the difficulty of climbing that ladder became all too obvious from the very beginning.

The first length was the worst for me. I didn't know what to expect and I was relying too much on my arms to pull my body up. Remember: When climbing tall ladders or even rock climbing, trust and use your leg strength. Grasp with your hands, push with your feet. Thoughts of quitting or falling too my death began circling around my head about half way up the first length, but I kept on a powered my way to the first platform. Ben and I stopped for a much deserved rest. Our arms were screaming and we were scared but confident. Thank God for adrenaline.

Platform One:

Platform Two:

Platform Three:

The Top:

Unveiling the flag:

Ladder of death

If you look real close at the top of the tower you can spot the yellow flag

Night-a-Bates

Oh, Bates West why must you elude us? Ben and I have been trying to get to the roof of Bates West for awhile now, but the only way is through a door that always seems to be locked. So after yet another disappointment of the door locked we decided to just go and explore Bates West's retarded cousin - Bates House.

Well let me back up. We did in fact do a bit of exploring in an attempt to get to Bates West's elevator shaft, but most all the doors were locked. By kicking a door open and knocking down some boxes we were able to enter Bates West's supply shop. Everything for our mechanical desires resided there. So if Ben and I ever need any tools we know where to look.

I don't really know what this is or why it was there. Creepy. On a good note, we found the Bates West blue prints!

Too bad they didn't help us in the least bit. But on another good note, I snagged some super hip safety goggles.

After searching through everything we could for treasures or manuals for the elevators (which we never found) we thought we should leave before our luck ran out.

On to Bates House where we scoured the premises for any secret entrances or ladders to roofs. Between Bates West and Bates House we found a hotbed of good news. It always starts with bad news though. That's just the way things work, because we had thought we found a concealed entrance to the Bates West underground (and we did) but the door was locked. What a disappointing motif. However, we found a ladder to the roof of the building connecting Bates and Bates West, which of course we couldn't resist.

I love how the steam from the kitchen is pouring off this building.

The only real problem with the roof was that it was too easy to get to. On our way back to our dorm Ben saw a tree auspiciously placed next to the roof we had just gotten on and suggested the challenge of getting on the roof via the tree.

So we had a go at it. (This is hard to see due to blur, but I'm in that tree climbing)

 

And we didn't end up dieing! There is the tree beside the roof I'm on. The climb wasn't too tricky but at the top you had to get on a small branch that you had to bend under your weight toward the roof enough where you could jump on to the building.

The best part of the night was the discovery of Bates' cafe's outdoor freezer, conveniently left unlocked during business hours. Can anyone say free bagels?

The Dirty Duz'n Does it

Yay! One show in the bag. Quite a fine show if I may say so myself, and to the small handful of listeners out there - Thank you. But hey, I just found out a way to record the show easily so the Dirty Duz'n podcast should be up after the next show and all you kids at home will be able to access us two whenever your heart desires.

If you have a 6 am radio show here is what not to do: Don't stay up until 3:30 am because you have to wake up at 5 am and it's cold and that is no fun. "3:30...am! Lucius, you're a mad man" I know. Deal with it. Nothing a hot bowl of Ramen didn't fix.

So after we had some hot food in our bellies and we'd rubbed the crusties out of our eyes, Ben and I walked to Russel House on a brisk Saturday morn. We got to the station on time and the DJ there let us in. Being in a rush and not really knowing what the hell I was doing, I was not able to record our first show properly. You have to record on this CD machine and it's confusing.

At 6 AM the Dirty Duz'n sprang into action and brought all of Columbia some down right funky hip hop and jazz with lovely narration by Ben and Lucius (otherwise known as DJ Dogface and DJ Horseman). If you missed out on this week you missed some dynamite talking. We talked about everything from how I can't spell to . We even advanced the entire field of radio broadcast by introducing the "Radio High 5". After asking for callers we actually had a guy call in on his way to work to tell us we rocked. That made our day. We love callers. So if you call in, we'll love you too. There were two other callers but they happened to be Ben's dad prank calling us, and then my parents calling in.


The whole experience was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do it again. Ben and I are hard at work making the show the best it can be to entertain to fool out of you guys, so tune in sometime. WUSC-FM 90.5 or wusc.sc.edu Saturdays from 6-8.