I saw these pictures the other day and knew I had to put them on the blog. How long can hair like that stay hidden from the public's eye? Not forever. That's my boy Brian, and he's got the meanest lion's mane you've ever seen in your life. When he so chooses to grow it out, it's pretty amazing. I guess that's all I wanted to say about these pictures. I was thinking of a story that has nothing to do with Brian's long hair, and I was thinking of some way to tie them together, but I can't. So I won't. I'll just tell you the story. But before I do, I have to point out that the kid sitting next to me in the library is laughing hysterically watching a Mr Bean movie. I think it's "Johnny English" or something. Mr Bean just accidentally squirted a guy that wants to kill him in the eyes with a dysfunctional pen, rendering the man physically incapable of seeing Mr Bean... So I thought of a funny/scary run-in we had with the cops some years back in San Bernardino, and I thought I'd share it. Keep in mind that as I'm writing this story, I'm being distracted by hysterical laughter from my neighbor. Ok, so when I lived in California, Garrett would make a trip down to skate with me every couple months. It was always super fun, we'd eat cookies that my mom had made us for breakfast, skate all day and just drink water, then go to Olive Garden at night. We'd only order soup which was like $3 and had free refills, not to mention the free bread sticks for dipping. With the tip and all, we had a $5 meal. We'd sit in there for a couple hours and get like 4 bowls of soup each. The waiters and servers undoubtedly hated us for stinkin g up the restaurant from having skated and sweated all day and for wasting their time and giving them a $1.50 tip for an hours worth of work. Like I said, we had fun. So there's this rail in San Bernardino that we wanted to skate, it's a perfect 7 stair. Everyone skates it in videos now, but nobody knew it at the time. I like to think I pioneered tricks on that rail, although I know I didn't. But regardless, I like to think I did. So Garrett, my friends PJ and Donovan, and I went to this rail Saturday afternoon to skate. It's at a highschool, and we never had any problems skating it on weekends. But this time we only skated for 2 minutes before a cop pulled up and kicked us out. He was unusually mad at us for skating (San Bernardino is super ghetto, and cops have a lot of other things to worry about than skaters. When I lived there it had a higher crime rate than Compton- the highest crime rate in Southern California. Let me give you an example of the neighborhood we were in: one time we were skating at this same school at night. Then two cars pulled up in the parking lot and like 8 dudes got out and were looking in my car. I yelled at them and started riding my board at them, and they got in their cars and drove off real quick. I was scared and wanted to go, buy my friend was trying to land a trick on the rail. Then a minute later, the same two cars followed by a third car drove by again and started circling the school like sharks or something. I told my friends we were leaving, but they just handed me a cell phone and said, "no, we're fine. If anything happens, just hit the call button." I looked on the phone and they had 911 on speed dial. It was their special 911 phone that they always had ready to go when they left the house in case they needed to call the cops. It was a crazy neighborhood.). Ok, so the cops have a bunch of other stuff to worry about, but this cop was way mad at us. I tried reasoning with the cop, but PJ told me right in front of the cop, "Don't even try, he's the Terminator." The cop didn't oppose to his title and held his ground. After we left, PJ explained that he was infamous in San Bernardino for having literally chased skaters down for hours until he tracked them to their very homes, came to their door, and arrested them for trespassing. He would spend the entire day chasing you if it meant bringing your sorry punk-A justice, he just wanted to see you go down in flames. Hence the name "The Terminator", he doesn't stop! He never stops! We still wanted to skate the rail, so we got some lights and extension cords from my friend and went back at 1 in the morning to skate the rail. Normally PJ and Donovan would be totally down for a night session, but both of them said that if The Terminator had been spotted in an area, it wasn't safe to skate for at least another 24 hours. I thought they were crazy, but they held their ground. So Garrett, Dustry (from St. George), and I went to the rail at night and plugged in the lights to skate it. We parked the car in the back of the school behind a dumpster, and we were hidden behind 7 foot high brick walls while skating the rail, so nobody could see us. At least nobody that wasn't already expecting us... We had only set up the lights for maybe 2 minutes before Dusty said, "There's someone at your car!" We looked through this gate and saw a cop car with its lights off driving behind the school straight to the dumpster where Garrett's car was. It was The Terminator!!!! We cut the lights and just watched for a minute. He got out of the car, went behind the dumpster, and looked into Garrett's car windows. Then he slowly walked back to his car, turned on the spotlight, then shined it right at us. We were caught! We ducked down when he did, but he already knew we were there. Then he turned off the spotlight then just started running towards us. Like the T1000 in part 2, he had the same run: lifting his knees really high and swinging his arms out in front of him. He started weaving in and out of these tennis courts that stood between us and him which bought us a minute or two of escape. We had to act quick, so we came up with a quick plan: Garrett would get the car and Dusty and I would pack up all the gear. Garrett would pull up to this fence in front of the school, we'd give him the lights and stuff, then we'd get in the car and get out of there. I was shaking SO bad, I thought we were gonners for sure being trapped in that school with the Terminator. So we gave Garrett a boost over the wall and he ran on the sidewalk then ninjaed his way back to his car. It was an act of true heroism going out like that alone against the Terminator. Garrett got Medal of Honor for that one... Dusty and I didn't waste a second in getting all the lights ready to go, and by the time we had gotten everything ready, a car pulled up to the sidewalk right in front of us. Garrett had run like 200 yards to his car and driven back with his lights off in maybe 30 seconds, it was pretty amazing. We handed the lights and everything through the fence, I remember Garrett running back and forth from his car with arm loads of extension cords and skateboards, and we all had this serious, scared look on our faces. We got all the equipment through in just a couple seconds, then Dusty said, "Jon, let's go!" He had his hands ready to give me a boost, so I stood on him, he lifted me up, and I wiggled around on the top of the wall, getting ready to jump down. Then I thought, "Well how is Dusty going to get up?" I looked down and Dusty got back like 15 feet, then charged the wall at full speed. He let out this amazing grunt yell that gave him superhuman jumping capabilities, and he landed with this chest on the top of the 7 foot wall! In one solid motion, he flipped his body up and over the wall and was down even before me. I picked up my skateboard that I had thrown over the wall, and me and Dusty ran for the car. Garrett was already in the driver seat with the lights and everything packed up and ready to go. We got in the car and Garrett got out of there without wasting a second. Dusty kept telling Garrett just to drive normal, don't speed, and we drove a couple blocks away. My heart was hammering, and I kept looking behind us, expecting to see the Terminator running right behind us. But we made it onto the main highway, and were safely on our way home. I couldn't believe it, we had escaped the Terminator!!!!! What had been one of the scariest moments of my life then became one of the most exciting moments, we all laughed for like 20 minutes straight. It was pretty amazing and scary all at the same time. I like to think that the Terminator got to the rail just seconds after we pulled out, and he couldn't make it back to his car in time to catch us. Looks like you let one get away, Terminator!
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