Hello Shadow (old)

Hello Shadow

Taken By Goo



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Turkey Vulture (old)

A Hawk

Taken By Goo



This is a shot I took of a hawk soaring over Levis Mound whilst I was mountainboarding.

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Why Aren’t There More Mountainboarders?

By Goo

Written 4-23-06

I cannot understand why there aren’t more mountainboarders in this world. I mean, to me, its just such an appealing sport. You challenge yourself continually by trying new runs and tricks and such, and when you succeed, you receive such a gratifying surge of satisfaction that there is nothing that I can relate to you that will effectively translate the feeling in words unless you have mountainboarded before. (Its really neat, because you don’t even have to be good to get that feeling. Just bettering yourself is awesome!) And, to top that off, there is the thrill of speed and/or the thrill of weightlessness, coupled with the possibility of serious bodily injury at any moment! It is such a rush!

But maybe some people don’t get pleasure from that type of thing, I don’t know, because otherwise there would be tons more riders all over the place!

I think the biggest reason that there aren’t loads of mountainboarders ripping around all over the place is because I’m just weird. (Well, not just because I’m weird... more like every mountainboarder.) I guess I (mountainboarders) must be weird to get a kick out of intentionally throwing myself in harm’s way. I’ve heard the term “Adrenaline Junky” used to characterize such people as myself. Maybe that’s just it, maybe I’m an adrenaline addict, and like no one else is. Yeah, that kinda makes sense, because the massive bunch of drug addicts outweigh the adrenaline addicts by a ton. But what do you do with the stoners who are adrenaline junkies, too? Wow, now we have a quandry. Sounds like laundry. Oh well, move on. Maybe not move on, because I’m pretty much done and wrapped up. Hoorah!

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About Randomer

By Gregory Heil

4-20-06

Note: This was written as the intro for the "Randomer "In Print" Volume 1" publication.

You may have just pulled this publication out of your mail box and gone “Hey, this is from Greg Heil! But what the heck is Randomer? I remember when he used to publish the Clark County Gazette, but that was ages ago.” Well let me tell you that all of your questions will be paired with answers in just a short bit.

Now, to get everyone on the same page:
In case you did not know, for quite a few years when I was a kid, I published a “newspaper” of sorts which was basically comprised of my writings and other random stuff. Well, I eventually kinda grew out of that stage, and pretty much stopped writing altogether. I think it happened about the time I started going to public school, which may have been to blame. Yeah let’s blame the rotten public school system, hoorah! (I wonder how many teachers are going to read this. That will be a laugh!) Well my life changed dramatically, a lot for the better, some for the worse, who can tell. But anyhow I arrived in English class last year. That is where the beginnings of the idea of Randomer first started forming in a dark recess in the back of my skull, but it took a while to become something. Basically, Mr. Worachek and his stringent rules/guidelines pissed the living hell out of me. It makes me really mad, really really mad, when someone tells me how and how not to write. But for the moment I was just really pissed off at English class. Then, in American History and Biology, we did this project on the Monkey trials of 1920 something, which was basically a whole evolution deally bob. Anyhow, there were several different roles you could do, and one was journalist. I was like “Hey, I know how to do that, that’ll be easy, I’ll shoot for that.” So I decided to do a special edition of the Clark County Gazette for this school project, and it was mostly rubbish articles about the mock up trial etc. etc. But, there were some articles outlining the past of the CCG, and some of the views that I have expressed earlier in this massive paragraph. Now we are getting really hot, because that was it. I started seriously thinking about writing again. I came up with the actual concept of Randomer, where I right about any random thing. The beauty of the name being that it is not actually a word, showing my flagrant disrespect for English class etc. and any laws that come along with it such as random things that prohibit run on sentences even though they can be so cool to use because they are so absolutely random that no one would even know what had hit them once they got done reading said sentence because it had strayed so far from the original topic that they couldn’t even remember where it started so they will have to go back to the beginning just to remind themselves because I’m going to be mean and not tell them where it started so ha. Another part of the original Randomer concept was to do it online, because about the time I quit writing I took up website design, so I decided to combine the two passions into one.

Let's start a new paragraph, just for the fun of it. That basically brings us up to the start of Randomer. The first news update on the site was May 5th, and I’m aiming this newsletter thingamajobby to be complete just about then. Also turns out that May 5th is El Cinco de Mayo, which is pretty random. How neat. So this is the one year anniversary of Randomer, the Randomer “In Print” issue.

So in case you haven’t caught it yet, what Randomer essentially is, well it’s a website. And it is updated many times a month. The URL is www.randomer.sphosting.com so please go, check it out, and enjoy. But Randomer is not just a website; it's an idea, actually more of an ideal. But I’ll talk about that a bit later.

As for what is actually on the website, you will find:
-Writings by me
-Writings by Ben
-Many pictures by many people
-And even some videos

If you’re interested in contributing, let me know.

A little bit about the contents of this publication:
None of this was written specifically to antagonize anyone. Or maybe it was. I’m never quite sure. Oh well. So if you do end up taking offense to anything written herein, well then it must really suck to be you because you’re one of those people who take offense at every fricking thing someone says to you. But if you feel the need to voice your opinion, I totally am down with that and there is a message board section on the website (http://randomer.sphosting.com) where you can do just that and say whatever you want. See, that’s one of the founding principles/ideas behind Randomer:
We should all have the freedom to express our opinions and beliefs how we want to, and not have to conform to someone else’s rules or standards. So use the message board to write whatever you want, and maybe I’ll publish it if I really like it, who knows.

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How it Feels to Be Obsessed Like Me

By: Goo

I am extremely obsessed with several different things. My winter obsession of choice is skiing. To me, skiing is not just a pastime that I take part in once a month. No, obsession is the correct word. Every single chance that I have to go skiing is pursued with the utmost priority. There are very few things that can divert me from my snow-plans. Work? No! School? No! But there is one thing that comes between me and skiing. The one person, the one being, the one focus of an activity that can consistently persuade me to not go skiing is God. But second to God, skiing reigns supreme!

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I Wish

By: Goo

Written 4-12-06

I wish I was one of those inspired writers who can just go and write... and write lots. Writers who can just go and put down a story in ink. Me, I haven’t written a coherent fictional story since Worachek forced me to write one. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that he effectively disemboweled any chance of creativity. It had to be done just so, created along the lines of his demented infrastructure.

I really think that has left my capability to transfer my imagined situations to paper scarred and damaged. Hopefully it is not beyond repair.

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Breaking Trail

By Goo.

I’ve never had so much trouble climbing a hill.

The thought flashed across my cranium and I regarded it as truth without even the slightest examination. Immediately following that thought, another one came:

I must be doing something wrong.

That one lingered for a while. I must be doing something wrong. All summer long I climb hills and mountainboard back down them without the aid of a lift, and here I am, exhausted on this comparatively short hike. I was breathing as if I had just run a marathon, but it hadn’t been more than a couple hundred feet. Breathing... that’s it! I’m simply not used to this type of strenuous exercise at this high of an elevation! Well, onward then.

Five minutes later, and nothing was better. What else is inhibiting my ascent? Then I subconsciously settle upon what the problem was: the snow. With every step, I would sink in well past the knee and have to unbury that leg a step later. “Well,” I reasoned, “that’s why I’m hiking this slope, isn’t it: it’s covered in virtually untouched, deep powder!” But what I wouldn’t give for a pair of touring bindings and skins. Onward it was.

Should I turn back?

I was immediately repulsed by this preposterous thought. Turn back? Me? I hike up hills and go back down them at high speeds. That’s what I love to do! Now, I’ve decided to hike up this hill and destroy the powder on my way back down so that’s what I’m going to do.

Eventually I reached the top, and after a short break to enjoy the view, made all of the toil very much worth-while.

When I reached the bottom, I realized that I understood several concepts that relate to big-mountain skiing that I never before had the ability to grasp:

The term "bottomless powder." Not that I have already experienced it, but soon... sometime soon.

Why some people spend hours skinning up a mountain for 1 run down.

But the one thing that I had always wondered about and now understood best of all: The term “Breaking Trail.”

Me, after reaching the top.	My tracks, going along the top of the hill.
Looking down the hill.	Looking down the hill.
My gear at the top of the hill after the hike up.	A stump at the top.

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Mountainboarding

Mountainboarding


4/9/06

By Goo

Nathan, Brent, and I went mountainboarding today. AJ tagged along and streetboarded some. But today wasn’t just any old day spent screaming down a hill on a board.

We had been riding 5th Street near the school, and it is quite a nice hill. Probably one of the best hills in Neillsville, and you can really get a good head of speed up. Well this guy was driving along and he was like “How fast do you go on those things?”

I responded, “I dunno. You wanna clock me?”

And he was like “Sure!.”

So I bombed straight down at about as high of a speed as I could muster and he followed me down, and turns out that I got up to about 30 miles per hour by the time I hit the bottom of the hill. That’s not too shabby! But the thing of it was, I didn’t even feel like I was going too stinking fast. I bet I can go faster!

Our riding came to a premature end when a cop pulled up beside us. He talked really quiet, so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. But I think I got the gist of it: “Some loser called in a complaint, right during the middle of my afternoon nap. Now I had to drive down here and yell at you punks. Now scram.” (told you I couldn’t quite hear him, so I had to paraphrase. I dought he was really napping, although that would have been hilarious.)

Well well it looks like the cops have finally taken the time to tell us off for mountainboarding. Looks like the way we look at street riding has changed forever. Dang Neillsville is so stupid. “Lets make a law banning skateboarding over the entire town. If anyone wants to skateboard, let them do it at the skatepark.” What a way to make the average kid hate authority. Wait how about the law banning any kid from loitering near downtown? How is that for senile? I vote we put some people into public office whose brains can be seen without using a microscope.

But then if you look at most people, they enojy watching us mountainboard around town. I talked to an elderly lady who was really nice who had lived on top of that hill all her life, and she came out to talk to us and see what we were up to, and she told me about how she used to sled down that hill when she was a kid. And then there's that dude in the truck, who was more than willing to take time out of his life to clock my speed. So why is this lame ordinance even in existence? It is totally bogus!

I guess we'll just have to avoid capture. Who can say dreamboarding?

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