Utah 3: Island in the Sky

April 9, 2021April 9, 20211 Comment

On our second day in southern Utah we drove to a much larger National Park, Canyonlands. The elevation was a bit higher than Arches, and it was a cooler day with more cloud, so we even had a few flurries of snow as we made our way out to the Mesa Arch overlook. While Delicate Arch is the place to watch the sunset, Mesa Arch is the sunrise spot for people who like being around lots of people watching the sky go from a bit dark to a bit light. We went well after breakfast when the sun was already up, so it wasn’t too crowded. Canyonlands is so big it is divided into three sections that aren’t easily connected (there are literally massive canyons in between them): the Maze, the Needles and the Island in the Sky. They sounds a little like Marvel comics prisons or Dharma stations from Lost. We went to Island in the Sky, and it’s easy to see how it got its name. The plateau floats about a network of enormous canyons that seem impossible to believe, like you are inside an enormous IMAX cinema or looking at a vast painting. I have been to the Grand Canyon years ago and the impact is similar. Well it’s the same river, the Colorado, just further upstream. Canyonlands is where the Colorado meets the Green river, making all kinds of fun patterns on the planet surface. Out at Mesa Arch the family bundled up beneath a blanket while I spent a few minutes drawing, as best I could, and various people took photos inside the opening that looks out onto another world. I had decided that I would probably not attempt to draw any canyons, they would be a little bit beyond me, as someone who typically draws fire hydrants and pubs. I wanted to catch some of the colours I saw, but I also wanted to just stop and stare, and take in the vastness without thinking about how to translate that into scratches and splotches on a sketchbook. Below, a couple of photos, looking out toward Mesa Arch, another looking out at the Candlestick, and another of the strange and otherwordly Upheaval Dome, where we hiked to next.

Upheaval Dome was a place of some mystery, a large crater filled with rocks of a very different colour from those around it, like the remains of a large green asteroid. I hiked as far up on the overlook as I could, but there is a much longer and arduous primitive trail that runs around the entire thing and can be quite a challenge. Not a challenge we were up for. The second day was going to one of shorter hikes with massive views, so once we were done with Upheaval Dome we drove down to the Grand View Point for a really impressive ‘Grand Canyon’ moment. I can’t really get over how spectacular the southwestern United States is, and that the National Parks do such a great jo of maintaining them so that we can enjoy them respectfully. I spent a fair bit of time in the park shop that morning getting souvenirs and what not, including metal pains, so now I want to start some collection of those whenever I go to a new one, seriously, great idea but what am I going to wear them? Grand View Point was stunning. There is a massive maze of canyons that looks like a galactic animal footprint from above. We walked along the trail going along the rim, until the family could bear no longer to be on the edge of the cliff and went back to the car. I stayed out and hiked a bit further, before heading back to the Point and deciding, sure why not let’s have a quick sketch. So I got out the Moleskine and a pencil and started just quickly drawing as much as I could see. Around me I heard as many American accents as license plates in the parking lot. It’s interesting to actually hear other North American accents in person, living in California where the accent gets homogenized into TV American, the only time you really hear different US accents with any strength is in TV stereotypes. I added in some paint and then finished off later; it was snowing, though very lightly. I was pleased with the result though, this isn’t a type of landscape I would ever get much chance to experience. Click on it to see it in more detail.

We had planned to swing by Dead Horse Point state park after our day in Canyonlands, but decided that would be a ‘next time’ visit. We had our fill of amazing views, and the park experience was so different from Arches, so we drove back to Moab for dinner and rest. We had one more day in Arches to come before our long journey back home, and the next day we would be hiking some of the Devil’s Garden.

Utah 2: Delicate Arch

April 8, 2021April 7, 2021Leave a comment

When I was growing up I had this book on my bookshelf called “The Atlas of Natural Wonders”. It was one of those hardback books you get from mail-order book clubs, my dad got a lot of those for a while, so my bedroom bookshelf was always full of interesting things to read before bed. I had two massive books about Mammals; a huge book all about the settling of the western U.S. called “The West” (which I still have); books about Britain’s Haunted Heritage or Strange and Mysterious Things like the Beast of Exmoor and the Cottingley Fairies; books about ancient European legends of Magic and Wizards; two amazing books about old Horror movies which I would devour cover to cover, scaring myself with images of Lon Cheney, skeletons in big hats or hands coming out of an open grave; and I even had this massive dusty and utterly boring book about the Soviet Manned Space Program, though I think that might have been a library book that was never returned (or even read, but was pottering about the house for decades). But best of all was The Atlas of Natural Wonders”. It wasn’t an atlas at all but a book (in no particular order) about forty or fifty of the most stunning places of natural beauty in the world. I don’t know what criteria meant a place did or didn’t make the list, but to me the list was absolutely gospel, these were, as far as my young mind was concerned, The Best Places On The Planet. I resolved as a kid that I would go to every single one. It included places like Mount Everest, the Grand Canyon, Iguaçu Falls, Badlands, the Ürgüp Cones, the Great Barrier Reef and loads of other places. Right there on the cover (and thinking back, it probably wasn’t on the cover, but it imprinted in my mind more than anything else in the book) was the Delicate Arch, in Utah. I knew I wouldn’t make it to every place in the book, but at some point in my life I had to go there.

And now I have!

We had to psych ourselves up for the Delicate Arch trail. We watched some videos on YouTube and there is one particular bit where you walk along a ledge next to a big drop that I knew would be a bit of an ask, but we did it. The hike is described in the guidebook as a ‘moderate-strenuous’ 3-mile roundtrip, with a pretty big elevation up some slickrock; while it was more testing than most hikes we’ve ever done, I get the feeling that it’s more of a schlepp on hotter days. We had sunshine but no desert heat, perfect conditions really. We made it up to the scary ledge part, taking that easy, not looking at the big massive drop next to us, hugging the rock face, but we made it alright. I was more concerned it would be massively crowded, and while there were a good number of people up there it wasn’t as bad as it gets for sunset. I climbed up a little bit more for some good views but chickened out while scaling around the rim of the bowl to get a closer view. We were fine where we were, we sat and look, I drew on a little perch out of the way, we took some photos and geared up for the journey back down. There was some brave fool doing handstands on the edge of the cliff inside the arch itself, showing off, while up at our spot we had to wait a while to take a quick family selfie while a classic stereotype mother-from-hell with a massive camera and a compliant grandpa or someone holding up a special light took about a thousand photos of her two twin boys (Tarquin and Timmy they were called, though I didn’t hear their names being said) in their matching outfits. Other groups settled in to stake their spots for the sunset later on, like people waiting for the parade at Disneyland. It was a stunning view. The colours of the landscape were otherworldly. After we got our selfie and had our fill of the arch, we made our way along the Ledge of Certain Doom and back to safer paths, back down to our car.

Come to think of it, the chapter about Delicate Arch might have been titled “Rainbow Arch”, which is a different arch at a different park, but this one was definitely pictured. This is my memory reaching back over thirty years. I can’t remember all of the places in “the Atlas of Natural Wonders” any more, but at a push I could probably recall most of them. Those places I have been to already in my lifetime include: The Grand Canyon, the San Andreas Fault, Cheddar Gorge, the Gorge du Verdon, and… dammit, I think that might be it. I need to get a move on.

Utah 1: Arches!

April 7, 20212 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, we took a Spring Break road trip to Utah. It took two days to drive from California across the mountains and high desert of norther Nevada (which is a much wider state than I thought; you look on the map, there’s a town or two but a lot of nothing, but in reality there’s a lot of grand scenery) (plus a few prisons; we saw signs for ‘no hitchhiking’) We stopped off in the Elko for the night, which seems to be a popular place for sleepovers when travelling across the country. I-80 goes from coast to coast, even through Davis. We passed into Utah the next day, crossing the expansive Great Salt Lake Desert, followed by a lunch of Belgian waffles and frites in Salt Lake City, before crossing snowy passes and sandy valleys to reach Moab, in southern Utah. I feel like I’ve seen a bit of America now, outside of the Sacramento valley. If we’d have flown, we’d have missed all of that. (But next time we will fly). Moab is the gateway town to the two national parks of Canyonlands and Arches, and there are even more amazing parks in southern Utah to explore, such as Zion, Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef, not to mention various state parks. Now that we are officially hikers (we have the boots to prove it) we plan to explore more of these parks some day. On this trip, we started with Arches. We got into the park early, as all the videos say to do, and headed for the Windows section. That’s me above sketching one of them. My plan was that alongside our hiking and exploring I would stop occasionally to do quick pencil and watercolour sketches of the arches, taking no more than 10-15 minutes. This worked out well, so that we could have good rest stops. I practiced a lot of quick sketches before our trip, trying to find the right palette, the right approach, because this isn’t the same as drawing buildings at UC Davis. I started off with a quick sketch of the ‘Turret Arch’:

Next I sketched the ‘North Window’. There are two big arches next to each other, ‘North’ and ‘South’ windows, with incredible views over the plateau that makes up arches National Park. We learned a lot about how the arches were formed, that there was once a great sea here, and as the face of the planet shifted it was lost, but the salty waters evaporated to create a vast bed of salt, that for millions of years lay below the layers of rock, before it eventually evaporated causing the landscape to collapse into a world of arches and unusual rock formations. This is roughly what I remember. I want to study geology a lot more, looking at the rocks was illuminating. We are indeed fleeting specks in the lifetime of the planet; but what specks we are. I’m glad the National Parks exist to help protect these landscapes. They call the National Parks “America’s Best Idea” and I can’t really disagree there. It’s right up there with democracy, s’mores and having Diana Ross take a penalty at the 1994 World Cup opening ceremony. The Windows section was a good way to get oriented with the park, do some fairly easy short hikes, and take in the breathtaking landscape of red rocks and petrified dunes.

We then walked over to the nearby Double Arch. There were a lot more people in the park by this point, and the parking lots were filling up. We looked at a site that showed us the busiest times of day for each parking lot and planned accordingly, I’d say we couldn’t have planned it better. The Double Arch (not to be confused with the “Double O” Arch on the Devil’s Garden trail) was one that I had practiced sketching, but of course being there in person the real thing raises the heart rate. I felt like Anakin Skywalker would come whizzing through them in his podracer, chasing down that slimo Sebulba. I drew this in pen (the only one I did in pen). There was a family from India we spoke to, some of the kids went into the arches and played some music to make big echo sounds. The acoustics were surreal. I didn’t climb far into these arches myself, but could have spent all day looking at them , drawing and cacthing the light as it evolved through the day. But we had many more arches to see. I’ll write about Delicate Arch in the next post, that is the one everyone knows.

take a hike

April 4, 2021Leave a comment

I nearly called this “Hike and Subscribe” but I’ll save that gem for a future post. These are my new Merrell hiking boots, I got them from REI. They are super comfortable, it’s like I have this massive protective cushion around my feet. I’ve had hiking boots before, I used to like wearing them years ago in England as regular shoes, but these were very much bought for the purpose of hiking. We planned a trip to Utah last year to go hiking around several National Parks that my son had done a project on for school, most looking forward to Arches. Then the Pandemic hit (I don’t know if you heard about that) and we had to cancel the trip, but we decided to book it again for Spring Break 2021, with me and my wife part-vaccinated and going by car instead of flying. So, we needed new gear. They went through a lot of different hiking boots and hiking shoes before they found ones they were kinda happy with; I pretty much bought the first pair I tried on. I don’t like trying on lots of shoes. These worked out really well. We went on a shortish hike to test out our new equipment, as well as our new backpacks (my wife got one of those hydration packs in hers; after our test hike I decided I should get one too, reaching back for the water bottle being a waste of energy). We went to Stebbins Cold Canyon, near Lake Berryessa (not that far from Davis, it’s a preserve actually managed by UC Davis, but we had never been there), walked along the easier hike, and I did a quick sketch, because I wanted to practice doing quick watercolour sketches for the Utah trip. It was pretty rapid, though I said to my family that I plan on doing quick sketches of 10-15 mins so that they can rest for a bit from the hiking, a good plan. So below is a quick sketch of the canyon; I’d like to do the higher trail next, overlooking the lake. It’s so strange to me that this is actually very close to Davis, but we’d never really been out here, except for a couple of drives up to Berryessa (to see the excellently-named ‘Glory Hole’). The Davis landscape is so flat that to be suddenly walking in all these dramatic hills is an eye-opener. In fact the preserve had only reopened a few weeks before, having closed during the terrible fires of last summer. Much of this area was severely damaged by the wildfires, and we could see the evidence of it all around. Such devastating loss of habitat, so many burnt trees and plants, but it’s encouraging to see that life returns; life finds a way. So, now we are officially Hikers, and I’ll post soon about our epic trip to Utah.

things are moving along

April 2, 2021April 3, 2021Leave a comment

Another one from the UC Davis Teaching and Learning Complex being built next to the Silo. They have put some glass over the front area now, so you can see the reflections from the buildings opposite. I didn’t have long to draw as I was on my way to a Zoom meeting so I did what I could and left it at that, rather than finish anything later. It seemed really important to include the sandwich board in the foreground. You’ve seen the Silo next to it a million times so no need to add all the details in there. Further down the road, Walker Hall is pretty much ready for use now, just awaiting opening. I’ll get to take a look around next week! I’m not sure when this building will be open yet though, but hopefully before Fall when we are planning a full in-person return to campus (fingers crossed). We’ll see. So it is April now, we’ve pandemic for over a year, I just heard that the Davis school board voted last night for kids to go back five days a week in a couple of weeks’ time – things are moving on. Our youth soccer team is now allowed to play friendly games against other teams, albeit masked up and with very limited spectator capacity. Cinemas are planning to open over the next couple of months, reduced capacity. Places are all going at different paces but this is where we are now, vaccinations are moving along well, but we know this ain’t over yet, and we’re working form home for quite a while yet.

Speaking of being at home, I got a Playstation recently (PS4; I’ve not had one since the PS1 mini I had in the late 90s, loved that little thing), and last night I finished the Miles Morales Spider-Man game. That was a really fun game. I don’t play a lot of video games but I do love Miles, and the graphics were incredible. I’m going to play the earlier Spider-Man game, but I’ve a few others I want to try out first; I got the 2020 Formula 1 game (full price, wish I’d waited a month or so) which is well hard, but I love Formula 1. Really enjoyed the first race of the 2021 season on Sunday, the Bahrain Grand Prix, great finish from Lewis and Max. I love football, but I bloody love Formula 1.

stop right now, thank you very much

March 31, 2021March 31, 2021Leave a comment

I drew this one Saturday afternoon early March, one of those times I just needed to go out and draw something, stopped on Fifth Street because it’s usually pretty sketchagenic. I like the way shadows hit shapes. I’m also constantly amused by the ‘cross traffic does not stop’ signs, because I’m a dad and it’s a typical dad joke remark. “Annoyed traffic speeds up” and “furious traffic runs red lights” and so on. “Polite traffic says, no after you, please, after you.” Stop signs are fun. They literally say “stop” which is not really open to interpretation, though people sometimes read “unless you just slow down and roll through”, or in the case of half the cyclists in Davis, “unless it’s you because you’re special.” The other half of the cyclists do stop at stop signs and red lights; I’m one of them. The thing here though is that cars just assume you won’t, which I suppose is fair enough, college town with a lot of new cyclists, but it’s when I do stop at the stop sign, after the car has stopped, and I wait for them to go, and they don’t, they just sit there at the stop sign waiting for me, even though they got there first. I’ve already stopped and they decide not to go and wave me through, by the time I realize what they are doing, another car on the other side starts going and it’s all very, huff huff , grumble grumble, at least in my British head. I don’t like the roads. Sometimes at red light crossings on t-junctions, if I’m about to cross the road (by foot or by wheel), it’s green man (well, ‘white’ man) or cycle crossing light, you go out and suddenly a car or a bike has jumped the red light and is hurtling right at you. I suppose they figure, well I may as well go since I’m not turning, what’s the difference. As I say, it’s been as many cars doing this as cyclists on the junction near my house. There aren’t as many cameras here as in London, where if you stray into the bus lane for a couple of seconds you get a huge fine in the mail days later. One thing about Davis though, we are considered the cycling capital of the US (the US Bicycling Hall of Fame is right here on the corner of B and 3rd, so we must be) and this was the first town in America to get bike lanes, and our bike lane system is extensive and well maintained and signposted. In general cyclists and vehicles get along and share the road. It’s a cause of great smugness from me and other Davis people who agree (not the ones who don’t). That said, the start of the academic year is always a bit of a free-for-all – campus between classes is like the Tour de France on steroids (ie, it’s like the Tour de France) when you really just avoid all roads and roundabouts lest you want to be mangled in a pile of metal, oily chains, textbooks and limbs. Downtown though in October, it’s like an episode of “Cops” on steroids (ie, it’s like…). Well, that’s an exaggeration, but the local police do conduct little stings where they’ll have an officer waiting at certain busy cross-junctions to flag down and cite (or at least educate) cyclists who go right through the Stop signs. It can be pretty dangerous so it’s good to nip it in the bud, and word gets around. I remember when the campus police force would also stop cyclists who cycled at night without a light, and rather than cite them they would hand out bike lights. Education is always good. Things always calm down a bit more in the cycle lanes by the time November comes around.

This building on Fifth, I think I’ve sketched before but this is the one involved in the tragic shooting of a young police officer Natalie Corona in 2019 a block away, I think this was where the murderer came from, and went back to, and was eventually found by the police before taking his own life. It was a terrible event, and I always think of that now when I’m down this part of the street.

I needed a milkshake after sketching this. I had a delicious chocolate milkshake from Baskin Robbins downtown, and trundled home. I don’t get those milkshakes much any more so it was a treat.

chevy on oak

March 30, 2021March 30, 20211 Comment

I like these types of truck. There’s something very ‘Pa Kent’ about them. I’m not a fan of modern American trucks which are more along the line of macho monster truck take up as much room as possible macho nonsense, the ones that stick out too far at parking lots and have their headlights up higher so they can blare directly into the windscreens of more normal-sized vehicles. Everything’s bigger in America, and if it isn’t, then GM have a way to help you overcompensate. I love this one though, especially as it’s all nice and shiny, and the shade of cerulean blue, slightly teal, is lovely. It was parked out on Oak St a few times and I cycled past thinking, I must sketch that some time. So in mid-February I did. Those are the sports fields of Davis High School in the background. It was another of those windy days we had a lot of in February.

Vaccine’s feeling a lot better today, two days after second shot. Yesterday the body was feeling very fatigued, but the seasonal allergies were kicking up as well. Hopefully the rubbish-joke side-effect has cleared up now. I thought I’d post this sketch since things are starting to pick-up…

shots away

March 30, 2021March 29, 20212 Comments

I drew this one quickly on a late lunch at the Silo on campus after going down to Kaiser Vacaville to get my Pfizer vaccine. Yes, I got the Pfizer at Kaiser, from someone called Eliza, while drinking Tizer, and I was none the wiser. I hate getting injections usually. I get nervous, then I feel a bit of a prick. Sorry, I should have sounded the “old joke about injections” alert. Still I was in and out just like that. Had to wait fifteen minutes to see if there were any side effects, but there were none, except I went straight to best Buy Vacaville and bought lots of Microsoft products. Sorry, I should have sounded the “boring joke about having a strange desire for Microsoft stuff after getting the Covid vaccine because stupid people think Bill Gates is trying to implant microchips in you” alert. It’s internet law that you have to say that joke at least once. My arm hurt a bit. Now I’m just after having the second dose and my arm hurts again, and I feel a bit fatigued all over, and I keep getting pop-ups saying “there’s a problem with your Microsoft account”. Sorry, couldn’t help myself. It’s not even funny (not that that has stopped me telling a joke before, I hear you say). There are better jokes. For example, many places are offering drive-through vaccinations, so when I tell people back home that I got shot in the arm in a drive-by they’d think I’m all gangster. No, no they wouldn’t. That one wasn’t very good either. In Britain they call them ‘jabs’, which after sixteen years away sounds odd to me. Unless it’s Steve Jabs, and when you get the vaccine you want to buy an iPad, and oh, no don’t bother with that one either. Honestly the best I’ve been able to do is say I got Pfizer at Kaiser, and rhymes aren’t necessarily that funny. The woman who gave me the shot wasn’t even called Eliza, and they don’t have the drink Tizer over here. Nobody in America knows what Tizer is, or Lilt, or Tango, or even Vimto (but Vimto’s disgusting). Tizer is a sweet red fizzy drink I can’t fully explain, but it reminds me of Vic Reeves as Noddy Holder. I could have said I was drinking “Crystal Geyser”, but that wouldn’t work for me because as a Londoner we pronounce it “geezer”.

Ok here’s one. “I got my vaccine the other day; they kept the needle in there for ages, several minutes. I asked if that gave me a better chance of not getting the virus. They said, well it’s a long shot.” Hey that’s not bad, is it, I might use that at a staff meeting or something. Maybe not. That’s the sort of joke you tell at the dinner table at Christmas, and pretend you read it on a piece of paper in a cracker, because you’re too embarrassed to admit you came up with it yourself.

Still, it’s better than the other ones. This Pfizer vaccine isn’t too bad for the side effects, apart from this fatigue, and the bad jokes. If I’d got the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, well that’s only one dose, so I’d be just calling it the “Johnson”. If I’d got the Moderna vaccine, that’s the one Dolly Parton helped fund, which is “nine-to-five” percent effective. Yeah, these jokes are awful. This must be one of the side effects (what was my excuse before?). The last time I felt this bad the day after doing shots was one night in Vegas. (And so the run of bad jokes continues…)

the longest march

March 29, 2021Leave a comment

And so March 2020 finally ended and March 2021 began. It’s what it felt like, right? That’s what we all say. That super long March, remember back in May 2020 when we’d say “oh, today’s date is March the 70th” or stuff like that. That’s what people say, in their Tweets and their Witty Remarks. I am writing this in late March 2021, the day after receiving my second Covid vaccine, over a year after the pandemic officially began. I’ve learned of a word (from Rick Steves), “vaccication”, the first vacation you might have after being vaccinated. We had a road trip to Utah last week to go hiking in Arches national park (I’ll post the sketches soon, what a place), but flying international might still be a way off for us, with how things are, though I hope it’s not too long before I can get back to see the family in London. In the meantime, more Davis. This is Cooper House on the corner of 4th and F, I have drawn it before, but I really liked how the shadows were falling on the white wood as the sun was setting. What was I listening to when I drew this? Probably something about football, or history. There is so much football these days. I remember this time last year when the football stopped, the floodlights went out, and football podcasts were suddenly free to be more creative, and not just go on about the latest VAR incident in Newcastle vs Crystal Palace or whatever. they would talk about old seasons, great teams from history, they would have fun football quizzes, and maybe talk a bit about the Belarus league which was still going on. When the German Bundesliga restarted, earlier than other leagues, we all became Bundesliga fans and far more interesting in the goings on at Schalke or the tactics of Julian Nagelsmann than ever before. Now it’s game after game after game after game. As for history, well I suppose there is just as much history as ever, but last year we would get more episodes about the Black Death, or the Plague of Justinian, or the 1918-19 Flu Pandemic (given the misnomer at the time ‘Spanish Flu’, as they were the only ones reporting on it since other European countries suppressed their news during World War I; in fact the flu outbreak apparently began in Kansas). Just what you want to hear. Speaking of which, who is looking forward to all of the films or TV dramas set during the pandemic? No, me neither. In fact I suspect there won’t be that many. Looking back to Shakespeare, there were disease outbreaks in his time, when people were quarantined, theatres closed – the plague outbreak of 1592-1594 for example, and another one between 1603-1604. Some of his plays like King Lear may have been written while on lockdown, though they didn’t have Zoom in those days so thankfully he never got his company of actors to sing “Imagine” line by line, or whatever was the equivalent back then, “Greensleeves” or something. Shakespeare may have made plague references that his audience would well have understood, but he didn’t come right out and make a Plague Play. Though if he did, perhaps it would have involved social distancing or self-isolation: The One Gentleman of Verona, for example. Richard ill. Julius Sneezer. Coriolonavirus. “The Comedy of Errors” speaks for itself with how certain governments handled things last year. Thinking about it, Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene was pretty well socially distanced. Shakespeare was also a fan of masques of course. I did watch a number of the Globe Theatre’s productions on YouTube during the early months of the pandemic, they offered them up free (I did send donations). Back then, FIFA were also posting a lot of full-length classic football matches on YouTube as well, which I watched gleefully (that Argentina-England 86 game, well not as much of a close classic as I remember, England were dreadful and deserved to lose, even if Maradona scored with his hand). I also watched a lot of old Formula 1 races, while the motor races were also stopped. Sport is back, but theater not so much yet. Cinemas are starting to return, slowly, tentatively, and I can’t wait to get out to the movies again, as much as I love being sat on my couch. I also sketched a lot at home, drawing every room in the house, but now at least I’m back drawing outside and glad for it.

duel of the freights

March 20, 2021Leave a comment

We get long freight trains rolling through Davis. Those really long ones like you see in movies set in America, that roll across the country, miles long, maybe with a hobo in one of the cars warming his socks on a fire and ripping yarns and tall tales. In fact you might say Davis exists because of the railroad; the Union Pacific railroad build a railway triangle here after getting hold of the land from the farmers Jerome C. and Mary Davis. They are who Davis is named after actually; originally it was ‘Davisville’, but the town’s first postmaster, William Dresbach, decided ‘Davisville’ was too long for the very small envelopes they had back then, and shortened it to ‘Davis’. That was over a hundred years ago; presumably it will be shortened again someday to just ‘Dave’. It’s ironic then that old Billy Dresbach’s house, which is still standing downtown, now has the ridiculously long name of ‘Hunt-Boyer-Dresbach House’, which was ok because they developed the technology to make larger envelopes by then. This particular stretch of railroad is near my house in north Davis, where the big metal rail cars are parked for a while so that graffiti artists can finish what they were doing last time. I sometimes run along this way in the mornings. The trains aren’t always here; I came back a couple of days later to draw another section but it had gone. It’s been a while since I drew the trains, but I was just so into all the colourful graffiti I couldn’t decide which cars to draw, so I did a panorama. Workmen clanged about by a rail car further to my right, welding this and that, while I listened to an Adam Buxton podcast, an interview with Torvill and Dean. If I had interviewed Torvill and dean I would not have been able to stop myself from doing the music, pa-paa-pa-paa-pa-paa-papapa, the one they did for the cinemas. And then there would have been an awkward silence, and Torvill and Dean would have said, um, yeah, this is awkward, um, that wasn’t us. And then I would realize that I was thinking of Pearl and Dean. Which would be embarrassing, but at the same time would make a funny story to tell people later. Especially if it was true. I would have asked Dean if he still heard from Pearl, and for balance I would have asked Torvill if she still saw Keith Harris. Look I was a kid when they were famous, yeah. There were lots of double acts when I was a kid, it was hard to tell them all apart. I was always drawing, I was too busy to lift my head up to actually pay attention to anything, unless it was Tottenham, or Formula 1. Oh how times have changed. But there were a lot of double acts, you had Rod Hull and Emu, you had Rod Jane and Freddy, you had Little and Large, you had Cannon and Ball, you had Hoddle and Waddle, you had Dempsey and Makepeace, basically everyone was a double act. At this point in my pretend interview with Torvill and Dean they are getting ready to walk out, but I convince them to stay, that I would take it seriously. And as soon as they do I’d say, I’m skating on thin ice now eh. I have personally only ice-skated once in my life, when I was 15 years old, in Austria while I was on a school exchange trip. I couldn’t do it. It was cold, I fell over a lot, I had absolutely no idea how people actually moved. People would get on the ice and suddenly off they went. I actually took my skates back and said the batteries need changing. I also had Gluhwein for the first and last time then too, I think it was more glue than wine.

The graffiti looks good on the side of these trains though, adds a lot of colour and turns them into a moving art gallery. I don’t live so close to the railroads that I hear them at night any more, but when I lived in south Davis I was a little closer to the main line that runs east-west and at 1am when the big long mile-long cargo train would roll through it would make my apartment rumble slightly. Even here though we do feel the vibrations of the earth moving slightly, it’s not earthquakes, it’s those long trains. Or maybe it’s bears or something. I liked drawing this panorama though. Click on the image for a closer view.