Listing Through Life

Got you wondering, don’t I? Here’s how it happened. To the left of the main jump there was a second, smaller jump with a wooden stairway along the edge. I spotted a couple people on the stairs taking photos, so I wandered over that way. There were no barriers and no signs. I walked right past a guy who was watering the main slope between rounds. He looked right at me and said nothing. So I started climbing.

The stairs ended about halfway up the slope below the big jump. From there I took this photo back down the hill. You can see how large the crowd was, and you can also see the plastic carpeting on the hill.

A couple other people came up the stairs behind me. They and the first two people started climbing higher along a narrow dirt path that ran along the smaller jump. There were still no signs or barriers and nobody seemed to be paying any attention, so I started climbing again too. When I got to the top of the hill, I saw that the others had actually climbed a ramp that reached right to the base of the jump itself. I followed. We were right at the point where the jumpers launched into the air! I think this is the 10-year-old kid.

OK, at this point I have to admit that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. But nobody seemed to care! Two photographers were on the other side of the jump, but if their equipment was any indication, they had some official reason for being there. Here’s a shot I took looking up the jump. The skiers were given a ride in a van to the base of the ramp I had climbed up, then had to hike up stairs to get to the very top.

When the round ended, the others headed back down the hill. I decided to stick around for a while. Six or eight minutes later, when they would have been hiking down the stairway, I heard the guy in the booth way down below make an announcement. “Would those of you on the stairway please head down. I know it’s a great place to get photos, but our insurance doesn’t cover you up there so you need to come back.”

Now what? As I thought about it, I realized I had three choices.

1. I could head back down the hill, but I would have gotten to the stairs well after everybody else had gotten off and I would have been pretty obvious to the entire crowd.
2. I could skulk off down the back of the hill and out a gate, or
3. I could brazen it out and stay where I was for the final round and then skulk off down the back of the hill and out the gate.

I chose option three. After all, the announcer hadn’t said I couldn’t be on top of the hill — he’d just said I couldn’t be on the stairs leading to the top of the hill.

I had about a half hour wait until the skiers were brought back up the hill and the final round began. I took this panorama looking out over the valley with the crowd way down below and the Fox River on the right. You can click twice on the image to make it a lot larger.

Here’s the view in the other direction.

Imagine being 10 and launching yourself off of that … While waiting for the next round, I sat on a cement wall under the jump. The skiers, when they climbed up, walked right past me as did several of their coaches. A guy drove by in a truck belonging to the ski club. He looked at me, but he didn’t say anything. Finally the round started. Unfortunately, my camera (or perhaps it’s me) isn’t up to shooting action shots in low light, so they came out grainy and blurry, but you can get a sense of what I was seeing.

The longest jumps were about 72 meters. I don’t know how that compares to winter or Olympic competition.

When the last skier had jumped, I did, in fact, skulk down the back of the hill and out the gate. I had about a half mile walk to the front gate where I took one last photo, then headed for home, still not entirely believing where I’d gone. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you carry a camera and look like you belong.

If anyone wants to go the the winter competition with me, let me know. But I think I’ll probably stay at the bottom of the hill.

Three or four times a year I see signs announcing a competition open to the public at the Norge Ski Club. I’ve wanted to go for some time, but I’ve always been busy — until this past June 13th.

In the summer, a carpet of plastic strips (think imitation hula skirt) is laid on the hill and drenched with water. It must work because shortly after I arrived and paid my $5 admission, people started jumping.

This was an unofficial “King of the Hill” competition. There were 13 jumpers, including:

• A 30-year-old guy from Norway who wore a pink suit with a hole in the behind and who wasn’t good enough to make it out of the first round.
• Three girls in their teens.
• A 10-year-old boy who made the final five.
• A 17-year-old guy who is the only ski jumper in the world with a prosthetic leg and who came in third.

There were perhaps 300 people spread around the bottom of the hill, including some celebrities such as Erik the Viking (left) and a former Miss Illinois (right). I know who she was because they introduced her when she sang the National Anthem.

I walked around to the west side to get the sun at my back. That’s where I got this photo.

I’d been hoping for something a little better than that, so I walked around to the other side and took this photo.

From the end of the run, I got this shot.

I still wasn’t satisfied, so I kept searching for a better angle to shoot from.

To be continued …

Several of my friends from work spent last Thursday evening at the Art Institute to see the new Modern Wing. Knowing that I am pretending to learn about art, they invited me along. Since I was heading to the city anyway, I decided to make a day of it. I arrived downtown around 10:30 and spent five hours or so doing various and sundry things (which will be the subject of future posts) before meeting up with the group at Corner Bakery for supper.

The new building is directly across the street from Millennium Park, and a walkway — The Nichols Bridgeway — leads from the park to the upper floor of the museum. I took this pan earlier in the afternoon while it was raining. I was standing at the midway point of the bridge facing east towards Lake Michigan. The mysterious circles that show up all over the place are raindrops on my camera lens — since the pan is made up of eight photos, the drops repeat across the image. I thought about trying to eliminate them, but then I decided just to leave it as it is and call it modern art.

I found the building rather stark and institutional. Here’s another shot from the base of the bridge.

The inside was as stark as the outside. Bits of art were scattered about in galleries and at the end of hallways. Here’s an example.

I wandered through the galleries of contemporary art by myself for a little while and found myself perplexed. I ran into a friend and we walked about chatting about why she liked the pieces she liked and why I liked the piece (note the use of the singular) that I liked (which she didn’t, by the way). Then I fell in with some other coworkers. It wasn’t long before one of us suggested we head toward the Galleries of American Art where the “real” art was. I heartily agreed.

I quickly found Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper (1942), which was on loan the only other time I’ve been in the museum.

We strolled around for perhaps 45 minutes. I saw a lot of paintings I liked, but I’ll get to them eventually in my Great Paintings series, so I won’t get into them here.

The piece that interested me the most wasn’t a painting but a table. The top was inlaid in an incredibly-detailed pattern of flowers using five or six types of wood and mother of pearl. While it was more ornate than I care for, the craftsmanship that went into the top amazed me.

After a while, I decided I’d had as much art as I could take in one day. I wandered through the Architecture and Design galleries for a bit. Some pieces of furniture were on display which didn’t seem to belong in the same museum as the table above. I’m not sure they even belong on the same planet.

Of all the art I saw (sculptures and paintings) during my trip to Chicago on June 11, this was the one that impressed me the most.

The plaque beneath the drawing reads:

Have No Narrow Perspectives

Ryan Oakes & Trevor Oakes (2009)

Having embarked upon various visual experiments since the age of 3, twin artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes have developed a method to trace the world before them onto a curved surface, completely freehand and by eye alone. Described as one of the most original breakthroughs in the rendering of visual space since the Renaissance; Millennium Park and the Department of Cultural Affairs in association with the Chicago Humanities Festival proudly present their first public sculpture.

I like it so much because ink sketching is the type of art I most wish I could do and this is the most amazing example of it that I’ve ever seen.