Thoughts of Dad.

From jimexpress44, via Flickr. Check out Jim's great big rig photos.

This isn’t about design, shoes, or prototyping. It’s just about a little memory.

I didn’t travel much this summer. But last Friday night we were on an isolated stretch of 580 surrounded by a few big rigs. Trucks, summer, and empty freeways always remind me of my father.

My dad is not a trucker. He drove a school bus for years to supplement his teaching income. He did drive quite a bit however. While I was a kid my family spent several summers traveling throughout the US interstate system.

I wouldn’t characterize my father as overly talkative. But he does vocalize things that catch his curiosity. His fascination with a rock formation or a car with a flat tire usually evoked the response, “Hey, look at that! I wonder…”

Of all the things my dad saw over the years, there’s one that sticks with me to this day. The signals from big rigs.

Since our family of eight was packed into a Dodge Colt, which, as if it wasn’t strained enough, also towed a pop-up camper, we got passed a lot. Even trucks hauling tons of lumber passed us on any kind of grade.

During the day, there wasn’t much to the experience. At night, it was a whole different story. The truck would over take our car. The diesel engine rumbling, then fading. And then, one the rig was beyond our car, he would signal. My dad would turn our lights off and on. The truck would move back into the slow lane, and then the lights on the back of the truck would blink in a manner so delicate I’d almost forget it was on the back of a big rig.

I was so proud of my dad for understanding this hidden language. He’d explain that trucks signal to each other as a way of letting the guy in front know that he’s clear. It seemed like a sort of teamwork. The fact that the trucker “thanked” us, felt as if we were allowed to play with the big kids.

To this day, I still love that subtle communication that happens in the isolation of a dark freeway. It does wonders to relieve the boredom of a nighttime drive. And as an adult, I’ve been fascinated by the way that communication has become so much more elaborate. The lights now move in orchestrated, playful patterns, like an old-school casino sign.

Sometimes I get so tired of thinking about design. It’d be nice to have a break. I’d love to cut a tomato and not imagine the connections between food service, waste, poverty and manufacturing efficiency. But then I experience something like the blinking lights on a big rig and I’m reminded of how wonderful it is to be curious, to have a mind and to be able to imagine.

That curiosity is a connecting thread.

Paddling the Bay

I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 10 years. One of the many things I love about this city is the fact that it’s surrounded by such amazing bodies of water. During my time here, I’ve often found such comfort in the space that I find while I’m on the water.

Sadly, I’ve been getting on the water less and less lately. Some of it is that I have less time. Graduate school both energized and focused me. The odd thing about doing what you love, however, is that it becomes much harder to shut it off or let it go. And while I know that a creative team might need down time, it’s far more difficult to build that in to my own life.

Short of forcing myself to relax, I’ve figured out a project that will allow me to play creatively while still getting the break that I find so necessary. My plan is to get a stand up paddle board and trace the coastline of the San Francisco Bay. For those of you that don’t know, a paddle board is basically a really big surfboard that has enough volume to float a 190-pounder person like myself. To start I was thinking of doing a modified loop of the bay using the main bridges boundaries. If it goes well and I have fun, I thought I could do a longer route, and actually cover the whole bay.

The initial plan would be to go from from the Golden Gate along the north end of San Francisco, to the Bay Bridge, then up along Berkeley and El Cerrito to the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge then down the Marin inner coast to the mouth of the bay, and connecting the loop at Fort Point. Originally I thought the first test loop could be all the way down to the San Mateo bridge, but that’s about 80 miles or so. My rough calculations (using Google Maps and Photoshop) puts this at around 40 or so. So depending how fast I paddle, that’d be about 5-8 sessions, spread out over as many weeks. I’ve never done any considerable distance paddling, so who knows how much ground I’ll be able to cover each week.

Although I’ve spend so many hours on the Bay and Ocean, I’ve never taken the time to explore the coastline, especially not from the perspective of the water. The parts of the Bay and ocean that I do know, are the ones best suited to wind and waves. Exploring the bay, seems quite different, and honestly, quite a bit of fun.

I was thinking of taking photographs at intervals to map the coast line similar to the California Coastline Project. Or even taking completely un-scientific samples and assembling them as some sort of art project. The USGS has an interesting project, but the data is totally unintelligible to me. If that’s really what I was after, I suppose I’d spend my time figuring out how to sync that data base up with some slick flex app, but the point of this is to get me away from work, not more entrenched in it.

Design principles: Have fun. Produce nothing of value.

Step one. Get a paddle board.