Halloween, Part 6

Having completed our photography session on the parking garage roof, and having fully psyched ourselves up, we piled in the van and headed for the elevators on the concourse level floor. Our friend dropped us off and we set off across the bridge to the main concourse.

Everything started out according to plan. We rode the escalators up to the main level and quietly skated along the end of the check-in counters in route to the aisles behind. I do recall that as we glanced at the agents at the ticket counters (it was 2am, there weren’t many of them) there were looks of surprise, concern, etc. I believe that we saw a few of them reaching for phones to alert the “security guards”. But c’mon, it WAS Halloween!

We made our way to the back aisle, assumed the “V” formation and skated the entire length of the main concourse. I don’t recall seeing anyone in particular, but what I DO recall was that we were in skater’s heaven – it was all we had imagined it would be and more. Wide, smooth terrazzo aisles, we moved in near silence, save the uniformed whooshing of our skates and the “this is AWEsome!” loud whispers now and then.

We reached the other end of the aisle and turned to head back to the escalators to exit the building back to the parking garage and be on our way…mission accomplished. What happened next happened very quickly. As we entered the check-in area, there was a “security guard” kind of jogging towards us from the counter area. He called out something to the effect of “Hold-on there, guys” and we all stopped and froze in our tracks. We didn’t want trouble; we had planned for this; we were just having fun. We’d explain ourselves, have a laugh or two about the whole thing and be on our way.

But as the guy got closer, one of us – I don’t know who – shouted “Let’s go!” and without a moment’s hesitation (I think there was a BIT of adrenalin – and some alcohol for some – involved) we all took off. We burst through the glass doors and out onto the road. As we looked back, we could see him using his radio calling for “back-up”. What? Was he going to rouse the other “guards” from their midnight cat-naps to come help him bawl us out? We weren’t going to stick around to find out… we were making for the van in the garage so we could get out of there!

As we headed down the ramps and doubled back toward the garage, it became obvious to us that we had caused a little more of a ruckus than we had intended. We got in the garage and realized that we had to skate the entire length of it to the elevator banks to make our getaway. All of the sudden, we had a very long ways to go and we were skating as fast as we could, as hard as we could, and realizing that we *may* have underestimated the impact of our actions. And then there were cop cars entering the garage behind us… CHASING us… with LIGHTS and SIRENS! And there were a LOT of them.

While this was extremely scary and we knew that we were in trouble, our only thought was to get to the elevators, then to the van, and then get out of there… as FAST as we could. We got to the elevators, pushed the button and waited. (Insert here a mental image of 7 VERY scared guys waiting *patiently* for an elevator in a lobby area while what seems to be the entire City of Seattle’s police force is very quickly ascending on them. Sirens are screaming, radios are crackling, and tires are screeching… do you hear the muzak in the background?). An elevator finally arrived and we all jumped inside. “Push the button! We made it! We made it!” That’s when one of Seattle’s finest made a great move and…

Wow… this has gotten really long. I PROMISE that I’ll finish it tomorrow.

Halloween, Part 5

My awesome friend found his pictures! Well – he found the negatives – and he was nice enough to get them developed, scanned them and then emailed them to me. I do not remember that we took all these pictures! This helped me to remember that in the course of the evening, we went a large open space in the middle of the University of Washington called Red Square.

Take a look! (Click to enlarge)

A ‘70’s-ish layout if ever I’ve seen one.

Practicing our “V” formation skating.

The effect would have been better without the flash. I’m number 2, second from the right. Remember – I’m topping out at 6’-5” – so we’re all pretty intimidating.

Oooooh! Scary!

Here we are in a group pic just before we got ready to assault the airport

.

Geared up, faces and lights on, ready to go! On the roof of the parking garage at Sea-Tac!

Well - now that you know what we looked like, I bet you're ready to hear the whole story. Tune in tomorrow to read what happened just a few minutes after this shot was taken

Halloween, Part 2

The first thing that we had to do was figure out exactly what we were doing. The year was 1980 and VCR’s and video tapes were just coming into their own. We rented the movie and got together to watch it. There were 7 of us guys that decided to do this together – we thought that would make a good “team” look.

We watched the movie and took extensive notes on their uniforms. I had never seen the movie before – it was a good flick – for the ’70s. After the movie we worked on sketching up the different parts we would need. It was going to take a lot of work to build these things from scratch and with not a lot of money, but we were all game.

My friend and his brother were the real brains behind the project, and they took on the lion’s share of the work. For each costume, we had to buy a set of football shoulder pads; football helmet; a football jersey (with the computer generated-type numbers on them); elbow pads; knee pads; shin and forearm leather wraps; gym shorts and black gloves. We also needed to install spikes in the gloves, and we also put them on the helmets. We added our own little twist to the costumes to help them better work for Halloween. More on that later.

The next couple of weeks were spent working on the costumes. We picked up the shoulder, knee and elbow pads at the local Goodwills and then spray painted and electrical taped them to make them all black. We all bought the same type of new gym short and gloves and helmets. We got some spikes and mounted them on the gloves, and we bought football jerseys and had the numbers silkscreened onto them. We also all sprung for new football helmets and painted them all just like the ones in the movie. My friends impressed me by going way beyond normal “guy” abilities and actually buying vinyl fabric, designing, cutting out and sewing all of the forearm and shin guards. We spent a bunch of late nights getting all this work done and then assembling everything.

But then we took it a step further. Our little twist was that we all bought white gallery-type plastic face masks to cover our faces. We then wired little red LED’s into them and taped them right above the slits for our eyes and mounted the battery packs in our helmets. We ended up with expressionless faces but our glowing eyes stared menacingly from behind. All said and done, we looked pretty darn scary. (I’m trying to find old photos as I write this and will hopefully include them as pics were before this little series is done.)

Look for Part 3 soon!

Halloween, Part 1

So – This will be a multi-post story. With Halloween coming up, this is the perfect time to tell of my greatest Halloween escapade ever. This is a story about a great idea that some friends and I had; a story about a bunch of guys getting together and really putting some effort into a project just for laughs; a story about having some of the most fun I’d ever had on a Halloween, a story about maybe having a little too much fun; and a story about love, passion, sacrifice, deceit and murder… Ok, maybe not the love, passion, etc. – I just threw that in to see if you were paying attention.

In 1975, a movie came out called “Rollerball” starring James Caan. You can read the IMBd on it here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073631/, or for a more in depth (including spoilers) review, go to Wikipedia. It was a movie set in 2018 (not so far away, now) where an international roller-derby type game determined corporate world dominance in basic human needs on a global basis. You’ll have to read the synopsis to better understand the movie, but the point that applies to this story is that the players on the Houston Rollerball team had these great uniforms.

The skaters were basically geared up like football players on roller-skates. And by the way, there were no such things as roller-blades back then, so get your mind wrapped around the old hockey skate style footwear.
The sport was a violent one so the uniforms were not only a form of protection but were also made for inflicting bodily damage. They were accessorized with sharp steel spiked gloves. Check out the movie poster to see what I mean.

We decided that it would be incredibly cool to recreate the uniforms as costumes for Halloween. Little did we know the work we had gotten ourselves into, the fun we were going to have, or the experience in which we would ultimately be involved.

Stay tuned for the next installment.