Riding the Standing Wave in Fayettenam

Surfers ride wave, tasty waves, in the immortal words of Jeff Spicoli. I enjoy skateboarding. I have skateboarded since I was a kid, and recently after watching Dogtown and Z Boys got re-inspired about the board sport. I must have watched the documentary at least ten times. It hit a chord for several reasons. One, I grew up in the 70's, and I relatively am the same age as the Z Boys. I also grew up in Fayettenam, one of the toughest towns in the southern United States. I went through the usual quiver of early skateboards, but the turning point was receiving a Gordon and Smith Fiberflex with Bennett Pro trucks and RoadRider 6 wheels. "What a Cadillac ride!" It simply was the best skateboard available at the time, and over time I learned how to ride it better than most kids in my town. There were a few hardcore guys that had surfer-type bodies and rode better than I did. I subscribed to the "stick men" school of freestyle, because that is all we knew at the time. Pool riding was coming in on the west coast, but the photos in Skateboarder Magazine didn't easily explain the surf style of skating the Z Boys were using. It was only when the film came out, after many viewings and study, I figured out their style. These men were surfers, "First and foremost" as Skip Engblom states, and that style of semi-slalom is what the Z Boys applied to the skateboard. Skating is what they call it, but because I also roller skate quite a bit at the local rink, I think of it as skateboarding or asphalt surfing. I failed to realize in adulthood how much skateboading shaped my life for the better. I lost all my baby phat riding that board, and I learned agility and grace. I found out how to release energy and spirituality through art. It also gives you an identity that was very similar to how I grew up, in a community racked with social classism. There were and still are in Fayetteville, North Carolina clear lines of 'demarcation' concerning money. There are the elite rich and the uneducated poor. There is very much a fine line geographically between the two. Because the children of these rich in Fayettenam were assholes, we had no aspirations of becoming friends with them. They attempted to abuse us. Finding a niche such as music or skateboarding was a haven for survival and adjustment. We never looked back. Twenty five years later, although my rational mind knows there is no money to be made in the world of skateboarding, it is still enjoyable and a magnificent release of stress. You literally ride waves within the city limits, as best possible under the juris scrutiny of the law and the rich builders of shopping malls and such. One beautiful thing riding a wave temporarily solves is blowing off the effects of diesel created infrasonic pollution. Infrasound is low frequency sound below 20 Hertz the human ear cannot hear. Instead the human body can feel it. Alarmingly every diesel engine creates an infrasound wave because of the firing rate of its cylinders. Diesel engines fire much more slowly than their gasoline counterparts, a paltry 60-100 revolutions-per-minute. That breaks down to, according to the rev rate of the engine, 1-2 cycles per second. That in audible terms is an infrasonic wave. The inherent noise and vibration of a high torque diesel engine is transmitted great distances via this built in carrier wave. Seismic data suggest infrasound waves travel not only hundreds but thousands of miles across the globe. When a locomotive sits idle with the engine still running, it will create a "standing wave" because the source of the sound never stops. Unlike a jet plane that flies over and then disappears into the horizon, idling locomotives continue to pump out their invasive wave non-stop when the engine is running. In Fayetteville that equates to a weekend with the lovely Norfolk and Southern. Their engine of choice lately seems to be the C40-9W, the most powerful DC freight locomotive in existence. For some reason they do not use smaller switch engines like the Aberdeen and Rockfish. Their roster consists of an aging fleet of GP series locos, from 10 up to 40. CSX-T likes to use a GP-40-2 with modular electronics to switch the short line to Fort Bragg. Supposedly that is the Cape Fear Railway, a shortline of CSX, but I have never seen anything to suggest that even exists. The Army loco roster lists only two locomotives at Ft. Bragg, an aging GP-10 and 15. Who's to know considering they run simultaneously. Like today the Aberdeen and Rockfish has two locomotives, Norfolk Southern has one, and CSX-T has many all operating with a square mile of one another. That makes for a judicious amount of infrasonic pollution, if that sort of thing bothers you. You can't hear it necessarily, but your body can certainly reap the ill effects against its will. This past weekend there was a standing wave in our home, a non-stop infrasound wave that pressures the inside of your house like a constantly banging drum. You can both hear the drum of the engine and feel the vibration in your bed. There is not much you can do to fight its effects other than suffer with joint pain, irritability, and blurred vision. Why would private businesses such as these be allowed to pollute our towns to such an extent with no repercussions? What other privately owned business is allowed to block intersections and create noise and vibration so freely with no penalty? The answer would probably be the "iron horse" built this country, and the railroads have always been in close collaboration with the federal government. The railroads are crucial to our defense department for hauling much of the war paraphanalia to port en route to the Middle East. Are these waves detrimental to our health? NASA studies have shown they are. The effects are fairly well documented, yet doctors continue to try to treat symptoms because there is no clear way to eliminate the source, the railroads. Back in the 80's, a decade many proclaim as one of the best, many of the railroads were near bankruptcy. Our fearless Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, came in and merged Seaboard Coastline with the Chessie System to produce CSX-T. The shit has never stopped hitting the fan since then. The world would be a cleaner and more sane place if all those big turbo-charged, infrasound producing locomotives were shut off for good.