Extreme Border Sports

Well, I may have at least found a partial answer to the question from my previous post: could the fence be transformed into a kind of bridge to at least begin the process of deconstruction, towards a structure that unites?
Well, in this case it certainly hasn’t helped to progress any type of border fence deconstruction (that’s for sure), nor has it really helped to unite U.S. and Mexico in the sense of creating a more open border – but, without a doubt, the border fence in San Diego (at least for some indeterminable amount of time) had been turned into a bridge. Literally!
Check it out.


Apparently, yesterday, some Customs and Border Patrol Agents discovered a rather clever ramp system that had been mounted to both sides of a lower level of fence nestled up against another kind of extensive boulder pile there to help act as a de facto barrier. So sophisticated in fact, the ramps could be assembled, used to drive over the fence, disassembled, and the tracks brushed away all in a matter of minutes according to this report. Wow, that's a serious job.


After following a suspicious truck bolting off from Route 94 towards Mexico, this article tells us, the agents were led to a scene where “20 people had crossed into the U.S. and put up welded metal ramps over the top of the border fence.” Upon the BP’s arrival they all took off back into Mexico but the ramp was left behind and, well, we got some good pics right here for ya.


Look at that thing, pretty bad-ass, actually. The truck that was stopped contained “60 packages of pot valued at $735,000” weighing 916 pounds. That’s some serious cashish right there.


It just amazes me, the types of ingenuity that go into these little secret infrastructures of informality, particularly in and around the border.
In case you’re a new reader, I‘ve been trying to track some of these under a category that I’ve loosely referred to as Improvising Sub_Base landscapes. Mostly, border and smuggler tunnels, but there have been some fascinating tales of smugglers using rope and pulley schemes underground across the border, too, that I have learned about adopted from old Vietnam tunnel-warfare tactics. Of course, a border ramp is nothing exotically novel, but certainly nothing I’ve come across yet. The typical border-crosser ladders are about the closest thing.


But, it also gets me back to my original curiosity of what the border fence could theoretically and imaginatively become, perhaps even ludicrously out of context. For example, maybe both sides could rig up dozens of more of these ramps, properly reinforced, to host a kind of border derby using the fence as a massive stunt superstructure; dune buggies busting flips off the fence, soaring back and forth from California to Mexico in amazing aerial loops, like border-crosser daredevils, almost as if it were some long-winded skate ramp. That coud be cool, too. Turn the fence into a transborder skate park. Cross-border derby stunt jumping contests could become the new craze. Extreme Sports would host annual skate competitions down there, BMX rats would develop insane new tricks off the old useless rusted sheet metal. I mean, come on, that'd be awesome! Why not?

[All images have been heisted from this article on the NBC News website, where there is also a video: Agents: Drug-Smuggling Ramp Found At Border.]