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Frozen Tuolumne

2012-01-13T08:46:00.000-08:00

This story begins on the drive back from the Bay Area on New Years Day after a fun weekend there. As day darkened to dusk along I-80, Matt texted to ask if I'd be keen for a last-minute trip to Yosemite the next day. This premise was made possible by Tioga Pass being uncharacteristically open; it's not maintained after the first big snow, but that hasn't happened (!), so it's clear and dry. If Tioga's open, it's under 3 hours from Reno to Yosemite, but an easy 5-6 if Tioga's closed. Unfortunately, Ethel had to work the next day, but I was off, and the promise of an unfettered photo mission was too much to pass up.

Unpacking from the previous trip entirely out of the question, I departed Reno at an ungodly hour for Matt's house after flinging all available camera gear into the car, and we were in Yosemite by daybreak. We spent a couple hours exploring some of Matt's favorite little spots near the top of Tioga, and then we continued down into Tuolumne Meadows.

Boiling hole

Tenaya Lake (and all the others) were frozen solid, the result of many cold and clear weeks prior. Still cold from the night when we arrived, we were intrigued but not totally surprised to find some people ice skating. What we weren't prepared for, however, were the short-sleeved throngs that would emerge as the day warmed. At any given time after the sun emerged, there were a couple hundred people recreating on the lake.

Barren lakescape

Usually, with a huge snowpack and Tioga Pass closed, the only way into the glorious Tuolumne high country is a 15+ mile ski, an effort that's undertaken by some, but certainly not easy access. Seeing this terrain in January without the snowpack and with trivial access is literally unheard of.

Domes large and small

Our early start had given us the luxury of time, so we spent the day meandering back and forth through the area. We left Tenaya for a while and headed back just over Tioga Pass to check out the wildly frozen outlet of Ellery Lake. While a spectacular sight, this icefall was guarded by a stiff wind that kept us from venturing too near any of the really good vantage points. The landing would not have been a fun one.

Frozen outlet

Mini-cavern

Happy to have avoided certain death at the icefall, we headed back through Tuolumne to hang out at Tenaya for sunset. Along the way, we saw our only wildlife of the day. The 'yote wasn't too interested in letting me get close to him, adeptly sauntering away at the same pace I approached. Perhaps chasing him with a 500mm lens wasn't the best way to ensure my stealth...

Local color

Back to Tenaya well in advance of sunset, I spent a good long while totally freaking out on making photos of bubbles in the ice. Sounds mundane, but just you wait...

Matt was set up on the lake with his digital camera, his 4x5, and his 8x10. Somehow, I felt like he'd be covering most of the angles down there, so I headed for higher ground and scurried up a nearby peak. Some heavy clouds had moved in, and we both thought we were gonna get skunked on light. I was so convinced that I started hiking back down when a faint beam of red light hit me in the chest, and I got treated to about 5 minutes of exquisite colors that really only appear in high country like this. The gap between the clouds and the horizon was so narrow that it was a very rapidly evolving show, over far too soon. Worth the hike!

The view east

The view west

After a solid 10 hours of uninterrupted photo mission, we slunk back to Reno after acquisition of some tasty Monoritos in Lee Vining. All in all, it was a super long and interesting weekend on many counts, and absolutely worth the lack of rest. Who'da thunk we'd be able to cruise Tuolumne via Tioga Pass in January!

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Shattered

2012-01-08T06:47:00.000-08:00

Today marks a curious anniversary for me: one decade ago today, I had the dubious distinction of breaking both of my legs in a snowboarding accident. This occurred before the blogosphere was ticking along like it is now, and even so, it's not a go-to conversation topic for me. However, to mark the occasion, I'd like to spend a few minutes sharing the story.

Screwed

In the closing months of 2001, the world is still reeling from 9/11, the tech bubble has already burst, and I am a senior at MIT. The fall semester is to be my last hard one; spring only holds one class and a thesis. My primary extracurricular concerns are beer, mozzarella sticks, and escaping the horrid east coast "snow" for something better to make turns on.

On January 8, 2002, I drive to Kirkwood with 3 friends, looking forward to a great Tuesday of snowboarding. The snow will be hard until late morning and the mountain is empty, so I elect to start the day on my race board, a Burton-made beast that's equal parts scalpel and cruise missile. To a large degree, it's a device that screams "does not play well with others," and that's a good part of why it's awesome. The feeling of riding this thing at speed is hard to describe, but I'll do my best.

Strap into thinly-veiled ski boots, and click them into plate bindings that sit at a 45-degree angle along the length of the board. Awkwardly scoot along to get on and off lifts and through loading zones. Formula 1 cars are not built to idle at stoplights, and this board is not built to do anything but haul ass. Get underway, then look a few turns ahead and pick a line, taking care to note locations of obstacles and snow irregularities, as well as to calculate the trajectories of other mountain guests. Pick up speed with your back to the mountain, riding on your heel edge, and then, when the time is right, engage hyperdrive. Bend your knees, load your quads, and steer with your shoulders. The board snaps hard from the heel edge to the toe edge, and the turn starts. You're downhill from the board, a seeming violation of the laws of physics, but the g-forces created between the board's edge and the snow suspend your body in mid-air over the run. Those forces build as the turn continues, your quads bearing the duty of keeping your torso from collapsing into the board. At the apex of the turn, your body is laid out over the snow from knee to hip to armpit to hand, and your dilated pupils watch the ridges of the groomed snow streak past faster than your visual cortex can keep up with. As the turn concludes, the g-forces subside, and your body re-enters the land of the living just long enough to load the tail of the board to set up that glorious weightless snap back to the heel edge where it all happens again. There's no slipping and no sliding and no "maybe let's go over here and check out this other spot," and by the time you've exceeded the speed limit of most highways with your face inches away from the snow, your legs are a quivering mess of jello, and the only evidence that you've struck is a series of deep well-defined trenches in the snow with gaps of many feet of wholly-undisturbed snow between turns. You are a ninja, and you've got about as much in common with the other snowboarders as a shark has with a sea full of goldfish. Welcome to the top of the food chain.

When it's right, it's one of the most pure experiences out there.

It's an addictive feeling, and I am giddy with caffeine-free anticipation to plug into it at Kirkwood. On our first run of the day, I survey an empty trail save for my three friends ahead of me and begin the process described above. Not even one turn in, and just beginning to pick up speed near the treeline, I watch another snowboarder exit the trees without looking uphill. He's about 15 feet in front of me, and the nature of committing to a turn on the race board gives me about half a second of realization that no quick maneuvering will be possible before the collision happens. The front of my board strikes the back of his binding, his first indication that I'm there. My legs stop instantly while my upper body continues on, and both tibias and fibulas experience about 200 times the force of gravity before they snap inside my boots (yes, I did the math). Before I slide to a stop, I know that both my legs are broken. As the waves of shock roll over me, I'm not yet able to realize that my life has changed. It will take years to come to terms with it, but the tenth of a second that it takes for my legs to go from whole to pieces will be a defining moment beyond any I've experienced to date.

The first hour or so is excruciating. Unable to medicate me at the mountain, the clinic staff mediates the battle between bone shards, sweet sweet shock, and blistering pain as best they can. They perform some rudimentary traction on my right leg, and it's from this particular batch of seconds that my all-time milestone of pain comes, still easily recalled to this day.

The ambulance ride brings Dilaudid, a heaven-sent gift of opioid escape.

I don't remember much of the hospital, probably a blessing considering the racks of power tools they have at standby. They move my kneecaps aside, drill into the top of each tibia, ream out the bone marrow, select titanium-vanadium rods to fit snugly down the length of the bone, pound them down, drill self-tapping screws through the bone and each rod, and staple me back together. I come to under the purvey of a morphine clicker, an interesting little device that teaches me a thing or two about chemical dependence over the course of three days. I'll be damned if I don't learn to wake up every seven minutes and fifty-five seconds to catch the 8-minute lockout on the thing before I go back to sleep.

Chunky

The next weeks bring bed and not much else. Once I'm able to be a little bit mobile, I can move around in a wheelchair; I'm to be 100% non-weight-bearing for 8 weeks. After returning to Boston, exceedingly grateful that my final semester will be a light load, I start to learn about accessibility in the old city: I can't make it two blocks to physical therapy without encountering multiple obstacles that are non-navigable in a wheelchair, and I'm also unable to enter my own house without being carried up or down the stairs. I also learn a few dark lessons about how people look at and act toward wheelchair users. After those 8 weeks of purgatory end and I'm able to use crutches (another 8 weeks), my world expands leaps and bounds thanks to a more nimble form of transportation. I'm still only allowed to bear weight evenly across my legs, so taking a step is out of the question. Hey, at least my arms are ripped.

Finally, desperately, I'm cleared to bear more weight, which comes with it the task of relearning how to walk.

The previous 4 months have been filled with sleepless nights and dreary days of longing for activity and recreation. However, it's not until the walking lessons begin that it really rings clear: something I've taken for granted since before my earliest childhood memories can be wholly unlearned in a trivial amount of time. Something as simple as self-ambulation is not a gift to be trifled with; it can be snatched away with the greatest of ease. It's in those weeks of relearning what balance is and how to move about without making the metal in me hurt that I make a promise to myself to never take mobility for granted. Every day I will make the most of it, whatever form it might take, and I will remain grateful for it as long as I have it.

It's during one of those sleepless nights (early on) that I discover a mental process that allows me to move healing energy down to my legs; I can feel healing happen in real time. It's a mild epiphany; a departure from the science-ruled world I've known all my life and from the engineering curriculum I've been ensconced in for four years.

The next year is relatively uneventful. The mild course load allows me to finish MIT without much trouble; a blessing considering the amount of physical therapy I'm doing. However, walking hurts, an attempt to run a quarter of a mile ends in some comically ginger hobbling, and so much as stubbing my toe sends vibrations up the rod in my tibia and makes my knee scream out in protest.

At the one year mark, the hardware gets removed.

I feel more than a little bit crazy to volunteer for more surgery, more bed rest, and more physical therapy. It's much better this time around, and it's all in the name of progress. The pain isn't as bad and the rehab is far easier; no wheelchair and only a few weeks of downtime. Snowboarding is wholly out of the question until at least the following winter; two full years off the snow and away from my beloved pastime and sole spiritual escape from the hustle and bustle of the world. As a bonus, I've now got a couple pounds of exotic metal in a bag to serve as a reminder of the whole ordeal. And two sets of gnarly scars.

Wolverine-style

Now with renewed spring in my step, the desire to return to the mountains burns stronger than ever, but there's a nagging doubt. After all, the last time I went snowboarding, look what happened! Along with my promise to myself to take full advantage of my new-found mobility, the desire to strengthen my legs to sustain the rigors of cliff drops and hard turns the following winter leads to an interesting proposition. I'll enter a triathlon, a little short local one, and if my legs survive that, surely they'll be ready to get back on the snow. After all, I swam and played water polo through high school, I've got a mountain bike that's fun to ride, and I do run a couple times a year, up to and including three miles!

The swimming and biking training isn't too bad, but running is a different story altogether. With substantial pain on board, the most I'm able to run before the race is a mile, and it ain't pretty. When the race rolls around, I'm counting on relying on pure determination to run the five miles, and that works out kinda OK, but it's some rather humbling moments on the bike where I'm passed by women in their 50s that really go to work on me. I'm wrecked and hooked, all at the same time.

Finally, the winter brings a return to the snow. The first few days are filled with abject terror anytime another skier or snowboarder is within 20 yards, but that fear subsides soon enough. A few storms into the season, I return to Kirkwood, and in addition to visiting The Spot, I take a spectacular high-speed tomahawking fall down a steep powder slope and come up whole. Confidence is regained!

Fast forward a few years, and changes have been happening left and right. Jobs come and go (all for the better), friends wax and wane, and I finally discover travel. My approach to sport shifts dramatically; both physical and mental games get raised a few bars. On the snow, I ride progressively harder and harder lines, terrain that used to scare me to even look at. In the world of triathlon, I come to relish the feel of competition and the process of improvement at increasingly difficult races. A fortunate combination of circumstance and opportunity takes me to New Zealand to live, further fueling the fire to explore more of the world and expanding my love for sport. I meet a nice Irish girl there, and she's alright, too. Fast forward a few more years, and changes and growth are still the name of the game.

If you've made it this far, hats off to you.

What's this all about? Well, there's no doubt that if that fateful day a decade ago had played out differently, it's not as though my life wouldn't have changed in the meantime. There's also no doubt that it wouldn't be the same it is today. And I'm not enough of a fatalist to think that my "bad day on my snowboard" set this exact course that I've followed for ten years thus far. However, the fundamental shift in perspective that it brought about has opened up paths and opportunities that would have remained shrouded from view had I not been fortunate enough to experience it.

I'd also like to state that, really, I had it pretty easy. There are FAR worse injuries one could sustain, FAR less brilliant surgeons (thank you from the bottom of my heart, Dr. Rupp), and FAR less complete recoveries. Maybe it was a wake-up call I was in dire need of. In any case, I certainly could have reacted to it far differently. Done the victim thing. But deep down, there was a sensation of warm and fuzzy opportunity that I couldn't ignore, and it's to the point now where, ten trips around the sun later, I'm glad it went down the way it did. I wouldn't go as far as to recommend that you go step in front of a bus to bask in the glory of some life-changing surgeries, but if it happens, make the most of it.

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Alum Creek by Night

2012-01-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

After our daytime trip up the canyon, Ethel very rightfully suggested that the waterfall up top could be worth a nighttime photo or two. As the sun set and the temperature plummeted, we skipped the hike and rallied the Jeep up the dirt roads that access the foothills and above. The canyon is well out of sight of the roads, but we knew the spot, parked, and scurried down into the canyon just meters away from the waterfall.

Alum Ice I

Alum Ice II

Alum Ice III

It was absolutely frigid in the canyon, and we were both anxious to warm back up as we could have been dressed a little better. There were other opportunities at the waterfall, but the creative process was pretty well stymied by the temperature. I was hoping to make another nighttime trip, but within a couple days, the weather dramatically turned even more anti-winter, and most of the frozen creek melted out. So that's a bit unfortunate, but I'll overlook the missed opportunities and be eminently grateful that I got what I did!

Bonus Reno photo

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Alum Creek by Day

2011-12-30T13:22:00.000-08:00

Ethel and I found ourselves in Reno over Christmas weekend, and we decided to spend the morning of Christmas Eve hiking up a canyon that we frequently run through. This canyon is usually snowbound through the winter as it sees no sun, but the lack of any snow combined with cold temperatures changed the landscape quite a bit. Alum Creek managed to freeze in place, a rolling, bubbling white ribbon snaking its way through the canyon.

Stairsteps

Suspended

Tumbleweed Island

Roots and frothy ice

Alien landscape

Ice room

Profile

The section of the canyon we like to run is steep, but it's only a couple miles long and we're usually through it in 20 minutes. Walking sure slows the pace! By the time we made it to the waterfall at the top and then back down, 3 hours had gone by. The best part is that the waterfall absolutely warranted a return trip under the cover of darkness; those photos are up next.

Here's to hoping everyone has a brilliant New Years holiday.

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The Gray Area

2011-12-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, I got invited to take a peek into a facility that represents a huge cultural taboo as well as a source of endless debate on States' rights, legality, and morality. I'll go ahead and stop you now if you're looking to pick a fight on any of those preceding points, and also add that this post is about drugs, so there's your fair warning. My obvious disclaimer is that the crop in question is one that I neither use nor possess, and that I have no ties whatsoever to the facility in question or any others like it, so don't be getting your panties in a wad.

So, on a weekend morning in the not-too-distant past, I was driven to a building in California that housed a legal marijuana grow operation. This nondescript structure stood out in no way from the surrounding buildings, and until I was led past some sparse furnishings and into a warm, humid, and tight space that housed some number of flourishing pot plants, it could have been any old flat.

There were patient prescriptions posted prominently on the wall, not unlike a restaurant's business license, except that these allow the operator to cultivate six plants for each scrip. The walls were otherwise littered with watering and lighting schedules, with tabulated details lining out the specific methods designed to maximize the yield from each plant. The crop from these plants was wholly processed on-site, then transported and sold to the cannabis clubs in the Bay Area.

In the eyes of California, this entire process was legal, but the current federal legislation directly contradicts California, creating a rather sticky gray area that is simply the reality for any of the thousands of growers in the state. They play by California's rules, all the while hoping that their specific operation isn't large enough to garner any attention from the Feds, who make a point of swooping in on big grow operations just often enough to keep the war on drugs alive in the media.

The money is great; revenue per square foot eclipses what most shopkeepers or factory owners could only dream about. And without doubt, the successful growers ain't your average hippies. Fanatical about the particular strains they cultivate, they provide each and every plant with rabid attention and care. It's all about yield, and every detail in the growing space is tended to with maximizing yield in mind, from thermal efficiency and light color and coverage, to fertilization and tricking the plants into as many grow cycles as possible. Finished product is shipped to labs for analysis and documentation, the results of which are provided to the end users in the clubs. The nuances between each strain are prized features, branding if you will, and cultivation of sought-after strains is a matter of pride.

So that's all well and good, but why the hell was I there? Because, up close and personal, it's a fascinating and beautiful plant. I had jumped at the opportunity to photograph the operation, and it turned out to be more of a glamor session for the grower's babies. He pointed out the differences between the several varieties he had, and I got absolutely as macro-nasty as I could in the limited time I had.

After ducking my head and camera and flash between as many of the plants as I could, my time was up and I was driven back to my car. It's a mighty curious standoff between the State and the Feds, but until it's resolved, growers will do what they can to reap the rewards without drawing too much attention.

We'll return to our regularly scheduled programming now.

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Plan B

2011-12-13T20:36:00.000-08:00

Mirroring life, sometimes we leave the house with a particular goal in mind, only to return with different and unexpected bounty. Such was the case last Saturday, when Murphy and I saddled up hours before dawn with every intention of photographing an eclipsed full moon setting over the Lake Tahoe basin.

Instead, we observed two forces working against us: first, the fact that a totally eclipsed moon ain't that bright; second, that a bank of low clouds at the horizon rendered the highly-preconceived, lack-of-sleep generating, shivered-for Money Shot an utter impossibility. Of course, confident 'til the end that fortuitous conditions would prevail, I didn't do a whole lot with the other interesting phases of the eclipse. Here's the best:

Hiding behind Earth

Then, the sun rose, and I was tempted to stamp my feet back to the car furious that I didn't have a photo of the setting eclipsed moon. With a bald eagle making a silhouette across it. In the shape of Jesus.

Instead, I looked around a bit and saw some other cool stuff. This next little animation I'm a fan of, and I think it'll turn into a neat series of prints, as there were a couple other similar shots nearby that worked out equally well.

Granite, revealed

Finished with the first stage of salvaging the super-early morning, we retreated to the Old Post Office in Carnelian Bay for a fantastic breakfast before the customary hordes arrived. Salvage complete!

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Discard Pile

2011-12-06T18:53:00.001-08:00

I'll do my best to keep graphic macro photos of decommissioned body parts to a minimum, but this was just too good to pass up.

Little icebergs

Ah, wisdom teeth, we hardly knew ye. Fare thee well!

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Luna

2011-12-04T07:58:00.001-08:00

Every so often, I feel like seeing if I can improve upon previous results I've gotten with that big thing dangling in the sky.

12/3/2011

Most of the time, it's a frustrating and fruitless pursuit, but once in a while, it works out!

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Gluttony

2011-11-27T19:42:00.001-08:00

I hope you all got your fill of whatever you may be into this past weekend. For me, it was excellent food, a good deal of catching up with cool people, and lots of time atop my bike, soaking in our unseasonably glorious weather.

Protein

I took it pretty easy on the food but rode myself into oblivion. Hey, gluttony takes many forms.

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Snowy CX

2011-11-21T20:29:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of spending my Sunday morning spectating at Murphy's first cyclocross race here in Reno. If you've never heard of cyclocross, these 18 seconds at Youtube will sum it up well.

Anyhow, a few of Reno's familiar faces turned up to hammer away in the snow and cold, and it turned out to be a better morning for weather than we expected. The course wound its way around the campus of Clayton Middle School and was most expertly organized by the Reno Wheelmen.

Poor little munchkin

Ethel navigates the sidehill

Ben rocks the single-speed to a dominating victory

Excellent form on the stairs

Nate powers onto the flat

Brian peers down the hill

As is typical with races like these, riders of comparable experience levels are grouped together, and then those groups are combined into each race to prevent it from dragging on all day. So while Ethel was only being timed against the other women in her group, she was out racing with the boys and mixing it up with everyone. And she won her women's race! She just may have a knack for this sort of thing :)

We were well clear of the big fire in Reno, and are most thankful that the hardworking firefighters saved as many homes as they did. The damage could have been far worse, as it was a perfect storm of conditions for the massive inferno. Here's to hoping that everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving, or at least a restful few days away from work!

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Swank

2011-11-17T09:17:00.000-08:00

These are the product of an uproariously inappropriate Mad Men-themed dinner party at Josh's house.

Melody

Ethel and Heather

Josh, the cocktail tycoon

Yours truly

Christina

Rachel

I've never watched Mad Men, so I just wore a suit. Close enough... Curiously, after three and a half years, this was the first time Ethel had ever seen me with a part in my hair.

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ITU World Championship

2011-11-13T21:30:00.000-08:00

The earlier part of last weekend's odyssey was a quick trip to Las Vegas for the opportunity to photograph the ITU Long Distance Triathlon World Championships, a race boasting world-class athletes and much of the storied Silverman course. This opportunity was one I couldn't pass up since it included a media motorcycle, and as we all know, access is everything!

I met up with a mate from New Zealand, Pete (and his fiancee Alex), and was able to crash at his homestay, courtesy of a lovely Aussie named Margaret. Hi to all of you if you're reading this! The night before the race brought a change in the weather, including a rainstorm. We knew that the storm would clear by morning, but none of us knew just what an impact that blustery pre-race day would have...

Lake Las Vegas, waters never to be plundered

As we were walking up to Lake Las Vegas on race morning, rumors were abuzz that the swim had been canceled. Sure enough, they held true; the storm's influence on the air temperature, as well as the rain's influence on the water temperature, put the combination of the two off the ITU's chart of contingency plans, and they demanded that the swim be canceled. If I had been racing, I would have had my own emotions and reaction to deal with, but instead of a backpack full of spandex, I had a backpack full of photo gear, and that meant I got to observe how everyone else dealt with it. For every strong swimmer who was absolutely furious (like Pete), there was another weak swimmer grinning from ear to ear and jumping up and down.

This race was scheduled to be a 4k swim/120k bike/30k run, and as such, the swim is proportionally longer than it is in most other recognized triathlons. Strong swimmer? Open up a gap and laugh all the way to the finish. Weak swimmer? No matter how strong on land, highly unlikely to claw your way back into contention. Taking the swim out wholly changed the race dynamics for age-groupers and pros alike. The call was made to start the race on the bike with 5 seconds between each athlete. This also had the effect of each racer not necessarily knowing where he or she might stand with other racers out on course, at least without doing lots of math, which certainly isn't my strong suit after 6 hours racing in the red...

Lots of expensive wheels lie in wait in T1

So...the media motorcycle: meet Tim.

Hi, Tim!

Tim proudly piloted a BMW 1150 GS, a ripping all-road bike with camera gear-friendly Peli cases for saddlebags. Score. Tim, being awesome, was keen to go all across the desert to get the shot, and was a great buddy for the day. We only got pulled over once, and that was for me doing the responsible thing, namely riding backwards on the bike to get The Shot. Whatever.

Anyhow, Tim's radness mostly took my mind off the photos I had scoped out the day prior for the swim. So onto the bike we go...

Jordan Rapp (USA), Massimo Cigana (ITA), and Sylvain Sudrie (FRA) maintain their 12m draft zone

Rapp opens up the throttle to hurt Cigana and Sudrie

Further up the road, Martin Jensen (DEN) leads solo

Jensen opens his gap on the others

The Rapp group crosses a bridge on the way out of Lake Mead National Monument (90mm TS-E, in case you're wondering...no photoshop trickery here)

Joe Gambles (AUS) leads his group including Michael Raelert (GER) through the Three Sisters (of Silverman infamy)

Gambles tops out the third Sister

Unidentified racer absorbs Cancer Waves along the Bike Path to Nowhere

I have to admit that the huge hookup of the motorcycle got me caught up in following the race more than I intended. My Plan, since I wasn't working for any particular media group, was to make a handful of rad photos instead of following the leaders, but the shortened race and its quick pace threw me off, and I don't think I did the course the justice it deserved. Furthermore, the midway bike turnaround for this race skipped most of Silverman's ridiculous scenery. Enough with the excuses. On to a few run photos.

Perfect handoff for Kelmerson Buck (BRA)

Caroline Steffen (SUI) casts a long shadow

Leanda Cave (GBR) ticks off the miles

Raelert hasn't quite rejoined consciousness in the classical sense yet. Pretty impressive that he still ran nineteen 6:20 miles in that state (he claims to not remember anything after halfway on the bike)!

Pete and his futuro-shades

In the end, it was a solid victory for Rapp, who ran down Jensen (eventually 4th) on the run and also held off Gambles and Sudrie. On the women's side, it was a 1-2 for Great Britain, with Rachel Joyce and Leanda Cave taking home top honors. They had lots of lead changes on the run, and Meredith Kessler (USA) and Nikki Butterfield (AUS) rounded out the top 4. Again, a bummer for all involved that there wasn't a swim, but that's what the racing gods had to offer that day, and not much else can be said about it.

So that was the race. Pretty darn fun. After a few hours laying low at Margaret's house and charging my batteries (literally and figuratively), she dropped me to the airport and I headed back north to continue the rest of the odyssey as previously documented. What a weekend!

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Root Society + Korg 3.0

2011-11-08T09:23:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was indeed as ridiculous as the oracle of sleep deprivation had foretold. We'll start with the latter half of the odyssey, purely because these photos got finished first!

Root Society has been a stronghold of the Burning Man music scene for many years, and although they skipped 2011, they're still revered for the world-class lineups, top-notch sound, and unfettered atmosphere of fun they provide. And I hear they'll be back next year...

Thus, it should come as no surprise that when they took their unique brand of party on the road and visited Reno to host a night of beats and fundraising for Korg 3.0 at The Knitting Factory, supplicants turned out in droves and the music kept on 'til the wee hours.

Root Society is the brainchild of Jefr Tale, a most interesting dude whose successes in his day job allow him to fully engage with this extracurricular passion of his. A connection on the playa with Grant half a decade ago turned into a friendship, and the early seeds were sown that resulted in this amazing party.

Enough blabber. Go-go dancers and bright lights and shiny things are calling us!

I believe it's -actually- called the Ho's Nest. DJ Erik Lobe underneath.

Shakin' it

Go-go above the crowd

In the spotlight

More go-go

Jefr works the beats

Rawr!

Gratuitous self-portrait with Jefr

Lights, lasers, and dancers

Grant -might- be excited

Kinda like the bat-signal

Stripe makes their dirty magic happen

Still a healthy crowd at 3am

I had the huge hookup of an all-access pass. The opportunity to go anywhere and do anything for the photo was addictive and I ended up spending about 5 hours charging around. It's also way quieter up on the stage!

As promised, the necklaces previewed in the last post were available to those making donations, and I saw an awful lot of them dangling off necks throughout the night. I'm quite sure it was a successful fundraiser, but far more importantly, it was an amazing night of music and dancing and friends!

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Heart and Fire

2011-11-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've had the pleasure of assisting on a pretty awesome little project over the last few weeks. These little talismans (talismen? nope says the little squiggly red line) will be among the guests of honor Saturday night at The Knitting Factory. If you're not link-inclined, it's a visit from Burning Man's spectacular sound camp Root Society to Reno, and is also an official Korg 3.0 fundraiser.

What you're about to see is the brand-spankin' new Korg 3.0 logo in pendant necklace form. These photos are the product of our sweatshop assembly servitude session the other night:

Nestled in

Standing out

Hunkered down

Stacked up

There's a lot to be said about these cheery bundles of joy, but I'll keep it fairly short now as this post is merely one cog in a highly-coordinated publicity effort. What I will say is that they're a gleefully local effort: designed, cut, and prepped in Reno; anodized with an ultra-steezy selection of colors just over the hill in Auburn; and finally assembled and packaged back in the BLC. I'd also like to add that the unsolicited devotion to this project displayed by all of the players along the way has been beyond spectacular.

Gushing aside, your first opportunity to get one of your own will be Saturday night at The Knit.

In other news, the next two days will be a veritable whirlwind of jetsetting, photoing, and not sleeping, and it'll be sure to produce lots of blog material, just as soon as I recover. Sometime next year.

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Marching Along

2011-10-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple more from the (recent) vaults of the sculpture project. The timelapse that I posted a teaser frame from months ago will soon be a reality; more teasers may be in order!

Woman, child, and dwelling

Chatting explorers

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The Mudsharks

2011-10-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

I got invited last night to stay out past my bedtime and photograph a reunion show for legendary Reno ska band The Mudsharks. After a swift rise to stardom in the 90s, they broke up but still maintained a loyal following, as evidenced by the arrival of visitors from several states away for this little show at the Black Tangerine (they also played the Little Wal for UNR Homecoming the night before).

After who knows how many years, they operated like a well-oiled machine and brought some honest-to-god stage presence. I had an absolute blast making photos with them; thanks guys!

Setlist

Rock the mic

Work the horn

Work the horn II

Bring the heat

Tickle the keys

Evidence of hard work

Memorabilia

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Bizzness

2011-10-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

Well, save the 5k at Burning Man, I haven't done a stitch of racing this year, triathlon or otherwise. I could pontificate, but it's mostly due to substantial time commitments that haven't totally excluded exercise but have prevented any sort of concerted effort to train for stuff. I'm not that torn up about it, since I saw the busy times coming, knew they wouldn't last forever, and decided that ruining myself to do it all wasn't quite worth it.

Anyhow, things have calmed down a bit, and a few weeks ago, I remembered that approaching soon was a race I'd been meaning to do for a while. Unfortunately, this race, a marathon, has always been a few weeks before Silverman, and the -last- thing I'm gonna do is smash myself to that degree just before the proverbial A-race. However, Silverman is on hiatus this year for the ITU Long Distance World Championships (same course, same weekend, and no, I'm not racing that :) ), so the planets aligned to let me run Bizz Johnson. Except that I've been a total dirtbag since, oh, about November last year.

Google "marathon training plan" and you'll be assaulted with schedules that average 16-18 weeks. Those, apparently, are for people with some sense of self-preservation. I had three weeks. Now, to be fair, I hadn't been a total dirtbag, just mostly. My yearly mental workout log is about like this:

Swim: about 6 times since November '10
Bike: a couple dozen rides
Run: more than the other two, but 15-20 miles per week

So, presented with the opportunity to piece together a marathon in 3 weeks, I devise the following brilliant plan:

Week 1: ~30 miles
Week 2: 67 miles
Week 3: Recover and race! Happiness ensues!

Through some measure of luck and dumb luck, I survive the ramp-up to 67 miles without any drama and arrive at the start line kinda fresh and blissfully willing to see how long I can hang on. Another little bit of disclosure is that after a handful of iron-distance triathlons, I'm not worried about the distance, but rather the pace. So by "how long I can hang on," I don't mean "finish the race," as I'd done the distance several times, but instead how quickly I can fling my shrieking carcass across the finish.

Notably, I'm not the least-prepared for this race. Accompanying me is Andy, who's got a fairly deep running resume but hasn't done anything whatsoever in half a year. When he decides to run this race 3 weeks ago, he makes a plan like this:

Weeks 1, 2, and 3, including the 26.2-mile race: Run no more than 50 miles total.

True to form, Andy comes off the couch, puts in one training run measuring 16 miles and another measuring 8, then laces up his shoes on race morning. Good lord. I've got no doubt that he'll do just fine given his background and attitude, and for that matter, I'm half expecting him to jog by my lifeless body crumpled into some willows about 4 feet after my "fitness" vanishes.

This race is a certified Boston qualifier, and it has a reputation as being a fast course, making it attractive for people who are looking for a way into that race. However, not really worried about making it into Boston, I figure I can go as hard as I want, race strategically as long as I'm able, and if I blow up...hey, no worries; there's nothing riding on it. So that's the lead-up. On to the race!

Shortly after the start, a group of three forms at the front, and we run comfortably together until about mile 7, chatting and getting to know each other ("My name's Scott!" "I'm Eric!" "MghElhhiokktk!"), when Eric goes off the front. Scott leaves to run him down after about a mile, and I'm languishing in the doldrums 200m off the back without much kick to bridge up. Then again, it's still early in the race, and just so long as I keep them in contact, it ain't no thang. Eric and Scott stay off the front for miles and miles, and then a curious thing happens. Eric drops a glove at about mile 14, Scott misses it, and, not really thinking, I pick it up.

Well, now I'm carrying something that's not mine, and the guy it belongs to is a couple hundred meters up the road. The miles are melting away, and now's as good a time as any to work hard. I catch Eric at mile 16, return his glove, and find myself in a pretty high gear from bridging up to him. Scott is another good bit up the road, so I keep my pace up and start chasing him down. I eventually catch up to Scott at mile 18; he's slowed down quite a bit and we chat for a minute. Then, hoping to open up a gap, I turn the pace up to Smash; gotta make hay while the sun shines!

Suffering; a 1-part series. Photo courtesy D^2

By mile 22, the previous 8 miles of chasing, bridging, and then gapping have taken a huge toll on me. The wheels start to come off, the veil of fitness and preparation is cast aside, and I retreat deep into my cuddly little pain cave where everything's Just Fucking Peachy. Having learned from Scott (early in the race) about his ultrarunning exploits, I know I can't limp it in without having him destroy me...guys like that don't stay down for long.

What I learn later is that Eric catches Scott at mile 20, and that reawakens Scott's pace. He climbs out of his rut and returns to 6:10 miles, which means that he's closing on me at a furious rate. Thankfully, I've opened up enough of a gap that, after hallucinating through the last few miles, I arrive at the finish line 30 seconds ahead of him. Eric is another couple of minutes behind Scott, so we three musketeers are reunited soon enough. I clock a 2:50:42, and I must say I'm pretty happy with it!

Surprise visitors at the finish are Grant and Shawna, and D^2 is there after chasing Andy and me to various trail crossings via car. We stand around and chat over a cold beer with Scott until Andy finishes. High fives go all around, we absorb some more knowledge from Scott, and then head for home. As an aside, Scott is a member of the Patagonia Ultrarunning Team and is an excellent ambassador for the sport; you can read his ruminations on running here.

Now, a day later, the consequences of my "plan" are apparent, as I'm utterly shattered. Call it a lesson in being just fit enough to get myself into lots of trouble... Racing plans are starting to take shape for next season, and hopefully reports from races devoid of any training are a thing of the past!

Stay in school, kids; Photo courtesy Korg

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Feathers and Fur

2011-10-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

Continuing on from Story Mill, here are a few more from Montana...just a little wildlife and whatnot. All of the birds are from a quick float down the Jefferson.

Great Blue Heron

Immature Bald Eagle

Greater Yellowlegs

Owl; variety unknown. Snake!; variety unknown

A jaunt up into the Tobacco Root Mountains yielded Jackson Lake after an...interesting...drive and a brisk hike, but no more animals. The weather had been far too warm to kick off fall foliage, unfortunately.

Grassy yellow stuff near Jackson Lake

And finally, the scourge of garbage cans all across the land, our favorite local bandit. [quite proud of this one: dark out, long lens, wide open, manual focus, manual flash exposure, and handheld, to top it all off]

Raccoon; cuddly, except for the claws

I was able to get a whole bunch of running and some top-notch relaxing done during my lovely but too-brief stay, not to mention some good exploring around Bozeman and Hookjaw. Ethel's got a few weeks to witness either the continuation of an Indian summer or the onslaught of brutal winter weather. Good luck with that, babe!

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It's The Wheat

2011-10-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

Ethel and I road-tripped up to Bozeman last week to drop her off for a seven-week internship with Keystone Conservation.

On my first run through the Greater Bozeman Area, I stumbled up to this abandoned mill outside town and knew I'd have to come back at night for a photo.

Flora and fauna will populate the next post, but I wanted to get this up while it was fresh in my mind.

Story Mill

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Spire of Fire

2011-09-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

This'll have to tide you guys over for a week. Murphy's gallivanting off to Montana for two months and we're road-tripping her stuff up there. This was from July in downtown Reno and I've been meaning to post it since then. Burning Man art makes its way into the default world from time to time.

Making the world better one BTU at a time

Catch ya on the flip side.

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Burning Man 2011

2011-09-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

Ethel and I journeyed out to Burning Man this year with her mom in tow. Fresh off the plane from Ireland on her first visit to the US, Jane was ready to jump head first into a week in the dust surrounded by the freaks. Or whatever people around the world think about Burning Man.

What you're really here for is some photos, so I'll keep the stories to a minimum and only say that I made a decision this year to spend more time photographing people. In the end, it was equal parts interesting people and art at nighttime; I wasn't too excited for photoing daytime art this year, for whatever reason. As such, let's start with some people.

Murphy in dust-protecto mode

That's for real

Happy couple

Martini Village, with which I've now camped for 7 years running, threw four pretty fantastic theme parties. It's an awesome bunch of people and they do know how to have a good time!

Martini Villager with amazing hat

Party-goer after having an inch-long gash in her forehead glued back together

September Nevada sunset

The playa was positively hopping at night; more so than I remember over the last few burns. Lights and fire and lasers everywhere! This year was substantially colder at night than I can ever remember, so cruising around in the unpopulated parts of the playa wasn't as enjoyable as it would have been otherwise.

Ooooh, light and designs and stuff

Avatar-ish tree; climbing people for scale

El Pulpo Mecanico

On the right; oodles of facts about the Milky Way. On the left; crazy zooming stars

Singing Tesla Coils (too dark to be visible here) make lightning and music; incredible!

I have a theory that the size and quality of the art at Burning Man is a good barometer for the economy. After a few decidedly off years for art, it seems to have made a resurgence. Fingers crossed that this trend continues. Moving on to a few more people...

Bumblebee wings vs Phoenix wings

One-man show

Dancing the evening away

Performance artist

We had a great spot to watch the Man burn; second row in a designated Sit or Be Screamed At section. This also ensured great views of the fire performances ahead of time. Also, you've all seen photos of the Man on fire, so we'll just skip that.

Pre-burn festivities

One of many unique performances

We spent the remainder of Saturday night cruising around and taking in the sights before snagging a couple hours of sleep and then heading back out for sunrise.

The magnificent Temple at night

Abstract view of the super-trippy Tunnel of Enchantment (I think)

Sunrise from the perimeter fence

Sunday was Ethel's birthday, which we observed with a massive AM Bloody Mary party, a nap, and a trip out onto the playa for some fun evening photos.

Totally hopeless at timing the jump

Murphy acts all primal

The Temple was off the hook this year. Utterly massive, it dominated the landscape from any position. As expected, it was a burn with a quiet intensity that's hard to describe. Far hotter and with none of the whiz-bang of the Man burn, the atmosphere created by 40,000 dead-silent people is a special experience not to be missed.

The Temple is "fully involved," in fire-speak

Rapt attention for the Temple

A quiet moment

Unfortunately, the word is out that the Temple burn shouldn't be missed, so our Exodus on Monday was orders of magnitude more painful than it's ever been before. After two solid afternoons of cleaning and sorting everything in sight, life has returned to normal save for our memories and mementos of a fantastic year on the playa.

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Sculpturific

2011-09-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

OK, first things first: Burning Man photos are coming soon. Real soon. Before that happens, though, we're going to spend a few minutes with the sculptures. A couple weeks ago, the entire lot of 'em got installed down in Carson City, and I took time last night to make a few photos of them with Ethel and Jane as highly skilled photo assistants.

2 explorers chat

Same 2 explorers and their view

Native woman and her dwelling; gesturing to children

Explorer leads two pack horses downhill

The project is finally complete, and I couldn't be happier about it. Paolo and I devoted just shy of a year to this one, and it's nice to have some, um, free time now.

If you're curious to see them (of COURSE you are), keep your eyes open the next time you head down to Carson. Here's a map, and a spotter's guide follows. Also, they view better and video better during the day, but I think they photograph better at night, so don't let my photos fool you into avoiding a daytime trip.

2 of them at the 5th St overpass. Most visible when driving south through Carson. Look up and to the east (left) side of the overpass as you approach. Also easily visible from 5th St.

3 of them at the Fairview interchange on the north side. Most visible when driving south. When approaching the mandatory Fairview offramp (until they extend the freeway), look up and east (left) to the close side of the straight onramp to 395. Also, if you happen to be entering 395 from Fairview westbound, you'll see the tops of these 3 out your left window at the top of the onramp, especially if you have a tall vehicle. Also visible if you enter 395 through the 270deg onramp; look up and right immediately after the loop ends.

And the mother lode...11 of them at the Fairview interchange on the south side. All 11 are in the 270deg looping onramp to 395 from Fairview eastbound. This is your only choice if you're returning to Reno from points south. Look to the inside as you're (safely, kids!) negotiating the onramp (hint: might be better for passengers). There's lots to see and it's a very dynamic view as you move around them and change elevation.

All 16 of these sculptures tell their own part of the same story, and I'm sure this won't be the last post featuring them. If you have seen them since they all got installed, please leave a comment (for better or worse; we can take it) with your impressions, reactions, etc. We're most curious to know what people who haven't spent a year neck-deep in the project think of them. Thanks!

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Vegas to Reno

2011-08-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

Continuing along the vein of Grant's recovery, I had the opportunity last week to go along on quite the adventure, all within the Nevada state lines.

There's an offroad racing series called Best in the Desert, and they produce races in both Nevada and Arizona. The competitors range from trophy trucks and highly prepped dirt bikes to more attainable jeeps and dune buggies. Their showcase race is Vegas to Reno (Beatty to Dayton this year, specifically), a 550-mile tear through the desert, and the race goes off without the racers being able to see the terrain ahead of time.

I went along as an embedded journalist of sorts. Grant had an opportunity to serve as navigator for the series-leading team, Bad Apple Racing. They were exceptionally gracious to have Grant along, and I must extend my personal gratitude for the hospitality, camaraderie, and insight they provided to both me and the filmmaker, Ryan Croke. The team is run by two brothers, Steve and Chris Appleton, and they have put together quite the operation. Thanks, guys.

Just so it's not too long until you can see what we're talking about, here's what we're talking about:

I survey my kingdom

"Navigator" is kind of a loose term, as they've got the course pre-programmed into a GPS unit, but knowing that the desert is about to turn left is only a small victory in a battle that's repeated countless times throughout the 550 miles. The GPS says nothing of the terrain, the "road" condition, or the amount of dust obscuring the driver's vision. What's it really like?

Imagine having 800HP channeled through two rear wheels on a surface that, if you called it "loose," would make a nation of sluts seem virtuous by comparison, or if you called it "rough," would make the Before models in those shaving gel commercials seem like pampered pansies, and being kinda able to see where you're supposed to point this truck, but really just hoping the entire time that you're not about to drive into a boulder or a 10-foot deep wash or a tree or something, and if you catch someone, you bump them from behind to let them know you're there, cause they can't see anything, and if they don't let you by, you point the truck into the desert at 110MPH and get by them as quickly as you can, because lots of weird shit can appear in front of you when you're not on a road and covering a football field every two seconds, and if you're successful in doing this for 10 hours without killing yourself or having any day-ending mechanical problems, you're a winner. It's nuts.

Anyhow, I wrecked myself to finish my week's work before flying to Vegas Tuesday night to be there for practice and qualifying and whatnot before the race on Friday. I also came down with a beast of a head cold, only exacerbated by long hours, no sleep, and probably some stress, so I was a hot mess when I stepped off the plane into the welcoming 10-pm 95-degree cool part of the day. Shawna had been kind enough to grab the metric shit-ton of my camera gear before she and Grant drove down, so I was thankfully able to travel light otherwise.

Wednesday started with an early departure from the hotel to meet the team out in the desert. Bad Apple fielded two trucks in this race. Truck #1 was the title contender, and Truck #2 was their pre-runner, entered into this race to provide any necessary support to Truck #1. Grant's seat was in Truck #2, not quite as badass as Truck #1, but still fairly fire-breathing.

Bad Apple 2 on a practice run

After the team made sure both trucks were running to their satisfaction, we headed back into town for the registration for qualifying, and then promptly headed back into the heat. 106-degree heat. At about noon. All the makings of a fabulous day!

Grant is mildly excited as they head off to qualify

Qualifying was a bit tedious from a waiting around standpoint but also quite fun as we got to see these bombproof horsepower delivery machines wailing through a closed course and laying it all on the line for their starting position in the race. Start early and have good visibility and clean air...start late and spend all day making sketchy passes. Let's qualify well, yeah?

Trophy truck blasts through

Bad Apple 1 on the boil

Hucking

Unfortunately, both Bad Apple trucks qualified poorly, #1 due to a flat tire, and #2 due to a limp-mode fault in the engine management, so they'd both have a lot of work to do on race day. Qualifying in the books, we cooled off by buying a 7-11's entire stock of cold drinks, drinking them, and then sleeping in their walk-in coolers. Maybe not that last part. Wanted to, though.

Thursday was race registration day and tech day, so Ryan and I kept busy interviewing the team members in a hotel room. It was a much quieter and cooler day, and that was a welcome respite from qualifying day. It's also the team's opportunity to shine up the trucks one last time, top up race fuel, etc. There's no doubt all the hard work had already been done in the formal race prep, but they're not willing to hang their drivers out to dry during the race, so everything gets checked one last time.

Skorg poses it out

Making it shiny inside

Topping up Bad Apple 1 with 113 octane

Where's the A/C?

Race day, Friday, brought an even earlier departure from the hotel, as we trekked north to Beatty well in advance of the 9:30AM truck start (the dirtbikes went off before dawn in the interest of safety).

Making the start line a little more spectator-friendly

Grant was fairly well-trained by now in his navigatorial duties (yes, I just made that up), so really all that was left was traversing 550 miles of inhospitable desert in a purpose-built dirt cannon, and to stay alert, fed, and hydrated along the way. That's all. And off they go!

Bad Apple 2 off to a roaring start

A buggy streaks through the desert

We're part of the traveling circus that moves from pit to pit along Hwy 95, easily keeping pace with the race since we drive 20 miles on the highway while they're driving 40 miles through the desert. Each pit stop is just for food and water when everything's going well. The trucks don't have the range to go the entire race without refueling, so there are a couple of those along the way. There are bound to be a couple tire changes, as those marvels of vulcanization transmit ridiculous power levels to the dirt, claw the truck through turns and over rock piles, and do the hard work when the anchors get thrown out. Hopefully, nothing else is required.

Race cars crest a horizon against the stark landscape

Chris keeps the focus up during a pit stop

As we work our way through the desert, the boys become evidently fatigued as mile upon mile of jostling, pounding, and smashing take their toll. The integrity of Grant's spine has been in the back of everyone's mind, but an essential part of recovery is testing the limits and taking hits that provide reassurance in repair and health. Fortunately, he's in good shape mechanically, and is doing an awesome job of providing Chris with all the information he needs and nothing more in order to safely and quickly pilot Bad Apple 2 through the mountain ranges and valleys. In short, they're tearing it up.

A buggy regains composure after nearly wadding it up on the berm

At some point, they've gone a while without radio contact, and Chris light-heartedly informs the team that they've taken a detour to inspect a tree. Grip is a mighty subjective thing on dirt, and they lost it from the front in a corner and more or less climbed a tree until they were high centered in it. This is about when I wish I had a helicopter (a proper chase vehicle) instead of being tethered to an SUV. 'Cause a truck in a tree would make for one hell of a photo. Aside from this excursion, they run strong all day and into the night; the team has done an excellent job of preparing these race cars.

Ron lets the rear off the jack after a tire change

Art fuels Bad Apple 2

Ron and Art scramble to replace a broken radio antenna

Shawna scorches up the desert

Desert sunset

As day turns to night, we take care of one last pit for them before we have to leapfrog ahead to the finish. The pits we skip are extraordinarily remote, and we would've fallen behind if we'd had any intention of going to them. Fortunately, the team is able to keep radio contact with them and they run well all the way to the finish.

A racer enters a pit just after dark

Bad Apple 2 heads into the night

Steve, Grant, and Chris trade war stories at the finish

Bad Apple 1 finished second in class and fourth overall. Bad Apple 2 fulfilled their mission 100%, and while they ran slower, they expected to due to the performance of the pre-runner compared to BA1. Grant, as expected, was exhausted but exhilarated from 14 hours of continuous and necessary focus on navigating. Everyone was in good spirits, and the team rather swiftly loaded the race car and we all made tracks for Reno. Utterly wrecked, we put the wraps on the weekend and went to sleep.

Huge thanks again to the Bad Apple guys, mostly for trusting Grant to be their navigator, but also for having Ryan and me along.

Ryan's quick cut on his view of the weekend can be found here: linky.

For more info on Best in the Desert: linky.

For more info on Bad Apple Racing: linky.

And for more on Korg 3.0: linky.

Finally, if you've arrived at this post because you're looking for photos of a particular race car...please leave a comment with some contact info and I'll see what I can do. The 2300 photos I left with just may have what you're looking for.

Onwards and upwards!

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Seattle

2011-08-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

We're so dang far out of chronological order now that I'm just gonna fill in the gaps where and when I can...moving on...

Ethel and I took a quick getaway to Seattle last weekend. She'd never set foot in Washington state, we swung a great deal on flight + hotel, and we had a few friends to catch up with. So, why not? Instead of a boring play-by-play of the whole trip, let's just rock out with a few photos and some selected stories. It'll probably be heavily architecture-themed, so stop here if you're not interested.

One of our stops was the Olympic Sculpture Park, a rotating exhibit of big art along the waterfront.

Rusty steel curvy things

One section of the Park holds the Vivarium, a greenhouse that is home to a Nurse Log, which is a big dead tree that sprouts all sorts of new life. Most simplistic description ever, but it really is quite cool.

Fern spores

Welded tree

We wandered to the Space Needle, where we promptly chose to avoid the cost and the lines. The complex around the Needle is also the site of the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, yet another tourist trap. The architecture is cool, though, and it's free to look at.

Panels I

Panels II

Panels III

Murphy poses it out

Back to downtown...

Most awesome gargoyles ever

We saddled up for an Underground Tour, an entertaining and meandering blast through the tunnels that used to be ground level before Seattle figured out that building a city on tidal flats was a bad idea. I wish we'd heard ahead of time that there was a nighttime Underworld tour also, a less family-friendly version of the Underground Tour where they don't have to call hookers "seamstresses."

The infamous Crapper

Watch your head

Ooooh, gears and stuff

Another cool stop was the Public Library, an architectural masterpiece. I easily could have spent a full day exploring the nooks and crannies of the place, but an hour would have to do.

Headed up

Top o' library I

Top o' library II

We got to catch up with Andy, Jesse, Kari, Daryl, and Melissa. We had awesome food and drink. We saw some cool stuff. So we called it good and headed home.

I've dispensed with my usual flowery writing style as I'm fighting a head cold, have a huge to-do list at work, and am leaving today for three days in the desert chasing Trophy Trucks around. More on that later!

Cheerio...

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...Playa by Night

2011-08-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Let's pick up where we left off: dusk.

The veil falls

Extra clothes on, we sat back and enjoyed the show that nighttime brought to the desert. Many miles away from any light sources, and without a moon until the wee hours, the darkness was oppressive. In fact, it was only mitigated by the trillions of stars turning the sky into an enveloping blanket of pinpoint-driven imagination.

Some Milky Way telephoto action

As the hours wore on, we were treated to dozens of shooting stars, including the biggest one I've ever seen. It lit up the sky, changed colors, broke apart, kept going, and eventually covered about 120 degrees of arc; nearly horizon-to-horizon.

I took the time to set up a long exposure that would include the horizon and the North Star. What you see below is about 120 stacked 20" exposures. Some quick math tells me that's about 40 minutes. Easier when there's no light pollution to drown the stars out! The higher concentration of stars in the right part of the frame is due to the Milky Way. And yes, there are a couple satellites cruising through.

Big Wheel

Then, when the clock said something-AM but still hours before the sun's arrival, a faint glow appeared near the eastern horizon and I went into photo hyperdrive. Must. Get. Right. We served witness to perhaps the most spectacular moonrise I've ever seen. The faint glow slowly warmed and grew to a disk that wasn't bright enough to overpower the stars; truly a special sight.

The moon approaches

After probably half an hour, the moon finally peeked over the horizon for an even more stunning view.

Hi! I'm far away!

Fully rejuvenated by this ridiculous stargazing, we packed up our gear and wiggled into our bags. This is stuff that not everyone gets to see.

Thanks for visiting :)

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Playa by Day...

2011-08-09T14:38:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a 2-part post. Now that we've got that out of the way...

We made a trek out to Black Rock Hot Springs a couple weeks ago with Riley, Mike, and Dave. Our extraordinarily extended winter left a lot of extra water on the playa, and this complicated our routefinding on the way out there. Since the playa is pancake flat, it's hard to gain any vertical perspective to aid in navigation, and we ended up having to go waaaaaay north and then backtracking to the hot spring to avoid getting stuck. Permanently. Or at least for a couple months.

As soon as we got to higher ground (the hot spring is ~50' above the playa), the source of our detour became painfully obvious: a rather hard to miss 6-mile wide lake blocked our desired path. Duly noted for the way out! We arrived to an eerily calm afternoon; almost unheard of out there. The spring was in good shape although a touch hot for the air temperature; it'd have to wait 'til morning.

The hot spring attracts life

Stiff grass; the spring is surrounded by this stuff 6' tall

The desert is a very inhospitable place, but I'm always stunned by the tenacity of the organisms that have adapted to the environment. Grass, bugs, birds, bats, and more thrive while subjected to this paucity of water. The sun's heat combined with the localized heat and humidity from the spring sent us wandering up a rocky slope for a better view. We watched the sunset and the onset of dusk from up there, and mighty cathartic it was.

Murphy surveys the vastness of it all

Mike and Dave await sunset

When the sun dipped below the mountains, the temperature noticeably plummeted. By the minute. Accordingly, we wandered back down the hill and added another layer of clothes. At this point, we're going to skip ahead to the next day's exploration, and conspicuously leave out everything between dusk and dawn. Oooooooh, foreshadowing. Wonder what part two'll be about!

As soon as the sun hit the tent, I woke up and headed straight for the spring. It was stiflingly hot but restorative all at the same time; still quite a shock to the body. After a breakfast featuring both coffee and a bloody mary for everyone, we started breaking down camp. And then Mike found a new friend under his tent!

So cute and sting-y

With camp taken apart, we headed for some smaller semi-hidden playas we had heard about for a look around. They are quite special; their smaller size lends an air of privacy to them. I imagine that won't be my last visit there. Of note, we had a -great- game of frisbee out there.

Mike heads for the horizon

Now heating up rapidly, we returned to camp, loaded the cars, and retreated back across the playa, this time with the knowledge of how to avoid the massive freakin' lake. We picked a nice spot in the middle for lunch and shaded ourselves with the side of the truck.

The playa bakes as the Black Rock looms

Sandwiches fueling us, we headed home after yet another quick but successful journey to a wild and special place. And that foreshadowing from earlier? As day turns to night, the veil of darkness slips down to the horizon...

Ooooooh, colors

Stay tuned :)

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Celestial Plaything

2011-08-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

Just playin' around with that pointy thing in the sky.

3 Aug, 2011

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Tour de Nez '11

2011-08-02T16:59:00.000-07:00

Well, the chronological order thing is pretty well shot by now, so we'll start with the most recent and eventually fill in the past few missing months of photo missions.

This past weekend marked the annual gathering of monster quadriceps, unabashed hipsters, and cold beer known as the Tour de Nez bike race. Murphy spent the day going a million miles an hour as a volunteer, not to mention all the prep in weeks prior. Compared to her hard work, the running around the racecourse I did to accumulate 2300 (!) photos definitely meant I got off easy.

The racing featured master's, pro women's, and pro men's criteriums through the quick turns and steep hills of downtown Reno. There were also supporting attractions like a kid's race, Gold Sprints, and, well, showgirls. Welcome to the Wild West...

Let's get right to the action with the masters.

Master's winner Jason Walker corners hard

Walker leads the two-man breakaway

Local darlin' after his win

After the oppressive sun during the master's race, some clouds sprouted and provided a little cover for the rest of the day. It was almost nice out when the pro women started!

All about that polka-dot jersey, but a little late for the kid's race

Focus on the start line

Amber Pierce (Rais) tests the pace in the early laps

Women's race from high above

Looking into the turn

Amber sits in and waits

I spent countless hours in the swimming pool with Amber as a kid, so it's awesome to see her back in town every now and then, especially when she goes off the front of the race with 20 minutes to go and stays away! Congrats...

On to the pro men. Murphy had scored me a press pass, and I finagled a ride on the back of a motorcycle for a few laps during the men's race. Stoke!

Like a bunch of cowboys at the hitchin' post

Dangling off the back of the motorcycle as the men push the pace through the corner

Micah sets the fashion bar

The pack lines up for the corkscrew

Diving into the corkscrew about a foot away from me

Men's winner Daniel Ramsey works hard off the front

Once the racing was done, everybody got to relax a bit after a hard day of work. Tim Healion, the race director, put on quite the operation and had a dedicated crew keeping everything ticking along.

Smooth criminal, that Murphy

The showgirls battle for glory in the Gold Sprints

The Tour de Nez team hams it up

'Twas a long day in the sun but awesome nonetheless!

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Itsy Bitsy

2011-07-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a month. Lots going on, lots yet to do, and not enough hours.

Much to come, but for now...a houseguest.

I see you!

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Middle of NVwhere

2011-06-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

Murphy and I disappeared into the depths of Nevada over Memorial Day weekend. The idea was to spend some quality time exploring a couple of wilderness areas, and I'd like to warn you that the next sentence is rather contradictory. I've long implored friends to act on the principle that there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear, but Mutter Natur had other plans for us out in the unpopulated stretches of this great state.

Our continued winter weather pattern was in full effect, and while we had enough gear in the truck to outfit a battalion to safely cross a glacier that was floating down a river during a sandstorm, the incentive to put ourselves deep in the backcountry with no promise of a break in the weather waned past the Empty mark and settled somewhere around Absolute Zero. Which meant that we stayed a little closer to the car and still explored a lot, just not as far down the rabbithole as we would have otherwise. Photos of vaguely-recognizable scenes obscured by driving snow are only cool for a little while.

Our first stop was Lamoille Canyon in the Ruby Mountains, where the road had just "opened" to allow access to 8' snowbanks at the top, which we followed with a lap around the north and east sides of the Rubies. We eventually settled somewhere up the Krenka Creek drainage for our first night, where the ever-present storm cloud started gracing us with snow as the afternoon turned to evening.

Murphy contemplates the muted palette

Freshly melted

Cautious

Fashion model

Ruby Valley from high above

Krenka Creek

New growth

After a morning excursion high into the snowfields protecting the Soldier Peak basin from Krenka Creek, we continued down the east side of the Rubies towards Ruby Marsh, during which time it pretty much just snowed, and the normally excellent dirt road turned gloppier by the minute.

Somewhere in Ruby Valley, just below snowline

Indian Paintbrush and sagebrush

The snow/sleet/rain/wind combination was keeping even the most hardened outdoorsmen hunkered down for cover, so we pressed on to the south and took a lunch break in Eureka.

Chilly beast

Sage and storm

Restrategizing over some hot food, we decided to visit a hot springs between Eureka and Austin before heading to the Arc Dome Wilderness in the mountains behind Big Smoky Valley. Unfortunately, the hot springs were overrun with RVs (it was a holiday weekend, after all), so we continued nearly 40 miles south in Big Smoky Valley to the North Twin River Trailhead. That 40 mile drive relocated us out from underneath a Mordor-esque storm cloud, so we were happy to be in calmer climes for the first time in 2 days.

Our plan for the morning was to make an early push as high into Arc Dome as we could, and we got the early start we wanted, leaving camp before 5:30am. Unfortunately, our forward progress was thwarted by frequent stream crossings that were swift and deep. They finally got to the prohibitively unsafe level, so we had no choice but to head back to camp, never leaving the deep canyon that held this tumultuous runoff. A closer look at the topo once we were back at camp revealed that we had nearly another dozen crossings to make before we would have attained our goal. This may be a mission for a little bit later in the season!

North Twin River

Contributing to the runoff one drop at a time

Lichen ramparts

Gypsy moth in the making

Murphy goes waist deep

Hummer at ease

Wet and cold from 8 frigid crossings but still in good spirits, we set course for home through the expansive Big Smoky and then Austin. Some thousand miles after leaving Reno Saturday, we got to see some neat stuff, albeit not at all the type of terrain we expected to be exploring. Some years, April and May are early enough to get into the high country, but there'll still be snow in a lot of prize destinations through July or even later this year!

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Intent to Distribute

2011-06-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

Bring your friends.

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Photo Sale

2011-06-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

OK. We'll go no further than to say that there were some scheduling misunderstandings last time 'round, and that my framed photos will be on display at The Hub in June and then another set of larger prints later in the year. I apologize to anyone who made a trip there to see my photos and didn't. Moving on...

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I've got 3 series of photos (15 total) on the wall at The Hub. They're framed and ready to hang on your wall, should you desire such a thing.

I'm pleased to announce that Sunday, June 12, 5:30-8:30pm, will be the official opening party for the show. The Hub's address, if you're not familiar, is 32 Cheney St., Reno. [Should you choose to imbibe, $10 will get you all the Irish Coffees you want. No charge to get in if you're not drinking :) .] I'm even more excited to announce that 100% of the profits from the show are going straight to the Korg 3.0 Movement, aka Grant's recovery fund. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, please start your reading here: On Fear and Consequences and Progress and Change.

I'm offering a sneak preview of all 15 photos here. Please contact me directly if you're interested in an unframed copy of any of them; I'll ship 'em to you in a sturdy tube. Prices will vary based on size!

Series 1: Dusk and Dawn in the Sierra Nevada

Pre-Dawn in Dusy Basin

Dusy Basin Twilight

Crescent Moon above Dusy Basin

First Light at Jabu

Shadow of Rose

Series 2: Burning Man

Inner Glow

Playa Traveler

Cubatron

Beneath the Throne

Ribbon Art

Series 3: Stormy Weather

Oxbow Bend

Tobacco Root Storm

Ben Lomond Saddle

Misty Drainage

Franz Josef Terminus

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Men at Work

2011-06-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

The fine dudes at Tutto Ferro hard at it:

This is one frame out of 5100+ taken at 30-second intervals over the course of 5 days, and it's on its way to becoming a time lapse of the fabrication of sculpture #8, a horse and rider.

It may be quite some time until the whole thing is edited and polished, but I thought a teaser frame was worth posting. There are many jewels of single frames...whether all three guys welding, the crew eating lunch, or the many poses the Barbie doll went through...

Ask me how fun it is to wrestle with 150GB of data from a single shoot!

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Korg 3.0 Gets Wet

2011-05-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

As promised, I returned to the River Fest in downtown Reno Saturday to be on the photo crew for a special occasion.

Grant, with the help of High Fives, the Korg 3.0 Movement, his amazing wife Shawna, and countless others, made his return to moving water under the watchful gaze of hundreds of onlookers.

I shot 800+ photos in a little over two hours as Grant slipped into the Truckee River, made his first paddle stroke outside of a swimming pool in over a year, and got right back to business; surfing the holes, throwing a few tricks, and smiling like the happiest shrieking baboon you've ever seen.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the day (also, check out Matt's excellent work here).

Stoked

First paddle stroke!

Dropping in; time to focus

EJ stokes the crowd as Grant paddles in to the main hole

Fine adjustments

Surfing!

Riding high

Deep breath

Triumph

Still stoked

There were few dry eyes as his enthusiasm and gratitude were evident from the time he put his gear on until the time came to begrudgingly step out of his boat. Whether they were friends and acquaintances from the close-knit local kayaking community, fellow competitors from previous years' freestyle competitions, or casual spectators, all were able to grasp the importance of this pass along a short stretch of boiling whitewater.

Onwards and upwards!

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Downtown Reno Wanderings

2011-05-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

What follows are the products of a couple consecutive afternoons of wandering around downtown Reno.

I was going to title this "Slow Water, Whitewater, and Bong Water," but then these first two photos wouldn't have fit the theme at all.

These two are recognizable to you Renoites as the Freight House District and the Aces Stadium.

Sailor on the prowl

Voyager

These two are along the river just east of downtown (Slow Water from the proposed title).

Submerged snag

High water

Next three here are from the Freestyle Qualifying Round of the Reno River Festival (Whitewater from the proposed title).

Loading up

Fully inverted

Eric Jackson of Jackson Kayaks gets nasty

And the final two here are some skaters I poached as they sessioned the ice rink site (Bong Water from the proposed title; sorry to paint with a broad brush, but not really).

Skater 1

Skater 2

I'll have more to post in the next couple days from the River Fest; a certain friend is making his return to kayaking this afternoon and I'll be on photo duty for him.

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Redemption

2011-05-03T05:02:00.000-07:00

Remember all that stuff I wrote about in the last post about consolation and backing away and waiting 'til next year? Well, that changed.

Long story: After getting home Saturday and stewing for a while, I decided that the conditions in Sullivan Chute were indeed passable, and that the mental consequences of letting it go outweighed the possible physical consequences in the line itself. So I went back. And remembered the intervalometer, which works just fine when it's not sitting on my bed. And got there at a better time in the morning. And set up a different shot. And set my head straight.

Short story: Consolation? Fuck that. Drrrrrrropping!

Sunday:

Self portrait

The only reason anybody knows what it's called. The origin of this line is a mystery.

I'll admit to not riding it gracefully, as I had to weasel down around a couple big loose rocks before pointing it straight for the exit air. Even though I still went from Zero to Not Zero rather rapidly, that weaseling made the exit smaller and I knuckled on the bergschrund below the drop, which I was hoping to clear easily. To give a sense for the speed, my camera was firing once a second, and there's just this one frame that includes me riding... I don't want to be in the business of claiming the steepness without verifying it, but DAMN.

I think I'd like to go back when there's more snow.

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Consolation

2011-05-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

Saturday did not go as planned.

I had grand aspirations to go ride a white whale of a line in the Mt. Rose backcountry, Sullivan Chute, and to architect a self portrait of me riding the line.

As I was setting up the shot high atop an adjacent crag, it all started to unravel when I discovered a HUGE flaw in the Canon intervalometer I'd purchased. This flaw is that it simply doesn't operate when I leave it at home.

Furthermore, the snow coverage in the prize line was unfavorable, as usual. It was close to going but I had a couple concerns about the technical and narrow crux. I did scope it from both top and bottom, and I came pretty close to pulling the trigger, but it was simply not the day.

Mitigating the first mistake by making friends with another group up there, I talked them into sticking around while I hiked to, scoped, and rode the zone in question, relying on them for their top-notch shutter-mashing skills with my camera set up on the tripod.

The only solution for the second problem was to ride a nearby and far less interesting line. As such, I've made a composite of some of the frames the semi-anonymous Craig (thanks dude!) fired off while I rode. You can see me scoping the elusive Sullivan Chute in the top left corner of the frame. Next year, I suppose...

Consolation Rock

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Greenery

2011-04-29T03:12:00.000-07:00

Ethel and I blasted across the country last weekend to visit Riley and Erin in North Carolina. I was on full mercenary status, having packed a carry-on bag with 98% camera gear, 1% toiletries, and 1% machismo (gotta keep it real, yo). Riley had been unable to find anyone inside the 3000 mile mark who could tolerate him for a day of wedding photography, so off we went.

Apart from the wedding, we were able to spend some time in the dense woods, both for exercise and photos. The trees had recently re-greened, and the heat-o-meter was just barely bouncing off Stifling, which meant we had to take advantage of such fortuitous conditions.

They grow 'em big down South

Stumped

Reflecto I

Reflecto II

Local color

Riley and Erin also showed us around the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill nightlife a bit, introducing us to a few of the cool spots that're bound to be found in a college town of that size.

I'm still questioning the wisdom of voluntarily crossing the country twice in a weekend, but hey, we only get one ride on this roller coaster...

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Shameless Self-Promotion

2011-04-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

Starting early next week and through May and June, I'll be showing several series of photos (and offering them for sale at modest prices) at The Hub, home of Reno's most awesome coffee.

All of the photos are ones that have been shown here before, like this one:

First Light in Dusy Basin

These are all well and good at 800 pixels wide on the screen, but I'm very happy with how they look printed big on nice paper. Drop by The Hub and see for yourself! May and June will have different photos, so this'll take more than one trip. :)

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Froth

2011-04-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

Ethel's aunt Paula and cousin Ciara are in town from Ireland; we took them up to Tahoe yesterday for a looksee along the east and north shores and an early dinner at Garwoods in Carnelian Bay.

A reasonably moderate spring day in Reno translated into whipping winds and driving rain in the Tahoe Basin (snow, too, on the way home). Fortunately, the lake is freakin' gorgeous when it's gnarly out.

These photos are all from Kings Beach, where the approaching storm wave made for foreboding and scary skies.

We're off to North Carolina tomorrow to visit Riley. 'Til next time...

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Bearly There

2011-04-17T21:45:00.000-07:00

I went to Bear Valley last weekend with the venerable Matt Theilen to help him photograph a wedding. I'll probably share a few photos of my own from the wedding festivities, but I thought I'd post a few from the trip there and back first.

In the meantime, check out Matt's blog post on the wedding here. The man does good work!

In the summertime, Bear Valley is a quick 2-hour jaunt from Reno over Ebbett's Pass, but that's unplowed in the winter. So five hours and a circumnavigation of the Sierra later...

West Fork of the Carson River near Hope Valley

Angels Camp watchdog

Mokelumne Hill hitchhiker

I had a great time over there and should have more to share shortly!

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Radio Silence

2011-04-06T15:04:00.000-07:00

Life's whirlwind lulled just long enough to make me realize that I hadn't posted anything in a couple of weeks. We had quite the storm cycle roll through (15'+ in 2 weeks), and the ridiculous powder days we had managed to sneak by without any photo sessions.

We thought that summer had arrived, but a storm is approaching now and is due to drop a couple more feet in the mountains. In honor of winter's conspicuous return, I'll offer two photos from a snowy walkabout in downtown Reno a few storms back.

Snowy River I

Snowy River II

Hopefully this marks the end of this current "lazy" spell on my part.

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Liberty Chute

2011-03-09T06:23:00.000-08:00

After ingesting some excellent winter-sports-oriented forecast data from Powdiction, Hatchett and I left Reno at 4am Saturday to visit the vaunted East Side of the Sierra. We were treated to some wonderful early-morning views on our way south on 395, too.

First light on the Sawtooths

Golden light across Mono Lake

The praises of these mountains have been sung far and wide, but this was my first visit to them with snowboarding gear in the car. Oh, how has it taken me this long to get down there?!?

First look at the playground of lines below Dana Plateau

Turning off Tioga Pass just before the winter closure, we parked, geared up, and skinned onto the snow just before 8:30. We made quick work of the first pitch, V-Bowl, which is a solid 2000 vertical feet. The scale in this area is so deceiving; we're not used to seeing terrain this big! Over the hump, we continued up into the basin below the Plateau. This basin is framed to the east by a view of Mono Lake and the desert beyond, and to the west by a ridiculous amphitheater of skiable chutes, couloirs, bowls, flutes, and cliffs.

Our goal for the day was Liberty Chute, a steep sliver of snow that resembles the Statue of Liberty (as the snow heads up and to the right, this is the Statue's arm, and the torch is formed by the cornice on top). The top of this chute rises something like 4600 vertical feet above the parking spot; this was due to be a long day. We were the first visitors since the last storm, so the skin track was ours to break all day, too.

Liberty Chute, looking wonderful

We had two options for the chute itself; to bootpack up it, thus learning about the snowpack on our way up, or two rappel into it from the Plateau, guaranteeing access to the scariest(=funnest) bits, but making the snow an unknown until we'd be committed. We decided to bootpack up, so we stopped below the rock wall on the looker's left side of the photo above and shed unnecessary gear like skins, poles, ropes, and harnesses in favor of crampons and ice axes.

Our waypoint at the bottom of the chute; cloud cover thickens

The first couple hundred feet of bootpacking were torturous: waist-deep in 50+ degree powder is only awesome if you're going downhill. The snow finally became more suited for ascending, then promptly turned sketchy. The aspect changed slightly from E to SE, the slope steepened a bit, and we found ourselves a few hundred feet below the cornice and on snow that was dangerous to ascend (even with crampons) and also dangerous to descend. Even more disappointing, the cloud cover was thickening signaling the approaching storm, and the light went flat. Not wanting to make headlines, we opted in favor of discretion and started our descent from the halfway point in the chute.

My first turn out into the middle confirmed our suspicions with the discovery of even sketchier snow, so I stuck to the skier's right side and enjoyed the softer deeper snow we had struggled through on the way up. We collected our gear at the bottom of the chute, and were rewarded with a break in the clouds. The nearly 2000 vertical feet of wide-open bowl and sparse trees between Liberty and the top of V-Bowl were filled with stupendous snow, and these turns were rewarding beyond comprehension. So good, in fact, that our failed top-out of Liberty was relegated to distant memory.

Hatchett uses a tree for spiritual purposes

The descents I'm used to closer to home don't offer nearly the vertical that this one did, as we still had the 2000' of V-Bowl to play in! More open trees and great snow awaited us there, and we reveled in every last damn turn. Giggling like idiots, we made the parking lot after 7 1/2 hours on the snow.

We had a beer, packed up, and started the drive home, pausing for a few photos here and there along the way.

Hatchett contemplates steepness

Mono Lake from Tioga Pass Road

And a few more of Mono from alongside 395, thanks to dark clouds and low-angle sun:

Save a stop at In-n-Out, the trip home was swift (and 50mpg!). I literally can't wait to get back down there for some more fun. Many lines beckon, offering up big mountain riding that we spend our early years of riding only dreaming about. Special thanks to Hatchett for being such a good tour guide for an East Side newbie, too. :)

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Racing Lines and the Call of Duty

2011-03-07T05:55:00.000-08:00

After the last heavy post, it's time for something a little easier to process.

One of the first things they teach you in racing school is that the fastest way around the track is to drive into the corner slow and out of the corner fast, maximizing exit speed onto the subsequent straightaway.

Sam has totally blown it, entering the tree at an extremely high rate of speed and puttering out of it like he's on his way to church.

I get bonus points for not falling off the slick roof and breaking my neck to get the photo.

Later, he frames himself nicely in the only sunspot in the entire house, taking care of his daily ablutions.

Next up will be more luscious backcountry snowboarding shenanigans.

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Progress and Change

2011-03-05T02:30:00.000-08:00

A year ago today, Grant's life changed in an instant (more on this later) aboard his snowmobile. I wrote about it here: linky

Since then, there's been a lot of sacrifice, suffering, and hard work on his part and from everyone around him, most notably his wonderful wife Shawna. They've given 100% of their time and energy to his rehabilitation; anything less than a full recovery is not an option.

He's been helped along the way by an embracing community of organizations and individuals who understand his stubborn commitment to rejoin society with a whole body as Korg 3.0. Arguably at the top of that list is the High Fives Foundation. To quote directly from their website, "High Fives Foundation is a Tahoe-based non-profit organization dedicated to raising money and awareness for athletes who have suffered a life-altering injury while pursuing their dream in the winter action sports community."

A couple weekends ago, Grant invited Ethel and me to join him for his halftime appearance at the UNR basketball game. I got to be on photo duty while Ethel and the rest of the crew lined his path out onto the court.

Watching the Korg 3.0 promo video

Video plays far overhead to a packed house

Making his way onto the court

Leaving the court; notice the nice heel-strike!

Passing the Korg 3.0 crew

He's been out of the wheelchair for a couple of months now, sworn to never return to it. And he's also moved past the walker, exchanging it for a pair of arm braces. He's started, in the last couple of weeks, turning the arm braces around to make them canes, all part of the quest to walk again. And, just a few nights ago, he held the arm braces in the air and stood, unaided, supporting his full body weight, for the first time nearly a year. Watch the video on High Fives' Vimeo channel here. And for the most current tidbits from Grant's recovery, visit him on facebook...or his youtube channel (gratuitous shirtless cameo by yours truly).

So back to that first sentence about life changing in an instant. I waxed poetic after Grant's injury a year ago, and I'm going to subject you to a little bit more. Hey, you've made it this far!

Several years ago, I was asked to make a timeline of my life up to that point, taking note of important (totally subjective) events and periods. Over the course of a morning, I trawled back through a lifetime's worth of memories and came out the other side with a timeline with about 20 tick marks on it. A pattern soon emerged.

About half of those tick marks corresponded to lengthy processes, encompassing months or years. Learning how to snowboard, for example. This process was a hugely positive one, having a substantial influence on who I am today. In no particular order, this sport has exposed me to a community of genuine, fantastic, and positive people; has given me reason to travel to mountains near and far; has been a safe place suitable for frequent catharsis in difficult times; and has been a source of bottomless spirituality. Not to mention bottomless pow turns!

The other half of those tick marks corresponded to instantaneous or very short events (less than a few minutes, say). Breaking both of my legs in a snowboarding accident, for example. The impact on my life of learning how to snowboard unquestionably pales in comparison to the impact of the injury, which had a far-further-reaching effect on who I am. In spite of the glowing review I just gave for what snowboarding has done for me, the changing effect of this instantaneous injury far overshadows the aforementioned benefits. It changed the path of my life in unimaginable ways: reset my perspective on disabilities, made me realize how much I'd taken for granted, and introduced me to a new athletic pursuit...which in turn ignited a passion for world travel, yet again realigned my mental approach to challenges of all sorts, and put me on a collision course with the girl of my dreams.

This pattern continued, not of learning vs. injury, but of lengthy process vs. instant in time. Without a single exception, the most formative and change-inducing influences in my life were instantaneous.

Unable to resist obvious temptation, the engineer in me added up the total elapsed time for all of those highly influential events. Five minutes, give or take. And if we cherrypick the top 5 of these events...about 30 seconds.

Changing gears for an aside, it's easy to argue that who we are today is simply the sum of every thought, experience, and interaction in our pasts.

Okay, back on track. We're going to say that my present self owes its constitution to my amalgamated experiences. And we're also aware that the handful of those particular experiences that were most influential total a whopping thirty seconds. I can then conclude the essence of my being and who I am today has been defined by those thirty seconds, chopped into memorable little bits. Is the rest fluff? Absolutely not (see above argument that I'm the sum of my past). But the core? Less time than your average pee break.

Needless to say, this realization presented itself as an epiphany. I enjoy thinking back to it and regard it as a valuable lesson. We'd best be ready for those fleeting moments; hell, we'd better square our shoulders and step in front of them. These are the experiences that force us to evolve and to improve.

So, to come full circle, feel free to ask Grant if the few seconds in the air when he knew it would be a bad landing, followed by the fraction of a second that it took his L-1 to explode and shower fragments into his spinal cord has been a defining moment in his life; I'm quite confident in his answer.

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Hully Gully

2011-03-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

Apologies in advance for being long on action photos and short on setting photos. You'll have to rely on my description of the area instead.

Ed visited from NYC this past weekend to slay some light Sierra powder. He picked a pretty darn good weekend as the mountains got hit hard with snow on Friday! We fought silly crowds at Squaw on Saturday and then escaped for backcountry merriment on Sunday.

I blast through a claustrophobic chute in Broken Arrow at Squaw, photo courtesy Ed

We met the rest of the crew along the Mt. Rose Highway at 6am...another early morning. Hatchett, Matt, Chad, and Hobie (dog) piled out of the truck and we headed across a meadow, into a ravine, and across a creek to access the south face of Mt. Rose proper. We began a long ascent of a SW-facing gully to the bench a few hundred feet below the summit, where we reconfigured gear and hiked to the entrance of Hully Gully.

Hully Gully is an aesthetic line that stares straight at Mt. Rose Ski Resort. A common occurrence on the lift at Rose is to stare back at Mt. Rose proper and Hully Gully, lamenting one's choice to ski the resort when there's an untracked 2000' powder line taunting from a mile away. Fortunately, we chose to be on the giving end of the Taunt Stick instead of the receiving end!

Dropping in at about 10:30am, the snow was starting to warm and consolidate thanks to a solid southern exposure. Glad that we weren't there any later, we took turns riding from safe zone to safe zone. We were also taking pains to make perfect turns, carefully crafted to incite maximum jealously in the resort-goers. Hey, it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it.

Here are some photos.

Ed navigates some flora, brimming with enjoyment

Hatchett drags his pack heelside

Loving it

Hatchett runs it out

Chad goes deep

Chad picks 'em up while crossing Hobie's line

Hatchett is stoked for Ed

I lay one over near the bottom, photo courtesy Ed

The crew hikes out, entrance to Hully Gully visible far frame right

Aye, not bad for a flatlander!

Chad and Hobie; Hobie's ready for a nap

After a rowdily successful descent, we realized that the five of us (and Hobie, who gets the Sickbird award for straightlining the whole chute) utterly snatched every last patch of good snow from anyone who might come later. Guess they shoulda gotten outta bed earlier :)

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Snowbeast

2011-02-22T15:43:00.000-08:00

In the interest of documentation, I've been visiting the sculpture site when there's interesting and photogenic weather. There was a neat sunset last week, so that was one trip.

And then, just like that, Junuary turned back into February, and things got interesting.

The same series of storms that contributed to this past week's reeediculous skiing and snowboarding also brought a lot of snow and wind to the valley floors.

After the wind went away and the snow starting falling down instead of sideways, I made an early morning trip to Carson and was greeted by quite a sight.

Paolo and I have been waiting for freshly fallen snow on this thing for months now, and we are far from disappointed. The seasons have provided yet another angle on this thing!

Lest you think you're only going to ever see photos of this solitary horse, we're marching along on design and fabrication behind the scenes, about a quarter of the way through the entire scene of 16 figures. So while there's only been the one to show off so far, there's lots more to come.

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Sunrise BC Lap

2011-02-21T10:47:00.001-08:00

I met Hatchett and Shane at oh-freezing-darkness at the top of a neighborhood in Incline yesterday. They saw -13F driving through the flat from Truckee, but the sun was due to appear and provide some solar respite from the clutches of Thermopolis Brutalis.

First light

Underway swiftly, we were greeted with the pure clean pink of alpenglow on the peak high above, followed shortly by a warm yellow glow enveloping our spot in the trees.

Sir Hatchett, His Squintiness

Lone outpost

Low cloud over Tahoe

Ascending into the abyss

Snow snakes

The views were nothing short of ridiculous, the rich winter landscape brimming with texture and presenting a simple yet vibrant color palette as we climbed high above Tahoe.

Rimed trees

Rime detail with oh-so-black sky

Playground

Choosing to drop in a little below the summit of Rose Knob, we switched our splitboards over from Suffer to Slay and leapfrogged each other down the mountain, gleefully drowning in deep snow with every turn.

Hatchett says, "Put me in, coach!"

Hatchett, toeside, on a slope of rippled powdered sugar

Back at the car by a little after 10, I loaded up and headed back down the hill into the realm of Reality, which included traffic backed up over a mile on the highway waiting to turn into the lot at Mt. Rose. Suckers :)

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TV Substitute

2011-02-12T15:21:00.000-08:00

Google "hi-def plasma" and you'll be inundated with links at which you can convert your hard-earned dollars into maniacal devices of unbridled mindless entertainment. However, we all get to make choices about the way we live our lives, and it's OK to substitute time in front of the latest and greatest TV for time spent transfixed on a different device, in this case a high-definition plasma cutter. That was nearly a soapbox speech. Moving on...

So this is the beast that brings people's dreams to life, or at least one step along the path to their dreams. Countless projects progress from cocktail napkins to design and finally arrive at a stage where sumthin's gonna git made, and this high-definition plasma is a fascinating example of Stuff That Makes Other Stuff.

Plasma, the so-called fourth state of matter (solid...liquid...gas...), is generated by applying a metric shit-ton of electricity to a jet of gas and is focused down to a beam narrow enough to leave a nice smooth finished cut right where it's supposed to be.

Thanks to its ability to cut through steel like butter, it's been instrumental in the sculpture project. Seven 5'x12' sheets of 3/8" steel are carved into ~120 slices in the matter of a day or so. The plasma jet makes it through 80 linear inches of cut each minute.

It's not as precise as waterjet cutting or laser cutting (and certainly not CNC milling), but some projects are better suited to trading absolute precision for cutting speed.

There's all sort of whiz-bang flashy smoky stuff going on when the plasma is running, and it's pretty fun to watch. There's also an excellent chance I shouldn't be staring at the bright light through a 150mm lens.

The space underneath the table glows red with hot slag as the head makes its way around a sheet of steel with superheated purple plasma. Before long, the edges of each cut start seeping smoke. Fairly surreal.

Once the cutting is done, it's simply a matter of marking the pieces to keep them straight, picking them off the table like gingerbread men out of a sheet of dough, and sliding a new sheet of steel up there.

There's been a lot of planet aligning to make this project work, and it should go without saying that access to this technology and the talented guys who run it has been absolutely instrumental.

Party on!

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Winter Black Rock

2011-02-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

We'll start this story mid-stream.

On the way back Saturday night, Ethel turns to me and says, "Well, I guess we won't be out here again until Burning Man." I agreed at first and then disagreed, pointing out that -all- of our trips out there are spur-of-the-moment-wild-hair-up-the-ass trips, and that we most certainly wouldn't be out there again until the next time we were out there.

Now that we've set the tone properly, we can rejoin the story at the beginning.

So the snow is awful in the mountains, leaving our days off full of uncertainty about what to do. Sometime around Wednesday or Thursday, our friend Josh suggested a trip to the Black Rock for one of the weekend days. He assembled a small crew, supplies were gathered, and we met at 3:45 AM Saturday.

What?

You see, Josh and I were both keen to make it a photo trip, and a setting like the Black Rock is an excellent excuse to be there for sunrise. Everybody's plans had conspired to keep us in Reno Friday night and get us back to Reno Saturday night, so it was sunrise Saturday or bust. The other four voyagers consented to get up early so that the two of us could get our rocks off at sunrise. Bless them.

So, yes, we met at 3:45 AM and pushed out of Reno shortly thereafter, Josh piloting the Subie with three sleeping passengers and me piloting the TDI with one sleeping passenger. "Yeah babe, I'm going to stay awake and keep you company," she promised, while simultaneously reclining the seatback to its stop and curling into a little ball facing away from me.

We pulled off the highway onto the playa (tentatively, as we were still unsure of the playa's condition) at about 5:45AM, and the sky was just beginning to show a bit of light in the distant east. The crescent moon had risen less than two hours prior, and its feeble light was enough to cast the entire playa in an eerie moonshine.

Moonshine

The playa is a different landscape in the winter; largely undisturbed, it gathers precipitation and then disperses it, leaving a cracked but very smooth surface. This unearthly smoothness between the cracks allows any light source to cast that sheen.

As light from the approaching dawn began to dominate light from the moon, planets, and stars, Josh and I began scrambling for photos. The light was changing too fast to keep up with; new landscapes evinced themselves by the minute, and I was very aware that I was little more than a spectator to a highly orchestrated show.

Unleashed fire

Finally, the fire on the horizon gave way to that massive bundle of thermonuclear goodness. The sun burst forth from the clouds and instantly changed the landscape yet again. This kept Josh and me pretty busy, but it at least added some much-needed warmth for the others, who were likely sick and tired of our redundant grunting every time the sky did something cool.

The globe reveals itself

Moonscape part 1

Moonscape part 2

After the sunrise had done its thing, we took stock of where we were and the condition of the playa nearby. While our first spot was a bit damp, there was a huge dry area less than half a mile away, so we relocated there and scattered our gear even further. Camp chairs and coolers appeared, as did a frisbee and a couple golf clubs. Oh yeah, and the ice climbing gear. Cue the impossibly ridiculous staged photo session.

Josh sets a piece of pro

The surface of the playa up close is something to behold. It varies from hard-pack crackle-sheen to sticky mud to hazes of pure alkali crystals to micro-eroded landscapes. For being so homogeneous from a material standpoint, its various incarnations are absolutely fascinating.

Micro-terrain

Crackly sheen

As the sun sped upwards from the horizon, the color palette changed yet again, but it finally stabilized enough for the warmth to outweigh the light show, so the cameras got put away and the frisbee appeared for a pretty lengthy session. As did the golf clubs. I most certainly didn't litter out there, but that stupid little ball will roll for days!

Tough guy

Playa river

As the short winter day wore on, we continued our various wanderings, including a group eyes-closed for 5 minutes walk. A study in sensory deprivation with particularly no consequences (not a thing out there to run into or trip over), by the end we were far more aware of what was underfoot and the sounds that each variety of playa surface made.

Moonscape part 3

Finally, it was time for more staged silliness, so Maggie and Josh went skate skiing in the mud.

Playing in the mud

Barrett plays paparazzo

Which way to the mountains?

The sun was starting to approach the horizon, and the light started getting awesome again, so Josh and I got giddy again and started charging around like idiots.

Moonscape part 4

Stitched with the tilt-shift

Josh as playa voyager

Quite suddenly, the sun broke through the clouds and illuminated a distant band of mountains, including the namesake Black Rock. We got to watch a cloudy afternoon become sunset become glowing twilight.

Sliver of sunset far away

Western cloud show

Eastern dusk

Darkening horizon

Last light on the crackles

Satisfied with our efforts to occupy the day with goodness, we loaded up and made tracks for Reno. We were only on the playa for 12 hours, but what a spectacular 12 hours it was. And I'm still quite certain that we won't be out there again until...next time.

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Tables Tables Everywhere

2011-01-31T17:32:00.000-08:00

I had the privilege of photographing another of Paolo's creations for the Montessori auction.

This one is a concrete top with a steel base.

The concrete was filled with polyurethane after curing, then ground, refilled, reground, polished, and sealed.

The polyurethane is the yellow contribution; all the other colored bits are the aggregate in the concrete, brought to life with the help of heavy abrasives.

The detail in this thing is amazing...

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Four-Legged Art (Non-Equine)

2011-01-28T05:50:00.000-08:00

Paolo, my favorite steel craftsman, artist, and full-blooded Italian, created this little masterpiece with a friend of his. Hewn from Grenadio and stainless steel, it's a study in exquisite grain, subtle curvature, and precise lines.

They created this one-off to donate to the Mountain View Montessori School's annual benefit, and it will be auctioned off along with other art and local delicacies like a cruise on the inimitable Thunderbird Yacht.

Cozy and sturdy

Grain and fire

Smooth and sharp

At least one of my childhood best friends is a Montessori alum, and HE turned out pretty well, so I'd like to provide my official endorsement of this year's auction (linky!). It'll be held at the Atlantis on Feb. 12, and beyond the obvious benefit of supporting education, it can be your chance to own this truly spectacular piece of furniture. Piece of art. Piece of goodness. Whatever.

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Portland Escape

2011-01-24T21:58:00.000-08:00

Ethel and I got skunked on our NYC trip last weekend so we salvaged the already-arranged time off she had and set our course for Oregon instead. Portland ho! We got to visit Sir Chez, Esq. III, explore the city a bit in between near-continuous downpours, and sample a wide variety of the food, drink, and coffee the place has to offer.

Here's the story.

We blitzed out of Reno at about 6:30am after garnering Portland beta from Joey at The Hub. Caffeinated and informed, the pedal hit the floor and the miles started melting away.

Daybreak near Doyle, CA

Upon arrival, we surprised our friend Willi at her furniture store in the Pearl District (check it out -here-!), and promptly adjourned to a wine'n'food joint, Metrovino, for a happy hour snack. We had, after all, navigated 600 miles of road that day. On the way back, I made a quick visit to a cool little park in the Pearl District for a couple photos.

Tanner Springs Park, part I

Tanner Springs Park, part II

From there, we absconded with Chez to our first official stop on the tour, Whiskey Soda Lounge. From Whiskey Soda, we introduced ourselves to a fantastic oddity of the city...the food truck pod. These pods are vacant parking lots whose owners allow food trucks to make themselves semi-permanent. Many of these pods have 6-8 or more food trucks. They are truly phantasmagorical in every sense of the word. We got a $9 meal that rivaled the food from many reputable restaurants, and then retreated to the homebrew beer and kombucha truck that had built a tent and provided tables and heaters.

This one has pies. Sweet and savory.

Blast from the past...a non-Home Depot or Lowe's hardware store!

We made a final beer stop at the Black Cat in Sellwood near Chase's flat before stealing away to the underside of the Sellwood Bridge (current safety score: 2/100 [due to collapse any day now]) for some photos of the bridge with the tilt-shift and of Downtown Portland miles away.

Portland across the Willamette

The shady side of the Sellwood Bridge

The bright side of the Sellwood Bridge

The next day brought a good sleep-in, a trip to the neighborhood gluten-free bakery where Murphy stocked up, and then a visit to the fantastic Water Ave. Coffee odditorium.

Next up was a run in the pouring rain through Oaks Bottom and then more...food! Off we went to Por Que No for delectable tacos and ceviche before navigating ourselves to Powell's Books (both 1 and 2, thanks) to donate our paychecks to this mecca of all things book. After another pretty darn good coffee there, we traipsed off a whole block away to meet my cousin Willy, author/singer/songwriter extraordinaire. Check him out -here-. We were long due for a catchup and whiled away about two and a half hours over cocktails until our dinner reservation at a nearby restaurant came round.

Cocktails with Willy at Clyde Common

This dinner was at Gruener, a lovely bastion of well-executed German cuisine. We didn't sit down until nearly 10pm, but we were all relieved to have gotten some cocktails out of the way early and to cap the night with dinner. Between trout, rabbit, and duck, we ate well!

Bill presented in a musty book at Gruener

Ambiance at Gruener

With much merriment and consumption under our collective belts, we called it a night.

The next morning brought a visit to the Chunky Monkey gluten free bakehouse and coffeeshop (parting shot for Murphy) for breakfast. Consumption complete, we made tracks for Reno, enjoying steady rain right to the California state line, where the skies turned clear immediately.

The only notable stop on the way home (besides dinner in McCloud) was at a spot I spied on the way up that had a rather photogenic arrangement of draped mossy trees in front of endless evergreens. It was positively pissing rain, but that's not an adequate deterrent.

Somewhere in Oregon

Not quite NYC but not a bad substitute, either!

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Icy River

2011-01-15T08:15:00.000-08:00

I'm supposed to be posting this in absentia from New York, but winter weather intervened and flights got canceled. So instead, we made the most of it and are in Portland for the weekend, where it's raining but at least warm. Moving on, these are from a couple forays along the Truckee River on a cold day last week.

The recon mission early in the day:

Suspended ice

A lonely blade of grass; just the tip

And this was worth going back for at dusk:

6' with the tilt-shift

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Daily Variety

2011-01-11T07:20:00.000-08:00

A previous post mentioned the nice morning view from the 14th floor. The little balcony with the clear view can be bitterly cold at daybreak, but it's totally worth it.

The variety of the light displays is pretty awesome; the following two photos are separated by 48 hours.

Tuesday

Thursday

I'll do my best to not totally go nuts with these sunrise photos.

I'm off to New York tomorrow for work and then sightseeing. Murphy will have a 1-day jump on me for enjoying NYC; I visit temperate and panoramic Rochester first. Fingers crossed for mild-ish winter weather!

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Installed (Briefly)

2011-01-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

The heavily aforementioned first sculpture got installed last week and then subsequently uninstalled.

Habitat

Blue sky action

Peeping through

We had been noticing that every new setting for the beast changed its character and how some of the design elements interacted with the surroundings. So it didn't catch us completely off guard to have visual elements come in too strong outside with the mixed onramp-and-earth background. It's currently getting a couple of mods in Paolo's shop and then it'll go back out for good!

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Slash and Rip

2011-01-06T13:04:00.001-08:00

There's been time lately for some extracurricular pursuit of happiness, thanks in no small part to a steady series of early-season storms.

Josh throws it sideways on his birthday (check out Josh and his talented photography -here-)

Hatchett drops off Incline Peak, Lake Tahoe behind

The day of the photo of Hatchett included a lap on Incline Peak and then a descent of Bear's Scratch, a rarely-filled line above Sand Harbor that is pretty steep and can be ridden all the way down to the highway at lake level. I had my dignity snatched from me while ascending the Scratch by my long-overdue-for-replacement climbing skins (I have to sheepishly admit that I wasn't able to top out the climb and had to drop in lower). New ones are en route, and I'm rather looking forward to ceasing performance of my new trick: the switch straightline down the skin track. 'Cause I'm getting pretty good at it and I'm not at all happy about it, although the other dudes get a good kick out of it.

It's been a good mix of resort and backcountry riding so far, and we've all got our fingers crossed for winter to continue like it has started.

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Oxidation

2010-12-30T16:43:00.000-08:00

The first sculpture was supposed to get installed Tuesday but got postponed to next week. However, it did get moved from the shop to the alley to have the mill scale removed, which allows the steel to oxidize. Washing the sculpture added enough water to the mix to start that process.

Beyond the new colors of rust in all its forms, seeing the beast outside added a whole new lighting scenario. The natural light and pooled water on the slices provided neatly stacked reflection pools, all interspersed with the beginnings of time's slow assault on the metal.

Here are some detail photos...

We find ourselves approaching and inspecting this thing from every angle, each new perspective revealing fresh detail, color, and lines. We probably look really funny doing it, too.

More full-body photos will be forthcoming shortly after its installation in its native habitat. I'm quite anxious to see it there.

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Holy Ghosts

2010-12-28T07:45:00.000-08:00

I'm a firm believer that we should all find our own sources of spirituality.

Round Top and The Sisters as viewed from Caples Lake, Christmas morning, 2010.

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Numero Uno

2010-12-26T14:43:00.000-08:00

Alright, here are a few photos of the beast in complete form, although not in its final resting place.

Head-on

Loping along

Slices

Portrait from below

Some stats on what you see:
~11' tall
~14' long
~3000 pounds
120 slices
Cut from 8 sheets of 3/8" steel with a hi-def plasma cutter
Width of each slice (when viewed from above) - 2"
300-some dowels for support and indexing
Untold hours of design, detailing, and fabrication

So I suppose it's time for a little bit of an explanation. A fairly brief one is that this is a foray into public art. This sculpture and fifteen others related to it will be installed in Carson City at two interchanges on the new 395 extension. They are 1.25:1 scale depictions of a meeting between explorer John Fremont and Native Americans. So while you've only seen a bunch of photos of a horse so far (pack horse, specifically), there will be a succession of explorers, natives, dwellings, etc.

It's been a long road to here to create a design signature for this project, to iron out (no pun intended) fabrication aids and methods, and to create many iterations of pose and the size of the slices. However, we've done most of that front-end work and it's time to get into the groove of producing some art.

Long story short, this is one hell of a way to keep my free time spoken for. :)

In other news, today's my birthday, and in hindsight, this has been a year of change and growth from myriad perspectives. Here's to much to be happy about!

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Eclipse

2010-12-22T12:23:00.000-08:00

Here are a few photos from the total lunar eclipse on the winter solstice a couple nights ago. Big marshmallowy trees look -really- awesome under moonlight.

Just as the eclipse started

It's striking how much darker the night gets when the Earth's shadow swipes across the moon, even in a surrounding of bright white snow.

During totality

The moon and a few straggling stars

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Lightshafts

2010-12-19T06:23:00.000-08:00

Getting to work around the time of the winter sunrise has its benefits. So does working on the 14th floor, far above the normal obstructions to the horizon.

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Craft

2010-12-16T12:56:00.000-08:00

The sculpture project is progressing. #1 out of 16 is nearly ready for a full reveal.

Before we do that, though, here's a tribute to the ridiculous level of craft that goes into the fabrication. Paolo and Kevin are shown here converting calculatingly misshapen rings of steel, countless feet of welding wire, and a frightening amount of amperage into...something...better.

Paolo

Kevin

Welding happens to be shockingly photogenic. Party on, people.

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Carmel

2010-12-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

For Thanksgiving, Ethel and I stole away for a few days to Carmel on the California coast. We needed a respite from the single-digit temperatures in Reno; hilariously, when we got there, the locals were shivering and bundling up because it had cooled down to 50. Sissies.

Our first couple days there were clear and calm, predominantly featuring the ocean gently lapping at the smooth sand. We made the most of it by taking a few walks along the beach, soaking in the warm November sun, and otherwise enjoying all the place had to offer. Of course, all that happened in between spates of eating hysterical amounts of food.

These guys would hunker down in footprints like tasty little Yorkshire Puddings.

Rivulets on Carmel River Beach

Tilt/shift portrait

Sun sets over Point Lobos

Cypress at Carmel City Beach

Waning day at the beach

Low tide; looking towards Pebble Beach

Shimmery reflections

Last minutes of light

Murphy ponders the sunset

Soft evening light

Saturday brought some stormy weather, putting a slight damper on the scenery we wanted to see on our drive down to Big Sur, but it's still a gorgeous place in spite of rain and fog. This storm also reawakened the sea, making things a bit more dramatic.

Abandoned barn, through the rain

Maelstrom, part I

Maelstrom, part II

The angry sea makes for awesome long exposures!

Silver lining

Peering down into the pit

Erosion at work, gracefully

Before we left to come home on Sunday, we enjoyed one last session of fresh sea air. The storm was gone but the sea was still angry.

Water, rock, and kelp

Thanks to the Ricciardis for putting us up (and/or putting up with us). We're very grateful to be able to spend time in places like this!

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Snap

2010-11-25T06:10:00.000-08:00

It got cold in Reno all of a sudden.

Art and science collide in the Jeep window

Truckee River from 14 stories up

Ethel and I are escaping to Carmel just in time. Sayonara, 5-degree weather!

Beasts

2010-11-22T17:32:00.000-08:00

I managed, quite accidentally, to photograph two cats in the same day. One of these beasts leads a far more privileged life than the other, although who knows what Sam's life was like before we got him.

Feral Siamese

I found the feral guy out along the river while I was looking for a great blue heron I saw fishing the day before (without my camera, of course). I made the return trip, and while the heron was nowhere to be found, this dude was absorbing some cold autumn sun.

Decidedly un-feral Sam

Since pet photos are stigmatized in the blogosphere, we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming now with some more looks at a different beast.

As promised, here's a virtual look or two at the cryptic steel I shared last week (although the beast has evolved a lot since I made these renderings a couple months ago).

Form revealed

Topo map-ish

Go ahead and imagine that animal constructed beyond lifesize. Like, 11 feet tall.

I'll continue to share more about this project as it unfolds. For now, I'll leave you with another coy peep at the real thing.

Stacked

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In the Flesh

2010-11-16T06:05:00.000-08:00

There's a project that I've been involved with that I'm very excited about; it's been a few months in the works and is just beginning to come to life.

The long and short of it is a large-scale sculpture project that, from my end, is a glorious blend of art and engineering. I'm very privileged to be creating these sculptures with an actual craftsman, a word that I do not use lightly.

I've got a little bit of cold hard steel to share, will reveal a little more in virtual form in a later post, and then share the entire beast once it's been built. And by "the entire beast," I mean "the first of sixteen." Yowzers.

Plasma-cut edge; 3/8" steel

Blasted hole

First hint of form

One slice of 125. The H in H-7 stands for Head...

This will be an ongoing series, so while I kinda apologize for being all cryptic, it'll be fun to see the evolution of this project over time, so I guess I'm not that sorry after all.

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Silverman '10

2010-11-11T17:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a story about my third visit to the Silverman iron-distance triathlon in southern Nevada, and arguably the one I was least prepared for. Insert intense foreshadowing here. Oh, wait, we just did that.

The deal I've always made with myself for long course races is that I wouldn't commit to a race unless I could prepare properly for it. Sounds simple, but in the past, that meant not holding a full time career-type job and racing ironman at the same time. Having the time to put in the huge training volume to do well at that distance race was great, but the economics finally caught up with me and brought it to a halt. I didn't do any long course racing last year (and barely did any racing at all) as I was too busy scrounging for work to train without feeling guilty about it.

Since then, the pendulum has swung back the other way, the economics work again, and I've been super busy with both day job and other projects. Fortunately, I'm graced with a splendid work environment that understands the importance of extracurricular passions, and for the first time ever, I've felt comfortable with the balance struck between work and training (and all the other stuff life has to offer). This environment allowed me to go race at Alpe d' Huez this summer, and also to push forward for a return to Silverman after missing last year's perfect weather.

However, when I finally pulled the trigger and signed up a few weeks ago, I was mentally committed to the race but knew that my preparation hadn't been perfect. Recovery from Alpe d' Huez took about 3 weeks longer than planned (damn you, steep course), and I came down with a couple colds that siphoned away the weeks I'd planned to put in huge hours. If anything, I had good run fitness, but my swim and bike fitness stood to prevent me from ever unleashing a big run. Insert intense foreshadowing here. Oh, wait...

So the state of the union leading in to race day was that I was pretty fit from great early-season training, but not rip-roarin' fit, and I was hoping that experience with the course, a couple more years of base miles, and lots more mental toughness would let me uncork a good one.

After the drive from Reno to Vegas on Friday, Saturday brought registration, the whole gear check-in thing at T1, a 5pm dinner and an early trip to bed for almost 8 hours of sleep. Fortunately, one of those hours was provided by the switch in Daylight Savings Time. Breakfast on race morning was a cup of tea, a thick PB&J, an Odwalla, and a banana. Personally, I love checking in gear the day before, as it drastically simplifies race morning logistics and minimizes the possibility of forgetting something important in a 4am stupor, like bike shoes. Arriving at the newly graded and carpeted T1 at about 5:45, all that was left to do was put water bottles on the bike and air the tires. On to the race...

Limbering up; yes, the hawk returned!

Floating in Lake Las Vegas

All lined up under the bridge

About that swim. Even after nearly a year of swimming masters and assiduously focusing on technique, nothing I do seems to improve or weaken my speed. As such, I'd kinda blown off swimming for the last couple of months as my time was better spent biking and running. Or, in less delicate parlance, "fuck it." This year marked a move for the race start from Lake Mead to Lake Las Vegas. Ultimately, it's a better venue than Lake Mead due to a less variable water level and better facilities at which to start a race. That being said, I kinda miss Lake Mead! On the down side, the water clarity isn't very good and it was impossible to see other swimmers until I was halfway up their calves. There was way more contact than normal due to the water clarity, but I think everyone recognized that and didn't freak out. For the first time ever in a long swim, I actually felt my legs getting tired, and that was a bit disheartening. As expected, I faked the swim as I knew I'd have to, but it took more out of me than it should have.

Underway in long and skinny Lake Las Vegas

Out of the water in 1:10, through the nicely carpeted T1, and up the steep carpeted hill onto the bike.

Let's talk about the bike course for a minute. 9700'+ of climbing over the 112 miles. Actually, it's likely more with the changed venue for the swim, as the modification to the bike course includes more hills than the section that was taken out past the turnaround. Furthermore, the hills are all just the right size...bigger than bumps, but not big enough to be knock-down-drag-out climbs, so the rhythm is always changing. Then there are the much-vaunted 3 Sisters, hills of 18% in succession around mile 95. Then there's the supremely awful bike path beyond the 3 Sisters. And so on and so forth. The desert landscape is stark and rich all at the same time, and this bike course is the centerpiece attraction of the whole race. Desolate save for another nearby lost soul atop a bike, the vibrant colors and textures of rock, vegetation, and soil fuel the psyche by letting it forget what the body's going through. Which is probably hell.

Officials cruising by

Hammer down

Big desert landscape

Those tired swimming legs held me down on the bike for the first 60 or 90 minutes. I was pretty damn sore and hadn't dealt with this sensation of not being Fresh as a Daisy before. I let lots of riders go by in those first 25-30 miles, knowing that some of them were riding too hard and flat-out praying that the rest of them were riding too hard. Finally, my legs came around and the next couple hours felt the way they should have. A lot of the guys who I knew were riding too hard came back to me and I reeled in a bunch more. All right, it's on! Unfortunately, I had been feeling the tailwind build on the way out to the turnaround and, sure enough, we got clobbered as soon as we turned back for home. I had worked my way up to about 15th by the turnaround, but that wasn't going to last long.

Sniped from above

Off to nowhere

The next horizon beckons

As I worked my way back from the furthest point on the course, the headwind quickly took its toll and I started to nosedive. I'd spent the last couple hours riding as though I were super bike-fit. In reality, my bike legs hadn't felt right since France, and it was now time to pay the proverbial piper. Sore and tired, my mood worsened. As a bonus, there were times that I'd blink, my eyes would stay closed, and I could feel all systems shutting down. Oh. Hell. No. I focused on getting my food in, breathing, relaxing, and dialing the effort way back in hopes of recovery. Not helping matters was the fact that the wind direction and magnitude exactly matched the forecast, ensuring that there would be no respite on the way back to T2.

Vast and empty valley

Still in good spirits

I got yer loaded weapon right here

By mile 90 of the bike, I was cooked and still had the 3 Sisters (all evil ones) to contend with. I was intently working to recover, but I was deep in the midst of finding out just how bad my bike fitness was. Amazingly, the gentle 18% grades of the Sisters cleared some of the gunk out of my legs and I perked up. In what may have been a shockingly good decision, I saved that perkiness for the run instead of spending it on the Bike Path from Hell (uphill, upwind, and frighteningly lonely) that connects the 3 Sisters to Henderson.

Cresting the divide

Unadulterated suffering and nowhere near home

I was hoping to best my 6:03 bike split from 2008 but watched that time tick by still miles from transition. Shattered, I arrived at T2 after a dismal 6:14 ride and somewhat deliriously changed socks and shoes. I had taken in 2100 calories of Infinit and who knows how many ounces of water over the length of the ride.

For the record, if it hasn't been said enough, this is no ordinary course. Here, a 6-hour bike split is something to be happy about, and pretty much any run under 4 hours is cause for celebration. If you're looking for a race to go sub-9 (or even sub-10), this is NOT the one...the course record is 9:48, and I think only about a dozen people have ever dipped below 11 hours. On to the run.

With dark thoughts buzzing the tower with every step, I lurched out onto the run course and discovered within about a mile that things weren't so bad after all. My decision to lose touch with a lot of racers over the last half of the bike and be smarter about my effort was a good one. My only goal for the run this year was to avoid the hill-induced detonation I suffered through in '08. You see, there's about 1 mile of the 26 that isn't either up or down, and putting together a good run on this course is about managing those climbing and descending muscles.

I'd spent the last 10 days or so fighting an angry IT band (thanks to a particular run in Wisconsin...with my first frigid breath out the hotel door, I knew my only chance for survival involved cracking the throttle open and managed a ~42' 10K in the pitch black and below-freezing Wisconsin countryside...). On the first uphill past the deceptively easy first mile, I felt that IT band punch the time clock and knew that I'd have to be diligent in managing its happiness over the next couple hours.

I am not happy; just off the bike

Long road ahead

Aside from the 2.5 hours of misery that ended my ride, the darkest moment of the day came on mile 3 of the run. This is a 2-loop run course, so the mile markers for each lap are nearly on top of each other. As I approached the mile 3 marker, I came to the mile 16 marker first, and made the mistake of asking myself "hey dude, 13 miles from now, how are you gonna feel about running another 10 miles to get home?" The answer to that question (which I thankfully kept silent) sounded something like a velociraptor getting lowered into a vat of lava and I made an executive decision to think about something else.

Even with my shelled legs, it was becoming apparent that the vast majority of the racers in front of me had overbiked even more egregiously than I had. Many of them came back to me, and I started to feel pretty good about my decision to write off the end of the bike course. As the miles ticked by, I was able to focus on breathing and "form" (what little bit I had) and kept picking targets. At this point (hours before, actually), I knew I wasn't having the race I wanted to have, but I was determined to salvage what I could and at least get it over with faster.

First lap through The District

Unidentified runner in an awesome photo near the top of the run course

It's worth noting that at no point was I running "hard." It was all about a steady pace, an efficient stride, and avoiding too much punishment from the hills. On easier courses, I've felt comfortable running with reckless abandon and have gotten away with it many times, but that's not a viable solution here!

After surviving the final quad-punishing downhill to The District, and with just a mall, a hill, and a path left to go (I probably repeated that a thousand times silently...a mall...a hill...and a path...), I figured the day was in the bag. I'd managed to protect the IT band on the uphills and the quads on the downhills, so at least hobbling home was out of the question. In '08, I had figured it was in the bag before the last big downhill and nearly seized my quads in the process, so this was a bit of an improvement! I picked off a guy in the last 200m of the run, too, and that always feels good.

My nutrition for the run was a bit different this time around. I snagged a few gels (3 or 4?), but I mostly sustained myself on Coke, water, and Gatorade. Probably had 15 cups of Coke, 6 cups of Gatorade, and of course water at nearly every aid station. Even with an abysmal run of 3:44, it ranked as the second fastest run of the day...this is truly a monster run course and lots of people clearly went too big on the bike.

Home in 11:15, I finished right in between my times from '07 and '08. While the results page shows a good performance, I know deep down that it wasn't the race I wanted to have. I paid the price, dearly, for my deficient bike fitness, and ended up overextending myself and racing past my overall level fitness, which is not the optimal recipe for success.

Done and dusted

Beyond the perennial highlights of the bike course's beauty and the sheer madness behind both the bike and run courses, the other benefits of Silverman lie in the race's organization and volunteers. With spot-on traffic control thanks to Henderson police; cheerful, friendly, and helpful volunteers that outnumber the racers; and immaculate attention to detail paid to the experience for the athletes; it's no wonder that people return year after year to subject themselves to such glorious torture. Frank's stubborn insistence to put on a good race makes all the pain and suffering worth it. My personal favorites are the aid stations that have the athlete list; there's nothing like 20 or so screaming volunteers cheering each racer on by name! The facilities at the end of the race are also spectacular, and while I can't speak for the medical tent, the food and massage tents are exceedingly rad!

We enjoyed the awards breakfast Monday morning; the food was actually quite good and we were treated to more of Dave Scott's antics up on stage. The long drive home to Reno capped off the weekend; I feel very fortunate to have this race in-state!

Unfortunately, Silverman will be on hiatus in 2011 so that Frank can put on the ITU Long Distance world championships on the same course during the same weekend. This race will attract an even stronger field of athletes and would be a good goal for all of you foreigners out there to work towards. We've got every reason to believe that Silverman itself will return for 2012, which is most definitely a good thing.

Getting to race through the vast desert landscape, completely removed from civilization, is a good reminder of why we do this sport. Body and mind work together (hopefully in harmony), soak up energy from the surroundings, and take epicurean delight from the journey that will be over all too soon. Or none too soon, depending on how wrecked your legs are.

BONUS: If you've made it this far, here are some photos from wandering around Vegas Friday night and the trip home on Monday.

City center skyline

Weeping wall

Murphy fights the wind at Big Dune

Texture, color, and wind

Shadows and sharp lines

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Wisconsin Whirlwind

2010-11-03T08:39:00.000-07:00

I blasted out of Reno for a couple days last week for a work trip to visit some plastic injection molding facilities in panoramic DeForest, WI. We're seeing one of our designs move towards production and it was time to talk details at the factory.

1500 ton press; not the biggest one they have but the easiest big one to photograph

Joel does his best imitation of Crazy in cleanroom garb. Lots of sterile-never-touched-by-human-hands-automation goodness happens in here.

Insert finished product here, collect check from customer

A big honkin' piece of solid steel mold (this one makes 8 headlight reflectors at a time)

I'm continually fascinated by the machines and the molds and the automation, no matter how many times and in how many settings I see them. Particularly the automation. I don't think the general public appreciates the complexity of the tooling and process control that goes into the goods they use every day!

It's all about the pellets

A splash of culture in nearby Madison

The trip coincided neatly with the beginning of taper week, and I even managed a below-freezing pre-sunrise run through the countryside, running east while watching the broad horizon's palette evolve as daybreak approached.

Oh, did I say taper week? I'll be toeing the line at Silverman in four days...stoked and ready to rock. Watch this space.

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Escape!

2010-10-21T20:24:00.000-07:00

While imprisoned in Aspen for Aaron and Britt's wedding, I schemed incessantly and finally managed to break free of my captors while conveniently garbed in my running outfit. Sprinting for the door of the Hotel Jerome, I hurdled indignant bellmen and sent a cart of last week's soiled crystal and silver crashing to the marble floor (it was headed to the incinerator anyway; donation is for the feeble-minded). Finally outside, locals' heads swiveled in my direction, their keen noses sensing a distinct lack of Range Rover ownership. Moving in for the kill, zombielike, they converged upon me, lattes in one hand, torts in the other, and forced me to make a desperate move through a brief opening in the approaching wall of cashmere. Spotting a succession of $2000 signs pointing the way to a $50 dirt trail, I did the only logical thing and headed for that trail and the mountains it accessed.

Most fortunately, I had accumulated some water bottles and a trail map during my incarceration, and also had the presence of mind to fashion a cellular communication device outfitted with a rudimentary camera. Hence, you'll be treated to some iPhone documentation of my time as an escapee. Winding my way to the outskirts of town and out of the valley, I gained elevation, lost oxygen content (Aspen itself is at 7900 feet, and everything's up from there), and found myself immersed in grove after grove of brightly-colored aspen.

First stage of the escape complete

On the lower slopes of Aspen Highlands

Continuing up and up along Government Trail (Big Brother is watching), I entered thinner and thinner air until the trail started to dip back down a little bit. It's worth noting that I encountered frequent patrols, mounted atop $8K mountain bikes as enforcement vehicles, and dove into bushes every time they came hunting for me.

My kinda sign

Purty

Up near the top of the trail, I spooked a mother and calf elk team (likely plotting my demise) and sent them clattering through the dry woods. Finally deciding that this path was too well-traveled, I bailed onto a trail affectionately known as Anaerobic Nightmare, making me overwhelmingly gracious that I was running down it and not up it.

Brashly pausing for a self-portrait

Trailside scenery

Thick

Back down into thicker air, I found myself many miles out of town and nearly out of water, so I followed Owl Creek Trail back towards the valley. I passed some quaint $20M "ranches" before arriving on a bluff overlooking the airport, where business jets are as common as Honda Civics and you're only cool if you've got a Gulfstream.

Parking lot of the rich and famous

Skirting detection here, I continued away from town until I found a friendly store. Unwrapping my trail map and phone from my shirt and donning proper attire, I begged the clerk until she took pity on me and allowed me to refill my water bottles; she must have made an escape attempt sometime too, poor kindred spirit. From here, I continued down to the idyllic Roaring Fork River, hopeful that the hounds would have trouble tracking my pungent scent along the waterway. Still about 5 miles outside of the prison's perimeter, I dipped my head and shoulders in the water and let it invigorate me for the remainder of the journey.

As inviting as they get

After some period of running up the Roaring Fork toward town, I zoned out and got disoriented, accidentally looping back to the hotel. I was overcome with a brief sense of panic, anticipating a most unpleasant assimilation back into the facility. Thankfully, though, I arrived exhausted, starving, and massively dehydrated, and was subsequently mistaken for an employee.

Based on my rudimentary scribbling (and backed by data from the homing chip they implanted under my skin, although I won't have access to that data until my next parole hearing), I was on the lam for just under 4 hours, ran for 3 and a half of them, and covered somewhere between 18 and 20 miles. After a good dip in the pool, the hot tub, and the pool again (I hadn't yet been identified as an escapee), I thoroughly enjoyed the wedding and the rest of the festivities, even though it hurt to stand up, much less walk around. I suppose there's something rewarding about listlessly wandering on foot in unfamiliar territory, as it was a far more palatable long run than any others I can remember.

Go get lost in the mountains!

[any allusions to the Hotel Jerome being a place of incarceration are only half-true]

[sorry for the iPhone photos, but hey, they're unedited and still quite alright, and the best camera is the one that's with you]

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Colorado Fall Colors

2010-10-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of traveling to Aspen a couple weeks ago to witness my ancient friend Aaron marry his longtime crush Britt. Aaron and I went to nerd camp together in Denver starting, oh, about 18 years ago, and we were instant friends for life.

Fortunately, they timed their matrimony to coincide remarkably well with the fickle fall colors in the Rockies. Unfortunately, though, Murphy was still in Ireland, so I was solo guy for the weekend.

So without further ado, let's get right to those fall colors.

OK, that was a bit of a tease. We drove from Denver and took the more scenic route through Leadville and over Independence Pass, finding ample places to stop along the way.

Aspen's a most curious burg. Good luck finding breakfast for less than $20, and good luck walking further than a hundred feet without stumbling over someone's $8M "cabin."

After a couple days of wedding-related merriment and a ridiculous trail run that I treated myself to up in the mountains (deserves its own post...coming soon...), it was time to leave this bastion of Extravagance and Disdain for Those Less-Privileged and head for home. Speaking of head:

Advertising the Sunday pig roast inside an Aspen restaurant

We took the same route back to Denver and stopped as we saw fit.

And one last stop at a grove that Aaron and Britt had visited before, this time with an agenda in mind.

Vandals!

I feel most fortunate to have been able to attend their celebration, and it was most awesome to catch up with friendly people I hadn't seen in well over a decade.

Take a minute or three to check out Aaron's company, too. They've created quite the empire.

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Moonrise

2010-09-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

Here're a couple quickies from the massive moonrise the evening after the autumnal equinox. Adios, summer.

I seem to be overly obsessed with celestial bodies lately. Eh, there are worse things to get excited about. Speaking of excited, Murphy returns next week from her month in Ireland; looking forward to seeing her shining face back 'round these here parts!

I'm off to Aspen, CO tomorrow for my most excellent friend Aaron's wedding. I am going to pack my camera and my running shoes as they are sure to be valuable weapons against the dangerously awesome fall colors; everything else may fall by the wayside. Cheerio 'til next week!

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Bomber

2010-09-21T09:14:00.000-07:00

I had the distinguished privilege of spending every single waking moment of last weekend with Riley, helping him on a big photo shoot. He got hired to photograph a global aviation-related company's annual retreat, timed to coincide with the Reno Air Races. They rented two WWII-era bombers, a B-17 and a B-25, and gave their executives and some top clients rides in them out of a private terminal at the Reno airport.

We had been out to the terminal Friday to see the planes, but we arrived there at 6am Saturday to set up the lights and get the rest of the gear set up properly. The collection of gear we brought is a little bit ridiculous and it's mind-boggling to think about all the contingencies we put into place to make sure everything went off smoothly. Quick count: 3 cameras, 15ish lenses, 11 lights, a production assistant, 8 pocket wizards, 120ish GB of flash cards, 6 batteries, chargers for every light's battery, a generator, a cherry picker, too many filters and tripods and light stands to count, sandbags, extension cords, a computer, external hard drives, etc.

From the cherry picker. How to light a plane. Photo: Riley

Preparation

Fast forward to late that afternoon, after several rounds of shooting and editing, when we headed up to the Hyatt in Incline to photograph their gala dinner.

Flame and moon

We managed a few hours of sleep before getting back out to the airport at 7am to set up the myriad lighting equipment again; this is still an active airport, so nothing could be left lying around where it might get sucked through a plane's propeller!

About mid-day, the gentleman coordinating everything for the company told us that there were a couple of no-shows, and that we could both go on the next B-25 flight. We dropped all non-essential gear, left our production assistant with a list of to-do items, and wriggled into the belly of the B-25. The beast roared to life with a cloud of smoke and we careened down the runway, swaying to and fro. The "interior" of this plane is littered with protrusions both sharp and blunt, making safe navigation within its embrace a substantial challenge.

Safe is a misnomer

Nothing to be embarrassed about

Once airborne, we had free reign over the plane, meaning we could crawl into the nose gun, into the top gun, and all the way back into the tail gun. And by "crawl," I mean "crawl."

Not for the claustrophobic. Photo: Riley

These planes have windows, too, and they're not the slide-up-and-down window cover that we're used to on airlines. It's a hole in the side of the plane, leaving one free to stick his head out into 280-knot airflow! We flew south out of Reno and did some formation flying with the B-17, after which they turned up to Tahoe and did more formation flying, making big banked turns with the B-17 so close it felt like we could reach out and touch it.

Alongside Slide Mountain

Leaving Reno airspace

Tahoe beckons from the nose-gunner's perch

B-17 from the B-25. Life is officially awesome!

They brought us back down over Spooner Summit, a few hundred feet above the trees, before setting a course over Carson and Washoe Lake on the way back to Reno.

Blat blat blat blat blat

Hardware

Instrumentation, or "this is how scared you should be" in analog form

Heading home over Washoe Lake

By this time, 30 or 40 minutes into the flight, the turbulence was starting to get to me, as Sunday was far far more windy than Saturday. I think Riley was feeling it too, as we both stumbled out of the plane and curled up into little balls before the next group of execs showed up for their ride.

After a couple more hours of shooting and on-the-spot editing in a back room, we went and made the prints (to be delivered that night) and called it a wrap. Exhausting weekend by all counts, but what an experience to go for a flight in a WWII bomber!

Burning Man 2010

2010-09-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

Ethel and I made our pilgrimage to Black Rock City last week. After our last couple trips to the playa outside of Burning Man, we knew we'd be in for the inevitable culture shock of sharing this place with 50,000 people.

We camped with Martini Village and had an awesome little crew that included a high percentage of international visitors and also a bunch of virgins. Burner virgins. You degenerates. The festival also coincided with Ethel's 30th birthday; what better place to celebrate a big birthday?

These photos here are not a complete tour of the playa and everything that goes on there, but they show some of the art and the moonscape that we so eagerly go back for year after year.

Perhaps the most distinctive art installation on the playa this year was the massive mesh-skinned woman. She was beautiful in pretty much any light and whether viewed from afar or up close.

Most of her at dusk

Torso detail

Hand detail

The Temple was stunning, as usual. Quick explanation that will lend credence to my fondness for the place: the Temple is always a large-scale installation that burns the night after the burning of the Man. However, it's an entirely different experience. The Man is a raging party of all 50,000 people, replete with blasting music from every direction and rowdiness of every flavor. However, a bunch of people leave before Sunday night. The burning of the Temple is instead viewed by 25,000 totally silent people. It's a place of both remembrance and letting go, as throughout the week, people write notes and leave artifacts in the Temple. They may be offering a remembrance of a friend or family member who has died, they may be letting go of an addiction, they may be letting go of a bad relationship, etc. By Sunday morning, it's hard to walk through the Temple without breaking down in a matter of a couple minutes; the energy in the place is truly palpable. So when the Temple burns, it's an event of collective energy and community, and it's the most special part of the week for me.

This year's Temple was modeled after sand dunes; large flowing shapes of wood meandered around each other and rose from the flat playa. It was far different from any Temple I've seen thus far and quite beautiful in its simplicity and form.

Sun and dust filter through the Temple

The Temple at night, guarded by the moon

Moving on...

Cruising around the playa at any time of day, one is bound to find impromptu parties. Burning Man is an "anything goes" type of place, so parking an Art Car with a sound system in the middle of nowhere and attracting some people to dance is not an unusual sight at all. Also not unusual is to see a burner fully embracing the dust by not letting it get in the way of a little sunset yoga.

Dancing girls at sunset

As good a place as any

A lot of the art at Burning Man isn't up for the whole week. Due to weather conditions or the fragile nature of some installations, they may only appear for one night or part of a day. These balloons were in that category. They were BIG balloons!

Balloons

One of the perennial treats of the playa is seeing the Flaming Lotus Girls' work. They brought us the truly spectacular Serpent Mother a few years ago and never disappoint. This year, they fabricated massive dandelions and other flowers. We unfortunately never made it by at night to witness the extravaganza of fire that is the hallmark of their installations, but their work is equally stunning during the day. They have raised the interplay of steel, propane, and light to new heights...

Dandelion

This next photo is a detail of a towering art installation in front of Center Camp. Climbable art, people would wait partway up until a spot freed up in the caged dome atop the tower.

Perched

One of the creature comforts of the playa is finding new friends who are carrying spray bottles and offer misty relief from the sun and the dust.

Ethel gets sprayed

On Friday, we made our first trip out to the Man to admire his neon work and his Art Deco styled pedestal.

Playa travelers

The Man is a hub of activity throughout the week, and it's an excellent place to sit down for a few minutes and watch the world go by.

Resting and people watching

The Man is also one of the highest if not the highest vantage points on the playa. The landscape is so flat that it doesn't take much elevation to be able to survey the entire place.

From the Man, back towards Center Camp

A lot of work goes into the construction of the Man, a testament to the ephemeral nature of the whole event. The level of detail in the neon and his delicate construction is a matter of pride for the crew who builds him, and it all burns in the end...

The Man on his pedestal, from afar

Neon detail

The Man, compressed

The Lamplighters are a select group who manually light the city's main streets each night. There is much ceremony associated with their movements through the city; they take their jobs very seriously!

Lamplighters

Aside from the toll that the microscopic moondust can take on camera gear, it's really a spectacular venue for photography. Even before we talk about the people, the art, and the light, there's simply never a shortage of colorful bright things to stick in the background of a photo!

Ethel at Disorient

Whether at the end of a long night or with fresh countenance after a good sleep, sunrise is a spectacular time of day in Black Rock City. It's where the nightlife and the daylife converge, when the weather is kindest, and when the light does amazing things to the playa, the people, and the art.

Outside Root Society at daybreak

Screens at sunrise

Flower stem, with Temple behind

Looking up at a 40' tall flower

Antenna array at sunrise

Murphy and Lisa

Inside a sanctuary styled after the dome of a Persian mosque

One of the more curious traditions on the playa is the group that gathers at the embers of the burnt Man and sorts through for artifacts. Highly prized are bits of neon tubing etc. There are hundreds of people hanging out there Sunday morning, napping, drinking, comparing treasures, and otherwise socializing.

The rubble of the Man

Treasures

All in all, we had good weather. We had a diverse and super-cool group of people in our camp, and our virgins jumped in headfirst. The music was pretty off the hook (An-Ten-Nae and FreQ-Nasty at Root Society Thursday night blew my freakin' mind). I think the art was a bit off this year, and I'm starting to hypothesize that the quality and scale of the art follows the economy. Both 2007 and 2008 had pretty amazing and plentiful art, and it's just been a bit subdued the last two years.

Above all, I loved hanging out with my extended playa family in my unofficial second home, and getting to celebrate Murphy's 30th birthday in such a special place was pretty darn awesome.

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Black Rock, Desert Storm Edition

2010-08-31T09:02:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to make another pilgrimage out to the playa, this time with Ethel, Riley, and my workmate Rory. We went much deeper into the playa than I've ever been, trekking out to Black Rock Hot Spring, conveniently located in the shadow of the area's namesake...a big black rock. Many thanks to Rory for his spot-on navigation getting out there.

Our trip coincided with a Sunday night very near the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, and we were hoping to see some astronomical action. We got out there late in the afternoon after driving past the Burning Man site; preparations in full swing! We set up our camp just in time to take a dip in the springs and watch some stormy weather roll through.

Looking west from Black Rock Hot Spring

Looking south; the Burning Man site is just out of frame left and about 15-20 miles in the distance. Deep playa baby!

We had possession of a monster piece of camera gear: a Canon 200mm f/2. I had rented this beast for the weekend, and Riley and I had already put it to good use at a wedding the day before.

Riley wields a weapon of optical destruction

This hot spring is quite hot...uncomfortable to slide in to, OK to be in after a bit, but a bit scary when a patch of extra-hot water sidles by.

Murphy + hot water

Black Rock Hot Spring, breezy grass, and the big black rock

The weather was changing fast and provided a gorgeous backdrop for the whole evening. Clouds, nearby rain showers, and generous but distant lightning activity (probably 60-80 miles away) were our constant companions.

Rory enjoys the show

After the clouds mostly cleared around dusk, we had a brief period of clarity before they socked back in for a few hours. All through the night, the bright work lights from Black Rock City were a persistent beacon; preparations for Burning Man are truly 24/7.

Night beckons, next cloud set approaches

First stars peek through

After a long period of awesome clouds (but no stars and no meteor shower), we had some clearing just after moonset (rad, but no photos, sorry) and got back to hoping for some shooting stars. We saw a few here and there but not the 60-80/hr that were forecast. I finally gave up around 1am and called it a night. Riley and Rory stayed up a bit later and saw the activity pick up before they crashed.

After a few measly hours of sleep, we drug ourselves out of bed, packed up, and made tracks for home. This was a Sunday night, after all, so work was in our immediate futures!

As I've mentioned before, the Black Rock Desert is a stunning landscape and well-worth experiencing outside of Burning Man. It's all the more beautiful when bad weather rolls through; there's not really any place like it on earth.

Speaking of Burning Man, Ethel and I are t-minus-24 hours from being out there for 6 days with 50,000 of our closest friends. Can't wait to arrive at our second home! My next post will be lots of photos from Burning Man :)

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Moon and Jupiter

2010-08-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

We're getting treated to a celestial performance lately: Jupiter is very bright in the night sky and also appears abnormally close to the Moon from our vantage point on Earth.

There's a widely circulating rumor that the Moon's companion is Mars, and also that Mars will be as large in the night sky as the Moon. The first part of the rumor is quite believable; the second part...come on...

Both celestial bodies just barely fit into the corners of a photo taken with a 300mm lens attached.

After dawn and just before sunrise, Aug. 27, 2010. Jupiter in bottom left corner of the frame.

Huge crop into a photo before dawn that shows the pinprick of Jupiter a bit larger

Another crop into the pre-dawn photo (hint: not Jupiter)

I wish I had some anecdotal evidence of superpowers imbued in me by the interaction of these heavenly bodies, but I think the only superpowers I'm experiencing are a result of the tri tip I ate last night.

Desolation, Part Deux

2010-08-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

Housekeeping first: being generally unhappy with my image hosting, I've made some changes, and you'll hopefully notice these posts loading better, actually getting all the photos the first time around! There's more to come along those lines, but all in due time.

Continuing through the pre-France backlog...

Ethel and I went back to Casa Hancock on the edge of Desolation Wilderness over the 4th of July, mostly to escape the stifling heat of Reno and the myriad throngs of undead zombie-tourists that choke the life out of Tahoe. And we both had the weekend off.

The last time we were up in Desolation (late May, 6 weeks prior), the landscape was inundated with snow thanks to late storms and cool weather. My, what a difference a few weeks make, as we stepped into a new landscape with only a few reminders of what we'd seen the trip prior.

We hung around the cabin the first evening, as we got there late enough in the day to preclude any big missions.

Idontknowmy flowernames, right by Casa Hancock

The next day, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with Chase's parents before traipsing up into Desolation.

Moon!

More flora, above Aloha this time

After a quick hike into the Wilderness area and then off-trail for a while (through the remnants of the snowpack, still 10' deep in places), we arrived at Jabu, a tiny little lake perched above Aloha Basin. And, as a bonus, there was still snow around Jabu. And in Jabu...

Ice cube in Jabu

Flowers and rock

The massive amount of late-season snow translated to copious amounts of runoff. Here's some of that runoff gushing out of Heather Lake:

Mmm, waterfall

We then took our time lazing about Jabu and the immediate surroundings. It's hard not to with a panoramic view of Aloha Basin and Lake Tahoe!

Ethel makes a break for the highest point

But after a while, the surroundings get overwhelmed by the draw of the lake itself. It's kind of the elephant in the room.

Contemplating...

Still contemplating...

Contemplating is for girls!

Having had our fill of Jabu (and freezing my wobbly bits in the process), we trekked back down to Casa Hancock, where Chase was due to arrive at any time.

I know this one! Indian Paintbrush

Leafy

Prickly closeup, same plant as above

Chase, Ethel, and I spent the late afternoon goofing off on Red Hill above the cabin, fabricating stories of machismo and trading tips on the finer aspects of needlepoint. Which are NOT mutually exclusive, thank you very much.

Flower on Red Hill

Sap sphere above Lower Echo Lake

Disturbance

Back to the Casa for another delicious dinner, we very briefly discussed making a trip to the top of Flagpole Peak to see some Tahoe fireworks, then decided the certain death on the dark and rocky descent back to the cabin wasn't worth it. So we relaxed instead.

Dock at dusk, Lower Echo Lake

Milky Way and a -few- other stars from Casa Hancock

After another leisurely breakfast and a dip in the lake, we tucked our tails between our legs, nodded goodbye to the wilderness, and relinquished ourselves to the maelstrom of society and the incapacitating summer heat. Which meant that we stopped at In-n-Out for an air-conditioned meal. And then back to the fray!

Alpe d' Huez and the French Alps

2010-08-11T21:21:00.000-07:00

I got back last week from a quick European holiday; just under a week and a half in the French Alps. The main impetus to go there was a heinously difficult triathlon at Alpe d' Huez, site of decades of cycling lore from the Tour de France. I traveled alone for the first few days, met up with some other doods from Reno and SF halfway through, then traveled home alone. Ethel couldn't come with as she's spending all of September in Ireland, as we're fully on the separate holiday track this year! Here's the story and lots of photos.

The Setup:
The seed for this trip was planted nearly 3 years ago when a fellow named Scott Molina who runs Epic Camp suggested it to me as he thought the course would suit me. Checked it out, and sure enough, it looked both stupidly hard and beautiful, my top two requirements for selecting races. It took until this year to be in a position where I could consider traveling to France for a race, mostly from a cash standpoint, as Mexican Black Tar Heroin has gotten wildly expensive as of late. I mentally committed myself to it in about January and started picking up my preparation as winter wound down. I spent the last few months being super excited for the trip and the challenge that the race would present.

The Trip, pre-race:
Unfortunately, the only way I can afford the trip is to fly standby on a friend's employee ticket. While this is great in principle, it adds a lot of uncertainty to one's travel plans, especially as there's no guarantee of arrival or departure dates. I make it from Reno to Paris with a couple hiccups (the worst is yet to come...) and successfully employ the chaos theory of travel to work my way from CDG to Lyon to Grenoble to Bourg d' Oisans over the course of Wednesday without any plans ahead of time. Find a charming hotel (Hotel Oberland) in Bourg d' Oisans, eat dinner, pour a pitcher of wine down my gullet, and pass out. Build the bike the next day and start exploring. I'm rocking the TT bike (my only bike) with deep dish carbon wheels (my lightest wheelset) and normal road gear ratios (eh, I'll be fine). My standard procedure for the next few days of rides will be to throw a messenger bag with a 5DMkII and a couple extra lenses over my shoulder and go find steep roads to lug it up. Training weight, right?

The view across the street from my hotel

Thursday brings my first trip up Alpe d' Huez. Treat it like a recon ride and go easy, spotting photo opportunities for the way down as I prefer not to stop on the way up. I pass under the banner in town in 58 minutes, a good sign for the week to come. This is a difficult climb on its own by any metric, not to mention how it'll feel at the end of a race. It's got a sustained grade WAY steeper than anything I'm used to riding, but the hairpins themselves are nearly flat and make good opportunities to recover (or attack). This is also my first taste of the town of Alpe d' Huez where I'll be staying when the crew shows up in a few days. Seems like a cool town! It's time for the descent, and it's a new world of descending for me. I'm used to sweeping descents where aerobars are du jour, but this is a lot of braking hard into a hairpin, letting go of the brakes, and immediately being accelerated past 40mph before starting all over again. I finally understand what people mean when they say TT bikes are not good descenders... I cruise through Oisans and back to the hotel. Rain threatens so I spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing and watching Le Tour, and make a foray into town late at night for some photos when it's not raining.

Halfway down Alpe d' Huez, maniacal hairpins beckon

Bourg d' Oisans at night

Mmm, sausage

Pointy thing in Bourg d' Oisans

Friday, I'm awakened by simultaneous thunder and lightning (differentiated from almost-simultaneous and damn-near-simultaneous), three times. Time for a lazy morning and an extended breakfast! The weather clears and I reload the messenger bag (more Oreos) for a tour of the remainder of the bike course. I ride from Oisans to Sechilienne, then up the Col d' Alpe du Grand Serre, which is heavily fogged and quite eerie and beautiful. This climb takes me nearly an hour before I drop into the valley between La Morte and the Col d' Ornon climb. This valley in between is gorgeous and will prove to be fast during the race. I pass through Valbonnais and pretty much shatter myself as this is a deceptive stretch of road that doubles as the world's toughest false flat. I crawl over the top of Col d' Ornon after passing the Chantelouve and begin the screaming descent back into Oisans. I have stopped for lots of photos, but this is still a four and a half hour ride, which makes my goal of 4:30 for the bike in the race a bit of a stretch as there'll still Alpe d' Huez to ride on race day... I round off the day with a nice run along the river in Oisans before dinner and relaxation.

The lake we're swimming in is attached to this liquid glacier...

Easy livin'!

Saturday, I meet up with 5 Brits who are staying in the same hotel and we go past Lac du Chambon to climb Lautaret and Galibier. These guys are a good hoot and good riding pals, and we enjoy good weather (except for the top of Galibier) and put another four and a half hour ride in the books. Seems like I can't go anywhere without putting in 4+ hours...how's that taper going, tough guy?!? Galibier is a monster, especially with that pesky camera on my back, but what the hell; ya only live once, right? The rest of the West Coast crew had arrived in Alpe d' Huez from Lugano that day, so I move up the hill to crash in their rented apartment, which ends up costing me 150USD for four nights: win!

Lac du Chambon

Partway up Col du Lautaret

Sculpted rock with a backdrop of the stuff that sculpted it

Galibier's my bitch...riiiight

View from Galibier towards Lautaret and Briancon

Ridiculous creperie in La Grave

Sunday, they're aching to go put some big kms in, so we ride past the race swim location, Lac du Verney, and tackle Glandon. Good lord, this makes Galibier seem easy, as it's an endless climb with very steep sections, and needless 12% down-and-up bits that chisel away at one's dignity. We do the easy double of Col du Glandon and Col de la Croix de Fer as they practically share a summit. I split from the boys at the top of Croix de Fer as they want to tack on another big 3-hour loop with some other climbs (even though we're racing in 3 days), and I'd prefer to just limp home and climb Alpe d' Huez as I'm feeling the vertical meters from the previous days pile up in my poor legs. After we split, their plans change twice and we end up riding the same route home, even though I'm stopping every 200m at times for a photo, so they beat me back by an hour. This time, the Alpe d' Huez climb takes me 1:05...easy there, big fella...I'm starting to feel shattered.

Doin' their thing at the top of Glandon

Role model for all things canine

From the top of Col de la Croix de Fer towards Col du Glandon

Dear California: your "happy" cows don't know what they're missin'

On the descent from Glandon

Looking back towards Glandon (center) and Croix de Fer (out of frame right)

This list compares climbing in the Alps to everywhere else I've ridden, on a scale from 1 to Being Drawn and Quartered:
Climbs near Reno/Tahoe (Mt. Rose, Kingsbury, Geiger, all part of Greg Lemond and Bobby Julich's stomping ground) - 3
Climbs in New Zealand (Crown Range, Coronet Peak) - 6
The hill from Pink Floyd's "Fearless" - 8
Every fucking shred of asphalt in the Alps - 10

The climbs at home are still mostly aerobic in nature, but these involve constant muscular agony, after which the road turns up some more. Kind of starting to re-evaluate whether I've prepared properly for the bike...

After my slow return to Alpe d' Huez, I spend the evening making photos of the dusk, rather enjoying feeling my legs recover instead of getting more tired.

The proper kind of luggage to bring to the Alps in summer

The church in Alpe d' Huez

View south at dusk from Alpe d' Huez

Last light over the Alps

Monday, I'm committed to resting a bit, so I do exactly that while two of the guys head off to ride Lautaret and Galibier before I pick them up in Briancon for some sightseeing. I kinda want to swim, so I go to the awesome outdoor pool in Alpe d' Huez, only to find it full of triathletes bouncing off of each other like those molecules in a container in that high school chemistry video. Deciding to save my 3 Euro and my skull, I head towards Briancon in their car and enjoy wandering around the walled city for a few hours with them.

Start your day right...

Jaffa pours water in a charming "I'll make anything you ask for" creperie in Briancon

Teetering row houses in Briancon

Landmark inside the walled city

Inside the walls at Briancon

Glacier at Col du Lautaret

Tuesday brings rest, registration, a swim in the outdoor pool (less crowded, thankfully), and race prep for the bikes. By now, we're well into the swing of walking 50m in the morning to pick up an armful of fresh baguettes for breakfast...this is good living. We take the bikes on a check ride through town, eat an early dinner, and pass out. No need to go to bed too early as the race doesn't start 'til 9:30am.

Euro steeze

Rad rock wall across the valley from Alpe d' Huez

Bourg d' Oisans and the cliffs from La Garde

Across the valley

My future home, bottom left corner of the frame, accessible only by railway

We wake up at a normal time Wednesday, eat breakfast, and ride 40 minutes, nearly all downhill, to the race start with our wetsuits on our back. I briefly entertain the thought of riding while wearing my wetsuit as it's quite cold. We've already dropped our run gear in T2 in town, so that's less stuff to ride with down to the start.

The Race:
I have to apologize in advance that my crack team of race photographers was unable to travel with me, so it's all words for the race itself.

After riding 40 minutes to the start from our apartment in Alpe d' Huez, we're greeted with a massive transition area and loads of skinny and fast-looking euros going through the motions. I'm #806 and there are a couple more rows of bikes after mine, so it's got every indication of being a 1000+ starting field. Stoked! There are racers from 40+ countries; this race's reputation is starting to get around.

We get set up, listen to the race briefing, and hop in the 15C (59F) water with a few minutes to warm up before the gun goes off. I settle in from a few rows back, avoid conflict, and enjoy the cold water. It seems like we swim a long ways out before we finally make two quick left turns to head back home. At no point do I push the pace as I know I can't hang anywhere near the front, and I've got lots of time to reel people back in later in the day. I'm done with 2.2k in 37 minutes and get through T1 without wasting any time. I'm in something like 140th after the swim...eh, I'm used to it.

Aside from the little hill out of the lake, the bike starts downhill, flat, and then slightly downhill for the first 25k. It's super fast, not many spots are exchanged, and I roll through Sechilienne ready for the first climb up Col d' Alpe du Grand Serre. As soon as the road turns up, everybody near me starts riding hard, and I go backwards fast. My strategy for the race is to conserve heavily (relatively...it's still a race!) on the first two climbs and let my race begin with Alpe d' Huez. I stick to my strategy and let them all go up the road, trusting that I'll see most if not all of them later on. I make it up to the top of Grand Serre about 5 minutes faster than when I pre-rode the course, and some of those early speed demons already start coming back. Most of this climb is ridden in the 27 and the 24 for me. It's already hot out and humid for this desert kid, so my top is fully unzipped for most of this climb and will remain that way til the finish. Reminding myself to conserve, I take as much free speed as I can in the valley between there and Col d' Ornon. I'm exceedingly glad that I pre-rode, as there are several deceptively sharp downhill corners that are sure to be day-enders if taken carelessly. There is one in particular in the town of Oris en Rattier (I think) that would have put us directly through someone's front door and into their living room as the road dives sharp left without any warning!

Through special needs in Valbonnais (Red Bull and ibuprofen, mmm), I am again thankful for my pre-ride as I can see the false flat damaging other riders badly. I finally start to pick up the pace near the top and pull more people back in. I've been dumping lots of water over myself as it's now hot even up in the mountains. I top out Col d' Ornon at about 3:10 ride time, so my goal of riding 4:30 is still achievable. The descent into Bourg d' Oisans is fast and rather exposed, and I let a couple people past in the interest of safety. The short flat in the valley is downwind, so I fly through Oisans and to the base of Alpe d' Huez. I make a tactical error at the aid station in town, as I toss my bottle before finding out that they've not got plain water at this aid station. It's hot out and I'm thirsty, but the next aid station is only a few hairpins up at La Garde and I'll do without the weight!

As I start up Alpe d' Huez at 3:31 ride time, I'm nearly through my 1200cal bottle of Infinit, so I'm feeling good about my nutrition and have no reason to second-guess it. This is where the race starts for me, so I drop the hammer and start watching a steady stream of shattered dudes go backwards. I grab one or two gears at every hairpin and slingshot my way up. I resort to the 27 for the steeper bits, but mostly ride the 24 and use 21 or 19 around the hairpins. I take on water at that aid station, which I really need by now, and keep pushing hard. I pass somewhere around 40-60 racers on Alpe d' Huez...thanks for riding hard early, guys! Loads and loads of cheering spectators all the way up the climb. Awesome! I make it up the Alpe in about 55 minutes, which I'm exceedingly happy about, and roll into T2 with a 4:29 ride and absolutely itching to go run. I'll note that this is the hardest 115k/71mi I've ever ridden in a race situation...beast course... And Pantani's record of 37 minutes up Alpe d' Huez: oh my god.

I'm out of T2 in under a minute and my legs feel great. I've got no worries about riding hard for an hour and being fine to run, making me triply glad now that I conserved on the first two climbs. This run is supposed to be 3 laps for 22k/14mi, but it feels short, even though I'm technically hallucinating and probably shouldn't be trusting my feelings. I start finding targets, which is easy on the first lap as there aren't too many people on the course (yay, only 30-something bikes in T2!). I see my mates Jaffa and Nenad, and they both look like they're doing well. This run is a mix of trail and road, and there's a deceptive bugger of an uphill just before the turnaround on the out-and-back section. This section is followed by a decent climb up a road before dropping steeply downhill back to T2 where the subsequent laps begin. I catch Jaffa near the end of the first lap and his gut hurts, so I encourage him to keep moving forward before I push ahead. I had been a bit wobbly at the start of the first lap, but I'm in full swing now and really want to be done. I keep the effort somewhere between Uncomfortable and Damaging, catch a few more people, and finally run down Nenad at the start of the third lap. I'm chugging gels and water, and dumping whatever I have left over my head and chest. That uphill before the turnaround hurt pretty bad on the second lap, and I'm really looking forward to tackling it again, but I want to catch a few more people and decide not to let the hill bother me. The effort pays off, I catch a handful more (including a guy in the last 400m), and finish with a 1:22 run, 10th in the field!

My best guess for what I could do this race in was 6:30, and I managed 6:33, so I'm super happy about that. I feel as though I executed it as well as I could have hoped for, as holding back until Alpe d' Huez, then smashing the climb and the run was both satisfying and also paid off in the standings. The guy who won, from the TBB Death Squad, rode in 3:46, which is just SICK. For that matter, any ride under 4:00 is pretty off-the-hook, and requires really attacking the climbs. The winner set a course record by about 20 minutes. The word has gotten out about this race and some really strong athletes are showing up.

From a recovery standpoint, really not too bad...that pesky extra half-marathon sure takes a lot out of a guy, and not running that far is a welcome respite. This is actually a pretty cool distance, as it's a good swim, an epic ride, and a just-right run. I felt utterly annihilated right after finishing, but was pretty good to go by later on that day.

Time for a massage, lots of food, and a night out on the town with Jaffa and a Kiwi I meet who's done Epic Camp twice and with whom I share a mutual friend in NZ. Small world!

Jaffa contemplates life, Leffe Tripel in-hand

The Trip, post-race:
Pack the bike and the rest of my gear, and submit myself to the gods of standby travel...my destination for the day change from Paris to Zurich to London, and by the time I'm cleared to point myself toward London, the buses that would have connected me to the train in time are long gone, the rest of the crew is out for the day, and I'm all alone with a bike box, a huge duffel, and a messenger bag. Gulp. My thumb goes out at the top of Alpe d' Huez and I wait for nearly an hour. The first guy who stops, a young Frenchman named Christopher, agrees to take me down the hill to Oisans, where I'm still liable to miss connecting buses and have to hitchhike again. It turns out that he's going to Lyon, which is my destination, as I had just booked an EasyJet ticket from Lyon to London Gatwick. Pure luck. He delivers me to the airport in Lyon, and I count my lucky stars and praise his good karma.

My flight from Lyon is 2 hours late, which delivers me to Gatwick after the easy ways to Heathrow are done for the night. I take a 2am bus to Heathrow, wait 'til check-in opens at 5:30, and promptly wait for 30 hours to get on a flight. The AA flights are an utter mess, and there are 150+ standbys waiting to get out. The 10th flight I'm listed on finally comes through after sleeping on a bare metal row of chairs (with armrests), and I connect through Dallas by the skin of my teeth (last seat on the plane both times). I make Reno after 65 hours of continuous travel, and as of the writing of the first draft of this 4 days later, neither my bike box nor my duffel bag had arrived. Complete and unmitigated travel disaster, but can't let it put a damper on the rest of the glorious trip!

Deserted Heathrow at 3:30am...last time I saw my gear for quite some time

Liars! That's soaked-through wax paper

Misery in Heathrow: how to do laundry in an airport

And that's all, folks. Moral of the story? Les Alpes are Le Awesome.

-

Urban Curve

2010-08-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

A quickie to keep you vultures occupied while I finish editing photos from and writing about France.

There's appreciation to be found in the most ignorable of objects. Be aware of your surroundings!

-

Midwinter in May

2010-07-23T01:54:00.000-07:00

OK, my backlog is pretty substantial now. I'm taking advantage of a rainy morning in my current home base (cough, French Alps, cough) to start the process of chipping away at it.

Ethel and I made a trip up to Echo Lakes and Desolation Wilderness the week before Memorial Day, and we were greeted with a scene reminiscent of February or March. Desolation always holds its snow longer than most other spots around Tahoe, and it had snowed about 6" two or three days prior. We were hoping to ski across Lower Echo to Casa Hancock, but the blanket of fresh snow concealed the rapidly melting lake underneath. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, we huffed our gear along the trail, none too excited about carrying cross-country skis (Ethel) or a splitboard (me).

Upon reaching Casa Hancock, we saw next door what could only be described as a scene from a Roman bathhouse that also encourages liberal use of amphetamines. Six or eight guys, in various states of undress, wasted, jumping into the slushy lake, and making quite the commotion about it all. Sensing no end to their revelry, we continued around the corner and pitched camp somewhere overlooking Upper Echo and Ralston Peak.

View from camp; Ralston Peak

Fading light

Fun with waterproof garments and macro lenses

Ethel works the Steri-Pen; pretty cool piece of kit

We didn't really have a set plan for where we'd be going, and we were prepared to cover lots of ground or not much at all. The next day, instead of pushing for a big mission, we stayed closer and made our way up towards Ralston. The splitboard covered the ground better than Ethel's cross-country skis, so she hung on a big bump between Tamarack Lake and Ralston Lake while I headed up the ridgeline for a few turns. The north-facing area near the summit was rife with natural avalanche activity, so, mildly valuing my life, I stayed a little bit lower on the ridge where the exposure was eastern and safer.

The view into Aloha and across to Pyramid from the Ralston ridge was re-donk-ulous, but I rookied it and didn't bring a camera with me. Or maybe I just don't feel like sharing...

Clicking my board together, I dropped off the ridge for some gleeful turns in wholly virgin snow. The snow was thick and sun-affected, which made for slower going than I would have preferred, but beggars can't be choosers.

Dropping!

I rode right down to Ralston Lake, pulled the board back into skis, and headed back to Ethel's little outpost in the sun.

Skinning out of Ralston Lake

Like any proud peacock would, I took the opportunity to shoot a few photos of my tracks, the only marks on the otherwise pristine snowscape.

The trip back to our campsite was all downhill and easy going. Ethel had gotten a lot better with the cross-country skis and was covering ground swiftly. We had broken our camp that morning, planning on staying in front of Casa Hancock whether or not the Bathhouse was still in full effect. Fortunately, they were gone, and the neighborhood was returned to its usual quiet. We pitched our tent, cooked our dinner, and relaxed in front of the firepit before the wind picked up. It blew hard all through the night and into the next morning, making the inevitability of having to leave a little bit easier.

The warm temperatures were taking a rapid toll on the lake's snowpack, with an obvious and drastic difference from only 36 hours prior. Some of that was no doubt thanks to the layer of fresh snow compacting and becoming one with the layers underneath, but the snowpack as a whole was departing at about 4-6" per day.

Having only about a mile and a half to hoof it along the sopping wet trail, we knocked it out and made a quick return to the blistering heat of Reno, where the memory of such midwinter conditions was already a distant one for everyone else.

Lower Echo, melting fast

Manzanita Deathmarch

2010-06-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

There's a very remote spot near the headwaters of the North Fork of the American River, right at the start of the Royal Gorge, that Grant and I visited a few years ago. The spot is Heath Falls, and it's quite difficult to get to due to overgrown and unmaintained trails. I went there again last weekend with my dad, who'd wanted to see it ever since hearing about the first visit.

Thinking we'd outsmart the approach that Grant and I took, we parked at a slightly different spot and made our way down into the Gorge. It turns out that Grant and I picked the better parking spot, as we fought with some manzanita in the early parts of the hike. Further down, however, the dark forest floor, piled with deadfall, had some vibrant residents for us to play with.

Baby snowplant

Bigger snowplants

Crunched for time, we pressed downstream where Serena Creek dumps into the North Fork. Not too much longer, the canyon walls got darker, signaling the start of Royal Gorge, and we were greeted with the pervasive sound of rushing and falling water. The reason Grant and I hiked down there was so he could recon the falls for a potential kayak trip down the Gorge. This next photo shows the start of 3 days of largely unportageable Class V+ whitewater, if you're in to that sort of thing.

Heath Falls (that's 50 feet tall, by the way...super wide-angle photo)

Minimal moonscape

Making our way back up through the forest, we found ourselves navigating some larger seas of manzanita than we had on the way down, and it is not the most friendly member of Sierra flora. By a long shot. Stiff, strong, pokey, and scratchy, it grows very densely and is soul-sapping, skin-shredding purgatory. Mind you, this entire portion of the hike was overland, so we didn't really have a trail to follow, and the last 500m to the car took us over an hour. At one point, we were less than 100 feet from a graded dirt road, and it may as well have been miles away, as the mature manzanita was taller than we were and most unforgiving for routefinding purposes. Daylight leaving us, we finally buckled down and forced our way through. Just in case you think I'm exaggerating how awful this stuff is:

D^2 and his legs, posing in front of manzanita

Exceedingly happy to be out of the death shrub, we gathered Ethel at Northstar as her volunteer duties ended and slunk away to an awesome dinner at the lake. A week later, my legs still look like they got caned. It's a special part of the Sierras to visit, but be prepared to pay the price...

Goodnight Lu

2010-06-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

One door closes so another shall open...

Last glimpse of a brilliant automobile while my now-primary transportation peeks out

Fare thee well.

Tour de Nez '10

2010-06-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

Reno was invaded last weekend by the Tour de Nez, our long-running professional cycling race. Featuring 3 days of racing, mint juleps, and frighteningly large shaved legs, it's always a fun weekend.

This year, Ethel got invited to be a podium girl, which means that she'd be kissing a bunch of guys who are better bikers than I am. To the winners go the spoils, eh?

The only day I made it to was the downtown Reno criterium, so here are photos from that race. Photo geeks: all shot with a 300mm f/4.

Receiving detailed instructions from race creator Tim Healion; note the laser-like focus

The pack, early on in the hourlong race

This race has always been timed around twilight, which means the lighting conditions change drastically from the start to the finish. As such, a lot of the racers opt for no sunglasses so they can still see things when it gets dark. And by "things," I'm referring to the other racers they're shoulder-to-shoulder with through corners at thirty miles an hour.

Giving chase

Two riders on a breakaway

The pack is a living, breathing beast, silently deciding when to pull back breakaways and when to change the pace. The riders have to stay aware of their surroundings as they suffer endlessly, as crashes in crits can be pretty ugly.

The pack motors along

Some familiar faces get spied on from 6 stories up

Riley acts all professional and stuff

The racing was fun to watch, with a group of 6 or so going off the front and staying away for quite some time. As the sunset turned to dusk, the pace picked up.

The chase pack

A modest lead for the break

As the race ended, Reno's hooligans planned the rest of their activities for the night, downtown cleanup began, and the riders headed off to recover as best they could before the road race at Northstar the next day.

One such hooligan, scheming

Good times.

Nosebleed

2010-06-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Our office recently moved from the hospital to a building directly across the street from the Aces' ballpark. There's a vacant space on our 14th floor that will hopefully make for some good viewing opportunities, but this photo was taken from a ledge on the 11th floor of parking.

The view from the 14th floor is better, but this ain't bad either!

Playaphiles

2010-05-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

We took advantage of an unexpected day off for Ethel to spend a night in the Black Rock Desert with Riley and Ed. It was new territory for Riley and Ed, and neither Ethel nor I had ever been there outside of Burning Man. She's got an excuse, not being a Nevadan and all, but I'm grasping at straws to justify my unfamiliarity with the place aside from that annual late-summer week.

Anyhow, we camped at Frog Pond, a hot spring that's not very hot and otherwise aptly named for the amphibian presence. They kept noisy throughout the night having their little frog-offs.

Here are a few long exposures from that night:

Wide awake early the next morning, we took the time to explore the frogs and their habitat a little bit more. These ponds are an amazing display of all stages of growth for these guys, with all sizes and numbers of appendages represented.

Here are a few fully-grown froggies:

After breakfast and coffee, we broke camp and headed onto the playa at the normal entrance to Burning Man. After cruising around for a bit and ending up quite a bit north of the furthest extent of the festival, we parked for a picnic and a photo session.

All business

Sweet relief

The arteest has signed his canvas

Big girl sunnies

Bundled

Unbundled

Ed looking rugged

Spring sun

Perfect playa

Traipsing further north, we got above the playa on Soldier Meadows Road where we found this overlook.

Storm cell

The vastness of this landscape is always striking, and even more so without 50,000 of our closest friends wandering about. It's a remote and rugged environment, but nonetheless a true jewel of the Western US.

She Rock

2010-05-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned previously, my cousin Connor had the lead in her high school play a few weeks ago.

Connor Norton, "All Shook Up"

She's a stupendous performer, and she's worked astoundingly hard to follow her dreams.

For all you Reno peeps, she's performing at the Bruka in "The Great American Trailer Park Musical" starting this Thursday, May 27.

Back to Racing

2010-05-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been since August last year since I've been involved in any competition.

While I've got a few tasty races scheduled later on this year, I've got my cousins to thank for cruelly tricking me into kicking off my racing season earlier than planned.

A slew of my cousins came to town a couple weekends ago to watch Connor absolutely rock the leading role in her high school play, "All Shook Up" (photos to come). The morning after the play marked Reno's Rock-n-River Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K, and Kids' Race. It ended up being a bit of a family affair, with Frances in the Kids' Race; Amy in the 10K; and Frank, Richard, Elaine, and I all in the Half Marathon (none of us were dumb enough to run the full).

The only unfortunate thing is that I didn't find out about this race until 5 days beforehand, and I hadn't been putting in lots of running miles, much less 1/2-mary specific training. And I made one of my Achilles quite angry early in the week, which brought that week's running to a quick halt. Not like I was going to get more fit, anyway.

Actually, that wasn't the only unfortunate thing. What really complicated the matter is that I arrived at the start line just fit enough to get myself into heaps of trouble. What does that mean? Well, if I had been a bit more out of shape, I wouldn't have stuck my nose in with the fast guys and girls. But I did, and then stubbornness took over, and I paid the price.

One thing that did go well was my pacing. Let me qualify that by noting that I don't run with a watch, so I've got no way of actually knowing, but our time through Mile 1 was within a few seconds per mile of my average pace, so that data point backs up my perception that I didn't go out too hard and then fade.

Pacing it well may have been nothing short of a miracle, as I'm only used to running after a swim and a bike ride, meaning that I'm already tired but am at least warmed up. Let's take a moment to review my lifetime results from running-only races:

Arm Run, 26km, Queenstown NZ, 2008: 3 weeks after Ironman NZ, with NO running up 'til 2 days before the race and very little exercise otherwise. Decided to race while drinking beer on a hot afternoon 3 days beforehand. Result - 3rd, vowed never to do anything stupid like that again.

Black Rock City 5k, Burning Man, 2008: During peak training for Silverman '08. Got tangled up with a woman at the start and helped her back to her feet as the field departed. Result - 1st, won a 12-pack of PBR.

Black Rock City 5k, Burning Man, 2009: Generally fit, but no specific training for anything in particular. Result - 2nd, got beat by a dirty little hippie wearing a sarong...and a GPS watch...goddamn sandbagger.

And that's it. Not the fullest race resume, eh?

So experienced in these things I am not. Which means that figuring out proper pacing for a footrace of any given length is not my strong suit. Back to this race, my perceived exertion was "Uncomfortable" by Mile 2 and remained somewhere between "Uncomfortable" and "Angry Hornet Nest" for Miles 2-13. Which is apparently the way to do it.

Near the turnaround at Patagonia. Photo courtesy d-squared.

At this point, I'm in fourth and in front of the eventual second-place guy, shortly before he ran away from me. We both caught a couple people between here and the finish, which was sweet.

Running into the finishing chute and then directly to the massage tent (uncrowded!), I was unable to stretch without cramping for about 2 hours. I established a good starting point for all half marathon forays from here on out, running about 10 minutes faster than my fastest half-ironman run. It took a full 2 weeks to recover, too, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't have been the case if I had actually prepared for the infernal thing.

Beyond all that, the rest of the fam' posted great results. Richard did a few minutes better than he expected given the altitude. Frank finished his first half marathon ever way faster than he was planning on. Elaine and Amy both held down the fort for the women's races. And little Frances has darn good form, bound to be some sort of stupendous athlete when she gets older.

So that's the whole story. Special thanks to my cousins for convincing me to get out there, and big ups to all of them for running so well. I'm done licking my wounds now, and it's time to look forward to whatever's next!

Spring Blossom

2010-05-17T10:11:00.001-07:00

I'm getting a bit out of chronological order here, but this'll keep me from feeling too lazy until I catch up on the other stuff.

I'm astounded by the resilience of these blossoms given our recent alternating cycles of 75°/sunny and 50°/snow/rain/sleet/60mph wind.

This photo is thanks to a particularly awesome lens I picked up awhile ago...a 150mm macro. I think I'm in love!

Blustery Aces

2010-05-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos from a cold and windy mid-May evening at a Reno Aces game. When we left at the 7th inning stretch, they were only behind 10-1...

Welcome to the front row!

Fair warning

Who knew it was a good venue for birding?

Strike!

Taking a stand

Tools of the trade

Ball in play

Obscured

It was a dark and stormy night...

Speed check

The crowd has thinned

You Kay

2010-04-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to visit the UK for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was a business trip which means it was rather inexpensive for me! My traveling partner was my workmate Nate, as the others on the trip had different travel arrangements.

The Union Jack

The majority of our trip was spent in Cambridge, and the nature of our business there was the demonstration of, training with, and delivery of a pair of our eyeglasses to a particularly sharp gentleman who's lost the vast majority of his ability to move or communicate.

However, before we got down to business, we got to spend a morning in the nearby town of Ely exploring the cathedral there.

Outside Ely Cathedral

Ribcage

The Octagon

And a few from a wander around Cambridge after dark one evening. Cambridge is the college town upon which all other college towns are modeled. Replete with maniacal wobbly cyclists, food from every corner of the globe, and exquisitely manicured grounds, places like Harvard wish they were in a different Cambridge than they are.

Punters

One of many churches in Cambridge

Now down to business...the aforementioned sharp gentleman is none other than Stephen Hawking, an example of absolute brilliance shackled in a body wracked by four decades of the slow decay brought on by ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).

Examining our creation

Light reading

Portrait

Center for Mathematical Sciences, Hawking's office

And a couple from a daytime wander through Cambridge.

Cathedral at King's College

First signs of spring

With our business finished, we had a day to ourselves in London. Again, my first time there, so we got to familiarize ourselves with the Tube (confusing at first, but it goes EVERYwhere) and some of the classic sights of the city.

Good luck

We made a walking loop from Picadilly Circus to Trafalgar Square, across the river to the Eye, back across the river to Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey, then over to Buckingham Palace and back to Picadilly Circus.

The Eye

And on St. Patrick's Day, we met up with Ethel's mate Daniella, who took us to a few Irish pubs that were packed, as most of London wasn't really observing this holiday. You know, not being Ireland and all.

Near Covent Garden

After a pair of flights home that incorporated 9 out of the top 10 travel nightmare cliches, we got back into the normal swing of things in both life and work. Another country ticked off my big world map, the opportunity to meet a remarkable man, and more jetlag than I care to deal with in the space of 6 days!

Huevos de Carlos

2010-04-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

My cousin and friend Norm just turned 30. The party was at his brother Charlie's house.

Charlie has six chickens now, and two of them are cheeky enough that I found them inside on Charlie's bed. Ran to get the camera but the chickens had been relocated outside by the time I got back.

Murphy lulls Benedict to sleep

Rugged

I went to high school with Ben and his sister (she's my age) many moons ago.

Bacon-wrapped cream-cheese-filled jalapenos were had by all, and life is thus good.

Vegas and Red Rocks

2010-03-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

Working through my backlog...

A few weeks ago Ethel and I made a quick excursion to the City of Sin to make use of the prize I got at the Silverman Triathlon in 2008. Glorious prize...a suite at the Wynn for two nights and a very generously comped dinner. That's all the excuse I need to get on a Southwest flight, tolerate the madness that is Vegas, and do a little exploring.

Let's start at the Wynn, and we'll move on from there.

Private entryway to the Tower Suites

The tour begins; our living room at the Wynn

The tour continues; our bathroom (!)

Self portrait

Lake of Dreams at the Wynn

We had a full day in between our travel days, so we rented a cheap car and fled the Strip for Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, conversationally known as Red Rocks. This gem may be the most redeeming place in all of Vegas, and it's awfully close.

Ethel examines the pool underneath a seasonal waterfall in Red Rocks

Goofy self portrait - "go on in there, I'm sure there aren't any snakes."

Scales

Compartments

After wandering around Red Rocks proper for a while, we followed a tip from one of Ethel's workmates and rallied our rental car on the dirt road to Black Velvet Canyon, part of Red Rocks but away from the popular loop road and largely unknown to all but rockclimbers.

Cacti in Black Velvet Canyon

This day of exploring the desert was amply rewarded by our tasty dinner at Bartolotta at the Wynn; I'm awfully glad that wasn't a bill I needed to pick up.

'Twas good to get away from Reno for a couple of days, even if it was to Vegas!

High Tech

2010-03-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm quite excited, because today I get to deliver this creation to a very deserving and brilliant gentlemen in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It's a talented team that designed and built this expensive little bundle of optics, and I'm honored to be on the delivery crew.

More to follow ;)

Eye-Com, rendered

On Fear and Consequences

2010-03-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

This is a tough one to write. For the second time in his life, my excellent friend Grant suffered some serious injuries in a snow-related accident. A decade ago, it was a bad day on skis, and last Friday, it was a bad day on a snowmobile.

Deep in the Sonora Pass backcountry, Grant flew his Ski-Doo motorized refrigerator a few feet too far and landed flat, literally exploding his L1 vertebra upon impact, which in turn did some damage to his spinal cord. Thanks in no small part to the top-notch backcountry buddies he was with that day, who calmly and efficiently did everything right, he was safely aboard a helicopter within about 2 hours of the accident.

Lesson #1: No matter how easy of a day it's supposed to be, choose your crew wisely. You never know when they'll make the difference that will save a life, speed recovery, or minimize collateral damage.

Now, approaching a week in the ICU, he's had a horribly invasive 2-for-1 surgery that replaced the disintegrated vertebra with a prosthesis and is in constant wrenching pain. While immediately after the accident, he had little to no feeling below the waist, he's now regained feeling in certain areas. His rehab doctor is very optimistic about his chances for a full recovery, although she's anticipating 1-2 years until he walks again. Knowing Grant's lust for life and generally positive attitude, I've got no doubt that he'll meet or beat that estimate. That being said, it's a long road to recovery no matter what. Thankfully, he's got an amazing wife, a fully supportive family, and the most extensive network of friends I've ever witnessed, so he'll never be without help and encouragement at any point along the way.

Grant, in a typical moment atop skis. Dropping in to the big side of Once is Enough, Kirkwood.

So here's where this gets interesting. After his skiing accident, Grant toned down the stuff he'd ski. In the same breath, however, I'll note that he will still select and successfully ski lines that would make 99% of other skiers' blood curdle. In other words, he refused to insulate himself from risk or otherwise ensure that he'd never experience an accident like that again.

I'm quite certain that he'll pilot a snowmobile again, and whether that's true or not, I have a pretty good idea that his liberating lifestyle of challenging his mind, body, and soul will not substantially change. Why? Even after 2 horrifically debilitating accidents that have subjected him to years of pain, surgery, and rehabilitation, the consequences of leading the lifestyle that landed him there are far more palatable than the alternative, which consists of avoiding risk at every turn, never experiencing enlightening moments, and living a life largely devoid of triumph or failure, merely bouncing along in a soft sphere of complacence and "good enough."

So to where does that bring us? We arrive at a quote from Helen Keller.

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold."

Go ahead. Read it again. Out loud, even.

Grant and I agreed long ago that these were words to live by. These words do not advocate reckless forays into no-win situations, but rather calculated and confident approaches to challenges of any sort. And yes, that's a fine line, but the line broadens when one approaches it. In other words, the balance between reckless abandon and quiet, confident success when faced with imminent doom only appears precarious from a long way away.

From my own experience, I was able to choose a path nearly a decade ago after a bad day on my snowboard. Fortunately, I chose the path that constructed the accident as an enriching experience, one to learn from, and an opportunity for improvement. Choosing that path has largely shaped who I am today, and I wouldn't change a second of it. All the pain, doubt, and repetitive rehabilitation, wrapped into a big bundle of Awful, is still a small price to pay for the joy I've lived before and after.

After a few days of being there for his family, I finally got in to see Grant yesterday. I won't write about his condition. I shared good wishes from many people, we chatted for a bit, and we parted after a moment of coherence on his part when he implored me to spread the word to everyone to get out there and live life to its fullest.

Setbacks are setbacks, but the benefits of living one's life in embrace of danger and uncertainty far outweigh the associated downfalls. They even further outweigh the best outcome of a life lived gently bouncing along. May Helen's words resonate strongly in your soul as you continue (or embark) upon your journeys. If you can't take her word for it, best of luck. You're better off clicking those poles together and dropping in, ready to stomp the landing. Otherwise, you're just falling off a cliff.

Feed Me

2010-03-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

After a terrifying drive over Kingsbury, a quick sleep in a huge suite at The Ridge, a short-notice daytime wedding photographed with Riley, and a stopover in Incline for a rest and a meal and a meetup with Ethel, we sent Riley back over the hill and spent the night at Stateline for a concert at the Cal Neva.

Unfortunately, North Tahoe's Stateline ain't Reno when it comes to finding late-night food. Hungry after hours of dancing at a show that started at 10pm, we went for a little wander before we found anything of interest.

Cal Neva? No food whatsoever ("sustain thyselves on your gin-soaked martini olives and dreams of progressive jackpots, double-down twenty-ones, and sleazy one-night-stands, you degenerates," they laugh). Biltmore? Reheated bean 'n cheez burritos and mini pizzas (no thanks). Crystal Bay Club? 3am treasure trove.

Beacon of hope

Little bistro thing, open 'til 4 or 4:30am, with friendly staff and cheap good food. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, toast, and two massive hot chocolates for the princely sum of $6.70.

Of particular interest were the hand-painted tables, each quite different from the others.

Well done, Crystal Bay Club

Verdi Inn

2010-03-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

After otherwise failed photo missions on two consecutive nights due to my inability to recon the desired site along the river during the day, Ethel and I cut our losses and headed into Verdi for a drink. Next door to the old Cedars (now the Sasquatch...odd choice of name), is the old Verdi Inn.

With a storied past and an uncertain future, all that's left now is a rotted structure that could very well be unsafe to walk on. Or near.

Verdi Inn under moonlight

On Utility and Boardshorts

2010-02-26T17:40:00.000-08:00

This is an article comparing the relative utility of some of our purchases. It's pretty dry, so no ill feelings if you stop reading now.

What prompted this was an observation that the small-ticket items we buy either get quickly discarded or stubbornly used until they literally disintegrate. It's the big-ticket items we buy that we feel obligated to keep for a while, but end up getting replaced every so often because there's a bigger (or smaller), tougher (or lighter), shinier version that we just have to have.

We'll do ourselves a big favor and wholly exclude the black hole of fiscal hemorrhage that is camera gear.

I own one suit for dressy occasions. It fits me well, and I paid $250 for it, call it $300 with alterations. I wear it about twice a year, and I've owned it for 4 years. I'll probably replace it for no good reason after another year or two, which means I'll have worn it about a dozen times. Doing some extremely complicated math, that's $25 each time I wear it. I know that wearing a suit a dozen times is on the low end, but my circumstances don't compel me to wear it a few times a week. If I were wearing suits nearly every day, I'd also probably own more than one, and I'd probably buy nicer suits, so the end result of more use would be offset by these factors.

Moving on, the snowboard I have now cost me $250, but its actual price was $450, and most of the boards I've bought over the years have been in the $400-$500 range. Let's roll with $400. A snowboard, even if babied, does not last forever. The wood core wears out, the base stops holding wax, etc. A snowboard, not babied, is subject to damage from a variety of sources. I do not baby my snowboards, although I do all my own tuning, so the upkeep cost approaches zero. On average, I get about 40-50 days of riding before 1) catastrophic damage occurs, or 2) incremental damage and normal wear combine enough to warrant replacement. Actually, I've only ever retired one board. Three have experienced catastrophe, and another three are still in rotation. Again, complicated math, but that's $8-10 in snowboard cost alone every time I go ride, not even considering boots, bindings, helmet, gloves, pants, jacket, goggles, etc., all of which have discrete lifetimes.

Ambling further along, I've got a pretty nice bike that I train and race on. I bought it second-hand for $2000. We'll lump the daily upkeep, replacement tubes, tire wear, chains, cassettes, cables, etc. together and figure that I'll have spent another $2000 on it by the time I replace it. I got that bike 3 years ago, and with a broad-brush average, we'll say I ride it four days a week or 200 days a year. I'll probably get another year out of it, so that'll be a total of 800 rides over four years for $4000. $5/ride. Not bad for a big-ticket item.

At this point, these three examples serve to illustrate how considerable initial outlays of cash for gear or clothes work out over time, and they all seem to justify that outlay with reasonable per-use cost for what are high-quality products. Curiously, each of them cost more than the previous one in the list, but each of them also have a lower per-use cost than the one prior. You could draw a rudimentary graph and figger that cheaper stuff doesn't get used as much and ends up costing quite a bit more each time it gets used. Unfortunately, that's an egregiously wrong conclusion, and we'll use the Case of the Boardshorts to disprove it:

Exhibit A

What you see here are some Patagonia boardshorts. They're not billed as running shorts, but I prefer to use them as such, because Running Shorts and Runners in General Look Silly, or I Would Prefer to Sandbag and Not Let People See How Crushingly Strong My Legs Are, depending on the audience. I've got other boardies for beach days and other uses, but this is a designated running pair. With the exception of races, during which more "appropriate" garments are worn, I have run in this exact pair of shorts for every run I've done since I've had them. I bought them in 2003. Six full years they've lasted, and across three continents. And with that same broad-brush average, three runs a week. 150 runs a year, six years, 900 runs. And I bought them for $19. Which means they've cost me just over two cents, a measly $.02, every time I've used them. [A designated casual pair, purchased the same day for the same price, was finally retired in Fiji after five years of hard use when the ass literally fell out, much to the chagrin of my travel partners and to the amusement of the locals.]

And, lest you think this is a eulogy, just because the shorts are on a hanger in this photo doesn't mean they've been hung up in the proverbial sense. Still goin' strong, and gettin' cheaper with every mile.

Renodump

2010-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

After a week of positively springlike and beautiful weather, our local "meteorologists" got caught off guard and allowed us to wake up to over a foot of snow Sunday morning. Perish the thought. I gathered Riley from his cave and we walked around downtown and by the river for a while. Here's my haul.

From our patio, heavy trees

Copper door

Copper door, abstract

Newspaper man surveying the mayhem

Situational irony

It was a heavy snow, so we saw lots of downed tree branches and even some downed power lines.

Promptly went home and spent the rest of the day shoveling our driveway and some key parts of the cul-de-sac. Between this frivolity and the time moving big blocks of snow for our backcountry jumps, my arms are wrecked and I can barely tpye.

Quick Booter Sesh

2010-02-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

I got invited to go along with some doods into the backcountry on Saturday for a day of building jumps. We cruised up to Mt. Rose Meadows and hiked up into the gullies high above Little Lake. We were greeted with less-than-optimal snow conditions as we'd had some sun and no snow, so we were backed into a corner as far as what exposure had any decent snow. This unfortunate fact greatly limited our available terrain.

On top of that, a storm was rolling in, so we just got right down to it and started shoveling. We ended up building a couple of jumps that took advantage of our available terrain and had some fun.

Justin airs over the Liver Splinter stump

Ben styles it

Justin bonks the Splinter

Corked out

Busting through

As the storm intensified, we packed up and rode down. During a moment when I was riding at the back, I unknowingly dropped a snowshoe off my pack. By the time I figured that out, I had a ways to hike back up...silly rookie move!

Good day, much snow moved, and mucho tired arms.

Little Miss Sunshine

2010-02-21T14:46:00.000-08:00

Tromped around a bit this morning with my good friend Riley, who's spent his winter making amazing photos of many different subjects.

Anyhow, one could argue that the brilliance of an artist is roughly proportional to the chance that he or she will throw a tantrum at any given time.

Here's Riley in one of his finer moments.

I'll post more photos from this morning in a day or two, but this one just couldn't wait.