The setup. The photo. The finished image. I love doing projects like this with people where there is a plan in place and the desire to make it happen.
Download the album at www.ashdinosaur.com
Monthly Archive for January, 2012
The St Louis Bike Polo Lock-In happened for the third time. We like to party. Surreal, lawless experience. Just wonderful. Got lots of games in, especially come 7 am or so when all the sleepers were sleepin’ and quitters were quittin’. I also have a gallery of the 2010 Lock-In event, missed last year due to injury.
I guess the time comes with every cyclist where you are hit by a car. Saturday night was my closest call yet, as a group of seven people I was riding with in Columbus OH was plowed into from behind at speed, perhaps at 35 mph. Two lanes in either direction with a center turning lane, no traffic at all, sharrows painted on the road, and easily 10 blinkie lights between the 7 people. We were riding in a tight group, taking up no more than 2 or 3 parking spaces length of road in one lane. No sounds of brakes, no sounds of the engine, the first notice any of us in the tight group had was a loud bang with the impact with the first rider and then the actual crash. Somehow only two riders had the complete impact from the car—24hrs later after spending the night in the hospital each is doing well, quite sore and beat up with a single broken collarbone between them. Considering the sickening crunching sounds of the impact and the distance they were thrown (out of their laced shoes…) the outcome is unbelievable. Pieces of the car littered the scene, bikes destroyed, this was no grazing hit. Perhaps cynically and predictably the car sped off with squealing tires, only to be caught on the opposite side of town minutes later with a reportedly very alcohol impaired 70 year old man (wrongly reported as woman at first, no matter really) behind the wheel. It is amazing the entire group wasn’t taken out, it’s amazing the two who got hit aren’t injured worse. We’re talking about making sure people could wiggle toes and fingers in the middle of the street here. One other rider went down in the melee but managed to only scrape his knee as he rolled out. Miraculously I didn’t go down, even though after all was said and done my rear wheel was left unrideable from some sort of impact during the incident.
Be careful out there, be nice to people, live it up.
It’s time for the third annual Travels in Pictures. Lots of pictures this time around, it was a fairly prolific year of shooting and this isn’t even scratching the surface…
February – Austin First stop, Austin. Flew in for the annual NAHBS show, shipping all of my lighting gear half way across the country and setting up for four solid days of shooting followed by some clutch Austin hanging out. Urban Velo NAHBS coverage. The red bike above made the cover of #25.
March – Seattle From Austin directly to Seattle. Just a couple of days, pretty awesome city and trip in the moment. Rented a car and visited FSA, Seattle Bike Supply (Redline/Torker) and Raleigh USA. Got some FSA coverage, and used an image from Raleigh for the #27 Ed Statement. Otherwise rode around, ate awesome food and had fancy drinks.
March – Portland Took the train from Seattle to Portland for a solo week staying with Dan of Portland Design Works and just riding around all day visiting everyone I could manage. Pretty amazing place, I’ve visited a couple of times and came incredibly close to moving there back in 2003. Even if on this side of the country it’s cool to hate on Portland, I could still see events taking me there. In order: Visited Cheever’s house, visited MAP Cycles, covered a visit to Queen Bee, got web coverage of a Ruckus Components visit, stopped through Vanilla Workshop, did a lot of hanging out at Portland Design Works and their in-house skate bowl, also did a lot of hanging with the Blaq Designs guys and their weirdo room of offensive screens, also got out to Ira Ryan’s garage space and had web coverage of a visit to Chris King. Used some Circulus images for a feature in Urban Velo #25. Did a Portland Frame Builder gallery in Urban Velo #25 too. For all the traveling I’ve done over the years this Austin/Seattle/Portland trip was the longest continuous amount time I’ve ever been out of Pittsburgh—15 days.
May – Louisville Went to Louisville for the Derby Debauchery Polo Fun Time Tournament and played with a couple of natives as I traveled solo, on a longer roadtrip than just this weekend. Good times for sure. Posted a web gallery at Urban Velo.
May – Nashville Drove from Louisville to Nashville to visit some great friends in a relatively sucky city. Big hats, big boots, big bugs. Middle of a cicada bloom in fact, which was kind of cool. Posted a web gallery from the Nashville Bicycle Lounge visit—it was good to see old friend Dan in his native habitat. It was weird to have some guy in traffic stop and recognize me walking down the street, but I guess that happens sometimes even far from home.
May – Allegheny National Forest Bike camping. Totally amazing, favorite camping trip so far. I posted a ton of images and full write up.
June – Philadelphia Road trip to Philadelphia for ESPI. We played pretty well, both of our losses were by one goal. A flukey one, and 5-4 overtime. Good trip, good polo, one of the better run tournaments I’ve witnessed. Another picture or two here.
July – Boston I visited Boston for the first time last year and laid the ground work for a way-cool 2011 as far as fancy bikes are concerned. Nearly a year in the making I went to Boston for a week long framebuilding course with Ant Bike Mike, and wrote a feature in Urban Velo #29 about it. Mind blowing week for me, and I came out of it with a remarkable touring bike. Loved it. Spent an extra day or two in Boston and visited Firefly Bikes and wrote up their anodizing process and then hit Geekhouse, bringing my NAHBS 2011 polo bike back and got a web gallery out of it. Also stopped through Parlee for a tour, but understandably couldn’t shoot the really cool stuff.
July – New Hampshire Made a quick visit to New Hampshire to see the new Indy Fab and Bailey Works factory. Stayed with owner Gary Smith for a night, always a good idea to take every opportunity to listen to whatever successful people will tell you. Great family going on there. Posted a tour of the new factory, and also posted some shots of some awesome Mother/Daughter IF bikes.
July – NYC My nearly annual trip to NYC to hang with good friends that I also managed not to take a picture of. Spent an afternoon brown bagging Modelo on the beach at Coney Island. I love NYC. Played some smoking hot polo, hung out with friends, took it pretty easy.
August – Rochester Road trip to Rochester for another fun-time tournament. Great time with great hosts. Roof partying, parking lot playing. Ended up with two folks I didn’t play so well with, but we had fun anyway. Posted a gallery of bikes, and a gallery of my teammate (and owner/builder) Horse Cycles custom polo bike.
September – Interbike Interbike #9 for me. In case you were wondering, Vegas still sucks. Had a good Interbike though. Posted lots of stuff at Urban Velo.
September – Columbus Another road trip to a local tournament. Had a good time, even if we were eliminated half way through the first day because the rules changed because someone had to drive home or something. Bullshit, but made the best of things. Still like the Columbus crew.
October – DC Polo Camp For the second year in a row I rode from Pittsburgh to Frederick MD for DC Polo Camp. Rode the new ANT touring bike from the July framebuilding course. This year I convinced another to come along with. Assuming it happens next year, I’m hoping to get a bigger crew together. Great time. Shot lots of pictures, posted a day by day gallery.
November – Philadelphia Second trip this year, stayed in the same awesome house with the same awesome little dog. Played hard in the inaugural PA State Polo Championships, got third place. “CLEAN!” Posted a big gallery of images.
Lots of travel this year—the goal was to spend roughly two months out of town and I more or less did just that, spending a total of 53 nights on the road. Met lots of great people, had some really amazing experiences with new and old friends. The year was great in most respects, significantly shitty in others. We’ll give it a B- overall. Lots of shooting, lots of writing, lots or riding. Here’s to a better 2012.