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

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.

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.

2010 Travels in Pictures
2009 Travels in Pictures

Dirty Dozen 2011. The steepest hills in Pittsburgh hosted by Danny Chew, this time contested by 300 riders or so. Shot a few hills with the oddball Russian Horizon 202 and expired 400 bw film before heading off to lunch.

Morning coffee making, antique Columbia, doorway during catsitting duty, autumnal polo, and two of the flower pot in my kitchen window.

The inaugural Keystone Cup polo tournament to decide the best team in the state. The best Pittsburgh could muster up was third place, not even first loser.

Taken at ESPI 6 in Philadelphia PA June 11-12 2011. Not sure where these images have been until now; I like them.

This guy called my back porch home for a spell.

Last year I rode this same route alone to the first DC Polo Camp, and apparently spoke highly enough of it to convince fellow Pittsburgh polo player Max to come along for the 2011 edition. First time bike camping for Max, killer travel mate. Pretty great trip.

Day 1. We are blessed in Pittsburgh and DC to have the longest continuous trail system in the United States connecting the two cities and many small towns in between. Between the 150 mile Great Allegheny Passage and the 185 mile C&O Canal you can travel between the two cities by bicycle or by foot, camping in various sites along the way. We hit the trail just outside of town riding 85 miles to Confluence PA, passing the Edgar Thomson Works mill in Braddock, the relatively old Dravo cemetery, and through the Roundbottom campsite (pro tip: new structures are in the works, but still no water) on the way. We also passed through Ohiopyle, but our leisurely pace early in the day and push to camp in Confluence made us motor on through without picture-time. The pay-campsite in Confluence is ok, but pales in comparison to other more primitive hiker/biker sites along the way that don’t have camper trailers and people driving to the bathroom all over the place. Unfortunately given our daily mileage needs it was the best of two or three less than ideal choices.

Day 2. Definitely the most picturesque, and perhaps the easiest of the four. We got a late start, letting the mist and fog burn off the day warm up a bit before going, especially seeing that the previous day was spent in the mid-50s and in a fine mist all day. After a quick stop in Rockwood for a snack we soon crested the Eastern Continental Divide, finishing the climbing for the trip with 1700 ft of elevation gain from our start. Shortly after crossing the divide the trail takes a definite downward slope, losing the past day and half of elevation gain in 25 miles or so. Just after the divide is the 3300 ft Big Savage Tunnel, one of the longer ones most people will ever get the chance to ride through—from there it’s the Borden Tunnel and a quick last 15 miles from Frostburg to Cumberland. Stopped at Sheetz and Dollar General for food rations and an alcohol fuel refill for my stove and pushed a few miles to the Irons Mountain campsite on the C&O. About a 75 mile day, ending in a pretty great campsite right near one of the many locks on the canal.

Day 3. Morning was beautiful as the fog burned off and we had our usual breakfast of coffee and oatmeal. Rode through the dark and damp 3000 ft Paw Paw Tunnel and otherwise hit lots of the towpath, trying to hit our mileage before dark. Midway through the day we were able to hit 22 miles of paved rail trail that runs next to the rough dirt C&O canal towpath, a welcome change and a few extra miles per hour. We stopped at Hancock for food and refreshments before calling it a day at the Jordan Junction site. Another 75 miles down.

Day 4. No time for photos—with Polo Camp and friends in store at the end of the day, we woke up early and hustled, trying to make it to camp and cool refreshing beer and a grill pretty well as soon as possible. With no real towns on the way, we cooked the last of our food along the trail for lunch and made good time on the longish day, riding up the steepest hill of them all just as we finished the 313 mile total ride—Polo Camp’s driveway. I was hungry enough upon arriving that against all better judgment I ate a giant sausage from the grill, perhaps the first full serving of “meat” in eight or nine years. It was awesome.

No walking the entire trip. No real injuries even if both of us had some knee pain throughout. One flat 15 miles from the end of the ride (me), and one lost fender (Max) with no other mechanicals between us. Awesome trip, would do again.

DC Polo Camp II. Killer. Best event of the year. We played lots and lots of polo on the finest courts I’ve ever played on by day and drank moonshine around the pallet fire by night. I only took pictures of one of these activities.

Last word: The Ransom family is awesome. Thank you!