An unexpected day off.

My son has had the flu for the past three days. This morning, I had figured that he would be well enough to go to school, but as it goes, he had a 100.2 temp, so I called my mom to see if she could watch him. She has the flu. Welp. A quick call to the boss to let him know that I am burning a vacation day and here I am, back at the pile of photos from the trip. Instead of writing out this meandering story of things, I thought it might work to take the "lazy writer's way out" and just list some observations...

-Four dudes, four bikes, and four dude's gear inside of a VW for 10 hours? Not the easiest. We made it work thanks to Yoshi and Instagram.

-Redbull Dave is 50 years old. I am out of excuses.

-Crandall is a bully.

-I had never met nor interacted with Johnny Del Balso. Dude is sweet and is a ripper.

-Brien's tile floor sucks.

-Phil talks like a white guy imitating a black guy doing an impression of a white guy.

-Florida is somewhat depressing.

-It is amazing/frightening how quickly the things we keep in our homes go up in flames.

-Ladies love the beard.

-Swimming in a natural spring, outside, in the month of December rules.

-Trey Jones is better on a bike than people realize.

-Dane Wild wears a Red Line shirt on purpose. Also I think he actually desires to be old.

-Tyler's little brother lives in a bad part of town. How bad? The burning bodies of two kids were found on a bike trail near his apartment.

-Kyle Iwanicki was the only member of "getlaidboyz", as well as the only person to lose to me on both arms while arm wrestling.

-I hate sleeping on the ground.

-KONA KONA KONA

-Mike Cottle has angry fun.

-I need a new front hub.

PICTURES!!!!!!


Tabletorp from BKFBM.


Trey Jones leaving jaws agape.


Dabozzle at Maitland tranny banks.


Typoll/Jerry Reed at the same place.


When we got there, Del Balso said, "I wanna see Mickey Marshall ride these." YOU HAVE TWO WISHES LEFT, BRO.


Kyle I still pissin'...

BMXBoard gets Banned.

The original plan had me flying to Orlando and getting picked up by Brien from the airport. Then, Typoll mentioned in a Tweet that he, Travpoll, and Jeffy were going and were going to stop in Knoxville and kidnap me. So the nebulous plan evolved into just riding down with a group of Ohio dudes. Then Jeffy, to the shock of no one, backed out. Then Travis. In stepped Kyle Iwanicki and Johnny Del Balso. They arrived in Knoxville on Wednesday night, went and saw a killer cello/metal show, and the next morning we were on the way to Florida. The first stop was in Jacksonville at the Kona park. That night we took a few tentative runs, as we only had around an hour to ride. After that, Redbull Dave let us set up camp in the yard across the street from Kona. Some charred Van Homan made s'mores, some Steve Crandall crafted insults, and some beers sent us to our tents with a oddly full belly and thoughts about getting back into that park in the morning to slay some concrete dragons. Brien Kielb arrived in the morning to join in the festivities.



Brien wanted a pic of a skid over a particular sticker in this bowl. Later, details emerged that sort of changed things...but not really.



Kyle called this out early on. The best part of this set up is the fact that the halfpipe is concrete and essentially made of cinder blocks.



BOMBS AWAY.





Tyler Pollari, when not unbuttoning his various Hawaiian shirts, put in work in every part of the park.

Mickey Marshall asked me if I was from Tennessee, asked if I knew Tim Lewis (I do!) and was comfortable with the fact that they are twins/dopplegangers.



Then he blasted the shit outta this concrete kinked quarter at the end of the snake run.

Incidentally, the snake run was the most delightful thing that my tires have ever trod upon. I could ride that every day for the rest of my life and I would be most happy.

This was all followed by heading out to Orlando/Apopka for the Banned in the Backyard Jam, which I don't think I can properly sum up right now. I have other photos, so when I get it together, I will write something else about it.



Mark Mulville roasted all day long. All day.



Officer Hoey. This was my first time meeting this dude and he was just as rad as you'd expect a cop from NYC that rides to be. Also managed to roach the tires in his Dodge Charger rental and the look on his face was parts smug and stoked 16-year-old.



Brien Kielb can do table tops. This was not one of them. I have a few pics from the jam of him doing them, but I am trying to stay on his good side for a moment. Nothing but love, dude.

Running on and/or with fumes.

I am not going to Texas Toast. I may shut my Twitter feed off for a week...just don't want to hear about what I am missing. Maybe that is karma for teasing BKFBM for not being there last year. The FBM crew are going to Texas Toast. On their way, they made a now customary stop in Knoxville to say hi, sell some shit and ride the park. Mica calls me an anglophile, and I probably am in some measure, so Tom Blyth was in some danger of me asking to pose with a tin of beans for a photo. We settled for this instead. Before he did this, he declared ownership of this hip. 

I think this was my first time meeting Zac Costa, though I have viewed several of his clips via the magic of BMXboard threads. 

Kenny Horton is always a treat to hang out with and has a pretty sweet feeling prototype frame under him. He's also one of the most generous people I have seen with regards to his sushi and hummus. 

Have fun in Texas, dudes. I hope you don't get too high from the fumes. 

I missed the entire month of July.

I have no real reason for it. I rode. I did things. I took no pictures. August has shaped up that way, too. Just living. Doing things and not worrying about setting up for a shot.

That said, I really want to shoot some photos. But, life as a 37-year-old father does not lend itself to the photographer's lifestyle. That is my reality. Work, school for my kids, school for me, dogs, cat, chickens...all of it just takes up chunks of time that I can't easily overcome.

But I want to.

I want to take pictures. I have film. I have digital capacity.

I have desire.

Increasingly, I ride alone. That is the way it goes when you are older. Your windows of time for riding shrink...and they do not line up with the windows of time for others. It happens. I was bummed for a while about it, but as time as gone on, it gets taken in stride. At least riding is an option.

Now, if someone could fix bmxboard, that'd be something.

I wanna write a review of Bad Idea so baaaaaddddd...

But I am gonna wait.

But just know this...it's really good. Like, I find myself wanting to live in certain clips in this video.

Because I love my friend Brien, that is all I will say.

KOREYSAYSHI

Korey Kryder and Joel Barnett came through town a few weeks back while on an adventure to get Joel to Nashville (it's the new mini-Austin!) and while Korey is actually a real life published photographer, I tried to step up and grab some shots of Joel. Now, when compared to what Korey shot, I am lacking for sure, but...I gave it a go. Having a dude like Joel to shoot with on a regular basis has to be a treat, so enjoy, Andrew White.

This one is with my 50mm. No flash or anything. Just trying to get a shot.


This was with Korey's 10.5mm fish. Yeah, I want one.


Anyways, sweet dudes for sure, and my hope is to make it over to Nashville to say hi and let Mica do some American Apparel shopping.

But seriously, that peach beer was awful.

Hollerrrrrrrrrrr.

NEW SPOT.

It goes like this. If you tell me about a wallride, I will go. I love riding them and being able to charge at a bank and launch into it. This place had all of that. Thanks to Tim Lewis for finding it and taking us. WILL BE GOING BACK FOR SURE.

Jon Harter liked it, too.

Try, try again.

Getting a photo CD from Walgreens is nice and easy, but I feel like I should be able to use this scanner better than I have been. This is a shot I took of Matt Green that I had posted already, but this one is scanned from my negative, so I wanted to see if there was a difference. I think there is, but then again I am sort of biased.

Also, really stoked to read the Garrett Reynolds interview where he makes mention of the five-pound-frame issue and how lighter than that can cause problems. I hope the pendulum stabilizes a bit after swinging back to a reasonable weight for a frame. 

The Albion is really killing it right now. The only thing really holding it up is the writing style of Steve Bancroft. But even then I think there is an air of "what the fuck is that dude gonna write this issue that will be over the line?" So maybe that is working; British tabloid style, as it were. 

Any ways, the rain has let up and the sun is shining just a bit. Let's go see what's up...

All but one...

The Old City Java photo show is over. It was a good opportunity for me to go through my first "showing" which in turn helped me to learn some things I should do if I am ever to do another showing again. Hopefully I will amass enough pics to warrant such a thing. Anyways, Brien had been asking me if I was going to post up the pictures that I showed, and so I will do that now- minus one because I submitted it to someone that might do something with it. TIME WILL TELL. So here they are. Some have been on the blog before, some have not, but all were taken by me and my Nikon D200.
 

The F100 and one hour developing

So, this is my second roll of film from the F100 since purchase. I forgot that I had taken some photos in Austin on this roll- an uncomfortable close up of Aaron Ross at the ice cream social and this picture of Tree Bikes Sam at House park. Sticking with the chronological order of things, I have a couple of shots of Matt Green from North Carolina (raise up). Dude is a fucking shredder. Would rather watch riding like this over a banana sandwich any day. I took some shots at the trails the other day, probably post-Jeff Grindstaff concussion, and though I have trouble with my D200 taking pics up there, I liked the way these came out... Tim Lewis puts in so much damn work up there. Anyone that pedals up there owes him a beer and a handshake. Don't be freaked out by that gnarled finger. It's cool. Dave looks high as fuck right here. vs. Dave going high as fuck. To close, pictures from this very day. Some dudes from Ohio came down and found me via the magic of BMXboard and instagram. I don't have last names and probably don't even have names right, but they were a blast to ride with. Fuckin' Ohio, man. Floyd? I think I got that right. I feel like this guy's name was John? Not even sure about that. All in all, I am really stoked on shooting with film and figuring out settings on my own and not relying on the back of the camera to tell me if I "got it". I don't take shots like that Pollari kid from Willoughby, but who does? Fucker is a savant.

The calm before the drizzle.

So yeah, in a couple of days I will be hanging some photos up at Java in the Old City for all to see. Well, all that venture into there, anyways. I keep trying to start writing an "about the artist" type of thing but it never feels right. I guess this is what deadlines are for (even if they are somewhat self-imposed). My friend Tyler Pollari came down a few weeks back and brought his twin-ish brother Travis with him. All the way from Ohio! I tried to get some information, like...why the fuck is Ohio a "swing state" and how come it seems so damned indecisive. He basically said that the people in the cities are liberal and the rural areas are not, and they are sort of equal in population and so it makes it all sorts of mucked up. Whatever. All I know is that Ohio does appear to be bad ass and I choose not to fuck with it. With that in mind, here is a little shot of my friend Tyler, getting it. There was a trail jam here this past weekend, and though no one really showed up for it, that didn't stop it from happening. I took a lot of pictures, but apparently my 28mm is a piece of shit (happy early birthday, Anna!) and so the only shots that even sort of turned out were ones that came from me shooting with the fish. So here is Dave "SOMEONE PLEASE HOOK THIS DUDE UP ALREADY" Williams with a tire grab over the big one... Here is a pic from my last trip to Austin that I have been sitting on for no apparent reason. It's Macneil's Drew Lazaruck (sp?) riding the bowl on (obviously...I mean it's not like he dropped from the fucking sky, is it?) a day that I got to share riding space with some captains of industry. Povah and Aaron Ross. It felt like riding with the embodiment of Twitter and the guy that invented the Cyclops stem. Nice! This is a picture of Brian Hunt that has been on my drive for forever. I have no idea why I never did anything with it. I think I might have sent it to DK and they never used it. Probably too busy working out Wal-Mart contracts. Or they thought it was a shitty photo (more likely) but I liked it and even felt good about catching the bars where I did. Now, a departure. For the last couple of weeks I have been working on a home for these ladies... and I finally finished it! I lost some blood, smashed my thumb (twice!) and had countless pieces of chicken wire stuck in my hands, but it came out okay. Some of the wood got warped (notice where the bottom hinge is...it had to be there.) but we made the most of it. I hope Gregger approves. That's all for now. I have to get up in six hours.

I think it is safe to post these now.

Back in 2006 the FBM team came through town. At the time, I had just gotten my Canon EOS Elan7 and was eager to take some pics of anything. Crandall asked that I not post or publish anything because Ride UK was doing an article on the trip. So I sat on the pics. UNTIL NOW.

BEHOLD. PICTURES OF CAM WOOD AND AARON ROSS THAT WILL SHATTER EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW.

White on white, that's fuckin' Ross?


Cam Wood on the same wall. Goddamn, this was six years ago. I was still in my 30's. HAHAHAHAHA. Great.


I hope Cranpa doesn't write me a nasty missive over the publication of these.