Ok, it’s been a long, somewhat extra grueling summmer. I’ve been to 20 different states (some of them multiple times) since spring. I’ve stood knee-deep in two different oceans, half a dozen lakes (ranging from “nearly frozen” to “nearly dry”), more mud puddles than I care to think about, and even the occaisional bath tub. I crossed several deserts, several mountain ranges, the Great Planes, and the Eastern Seaboard.

That’s a lot of travel, and I never once set foot on an airplane. I did, however, drive 10 different cars, and ride in half a dozen different boats.

I’ve been nose to nose with a couple of foxes, a coyote, a very unhappy deer or ten, and a crop duster that I’m sure would have been every bit as surprised as me, had they known I was there. I stared into the faces of >1000 eager cyclists, who were just a gunshot away from stampeeding right over me.

I slept on stone picnic tables. I slept in the backs of cars. I slept on the bench seat of a pick-up truck. I slept in a tent. I slept on concrete floors. I slept on couches. I slept on the deck of boat. I slept on a gravel driveway. Once in a while, I slept in my bed with the lovely assistant. I fell asleep standing up in a hotel lobby once. And the best nights’ sleep I got all summer long, was a 2.5 hour pull on the asphault in a McDonald’s parking lot in Pratt Kansas.

I shot weddings. I shot bike races. I shot candid portraits. I did a bit of promo work. I got a few nice wildlife shots. I got some excellent sports shots, and I even got a credited shot on the front page of the sports section of a local newspaper. And, in a nearly unprecidented turn of events, I even got paid for a few shots along the way!

In short, it’s been a hectic, and productive summer, but you wouldn’t know it by lookin’ at this here website.

I aim to fix that. Stay tuned.

Dateline: Salton City California

Race has been underway for about 3 hours now. Mostly smooth going for us crew thus far. One minor mech problem.

Found out local paper is running blog style updates (by TannerDave) with my photos.

Link pending….

Update; this is more RV’s per square inch than the town of Salton City (on the shores of the Salton Sea) has ever seen.

If you,re wondering what the heck I’m up to, you should probably start by looking at the race website.

I am the crew chief for the Hoosiers 4 man team.

Yesterday was crazy busy. We went from zero to “passed inspection” in about six hours. This may not sound like such a big deal but it did involve no less than three seperate trips to hardware stores won me a nomination for the “MacGuyver Award”.

And the ultimate was that the ladies at the registration desk said I’d set a record for wrangling a team through inspection and registration.

So, all three trucks, all four riders, all eight bikes, and eleven potential crew are in the race, and ready to go.

Where the streets are paved with gold, and lined with hookers.

I kinda thought there’d be more “adult superstore” billboards.

I’m 110 miles from the next gas station, in the San Rafael desert.

I’m getting four bars of signal with full data capability.

I don’t understand what the “Pearl Harbor Memorial Highway” is doing at 6000 ft. above sea level.

On the road in Denver.
Posting is working (’cause you can read this), but getting the pics out isn’t quite right. I’ll keep working on it.

Stay tuned…

Well, me and my spiffy new phone (from which I’m posting this) are on the road.

Posting might be. Even more sporadic than usual… Or it might just be the start of a new “golden age” for us here. One never knows ’bout such things.

I’m gonna try to post some pics, but I may be limited to stuff from the new camera phone. Stay tuned…

Dear Spammers,

You can’t read this, ’cause I’ve taken some drastic action, but I feel like I owe you…. or…. someone, an explaination.

I’ve been patient. I’ve been a lot kinder than I really should. Heck, I’ve made a bad policy decision or two, and even allowed sanitized versions of your spam-comments (featuring some lovely stroking of my enormous ego) to appear on my blog.

In retrospect, that kindness and playfullness that I was showing, allowed the situation to escalate, to the point where it was negatively impacting the performance on all the saturn-5 associated networks. I probably should have adopted more of a “zero tolerance” approach from the begining… I’ve been in the IT biz for a mighty long time… I should have seen it coming.

So the new policy amounts to this. After a post to this blog ages to a certain arbitrary vintage, any comments posted to it are automatically greeted with skepticism. And if that mature blog post is found to be attracting spam comments, then comment posting to that article will be turned off. This part of the policy has in fact been in place for some time now, and was helping, but…..

Due to what I feel was an unfortunate design decision with WordPress (the software that powers this blog) it is possible to post a comment to an article even after comment posting has been “disabled” within word press. It isn’t hard, but it does take a degree of cleverness and familiarity with how web forms work. But in essence, it’s simply not the sort of thing I think a person would (or should) be doing.

Therefore, it is now the official stated policy of this blog, and all other domains and services using this web server, that any IP address that attempts such an operation (posting a comment to an article who’s comment section is closed) will be blocked at the web server level, with appropriate haste.

Lemme know if you experience any problems associated with this change. Of course, if you are having problems, you won’t be reading this. *shrug*