New Client - Patagonia

Don Thomas, libidinous progenitor of umpteen-ish misadventures during my RibbonOfRoad trip, has made his way into the early Fall 2010 Patagonia catalog via a photo I made of him mountain biking through a forest of Giant Rhubarb plants in austral Chile.

We had just left Pumalin National Park, and everything was clicking along in a clickless way as we passed this scene. But the peace was rudely interrupted by the snap crackle and pop of el Don's rear hub--fricasse a la Shimano XT. Don hitched a ride with a tour leader from Patagonia Clothing Company for 50 gravely miles to the next major town with a bike shop.  The car had just dropped several of their employees off for a week of volunteer work at the future Patagonia National Park site. So it's oddly fitting that my first image in print for Patagonia Clothing Company is one that they were serendipitously involved in producing. There's my metaphysical panhandling for the day.

For more, check out the Patagonia store on Pearl street in Boulder.  Rumor has it that Don Thomas has been spending quite a bit of time there lately--offering autographed catalogs to outdoorsy, ideally ultimate playing, MTBing, can camp in the rain without whining about it, enthusiastic about nude hot spring-ing, tequila swilling, brunette, good sense of humor, hiking boots in the mountains heels on the town all in the same day, smoke free, confident, not too into Yoga or at least doesn't talk about it all of the time, can hold their wine glass correctly, speaks more than one language, traveled outside of the US (Cancun or Cabo don't count. Whistler wins points but doesn't cut the mustard), has managed to work through most of the skeletons in their closet, saucy and petite but taller than 5'6", played a sport in high school, can squash a bug with their own hand, well educated at a liberal institution, handles bumfuzzlements in stride, curious about the world, not afraid to let their man get carried away with himself or sleep in an old musty sleeping bag in lieu of bedsheets from time to time, 26-32 y/o single (or with current relationship on the rocks) genus femininum.

Date Night in Madrid - Goya, Picasso, Havanna Club

Madrid - So much better in person than interwebs or books

Portraits of People Along The Way

Outside Magazine - August Parting Shot Backstory

Outside Magazine is featuring a photo from my "Portraits of a Indian Bike Company" collection as their back cover "Parting Shot" in the August 2010 issue. The odd thing about this image is that I never consciously knew that I made it until several days after the fact. You see, just minutes after making the photo, I was drugged (long story) with a triple dose of some sort of hallucinogenic. I spent the next 30 hours on a wild, vivid, and sometimes scary trip under the watchful eye of my guest house owner. A recurring theme during my hallucinations (amongst many other things) were flying monkeys who took pleasure in burning me with motorcycle exhaust pipes--so I simply assumed that the monkey running through air in this photo was only part of my imagination. But a week after recovering from my cranial phantasmagoria, I flipped through my photo edit from that day and realized that this image was made prior to being drugged, that the monkey was entirely real, and finally remembered that I circled back to that location several times that week to try to get this cyclist with "monkey runner" picture.
So there he is on the back page of Outside magazine--a seemingly cute little monkey who was actually the sinister inspiration for an incredibly torturous and searing drug-induced head trip.