Enjoy the Scenery
Good and fast in the Ozarks.
A couple souvenirs from an early morning session during a quick, in and out trip to the Arkansas Ozarks a week ago.
Fastplants forever.
Heather with a sustenance bound Safety Grab for the last hit of the morning.
The Flower
Where the Aquaduct Looms
Things we do in ditches.
Billy - A cold day for aliigators
Billy - This thread the needle over tooth wasn’t working, but looked cool anyway.
Billy - Acceptance
Had to smack the lip a few times myself
Prelude
I remember waves hammering stone walls, gulls hanging in the vent, riders roaming just to ride, not a care is spent.
I remember waves hammering stone walls, gulls hanging in the vent, riders roaming just to ride, not a care was spent. That was Weather in 2011.
And those stone walls.
I stood on the edge of that cliff for more than a decade; watching the waves below eat stone spires and swallow rocks so large I choked as they lodged in my imagination.
Old Deck, New Studio
Old deck, new studio.
Some very old, hastily done, Weather art on top of my even older Bloodwizard deck, on top of the newly installed, and hand finished, Weather studio floor.
After a change of heart I have a studio for Weather.
Lucky suns and ditches
Starting in the dark with good company and a simple plan has always worked for me.
We plunged zombie-armed through the fabric of night, a homogeneous, untouchable, lightless velvet that cloaked the pines. We groped for a spot to pee, fingers extended, ready to touch god or be obliterated against blackjack trunks.
We felt our way back to bed with cautious steps until we jammed our digits into steel and slid them along the truck’s body, feeling for a door handle.
A last look at the sky through the window revealed towering silhouettes, pine shaped cut outs in the stars. So many stars. None of them ours.
If the sun eclipsed one of the biggest and brightest stars it would be a low watt speck of amber incandescence in a solar system sized sea of blue LED light. Virtually imperceptible. But, at the same time that little mote of orange could swallow more than a million Earths. That’s our star, and it was rising soon.
Meanwhile, 60 miles north, the Grand Canyon sprawled silently in the dark. A wonder of Earth, a shelter, a grave, an ecosystem, a ditch carved by weather and time. But, it’s our ditch and watching the orange speck rise over that ditch is a sight we’re lucky to see. We rolled out of the Coconino and headed toward Kaibab in twilight to catch the dawn properly from the South Rim.
After the solar rim ritual our pilgrimage took us to another ditch. A multi-component site. An overlooked feat of civil engineering that quietly spares the city from snow melt and monsoon floods. A heroin den or wayward home for some. A bordello, prophet’s tablet or canvas for others. For us, the megalith beneath the street was a shrine to the carve, where we paid tribute in turns, offering sweat for joy until lunch.
Head over heels in the Tunnel of Love.
Meet Me in the Hills
It was 2019, mid-September, the long taper of a summer without demarcation. It was the evening. My phone rang.
It was 2019, mid-September, the long taper of a summer without demarcation. The last steam bath days of St. Louis heat stretched on. Slobber strands dangling from a hound’s jowls.
One night, I was noticing the Moonish qualities of the street lamp outside my living room window when my phone rang. It was Jackson. He pitched a rendezvous. In ten days meet FBM, Profile, and some of the extended ménage in Colorado to hitch along for a leg of the 6th Maiden America tour for roughly 48 hours of riding in the Rockies. It was short notice and a short trip—a blink.
Street Lamp, surrogate for the Moon.
I extended my right arm. My elbow creaked like a door in an abandoned Victorian. It had been for months. From time to time I gripped my bars, but by this point it was a symbolic gesture. The tendonitis wasn’t a deal breaker. Maybe I’d get a few airs in before the rusty hinge pulled off the door like viscera velcro. Anyway, prospecting for transition gold in the mountains with friends was reason enough to go. I’d take what I could get, cut work, and book the flight to Denver.
Other than the brushes on Bohren’s Midnight Radio summer boiled off without a hiss, but Jackson’s call promised fall wouldn’t evaporate the same way. So, before dawn on the equinox I threw on my backpack and tugged my bike bag 6 blocks to catch the 5am Red Line for Lambert. A few hours later Jackson grabbed me from the Denver airport and we were off to meet the others west of the city.
A smattering of vagabonds gathered in the motel parking lot soon after we arrived. This was the renegade BMX nobility I was joining up with, mostly familiars. Jackson and I were close friends from when I lived in Santa Cruz. I watched Garrett grow up ripping Ramp Riders in Saint Louis with his brothers, Zach and Adam. Steve Crandall became a friend after years of crossing paths on the road. Others: Stew, Dolecki, Seamus, Holladay I knew from prior FBM meet-ups and the typical currents of BMX life. The Leeper Bros, Jay from QBP, Vic from Circuit, Matt from Profile, and the bizarrely skilled Declan Murray were new to me and—
A cosmopolitan vagabond approached the van, ”I’m so horny!”
Eric Holladay was grinning behind black sunglasses as he strolled up in a billowing un-buttoned short sleeve, khaki shorts and slides, banana in hand.
”I’m horrnyyy,” replied a voice from the shadows of the van interior, Seamus I think.
”Man, I’m so horny. Is anybody else horny?” called Garrett.
Pockets of voices spread around the asphalt returned,
“I’m horny,”
“Whooo’s horny?”
“Sooo horny.”
The call died off as suddenly as it began—this was a pack of coyotes.
Time dilation is wild. Two days, and that’s being generous, felt like a week. On day one I managed a few carves at The Hook and a few airs at the Milliken park which earned me six more months of frayed cable friction in my arms. So, I was sidelined right away but happy and shot tons of photos.
This trip marked the conclusion of FBM operating as a handmade in the USA BMX bike company. Steve made the announcement while everyone was taking a break at Frisco. But, he also made clear this wasn’t the end of the road for friendships or road trips.
FBM was always more people than product anyway.
The road—we met there, we meet there, and if we see each other again, that’s where it’ll be.
*Click’em to make’em big and un-cropped.
Long Shadows
Thresholds dividing what I can see see from what I can’t.
In many of my most vivid memories I’m walking toward the sun, the horizon, a creek bend, cluster of trees, hill top, or a row of buildings. Thresholds dividing what I can see see from what I can’t.
