Hollow heart Hollow Earth

I’ll see you on the inside Murph ♥︎

Prelude and Initiate

Waves hammer stone walls, gulls hang in the vent, riders roam for the ride, not a care is spent.

I stood on the edge of the cliff for a decade. For over ten years I watched the waves below eat stone spires and swallow rocks so large I choked as they lodged in my imagination. This is what I saw.

Going Coastal

Waves, Waves, Friends, and Coffee.
Heather and I spent a few days kicking around the coast.
See the photos here.

The Good waiting

My Credence MOD, one vessel that sailed me through city life, home ownership, knee surgery, life in deserts, forests at 9000 feet, three months living in my vehicle while traveling the West, and more.

“There is always so much good out there for us, waiting.” a friend wrote in response to some travel photos I shared in our years long, but intermittent email chain.

I agree, but I’m sure he played some role in shaping my opinion when in 2004 his BMX company put out a world tour video.

The riding in the video was raw, powerful, and inspiring, but the context of the riding was the belle of the ball, not the progression of tricks, the promotion of products, not even the riders.

The spirit of exploration imbued every part of the trip.

A world tour seeking out ruined ramps in vast, desolate landscapes, immaculate architecture calling for a carve betwixt esoteric sculptures in ancient cities, improbable skateparks lacquered in vibrant graffiti embedded in equally vivid cultures in stark contrast to our own, and plenty of bizarre, shreddable, infrastructure monoliths rising from distant no man's land horizons that act as anchors, beacons, portals, and corridors to an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. Many of which became pilgrimage sites for following generations.

In that context the bike is just the vessel ferrying us, and our friends, through our experience.

How rad we get, or how much fun we have along the way is up to us, and if we make these experiences entirely about the bike and how we're riding it, we risk making our vessel into a cardboard boat, permeable, soggy with time, and easily sunk by the waves and rain from the inevitable storm of entropy.

26 years into my own riding, I still wake up with this electrostatic feeling in my skin, a hunger for a carve on the edge of traction, the cresting arc of a good air, wall rides, and the buzz of discovering new ridescapes.

But, I know the bike is just a vessel, an avatar, and it could easily look like a skateboard, a pair of shoes, walking your dog, a guitar, a pen, a camera, anything, any activity.

It can take any form because the power isn't in the vessel, it's in the understanding that "There is always so much good out there, waiting."

When you know that, the vessel appears in a form just for you.

MOUNTAIN TIME

Virtually off grid for the winter. Orders will go out once a week, on Thursdays.

Devour Heaven

“We fly, we dream in darkness, we devour heaven in bites too small to be measured”

// Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

I made this collage before learning of Rebecca Solnit. But, after reading Field Guide I Thought it fit the bill.

Another:

”Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Three years ago I was giving a workshop in the Rockies. A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”…”

Edifice Complex

I’ve managed to give myself tendonitis in both arms so I get to shoot photos of my friends doing what they do, guilt free.

I posted a new photo collection from one night at Sk8 Liborious, see it here.