This came in the mail today, from Concept2, with whom I’ve done a ton of work. They’re a great company, really sweet people up there in Central VT. Anyway, I took the shot in the summer, July I think, when they were rowing the length of the Ct River. It was a cool trip and they used a bunch of my images which was nice to see.

Drove down to Connecticut today to do a MTB ride and photo shoot with one of the Mountain Bike editors and another rider. It’s for an upcoming travel section on the best rides in the US. We rode and shot at Case Mountain outside Glastonbury, near Hartford. The riding was pretty nice, but it’s amazing because it didn’t seem like a lot of people had ridden there recently. There were tons of leaves still on the trails, still fluffed up and not ridden off. I know it’s the end of November, but it’s been so mild I would have thought more riders would have been out on the trails. Off to Montreal tomorrow for a shoot at the World Anti-Doping Administration (WADA) with Charles from VeloNews. So I have to bust out of here way early, like 4 am, to maake it up there. And it’s supposed to snow tonight. Great.

So I missed the NE CRoss race in Mass yesterday for a variety of reasons. Needless to say I needed a weekend at home as they’ve been few and far between since the beginning of october.

The weather today was supposed to suck: rain, wind, the works. So I decided to work on my bikes in the basement and I was just beginning to build down the road bike to put on the new DA 10 speed, when K yelled down that Adam was at the door. It was none other than Adam Craig, refer to last Monday’s post and image above. He was in the area and rode up to the house looking for a ride. It hadn’t yet started to rain and he said we had over an hour ebfore it would. Threw on the gear, pumped up the MTB tires and we headed out. It was great. I’d really not expected to get out today but the riding was really good. We chatted a bunch and it turns out he’s just tied up a solid sponsorship deal for the next couple years. Good for him.

This is going to be a busy week, a couple travel days for shoots (likely) and a few more projects to sew up. So having the weekend at home, riding with one of the country’s best mountain bikers, and spending time with the girls and some good friends, made it a nice late-November couple of days

Cover from the December Vermont Sports, a local outdoorsy publication. The color is a bit off, looks like something got messed up in pre-press which is always kind of a bummer. I like this shot though, makes me psyched for the coming winter. Not many people shoot nordic skiing as there’s not a ton of $ in the market, and most of ther nordic shots I see look really staged and cheesy. Say no to that. So I try to keep it authentic and fast, and that seems to work well, utilizing the scenic stuff but not relying on it too much. The skiing is enough.

Speaking of winter, it was crazy warm yesterday, like 65 degrees. I went on my ride in shorts and short sleeve jersey w/arm warmers, last time I’ll do that until next May I imagine. Like 10 minutes after I got back the heavens opened as a front rolled through, pouring rain w/35 mph winds. So when we wokoe up this morning it was only 17 degrees, winter’s back in the house.

Got the cover on the latest issue of Ski Racing. Check it out.

This past weekend has finally caught up to me and I’m wasted. Got my “new” computer from Zak, his “old” G4, which is way better than what I’m using now, because he always has to have the newest Mac model. Just have to get a monitor and we’ll be rolling at more than twice the processing speed.

Finally cleaned my ‘cross bike and it took like 45 minutes to do it. The mud and grass was caked in everything. Made a complete mess in the basement in the process. Might get around to building up the Empella, which I got more than a month ago, but I doubt I’ll race it this year.

The final US Gran Prix of Cross down in NJ. Damn.

About 800 miles of driving, about 600 frames shot, two races, one cheese steak, a few beers, two web updates, one 2,000 word article, untold liters of sports drink mooched from vendors and teams, and a shit load of computer time. And it was still fun. The weather was crap, dark and gloomy the whole time, but at least no rain. The courses couldn’t have been more different. One, sandy and fast. the other, muddy and slow. The town that hosted Saturday’s race, Bridgeton in way south Jersey, was super depressing, a bombed out former agri town with a bombed out downtown. Big bummer.

Got back late last night and got to it directly this morning to file my story for VN and edit the images. Turned out reasonably well, though the camera just falls short in low light action stuff. Then Adam Craig, Maxxis-Giant pro, stopped by the house to pick up the bike I drove back up north for him. Even though my legs were wrecked from the weekend, I’m sure his were too, we went and slid around on the trails. He was on his SS and ripped it up. No wonder he’s a top pro. The cross season’s winding down, which is fine, the travelling is getting a bit of drag, though the racing is still fun and I’ve had good luck if not good results.

Finally finished up processing images from a couple of lingering projects (this image was among them and you can tell it was a long time ago, theree were leaves on the trees), so those files can head into storage for the time being. Got an e-mail from Vermont Life Magazine this afternoon asking for my details because they’d run one of my shots in their winter issue and they wanted to pay me - cool. It cracks me up when that happens, I took the shot last January, sent it to them in June, and hadn’t heard a peep since. Patience, and obliviousness, is definitely your friend.

Got an image to TruVativ for a ‘cross ad they’re putting in ProCycling magazne in February (of Adam Craig) so look for that. I’m heading down to Jersey tomorrow for the final 2 USGP ‘cross races, I’ll race down there too. Staying with Ed H from back in the rowing days, it’ll be great to see him again because hanging with him at numerous rowing events was one of the highlights of my rowing journo years. The VN deadline is going to be kinda rough, I drive back to NH after the race on Sunday and I’ll likely get home after 10. Then VN needs 2500 words by Monday noon. Ouch. Meeting with Colavita on my way down to Princeton, where I’m staying with Ed, to square away our details for 2005. I hope i can pick up some pasta and Olive Oil while I’m there.

Great MTB ride today and I’ve felt reaally good on the bike. Maybe I’m about to get sick…

I love adilettes, I really do. I got my first pair of adidas sandals back in ‘87, my freshman year at Cornell during spring break while we were doing training camp in Ithaca. Those lasted me until ‘96, then I got another pair that got stolen by someone on the Dutch rowing team when they were training in Hanover in ‘99. So I got the pair that just died last week. So what’s that, four pairs in almost 20 years, pretty good. When I saw these red ones, which i’d never seen before I had to have them. I also got a pair of pimped white w/green stripes just for good measure. That should last me a good long while.

Met with KE from Thayer on doing a photo/words poject for them, documenting their massive machine shop. I think it’ll be a cool project and it should get going in December, not my normal subject matter, but the shop there has all sorts of wicked machine tools that send bits of metal and wood flying. Tons of potential. Got my neck cracked, which I needed, and felt much better.

The weather’s holding, got my fork perfect today after three laps on the test track, stopping after each to adjust the pressure. The Marathon SL has four different places to inflate, so it takes quite a long time to find a balance, but I finally did. The subsequent ride was great, felt so strong, rode everything (almost). If you’re wondering what the test track is like, e-mail me and I’ll take you on it, it only takes like 5 minutes per laps, but has everything.

BTW, check out this link. It’s a piraated version of a Dutch ‘cross race and is absolutely sick. Well worth a look. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~dronkert/tmp/

Northampton ‘cross all day Sunday. First, my race. It was cold, snow on the ground, but started to warm up quickly. The big bummer was the decision by race organizers to line us up by #, that means anyone who registered that morning would start all the way at the back of the grid. Wanna guess where I started? Exactly, the very last row. If you’ve ever raced ‘cross you know that getting a decent start is critical and I basically started in last place. So I basically spent the entire race trying to go through the field. It was kind of frustrating because I felt really, really good and got slowed down on a couple of spots by much slower riders. No big deal, though, it is just masters racing. In any event, the course was great and it was encouraging to feel so good. Which leads me to…

…the shooting, which was very nice. The course was totally different from last year, but there was a lot of sun, even if it fell funny on the course. The women’s race was sort of boring: small field and Mary M killed everyone. The men’s race, on the other hand, as great. Ryan T. looked like he was going to win easily, but he wrecked and lost his lead. From then on it was a battle for the top 4 guys. Mark M won in a sprint, unfortunately the finish stretch was totally in the shade and then some jerk jumped in front of my shot and worked the best image. I sometimes really hate the finish line shot, especially at smaller races where there’s no crowd control. However, the worst experience I’ve ever had with it was down at USPRO when a Nürenberger soigneur jumped directly into my shot of Petra Rossner winning. I was furious, but what are you gonna do?

Heading down to Jersey on friday to meet with Colavita to discuss next year and shoot the weekend’s USGP.

So this is the second shot off the XPAN, the light fall-off at the outer edges kinda kills it, but I still think it works on one level. I can think a bunch of situations it could really be the trick setup. I definitely need to get the special film carriage for the scanner because the McGyver modify I did on my normal strip carrier is not cutting it at all.

Went over and scoped out a potential ‘cross course at Thetford Academy for next year. It is pretty much perfect location, smooth trails, pavement, undulations, field, everything for a solid course. Now I just need to start working on the organization end of it. It was super windy today and I froze on the descents on the ride, even though it was sunny and everything. ‘Cross in Northampton tomorrow so another long day, racing in the AM shooting in the PM. My legs pretty junky, but it’ll be nice weather so even if my race sucks I’ll come back with good images.

Got my first roll of XPan images back today aand I was very impressed. I definitely need to get the centerweight filter for the 45mm, you can some serious light drop off on the outer edges in this image, but still, the panoramic format is so cool. I did some traditional landscapes with it, but also shot some action stuff in the woods (I’ll post tomorrow) and those worked out well too. The biggest issue was modifying my scanner to scan the panoramic frames. It’s still not dialed in.

For those who don’t know about the XPan, it a Hassleblad 35mm camera with an option to create panoramic frames, basically a double 35mm frame that’s as wide a medium format but only as tall as 35mm. So it’s either very wide or very tall. In any event, it can be switched back and forth on the same roll, shoot both chrome and print, and has three different lens options. I have the 45 and 90mm. I’ll see if I can shoot some cyclo-cross with it this weekend, that ought to be fun.

Mellow day in the office, finished an article, solidified a couple more, and sent out some image requests. Also, and this is big, I got my new chair, or should I say ball. I got a workout ball to sit on as it looked like an economical, dynamic way to sit. It only cost $30 so if I hate it, no big deal. I just could not bring myself to drop $600 on an Aeron chair, instead I got a couple new pairs of Adilette sandals off the adidas originals site, my old ones had kicked it somew time ago. I jusst read in CycleSport that one of the old wives tales in Euro cycling is to avoid walking barefoot, with two new sets of flip-flops I’m safe.