Okay, so this was taken last week the morning of the Vermont 50, but it wasn’t the last time I saw a sunrise. That was this morning at 35,000 feet flying back from Interbike in Vegas. Never really got on Pacific Time so saw the sun rise every morning I was out there.

Vegas proves PT Barnum’s point every minute of every day. You can’t really wrap your head around how horrendous a place it is and what its success says about people. But I guess you need a place to have conventions and no open container laws, so the middle of the desert makes as much sense as anything.

Got a chance to ride some cool bikes, catch up with some of the nicer people in cycling, and it wasn’t too bad all things considered. Kept the camera in the bag almost the whole time, just couldn’t bring myself to take it out and shoot what would inevitably turn out to be crap images in crap light. Here’s my brief rundown of Interbike/Vegas:

*drinking is major at the convention, starts at 4:00 the first day and as far as I can tell really doesn’t stop until everyone leaves on Friday

*carbon is king. there were so many carbon bikes at the show and some were just stupid/scary light. You first buddy.

*fake boobies=Las Vegas. On so many levels.

*29ers are here to stay.

*Carbon De Rosa ‘cross frame.

*Trucker caps are still cool, I guess.

Gotta get up early if you want to shoot rowing, buddy. Like 4:45 today. That’s gottam early. But it was worth it, awesome fall day up at Craftsbury, really nice stuff all day.

Pulled a new one out of the bag, using a EWA underwater housing, went subaquatic on it. This was only my 2nd go round on underwater shooting and  I’m still learning  (gotta use some kind of ballast for shooter and camera if you want to stay under water long enough, most water is really murky, etc). Still, looks kinda cool.

Up early again tomorrow morning to shoot the VT 50-mile trail run for Trail Runner. Then, straight to Boston to fly to Vegas for Interbike. At one point, I think, this all seemed like a reasonable idea.

Broke my mounatin bike yeserday, dropout weld cut loose and that was no good. Had to walk out of the woods and mountain bike shoes are not really meant for an hour of walking.

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Usually, when you keep delaying a shoot, for whatever reason, the actual shoot ends up being pretty good. Not sure why that is, but it seems to work out that way more often than not. Rode with the guys from Irie Cycles on a trail in Waterbury. Granted I was riding with a 40 lb. backpack and hadn’t ridden the MTB in a month, but these guys were smoking (in a lot of ways). The Irie boys were rolling on big travel rigs, and me on my Duo all XCed out. The trail was hectic, rooty, rocky, loamy. In short: very fun. Got some nice shots in the deep, dark woods and only endoed once. Coulda used some 2.3s and 6″ of travel.

Then headed a few minutes down the road to Barre to shoot a trail center down there, the Millstone Trails. Took this of Pete riding on one of the huge granite quarries. Don’t get too many looks like this back East.

Doing an interesting project tomorrow, I’ll post if the result is good. BTW, did a nice little headset mod with a Dremel tool today and I’m one step closer to rolling out the singlespeed ‘cross bike.

Shot this yesterday, a project I’m doing for a company. One of the funny requirements is that all the images have to be shot horizontal Normally I’d make this shot vertical, but they’re paying so they get it horiz. Not a lot of sun, but for this shot I don’t think it’s necessary.

Really short on sleep right now. Since we moved into the new house we’ve been getting these calls every third or fourth day, it’s basically a telemarketing call but it’s a fax and we don’t have a fax machine. So we pick up the receiver and hear “beep, beep”. We signed up for the Do Not Call list, but these a-holes haven’t noticed yet. It’s not such a big deal, but the calls have started coming at 2-3 AM. Hard to egt back to sleep once you get one of these calls, you’re so pissed. Somehow they have the #69 thing blocked for this # as well as caller id. So looks like we may have to change our phone #. How crazy is that?

Finally headed up to Waterbury to do this shoot I’ve been trying to get together for a couple weeks.

Not always bad to shoot in grimy, rainy weather. Rather nice yesterday, actually. Ran some test shots with Libby, came out well.

Spent the morning up at FitWerx getting my bike re-fit and getting some custom made orthotics. Ian, the owner, does an incredible job, well worth the time and $. The orthotics make my shoes feel much better, and the new position on the bike is better on the knee.

Supposed to shoot up at Craftsbury this weekend, but the weather is looking not so sweet.

Rolling down the road yesterday, having a swell early-fall ride. It was warm - almost 90 - and the bump in temp brought out the insects, one of which went down my throat at about 27 MPH. I’ve ingested plenty of bugs on rides over the years, but this thing was like a cargo plane going down the throat. I dry heaved for the next mile or so, like serious convulsing dry heaves. Finally washed it down, but made me feel like absolute crap the reast of the ride. Ick.

Heading up to Waterbury VT tomorrow to shoot a couple of the local tasty trails for Mountain Bike.

Just finished up some writing for the VN ‘cross preview and it got me psyched for the coming season. Looks like my knee will come around in time. Keeping my fingers crossed. Doing the full NE series (writing, shooting, racing) then 4 of the 6 USGP races (including the SF Bay Area races), then nationals down in RI. Putting by CX bikes together right now, I’ll post images soon.

Picked up some slides yesterday from a sculling shoot I did on Sunday. Shot some Provia 100 and VS100 as well. Digital is great, but getting a bunch of chrome back from the lab is still sweet, esp. since it means no computer time. Speaking of computers, I found out the hard way that Benadryl and computers don’t mix. I got stung by a wasp on Tuesday night right near by left eye. The side of my face swelled up like a balloon, not unlike Jonathan Vaughters. So I took some Benadryl about noon yesterday. Lights out by 1 PM. It was crazy. I couldn’t stay awake, just falling asleep at the desk. Lesson learned.

Finished off the Vicious Cycles shoot yesterday morning, finally. It was a really nice day and the images came out reasonably well. This is just kinda an outtake, pretty spot on Rte 10 above Piermont, NH. Really good area of the state to ride: rolling flats heading north and south along the CT River with some nice, burly climbs to the east and west if you’re in the mood.

The cortisone experience continues to improve. Day two since the injection under my kneecap and the knee feels awesome. Rode for over an hour yesterday (on the PowerCranks) with no discomfort. Just knocking out that little bit of swelling in the knee with the cortisone seems to haave made all the difference. Also, doing some heavy duty rehab stretching and electro stim. Getting pedals and cleats aligned next week and some new footbeds to make sure this never happens again.

Went down to shoot some rowing this morning, but the fog has been lingering until mid-morning so had to re-schedule, maybe this afternoon. Spending the weekend organizing the basement, getting the bike shop set up and unpacking, finally.

Shot up in Barre, VT yesterday for some work I’m doing with Vicious Cycles, a framebuilder from NY. There’s an incredible trail network up there. That’s granite and marble quarry country and the trails run right along the lips of the some of the quarries. Unfortunately all those trails are western exposure and we were shooting in the AM on kind of a tight schedule. But I’ll be heading back there for sure. Finishing that shoot up tomorrow, it’s been a 4-part shoot: not ideal.

Got a cortisone injection in the knee today to calm down some of the inflammation. I can ride with it as is, but there’s just some internal junk that a cortisone shot will get on top of (I hope). I rode the past two days on the PowerCranks and it was good. The knee hurt hardly at all and the PCs force you to pedal even with both legs. Uneven pedalling, and the resulting muscle imbalances, has been the root of the recent knee bothers. The thing I was most suprised with was being abole to ride for an hour each day with the PCs. Those things are like torture devices and usually when I get on them it takes me a couple weeks to get up to 60 mins. Go figure.