Here’s Levi L, decked out in the Golden Jersey, hitting the Komfort Kastle before a Vuelta stage. Yeah, even the stars get those pre-race rumbles down low. This shot is so close to being great, if there’d been no cars in the background it would be outstanding. But they’re there so it’s not. Eggleston would have figured a way but I couldn’t. Moments like that are so fleeting and perfect ones nearly impossible. Speaking of that, my race on Saturday was the perfect storm of sucking. Last row start, super hard course, and dead legs. So I took advantage of the trifecta and sucked, hard. A guy I was 12 seconds behind last week I was over 3 minutes behind on Saturday. But CX is still fun even when you’re eating shit at the back of the field. How’s that?

Dragged the race bike out to the driveway and pulled the point-n-shoot for a couple. So here it is: race bike 2008. Straight from Tessenderlo, Belgium this was Petr Dlask’s third bike last year for Fidea (thus the Czech national champion color scheme). Luckily for me Dlask is a freaky tall guy too so I was in like Flynn with this (nearly) one of a kind Ridley X-Night. When I got the bike it had 177.5 cranks and 42/48 chainrings. The saddle was pushed all the way back and the stem was a 140mm! So that is one burly dude. Needless to say I put shorter cranks on, moved the saddle forward, shorter stem, and have gone to a single ring (the 42). One of the things I really like about the bike is the high BB. I know there’s some back-n-forth about the merits of a high BB on a CX bike but I really like being able to pedal through corners without spiking a pedal and deep ruts are much better. For what that’s worth. Interesting things cooking right now….

Cross another sport off the list of those to be shot. Living in a college town you’d think I have shot about everything Dartmouth plays. Not the case. Hadn’t shot any Dartmouth sports in a couple years actually. Go figure. But when told I could shoot a soccer game from a 70-foot cherry picker how could I not say yes? So I channeled David Burnett and enjoyed the perspective. Luckily it was a great day as the long shadows make the shot effective. Still haven’t gotten around to shooting the new CX bike but did race it at Sucker Brook on Sunday. All kinds of fun.

I actually remember taking this shot but I really had to think about it. If you’d just showed it to me and not given it any context - wheres and whens - I probably wouldn’t have guessed I shot this less than a month ago. But I did, at D2R2 in Western Mass. Channeling Stephen Shore and William Christenberry in my small way. Had a client cancel a shoot yesterday….and the shoot was supposed to be today. Grrrr. It’s a long-time client so I know we’ll get around to shooting again soon but I was really looking forward to this one and we had some great locations and models lined up. So it goes. First CX race of the year on Sunday down at SuckerBrook. I’ll post a shot of my new ride tomorrow.

So this is the cool trip. A week following the Vuelta a España. Shot this the first night in Ciudad Real, south of Madrid. For some reason Italian mechanics always work shirtless, not sure what’s up with that. I haven’t posted more shots for two reasons: I’m shooting film and even if I weren’t the internet connections over here have left much to be desired. But mostly it’s the film thing. Shot nearly 30 rolls of 120 over 6 days with the rest day being the most prolific. I shot the Vuelta in 2002, the first cycling event I’d ever shot, and the biggest improvement in the experience between then and now is the GPS. I got so lost every day back in ‘02 and hardly got lost at all this time even after driving almost 1900km(!) It’s been a good project, due mostly to good planning, some good luck, and cooperation. As I was driving down to Barcelona today I realized I’ve spent almost a month in Europe this year between two trips to Spain and then one to Belgium. Yikes. I fly home tomorrow morning.