Thin Air

behind

a perspective from where i am right now.... behind. merry christmas everyone.

free to a good home

only you can make a difference in providing a home for small wayward triathletes. jg thanks for enduring my attempts to figure out my new camera on sunday. you are the best.

photo sesh

i didn't take many photos while in indo but this one is cool. spent a fair amount of time in the area of the archepeligo (the boats name for the 11 day livaboard portion of the trip in the banda sea). this is in the bottom of the boat where all of the photographers could set up their equiptment and work with their photos. but this captures the vibe pretty well and i love you dudes. thanks g for all of the pointers on the post production of photos and the lenses. i am so stoked to get some good shots. as you can see several bintangs were harmed during this session.

Ambon Harbor, Indonesia

loading up with ice for a tuna fishing excursion

artisan feats of strength

An artisan (from Italian: artigiano) is a skilled manual worker who crafts items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewelry, household items, and tools

i found a glass grinding wheel that was rusted and beautiful and decided that i wanted to use it in my home as a piece of found art. one problem it weighs like 250lbs. so i put it in my truck and take it home and then i have to get it in the house. so i channel STEFAN SOLVI PETURSSON - ICELAND from worlds strongest man and stagger it into my house only dropping in twice in the dirt on the way up the path. talked to a friend who suggested i use penatrol to bring out all of the subtleties... the dirt underneath so to speak. i did and it looked awesome. then came trying to hang this thing on a wall. which is fucking ridiculous. even with my whole hearted nature and blind ambition. what would be more ridiculous is to attempt to do this by oneself but i digress. so my hero at work bob weaver suggests (who is my kindred spirit and fellow artisan is not in the least dissuaded by the fact this is a fucking retarded idea....) that he has the perfect thing for me... a two inch wide 12 inch long railroad spike with an ornate head on it. i would as where someone might get such a thing but with bob some things are better left unknown. i gladly accepted and one morning a few months ago i woke up and decided it was go time. i began drilling into the side of my enormous fire place with a huge masonry bit with vigor. sweating and knocking out rock carefully after 45 minutes i was able to seat the spike firmly in the wall. i then began to fill this perfectly tight orifice (disgusting) with liquid nails. i then pressed in the spike and coated it with penetrol one more time for good measure. i stood back and admired my work... i cracked a beer a stood gleaming with pride at moving this project forward. about 45 minutes later i had a sickening realization. the hole in the disc was not as wide as the widest portion of the spike... and the spike was in the wall. that is when the panic attack started. i had to get the spike out and out now before my project was simply a spike in my wall. now i don't know how familiar you are with the properties of liquid nails but that shit is strong. i was a carpenter full time for a year and that shit can hold up entire buildings. so again it was go time and i swung at that spike that i had just put in the wall with vigor for 45 minutes with a sledge hammer to get it out. sweating and gasping for air at least it was out. now i had to get it back in with it already through the hole of the 250lb disc by myself. if you thought the notion of the project itself is fucking retarded the notion of me doing it myself is absurd and potentially dangerous if not life threatening. but i was the only one there and that liquid nails was going to dry. i put a huge eye bolt into the ceiling and used some climbing rope that i inadvertently stole from nimby and tied it to the disc and began to hoist. one problem..... hoisting worthless as the disc weighs substantially more than me. now this project has officially gone awry when i am laying on the floor hoisting with the disc hanging only slightly above me when my savior arrives. big dave comes strolling in the door with a twelve pack of bud and confirms "alright now i know you have completely lost your mind up here... what the fuck are you doing?" hanging this artisan project give me a hand! so after wrestling with this beast together we managed to get the spike back into the hole with the wheel hung and braced appropriately until it got all set up. a few weeks ago when wildcat came over he told me i should take the brace down so tentatively i did and it seems to be holding up fine. all i can say is mission complete. and the artisan spirit lives on flagstaff mountain. thanks big guy for not letting me die and here is a pic.

Run Island, Banda Sea, Indonesia

yep that is me. photo cred goes to G and the grotto on run will be forever remembered.

http://www.ternyata.org/journalism/features/nutmeg.html

this permit game (revisited)

good to send the boys down to pesca maya with a bang and i am glad you boys had to get up at 6am to catch that flight after that night. bummed i am missing out but i can't wait to hear all about it and the new sage Xi 3 and tibor reel the big guy got are amazing. so in honor of them going without me even though i wanted to go so bad... this work thing is a drag. i won't complain to much though as i will be in key west next week and i am sure i will have a great time with the family and with all of the captains. but i digress... so in honor of them going and me about to go and the iconic nature of a certain captain peter heydon i am about to do something unprecidented. having been invited to the merkin in march i decided to get to the bench and churn out a incredibly secret fly for this years tournament. now peter and i and the rest of us have spent countless hours over many beers debating the merits and inclusions of a great permit fly. but i think this time i nailed it and for once i am going to release a photo of this secret fly nearly two and a half months before the tournament. this fly will forever be known as the peter heydon special enforcer. i even tied a few extra for you big guy!

make a new pot of coffee or a tiger will eat you

trying to prove i love all ya all via joe pug

http://www.joepugmusic.com/

carpenters gotta stick together.

hell no i ain't happy (revisited)

for my loving mother. so i know things can be cryptic here and that is by design. while i love all ya all here this is for me and it is what it is. but sometimes the cryptic nature can lead to misinterpretation. references are obscure at times so i will clarify a bit here after my mother wrote me via email that she read that "i was not happy" on my weblog. so bear with me please. i am happy. but i tend to live an album at times in my life. i have been in decoration day land by DBT for awhile. it hits me right there and one of the cuts from decoration day is patterson hood's "hell no i ain't happy". so you need to look no further than track 3 to get where i am at. the cool thing is that jason isabell and patterson hood detail some of the thoughts around this album and its creation on the website below:

http://www.drivebytruckers.com/writeup_dd.html

one of the things that makes this really be there for me is the top piece of the write up of decoration day on the website and the places in life that the band was in that resulted in this art. it is authentic and speaks to the human condition. and like all great music it is perfect emotive and i love it and i need it.

white angels

i think this was in the airport in taipei... i like when hello kitty keeps time for me in far off places.

there are many like it but this one is mine

 

New Telemark Norm



Checked out the NTN stuff yesterday at Neptune Mountaineering and if anyone has the dish on this new setup please share your thoughts.

on catching up... i have a buch of photos from the summer that i was either to lazy to post or otherwise uninspired. but feeling inspired lately i will try to make amends. this photo is from a fateful visit from three solid individuals to what is the life of LL and CR. thanks for the trail crew support and the beer. T thanks for the nod on the 333 skis (http://www.333skis.com/). JD nice photo and you can pee outside all you want.

Extraction

wanted to post this a while ago blurry but classic Download Extraction

Indonesia Pics

http://www.kdbprofessional.com/BandaSea_web/

Insert link in browser for some pics from my recent trip to indo and the banda sea. It was nothing short of a revolution in my life and anyone who wants to have a pint and here all about it hit me up. A few high points. I free dove with a couple hundered pilot whales. Climbed an active volcano on Banda Naria. Became an honarary Bandanese citizen sanctioned by the Des Alwi the King of Banda region. Encountered first hand Pshchodelic Frog fish(that just happened to be pregnant and you could see the baby frog fish faces in the eggs) in Ambon harbor that was only discovered in 2008. Check it out here.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090226-psychedelic-fish-picture-ap.html

Amazing and humbling and I couldn't make this stuff up. More pics to come. Photo cred goes to Dan Baldwin. Thanks wildcat.

saying goodbye

i said goodbye today to my pickup truck. she has been a good friend of mine since early 01. she never complained once for all of the times she was rode hard and put up wet. being my truck is not an easy gig and i literally limped her in to the garage. for those of you who didn't know her she was a beauty in her day. Bright red and shiny Dodge long box (short boxs are queer) and a cummings diesel engine that made 505 lb-ft of torque. when you parked her on the mountain she looked like all of america sitting right there in one spot. she got me home. she pulled my sleds. she hauled my firewood and was the foundation of the flagstaff timber company fleet for awhile. she made a few cross country adventures and her favorite place in the world was fort smith, montana. she was way better to me than any other girl ever has been so today i just wanted to say goodbye and thanks for the ride.

hell no i ain't happy

so i haven't been here much in awhile but i plan to try to change that. at this time of year when we give thanks i feel i have so much to be thankful for. but those to words.... try and change. i will focus on each of them. the second has been really hard for me. normally this one is easy but in certain instances not so much. things are in the works. the townsite revisited on the pages of books and in reality. i can't wait to check it out. met a new bike messanger friend today and caught up with a not so new bike messanger friend. "where you been?" honestly nan i wish i could tell you but i am not really sure. physically...hawaii, canada, indonesia, new mexico. mentally. not real sure. i am not good with the status quo. i am not good with good enough. i want it all, and at the same time there is absoultely no one "thing" that i want or even feel i need. vague thought does not inspire specific behavior. i feel the need to fill this space and find out what the next 10 years of my life might hold. live intentionally. so here's to projects undertaken that are scary and i know nothing about. here's to covert meetings in bali that result in a cohesive plans for building the dream (we hope). here's to realizing that maybe you have figured a few things out. and here's to all ya all. stay safe out there.

ps. dk as always...thanks for just being there

Standing on the edge of two days of travel to indo and the most beautiful waves in the world. Boarding for lax with a proper amount of horse tranquilizers to get me through. See you in a month or so.

Just got back from a quick last minute trip to Canada to help pull docks and close down for the season. Thanks to E. Howes for the pick up and heading up on the res to pick up my two sticks made by one of the last Onondaga to still make them by hand. Alf E. Jacques. Beautiful. Check out the video below.

http://www.ustv.us/programs/canterbury_workshop/canterbury6.htm