Thu - September 18, 2008

bringing sexy back

Tony and Sam stopped by after riding the dragon's tail. Tony got both Sam and I started on the ducati monster obsession and he puts as much work into perfecting his monster as any artist does a painting. What's really cool about monsters is that almost every one is personalized. Everything is customizable and many many hours are spent by ducati owners tweaking their bikes, somewhat to the dismay of their wives. I once explained to Reid that if I got onto anyone else's monster blindfolded I'd know right away it wasn't mine. My bike fits me like it was made for me, because I made it that way. Unlike Sam and Tony, that's where I stopped. Tony's bike is the first one, Sam's after that and my bike sits relatively dowdy, longing for a single sided swing arm, rearsets and a new exhaust like it's prettier cousins up above.

For you shooters, if you're going to shoot a vehicle or anything shiny that will produce specular reflections, you need to use a light source, bigger than the vehicle itself to get this look. In our case, it's a $14 white bed sheet on sale from target. We still had the softbox showing through though so I'm going to try ripstop nylon next.

Sorry I haven't been posting much, I've been discovering what the 23 hour work day is all about. But hey, is it really work? Just so you know, I am working on THE single of next year. Seriously. It's amazing. I didn't write it, so I can say that. Newsboys are it in 09.

Posted at 10:57 PM    

Mon - July 23, 2007

Sun - July 15, 2007

Riding the Trace

I've discovered something that makes up for a 3 month long Nashville allergy season: Natchez Trace. I love Illinois, I miss Illinois, I can't wait to go back. But Illinois is the land of straight roads and right angles. When they planned the IL roadway system, apparently they used an etch-a-sketch. Natchez trace however is miles and miles of curves that go all the way down to the coast. Motorcyclists live for curves like these, I feel like a snowboarder living next to Vail. It's a pretty strict 50mph limit, but drawing the perfect line on those sweeping curves becomes hypnotic and relaxing. I've been going every other day. Motorcycling, snowboarding and rock climbing are all activities that put you in a "flow" state where you spend all of your mental energy on the task at hand, freeing your brain from worry. It's a reset, a clean install. A good ride gets me in a mellow happy state, no matter what I was stressed about before. It's like having a drink after you get home from work except that I'm allergic to alcohol so really I'm just guessing what that feels like. There's almost no traffic on the Trace and every time I ride it, I felt like a wealthy man riding on miles and miles of my own private track.

I'll stay in Nashville till snowboarding season than I'll see if I can go live with my in-laws who as a matter of fact, live on a ski hill. It doesn't get much better than this does it?

Next up, the tail of the dragon at deals gap... 318 curves in 11 miles. Who's coming?

UPDATE: For you shooters who are asking, this is an existing light photo with manual HDR and lots of photoshop. It's very difficult to shoot into the setting sun and get any foreground exposure at all. It might be possible with a graduated filter, but I end up compositing exposures in photoshop. This one was tricky.

Posted at 11:26 PM    

Fri - June 29, 2007

Once more, this time with feeling.

OK I couldn't resist. I've only had the bike out for a couple runs, but I've really enjoyed it. The duc has a 750 V-twin engine that throbs and pulses like a big cat. Unlike the Japanese fours, it growls instead of whines. It feels like I'm piloting something that has world war II fighter plane in its DNA. It has a soul. It's not the fanciest bike in the world, but they haven't changed the design of the monster in 10 years because they haven't had to. It's like the jeep that way: classic. timeless.

Speaking of which, the jeep went home with Tony, back to IL. I realized I wasn't driving the jeep anymore, mostly due to the nashville heat/allergy combo which had the jeep in the garage most of the year. I do still love jeeps and might go back to one someday, but will make sure to get the 6 cyl engine next time. I look forward to seeing how he modifies the jeep to suit his wife and I'm sure he'll do as good a job with it as he did with the ducati he brought me in exchange. As I drove the jeep to meet him, I passed a blue jeep and realized that I'd just made my last jeep wave. It made me a little sad, although the courtesy of the jeep wave has been dwindling away slowly as newer jeep owners don't seem to know or care.

My other motorcycle, the CBR600f4i is going up for sale. In my mind I'm going to get out to a track and learn to drag my knees in the turns, but in my reality I just wasn't comfortable with how twitchyfast the bike was, something I didn't even know till I got onto the ducati and it felt comfortable and made me enjoy riding again. The CBR felt like riding an angry yellow hornet, with all the rush of a roller coaster, hanging on for dear life and hoping that it all turned out ok. Good adrenaline rush, but the out of control feeling isn't something that enhances a motorcycle ride at this point in my life where I'm all too aware of the fragile nature of the human body. It's a fantastic bike, all honda reliability and razor control, but I think it's for someone with more time and adrenaline to devote to the pursuit of speed. I'll miss that honda manufacturing perfection as I adapt to the quirky handbuilt nature of italian bikes, but the ducati fits me and brings me back to when I first learned to ride and we all had standard bikes that were easy to ride and fast enough to be fun and we were going to live forever.


(for you photogs out there, same setup as always, colors manipulated in iphoto)

Posted at 03:19 AM    

Sat - May 27, 2006

Melissa's new car

Melissa has a lovely new (well new for her) VW convertible bug from carmax. She is missing the little flowerholder vase that sits in the dash so if you happen to go by a convertible bug that's open and has one, just grab it and bring it to her at a show. (I'm kidding, please don't, but if you know where to buy them...) Anyways, this means, that the faithful old jeep cherokee can go home to her parents farm in Indiana and be turned out to pasture with the other old cars and live out the rest of its natural life ferrying Melissa's mom around to get groceries.

UPDATE: Steven has found and is sending her the vase. Gracias!

Posted at 11:27 AM    

Wed - February 15, 2006

I guess this is growing up

This is my first grown up car. The 4 cylinder wrangler wasn't cutting it for trips to nashville and back, so I broke down and got this after Melissa's cherokee broke down on me in sub zero temperatures and the made avail boys had to come rescue me. It's an infiniti fx35 and here's a shot of it sitting in my driveway, 280HP, AWD and 20 inch rims baby! I still kept the jeep though, not giving that up yet....or the motorcycle....or the midlife crisis.

Posted at 02:42 AM    

Sat - December 10, 2005

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Well, it's been an on again, off again love affair with my finicky jeep, but when Chicagoland gets dumped with 8 inches of fresh snow and I get swamped in an unplowed road cause my GPS get's confused, it's worth every penny. Today, I love my jeep. 4 wheel drive forever!

Posted at 12:03 PM    

Mon - November 28, 2005

Sleeping beauty

Well it was briefly warm enough today for one last spin before she gets garaged for winter. I pulled out as the first snowflakes were floating silently down and beading on my helmet. I've been trying to master the clutchless wheelie unsuccessfully all summer and as I got out onto the main road, just for the fun of it I goosed the throttle, rocked it back and punched it again like I've been trying for months and easy as pie the front end lifted right up and bumped gently back down a long heart beat later. One happy pull of the throttle and I was doing 70 in a 40 zone and already looking forward to spring when I can wake sleeping beauty with a kiss and a promise of long summers to ride.

Jeep Update: Having had the jeep broken into once already, I haven't pimped out the sound system, but when my driver's side 4x6 speaker blew, I knew it was time for an upgrade. (It should have tipped me off that the thieves didn't even consider taking my stereo). Not wanting to add components that could be taken by unzipping the soft top, I contented myself with upgrading the front speakers to bigger 5.25 infinity's by using an adaptor plate from 33 engineering. After cutting away the original support bracket, the 33 adapter dropped right in, albeit without as much depth as I'd like on the driver side. Now I've actually got some mid bass going and I might just have to replace the thief broken center console with a metal one that holds a sub woofer. We swap the stereo out with one that takes a line input for my ipod and I'll be all prepped for next summer with the top down and the tunes bumpin. In the jeep, since it's sort of a public address system I try to avoid the tired cliches for loud music and find that I can bump James Brown's: I Feel Good, Kool and the Gang's Jungle Boogie or Earth Wind and Fire's: Shining Star to produce smiles in most people.

Posted at 05:34 PM    

Thu - October 13, 2005

Fall colors

Well it's turning fall here and the leaves are starting to turn, which always makes me wonder where the year went...it made me want to start taking pictures since last year, the leaves all turned, then two days later, this huge windstorm came through and took all the leaves off and my planned fall pictures were completely pointless since the trees were all skinny, awkward and naked the way dogs look when they're wet. I've got this shot in my head involving my motorcycle and some yellow leaves, but I didn't quite get it, I'll keep trying though. This shot is 28mm but with me holding a 0.3x wide angle adapter for video cameras in front of it, giving me an effective wide angle of around 10mm. A $100 way to get cheap wide angle on your DLSR. It does vignette at the edges and blur but I kind of like it.

I took the bike for a little spin around the hood when I was moving it, and it felt really good. Normally when I ride, I have boots, armored pants, gloves, jacket and helmet. Having been down once already, I'm a big fan of armored gear, but sometimes I feel like Darth Vader taking a moon walk. As I spun the bike around, to put it back in the garage, I took it up and down the street without any of the gear (you can do that in Illinois legally) and all of a sudden I was reminded of how it was in college when we were young and invincible and we rode motorcycles for the sheer love of it and the wind was in your hair and you flew above it all riding on a chariot of the gods.

ah. when life was simple. the best feeling in the world.

postscript: I think the clutch cable on my bike is sticking cause every now and then when I let the clutch out in first, it doesn't seem to engage until later than I expect, which is very unnerving. Anyone know how to lube a clutch cable? I have fortunately fixed my jeep problem. A month ago it developed a clunking noise that happened during deceleration or on a grade. I crawled under the jeep to see if I could figure out what had come loose, I thought maybe one of the sway bar links had snapped, but I couldn't find anything wrong. I was getting ready to take it in, but yesterday morning, in the shower, (I do some of my best thinking in the shower) I suddenly knew what was wrong as well as where my groceries went: 2 missing cans of soup were rolling around under the front seat.

I'm quite the mechanic huh?

Posted at 02:58 PM    

Mon - September 19, 2005

mini-size me.

My buddy Paul who used to be in CoR with me was passing through town and showed up in his new ride. I've always liked the mini, but this is the first time I've gotten to see the new ones up close. He got it with all the options and it looks really good. Right now it's pushing around 170hp on a GVW of about 2400 pounds so it's relatively zippy, though he wants to jack it up to around 220hp. He let me drive it around and it sticks really nicely to the road. I put it through some harder turns and it never feels like the tires are going to break. Very fun to drive. Overall, I really liked it, the fit and finish feel appropriate for a car that comes from the BMW factories and the unconventional dash while very modern manages to retain it's restrained british heritage. It has the feel of a vintage object from the future that I tend to love. I know Tricia wants one of these so bad she can taste it and I might just be catching the bug. This car is an example of polarization, you either love it or hate it. When they were designing the dodge ram, they showed it to focus groups and it tested abysmally; 8 out of 10 people hated it. 2 people said they'd buy it right now. Turns out that dodge's truck market was under 16% so they went ahead with it anyways and now the ram is a best seller for them. I'd rather create something that 8 people hate and 2 people love than something that everyone can live with, cause usually when you take out all the things that offend people, you're left with this bland mess that no one loves. So whatever you do, do it boldly and don't worry about offending people, cause chances are, you're creating good art.

Incidentally, from a marketing perspective, this is what Seth Godin would call a "purple cow" product, something so unique and cool that it markets itself. Obviously, I'm so amused by it that I'm posting about it and it's being marketed "virally". In the old days, before there was viral, we called that "word of mouth". You could sum up the "Purple Cow" book in one sentence: "it's the product stupid". And it's why I've always believed in getting the album right in the first place, something we haven't always done. Mini Cooper people, if you're reading this, I like this car, send me one. We'll take it on tour and display it. Don't make me go to my friends at scion....

Hello to our viewers from barceloa spain, it's one country I haven't been to yet and hope to visit some day. Very fun to have readers from around the world.

Posted at 04:51 PM    

Wed - September 7, 2005

What is going on here?

Well.. this passed me in nashville the other day and I don't even know what to say about it. Rock on, wooden saddlebag man!

Posted at 06:16 PM    

Thu - September 1, 2005

Max blog version 1.6

As promised, I am revising the blog to make more sense and be more entertaining. Version 1.6 adds categories to the blog. This will help make some sense of my chaotic life and multiple varied interests. Fortunately, I can only sustain so many interests at a time so we can leave out the "rock climbing", "filmmaking" and "graphic design" categories for now. To break in the vehicle category, I resurrect this picture of my motorcycle, which would be the 2nd incarnation of my uncle's MG. My uncle had a vintage MG that I always associated with him and when he offered it to me, sadly I had to turn it down because I didn't have enough garage space to keep it in it's pristine condition. So he sold the MG and gave me the money, which I turned into a lovely CBR600 F3. As our longtime readers know, I crashed that F3 when riding with some other guys because I was trying to keep up and riding above my skill level. (the things we do for pride...) Anyways, that F3 got swapped for this baby, it's a CBR 600 F4i and it's a wonderful bike that I don't ride nearly enough. I shot this picture on an overcast day, which turned the sky into a giant soft box. When shooting pictures outdoors, don't be afraid of overcast days, they're really very nice for photography, instead, fear the sun. High noon outside is generally bad for taking pictures, so either pose your subjects in the shade or wait till the sun goes down some. When I was in college, my dream bike that I lusted after for hours on end was a CBR Hurricane and this bike is the modern incarnation of that.

I see we've had quite a few visitors from outside the states and whoever's in capetown south africa, you win the prize for being the farthest away this week. woot! UPDATE: capetown you may have been trumped by New Zealand. Not sure which is technically farther.

Good book I'm reading right now: Coach Yourself by Anthony Grant and Jane Greene.

And Brian Gocher gets the prize for suggesting that the whole band should be GIANT FIGHTING ROBOTS that merge together into one MEGA GIANT FIGHTING ROBOT!

Posted at 03:59 PM    

Mon - August 9, 2004

Weekend update with max

adapter located, blog on!

So I know it's another jeep picture, but I couldn't resist, the light was really nice and I've been loving the new ride so... there's more to this jeep thing than I thought, it's kind of like motorcycle culture, other jeep owners tend to wave at you. Everything I have is a badge item, I wonder if it's because I love subcultures or if I'm just really insecure. A badge item is something that identifies you as part of a subculture..ie my Apple Powerbook, I-pod, snowboard, motorcycle and Jeep. Jeep capitalizes on this with their "it's a jeep thing, you wouldn't understand" slogan. Probably the ultimate badge item is a Harley Davidson, although it's not my first choice in a bike. I do love them, but I also love going fast too much. Than again, these days, I'm not so sure I love going fast that much after all...

I was out riding with the guys on sunday, the guys being Tony and Sam. Some of you will remember that those 2 guys were with me when I flipped my last motorcycle 2 seasons ago. Since than I've been quite a bit more cautious when riding. I didn't realize how much more cautious I'd gotten till I tried to ride with these guys again. I kept finding myself getting behind and trying to catch up. Now I've analyzed that turn I highsided off of about a million times and pretty much narrowed it down to focusing too much on slowing down into the curve rather than leaning into it. However when I was out with these guys again, another factor came into play that I'd forgotten: peer pressure.

Not that these guys pressured me at all to go faster and halfway through Sunday's ride when I volunteered to go home rather than slow down everyone, they encouraged me to ride at my own pace. It was pressure that I put on myself. In my mind everytime I got behind I imagined them getting impatient and started having flashbacks to high school sports. So rather than have them think I was dumb, I started to ride beyond my limits. You can only do that for so long before something happens, which isn't that big a deal when you're skateboarding, but on a motorcycle it can be fatal... luckily I walked away from the crash with nothing more than sore wrists and a deep gratitude for my helmet and armored jacket. But it could have been a lot worse. So here's the thing; I was risking my life for peer pressure. How stupid is that? It's kind of silly the things we do because we want people to like us. Anyways, the ride ended without incident except for I'm sore today from riding for so long yesterday. Almost as sore as I was after the crash. I've also vowed not to risk my life for perceptual peer pressure. It's embarrassing to be the last, but more embarrassing to crash.

Anyways. we stopped by this house where tony knows these guys who are building a quad course in their 12 acre backyard.. sheesh.. what happened to the days where we just built halfpipes? Here's some pics I grabbed with my treo.

Posted at 08:52 PM    

Sat - August 7, 2004

Another new family member

It has been really crazy around here lately, some of our friends have been having a rough time of it. The girls have done some great vocals and the writing has been productive. Amidst all the chaos, we have a new family member, here she is:




I know 2 pictures are overkill, but hey, it's my blog. It's a 97 TJ wrangler and the only mod I've managed so far is the fire extinguisher. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with helpful info. Now the real work begins... what to do? Maybe bring the wheels out a couple inches for stability, better sound system, bikini top, fog lights, skid plates, aftermarket bumpers and winch? Realistically, I won't get to any of that this year. Well.. maybe just the wheel spacers and bikini top... Funnily enough after it arrived, the girls grabbed the keys and took it out before I even did. I'm not entirely sure it's going to be here much this summer as I think Melissa and Tricia have claimed it. The del sol has gone to live with Matt's mom where it will be loved and cherished forever. Somedays I feel really blessed. The guy who had it before me took really amazing care of it and is an industrial designer in downtown chicago.

Posted at 02:31 AM