Less money less problems

I have spent one and one half hours on the phone today dealing with health insurance and trying to fix my downed email account. Maybe I should sell everything and go live in the woods.

enohPi

I just found my new favorite in-city ride

23ish miles. Hella steep uphill section, wicked pissah downhill section. Can't wait to go again tomorrow. You must click the map. MUST>>>

Tears- Frequency Snowboard Journal

Frequency Snowboard Journal is now out on stands. I've got a 6 to 8 page spread in it, depending on whether you consider text/my signature a spread or not. Regardless, pretty jazzed for snowboard season and what the future holds. Hustle hustle hustle.

I went for a day hike on the coast.

And it was the most amazing thing ever. Surfers, mossy forests, mud, soft pine needles, and miles of forest trails. I'm coming back to camp here next next weekend.

Mt. Hood

Taken on a bike ride just now. I with my iphone were a dSLR instead of... just an iphone. Oh well.

Something new, something old, something borrowed and something rifle

Here's a keeper from the bike ride to Sauvie Island I told you about. You don't remember me telling you about it? Do you even listen to me when I'm talking?

Sarah- Sauvie Island, OR

Long lost digi point and shoot- Chadron, NE

I have no photos...

... so the best thing I can give is half-assed inspiration. The inspiration isn't half-assed, my attempts are. Check out this guy Nich Hance. I have no idea who he is, and it doesn't seem like he's got a website. But he takes some beautiful, vivid, lo-fi images of people and amazing Alaskan-and-beyond landscapes. Check him out.

I've been assisting a bit and getting on my feet here, hence the lack of blog posts. I went on a killer bike ride today up to Sauvie island, and took the world's crappiest digital point and shoot camera with me. I'll put em' up tomorrow, after I make a killer omlette with goat cheese, shallots, spinach, and wild mushrooms, which I've been looking forward to all week.

Fashion meets function meets capitalism meets trend meets accessability meets product meets moving up meets Sweden meets impact meets you.

Ikea shopping carts- Portland, OR. Taken with iphone.

Multnomah Falls

A couple shots from Multnomah Falls, OR. About 45 minutes East of Portland, where I am right now. With a new room, a new bed, a new dresser, and the same desk. We should do a print trade as well, so I have something to hang on my wall.

And for the love of God, try to convince unregistered voters to vote while there's still time, undecided voters to educate themselves on each candidates stance on the the issues at hand (so people aren't voting on a 'gut' instinct formed by spin), and also to go get your Jewish grandparents in Florida to go out and vote Obama... or else, hopefully they stay healthy for one more year...

Deep Trees- Multnomah Falls, OR

Two Girls- Multnomah Falls, OR

Look down

Look out

A Story

I wanted to share an experience I had last night from the place I stayed, Mountain Home, Idaho. It is, through-and-through, an American town. A couple grocery stores, a high school, a bunch of gas stations, some RV parks (NOT a disparaging reference), and a handful 'necessity stores'- bridal, auto, insurance, bar, etc. Mostly along the main strip of road running through town. Just off of it are the typical suburban houses, and the further out you get, the land opens up exponentially.

As the sun started to set, I took a 4-5 mile ride in flip-flops and mesh shorts out of town. Nowhere in particular. The air was really still, dense clouds lit up like fluffy white orbs from the low-lying sun, the sky was deep blue, the air was dry and smelled like the mountains, everything was golden.

I rode past the bridal store as it closed, and next to it a group of drifting, bored high school girls flatly shouted "I like your bike!" with hoping to illicit some sort of response from me. I went over the railroad tracks, away from downtown, onto the immediate suburbs of Mountain Home. In this place, the homes were built in different shapes from different time periods and are painted in different colors. A little brother and sister ran in giddy circles around a whirring sprinkler; their mom, who wore a pink t-shirt with a beaded decoration on the front, her brown hair put into a hasty ponytail, sat watching on the front steps. She looked both content and weary. I rode by, wondering how much houses were worth around here.

The road grew narrower as I rode further from town, my bike lane/shoulder disappeared, and the asphalt got rough. I was now past the original neighborhoods that were built 50, 60 years ago, and had hit the newer subdivisions to accommodate Mountain Home's more recent inhabitants. I passed street after street of ubiquitous grey houses, and decide to loop into one. In the driveways, a beat up Chevy Nova here, a Corvette there. A 30-something woman walked her pitbull-like dog, smoking a cigarette. On the front lawn of another grey home, a latino family hurriedly loaded up their Chrysler minivan for what looks like soccer practice. Even though the homes look ubiquitous, the people who live in this neighborhood are real, different, of all walks of life.

Finally, I ride even further out of town and the yellow line disappears. Aside from a seemingly abandoned housing division that might have gone broke (strewn pieces of lumber lay around half-framed houses), homes along the road become irregular blips in a sea of dry yellow grass. Occasionally, there is a small ranch, or a weathered, trailer-like home. Through the windows, I can see old lamps, stuffed animals, a grandmother. Next to these properties, infinite lengths of chicken wire fence hold spotted cows or goats, as they roam expansive and muddy lots of land. It's all beautiful.

I ride back, past the housing development that ran out of money, past the subdivision, past the older homes, past all these people that live in this town. My life is drastically different from many of these people, but I still feel an intense kinship with all of them. We all live in the same land. We all have heartbeats, needs, feelings, beliefs. We all should be able to carry a conversation with one another, regardless of where we come from, and have a semblance of some respect for how we differ and how we are alike. When George W. Bush addresses "my fellow Americans", he means all of us: far leaning liberals in cosmopolitan cities like myself as well as those living out on the fringe of Mountain Home, Idaho.

In all of your decisions and thoughts, political and otherwise, think of yourself and those thousands of miles from you. Understand the whole American picture, the spectrum of how we differ and why. Disrespect and obliteration of what we fear seem to be our country's new currency, and if it continues, we'll all go down. To step away from this mindset will make our country more rational, more efficient, more unified.

Don't change your beliefs. Simply look outside yourself and understand we're all in this together. That's truly democratic.