Celebrate the Silence

This past weekend, my wife and I got away for a respite. We spent Saturday and part of Sunday at a retreat led by a friend and held at the Villa Maria Retreat and Conference center outside of Redwing, MN. It was timely, really fun and needed.

While at the Villa I was overwhelmed with the silence. I heard no air planes. No kids. No phones. I had no email. Only an occassional train would sound in the distance. Really, the only sound I heard at the retreat was the sound of the old radiator and heating system.

Truthfully, I struggled a bit with the silence. Silence is so vast. It's endless. As I sat there in the silence, nothing distracted me nor redirected my thoughts. The only thoughts going through my head were the ones generated by my own brain. I wrote in my journal that while the silence gave me peace, it also gave me anxiety. My days are not often filled with silence or the opportunity to fully think freely.

In dealing with this overwhelming silence of the villa, I went through my normal processing cycle of thinking about what I was going to do tomorrow when I got home followed by what I had to do next week? My upcoming trip to Montana for ACA? Frostbike? My future? I could go on and on. But you know what, I ran out of things to plan fairly quickly.

One of the things we discussed at the reatreat was celebration. I've been struggling thinking about some changes that I have started to implement in my life. You've seen one of these changes here on the blog in that I am blogging less so I have more mental capacity to think and do other things. What you may not know about is that blogging less is only one of my changes I've implemented for myself. These changes are both personal and professional. I have end goals in mind. But, they are different than in the past and I've had anxiety around them.

That is when one of the messages of the retreat hit me. I need to make these changes and celebrate the change. I need not worry about what others think of my changes. I just need to take care of myself, move forward and celebrate the journey I've been on. I got to sit there and relish in the vastness of the silence and focus on what I have accomplished over the past few years and also where I am headed. I found great peace and clarity in my choices.

And if the message wasn't clear enough, I slept great Sunday night and woke up to fresh snow on the ground. I grabbed my bike and hit the road and trail to work. I rode into work alone in a dark snowy silence. The only sounds were that of the occassional stick or branch breaking below the snow as my fat tire(s) rolled over it. By the end of my day, I got nearly 5 1/2 hours of fat tired saddle time. I took only 6 pictures, one of them below. The rest of the time I just rode and took in the beautiful MN River Valley.

Celebrate the silence.

Ps. I am taking a blog holiday. I'll be back with a post and images Monday.

Denali - In full view

I sat down to write about this past weekend where my wife and I attended a retreat out near Red Wing Minnesota. I wanted to write about the vastness of the silence of the villa as well as the peace and joy I experienced while away. However, when I sat down to write I saw the new film & slide scanner sitting next to my computer and I jumped into digging through old boxes of film and slides. That's how my simple mind works and wonders.

I immediately went back to my old Alaska to Utah bike tour of the 90's. I shot color slides and black & white film. I have done little with these precious images and memories. In fact, I bet I've only printed about 1/10th of the images I captured. Well....the time has come to delve into the past and start rehashing those memories.

It will take me a while to really get this all figured out, but I am going to spend some time scanning images and see if I can put together some stories worth telling. Until then, here is my first lo res scan. Shot on T-Max with my old Pentax 35mm film camera.  I know I need to learn how to clean the negatives and do some touch up afterward but I thought I'd share my starting point. It also adds a bit of a vintage feel to the image. Hope you enjoy.

Denali - In full view

I call this image In full view. Denali had eluded us for some time and on this day, we got our first perfect glimpse of the full mountain. I find the hardest thing is to gauge the size of something like Denali. Imagine that snow line being roughly 5-8,000 ft. Simply incredible.

So...Lot's more to come as I process and scan images. I can't wait.

Photo Friday - Snow Dreams

A Dusting - Portra 400 - scanned - converted and toned in Lightroom

I can't believe it is January 19th and we've got essentially ZERO snow. The pic above was taken on an early morning of a few flurries. Yep, I'm dreaming and scheming about riding fatbikes in the white stuff. Soon...I hope.

Hope your week has gone well. Mine has been spectacular. Very little excercise and activity but spectacular none the less.

Have a great Friday and weekend.

Ride your bike! Take some pictures!

My Salsa Mukluk 2 build

Ok...I've been riding this bike for a while and I have been promising the build report. Here it is. Before I get started I want to let folks know that I work for Salsa Cycles. As such, this is just my build and a few thoughts. It is not a review of the bike. Just how I built it for me. Hope you like it. Got questions? Ask in comments or send me a submission from the "about me" page.

Most of the parts come from my Mukluk Ti bike that I have been riding for almost 16 months. Why did I take the Ti bike apart? Well....I've got plans for the ti bike and it is almost complete. The Mukluk 2 is my everyday fatbike that I intend to use for everything, all surfaces and all types of activities.

Frame - Salsa Mukluk 2 size large

Fork - White Bros Snowpack (but this will change to Salsa Enabler for bottle and rack mounts)

Headset - Cane Creek 40

Rear Derailleur - XTR

Front Derailleur - SLX direct mount

Crank/BB - Surly Mr. Whirly with prototype Surly rings - Cant remember sizes

BB cups - Hope Stainless

Cassette - XT 11-34 9 speed

Chain - SRAM

Brake - Avid BB7

Brake Lever - XTR right lever

Shifter - Paul Thumbie mount with Dura Ace 9 speed shifter

Cables - Jagwire Ripcord compressionless housing

Bar - Salsa Bend 2 bar flipped upside down

Stem - Old Salsa scandium S.U.L

Grips - Prototype

Seatpost - Thudbuster ST

Saddle - Fizik Aliante Gama MTB

Hubs - Salsa 170mm Rear with Surly 135 rear disc hub as front

Rims - Surly Rolling Daryls

Rimstrips - Surly Red

Tubes - Surly

Tires - Surly BFL front/Nate rear for all out traction or 45Nrth Husker Du's for speed and XC

Pedals - Time pedals if above 20 degrees. Flat pedals if below 20 degrees.

Other - Framebag - Salsa by Revelate Mukluk bag

So...That's the set up. I absolutely love it. It is my monster do all soft surface go almost anywhere bike. As mentioned above, I am putting the stock Enabler fork on the front so that I have the bottle and front rack mounting options available on this bike. The White Bros Snowpack will be going on my original prototype Mukluk Ti bike which I hope to share sometime in the future.

Well, how about some pictures?  

Best of 2011 - Nature

OK...Here is my last one. I filtered through last year's images and pulled out some of my favorite places, landscapes and nature. This will close out my 2011 picture series. This project has gotten me very fired up about taking pictures in 2012 so I'm really glad this is over.  

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these images. Better yet, I hope you go back through your images and remember where you've been and use those memories to plan where you are going this year. I know I've got plans. You should too.

Oh...And if you don't like this slideshow viewer, all of these Best of 2011 images are viewable on the Gnat Gallery page at the top of this page. Enjoy!

Film for 2012

Bessa R4A Rangefinder with Cosina Voigtlander 21mm f4 lens

One of my guiding principles for 2012 is to not waste time or money if it is not getting me to an end goal. Today, I share with you one of my goals, that is to become a better photographer. I have read several stories on shooting film everyday for a year makes you a better photographer. It makes you slow down. It makes you understand exposure. It makes you focus on composition as opposed to gun and run digital photography. In the end, I bet I get as many "keepers" as I do with digital.

In the past few weeks I've been researching just about every type of film camera, film type and film scanner. I've gone through my old college books and read countless old reviews, forums, and online opinions on film photography. While I'd love to find a used Leica M6 TTL, I just can't afford one of those. I also don't want the high roller image of the red dot...Even though I know many true artists and not so wealthy photographers shoot with Leica. Nope. I've set my sights on a used Bessa R4A Rangefinder with a wide angle 21mm Voigtlander lens.

Beyond price, how did I land on this set up? Well...I have a bike photo project that I am exploring that I believe needs to be shot using film. Assuming the set up works the way I envision, this project could take me 2 years to complete. Yep, that's right, 2 years but that is another story for another day. I can and will say it involves bikes and that you will likely see an image or two along the way from this project. This requires a wide angle lens with a fairly deep depth of field. The Bessa R4A is the only rangefinder available equipped with a wide angle view finder. This coupled with a 21mm or 25mm lens should do the trick.

I shot the first roll of black and white film last week and am shooting the first roll of color this week. These two images above are super lo res scans from the first roll just to get something up on the blog. Nothing great as I am just focused on learning right now. While these images have loads of issues, I see a glimpse of hope in these images. I think that meaningful and impactful images will come later once I figure it all out and find the film and processing I desire. I hope I can pull through.

So...It's time to go ride my bike and take a few pictures.

Best of 2011 - People

One of my goals for 2012 is to become much better at capturing candid photos of people. I've started working on that and I suspect you may see quite a few of them in the coming months and year. I did occassionally try to do people throughout 2011. Truthfully, these are mostly of my kids and other kids since kids aren't afraid of cameras the same way adults are afraid. Some might call this the grandparent slideshow. That said, some of these are captured while on riding trips. Hope you enjoy.

Below is one of the images from the slideshow, it is one of my favorite moments of 2011 so I am pulling it out of the show and sharing it below. I will never forget that moment.

Next up - Best of 2011 - Places

Best of 2011 - Riding

I know we are midway into the first month of 2011, but I have finally gotten around to looking back on 2011. I planned on doing a one month, one picture sort of thing but I couldn't get my 18,000+ images down to 12. I did get down to about 60 but I couldn't get further. So...I broke them into 3 categories and I'm going to share all three here on the Gnat blog.

Today, you get the first. Riding. This is a bike blog after all. These are some of my favorite riding images and bike riding experiences of 2011. Some you have seen. Others you have not. Regardless, I hope you enjoy them. Oh...And if you don't want the slideshow and want to look at them individually, take a jump over to the Gallery pages and click on the Best of 2011 - Riding gallery.

Next up....Portraits.

Old Car - A black & white photo exploration

If you've been around the Gnat blog for long, you have likely seen an image of an old car I like. We went off trail and checked it out during my River Ramble ride. I wanted to go back and shoot the scene without other cyclists and with evening light. With my broken collar bone and my rest period from cycling, I did not think I'd get down this year to shoot it. Well, with our very mild winter here in MN, I was able to get down there on my own. I shared a couple of images here and in various places on the web, but today I share the the black & white images. All shots taken with my Sony NEX-5Nd with kit zoom lens, shot RAW and converted to B & W in Adobe Lightroom. 

I am printing this last shot for my cube wall @ work.

I sure love exploring on my bike and finding interesting stuff like this. All these shots were shot the same evening at the same spot, but as I post them I see that two of the images above are not actually part of the old car. Anyone know which two? 

Now, I gotta go find something else. I can't wait.

Back at it

Happy New Year! I'm back and ready for the new year. It was a great holiday. Hope you had a great holiday too. Before I get into today's post, I want to thank all of you for the emails, notes and comments over the last few weeks. They mean a lot to me and I am thankful.

Back from North Dakota - Big. Fat. Happy.

Today marks the first post of the new year. I'm taking this opportunity to set the tone for the coming year and share some changes to this website. Before I share exactly what my plan is, I'd like to share my guiding principles for the coming year.They are not new year's resolutions. They are guiding principles for my actions.

• Quit wasting time and money unless they are getting me to a specific end goal.
• Health - I need to tackle my sleep disorder. If I can control it, I can control my hunger, manage my food portions and loose weight…which in turns makes me sleep better.
• Ride my bike for the joy of riding my bike. This past year, riding almost always felt stressed for one reason or another. I just want to enjoy riding for riding and not make it into something it isn’t. This is why in the spring, summer and fall I am going to go back and ride my Salsa Fargo as much as possible. Last year I rode a slew of other bikes and I did not enjoy riding as much as when i rode my Fargo 99% of the time the previous year.
• Smile more and have more fun. In all circumstance and in all places.
• Find time to ride with the people that are important to me.

So....Just how does this relate to this blog? Great question.

This blog has exceeded my wildest dreams for starting a blog. Truthfully, I never imagined that I would last this long blogging. Through these last several years I have met amazing people and been inspired countless times. This blog really helped me develop and foster the creative side of me that I had stuffed away years ago. It has also fueled my passion for photography.I could go on and on.

It has also become a bit of a crutch. Recently, I have found myself developing and moving in different directions than the tone and the "image" of this blog. I have also found the time and dedication needed to keep it engaging and growing to be a challenge. So much so that I have not been able to learn some new things.

So....Today I am making some changes. Starting today, I will be blogging less here on the Gnat blog. I want these posts to be meaningful, relevant and most of all, filled with good content. I suspect 1 - 2 good posts per week.

Oh what will I do with my Mukluk this year? My full build post is coming soon. Making some changes to the whole front end and then will make a complete post.

What will I do with this additional time? Another great question.

First, I will spend time with my family, ride my bike(s), and learn new things. It is time to reinvest in myself. I've got more to say here, but I think this will be the topic of an upcoming post.

Second, for quick in the moment creative thought, I have started a new website powered by tumblr. You can click here to go to the new site. It is focused on quick content and sharing and not as much on words, themes and events. The site will include a bit more non bike related photography, but you can count on a good dose of bike related imagery over there. Truthfully, I have thousands and thousands of images I have not shared here because I couldn't work them into a story or they were not quite on target for the feeling of this site. Now I can share them and I will. I will be posting daily, sometimes several in one day. In setting up the site, I used many images that you may have already seen if you are a regular reader here. However, over time, I expect the content to diverge quite a bit.

So...Bring in the new year. I'm ready. Again, check out my new site by clicking here. Imaginegnat.