Chasing Hurricanes

When you live in Texas it can be a little arduous to get a good day of surfing in, and even more difficult to luck into all the forces to work together to make a stellar day of wave sailing come together. In the summer, as everyone living along the gulf coast dread the arrival of hurricanes, surfers look forward to them. They always come at times that are not convenient for the schedule, so you always have to drop everything and run at a moments notice. 

I made the commitment to chase some swell as hurricane Alex approached the Texas coast and lucked out with a gorgeous day of surfing, kiteboarding and topped it off with an epic session of windsurfing in some of the nicest and biggest waves I have seen along that section of coastline. The fact that all the directions worked perfectly still takes my breath away. 

Ancient History

Getting out of the summer heat, I spent some time digging thru some files of negatives. Scanned some old black and white medium format images into the computer. Wow, they look like ancient history with all the modern digital stuff and technology that I usually use, but oh what images the old film stock could make.

These are from a kayak trip with a group of friends down the Grand Canyon in the 1990's. Truth be told it was just a few years ago but it feels like ancient history now, probably partly because of the film source. Ahh what memories of cold water it brings back. Really hard to believe that I think of cold when I see pictures of the Arizona desert.

Daily Discovery

Rather than just going on a dog walk this morning, I took Kimo on an exploration of the banks of the Trinity River near the Joint Reserve Base formerly known as Carswell. The folks at Stream and Valleys have actually made access to what is called the Falls on the Trinity really easy, so the dog did not even have to get his feet dirty. Operative words are "have to". Of course he loved it, even with the big snakes, snapping turtles and slimy algae he was skittering across the tops of what is a nice little drop creating a cascading fall on a tributary of the West Fork of the Trinity River.

A good little adventure and he came back mouthing to all his friends how he was in the country, even if we never got more than a stones throw from civilization.

Way Back Machine

You can see it all, the wall of flame rising. Palm trees ablaze in a plume of napalm as The Doors "This is the end" blares from the speakers. That opening scene of Apocalypse Now runs thru my head as the rotors spin up on the Hughes helicopter. You rise into the air, but instead there are only Texas cattle pastures below as we fly over the "target". It turns out that we are only taking pictures of a corporate campus but we are doing it from a beautifully restored 1968 Vietnam era helicopter. AS simple as the craft is, just a bubble and two seats, it is perfect for shooting aerials since there are no doors and the three blades makes it a much more stable platform than the typical 2 rotor Jet Rangers I have been in. Great fun flying in a classic machine, especially when you are supposed to be working.