Sarah Eats an Orange

Orange with a little bit of awesome sauce on top!

Playing with new camera and fisheye

Click on an image for a larger view.

Nikon D 60 

AF-S Nikkor 18-55 VR w/ opteka 0.20x superwide fisheye

This is the first time Ive ever messed with a digital slr so its going to take some time getting used to.  lots of menus and options.  

Bulding Ramps Today

Well I'm about to ride my bicycle over the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge.  On the other side I am helping put together Jimmy's ramp from Azalea festival.  40' wide 6' tall with two 8' extensions.  It is for the contest redbull is throwing on the deck of the battleship.  You can check out more info HERE.   

Explanation of sorts

Well, everyone that I skate with asks me the same question when I'm telling the I'm going to New Zealand. I guess that I should precede this post with an explanation of another kind. I am going to New Zealand for three months starting in January. The first month I will be hiking around the south island with my parents. We are then flying back to Auckland and spending five days together. They are then leaving and my girlfriend Sarah is flying over. For the next two months we will be riding bikes around and camping trying to see as much of the country as possible and do as many things as we can afford.
With that said I can finally explain the previous question that I started to tell you about. Everyone always asks me if I'm bringing my skate board. Actually its more of a rhetorical question, like; "your bringing your board, right." Well No. I am not. I have lots of reasons why I want to and lots of more logical reasons why I'm not going to. First of all our means of transportation is going to bicycles. Bicycles require healthy bodies. I personally cannot skate at say 50%. Its 110% every time. I'm not saying I'm a bad ass or anything, its more along the lines that I cant have fun if I try to hold my self back. I've said for a long time that if your not getting hurt, than your not skating hard enough. I cant get hurt over there. Not this trip at least. Who knows maybe I'll go back one day solely to skate or hell, maybe I'll move there. You never know. Ive got plenty of stuff to skate here and my friends are here. I'd rather skate with my friends anyway. Next is space. We are cramming for space as it is without worrying about carrying boards. Sure it could be done but its not worth the hassle for me. Last and not least, Sarah doesn't skate. She has spent allot her her hard earned money to go on this trip with me and I want everything we do to be together. I would feel bad if I made her sit on the sidelines and watch me skate in every town we came across that had a park in it.

With all those good reasons said, This will be the longest period since getting sober that I will be off of my board. I have used it as a means of taking out my anger, frustration, and all sorts of other emotional road blocks. I'm pretty positive however, that while we are in New Zealand I'm not going to have that much to really worry about.
damn, I cannot wait!

Wilmington to Virginia Beach on Bikes

This past thanksgiving break my lovely lady Sarah and I rode our bicycles to Virginia beach from Wilmington.  The total trip was about 300 miles.  297 to be exact.  It took of fives days total to get there and it was five of the greatest days ever.  We had really good weather besides the cold and one day was really windy.  I'll probably come back later and post more pictures and details but for now here are some pictures and a synopsis of the trip.  One of the days I will make a map solely for the purpose of putting on here so I can show all my fans the route that we took.  I do plan on telling you what route we took, but it is so much easier to just give you a map and say; look, here, that is how we went.  But, alas, I am not going to give you map just yet so your going to have to use your imagination.  Or better yet you could go to google maps or some other map service and look it up and it will be alot clearer.  I still think imagination is the best way to go.  We had several battles with warlocks along the way and none of those will show up on google maps so you would be getting robbed by not using you imagination.  Warlocks are terrible creatures.  They are constantly drooling pink fuzz, and are relentless with their attacks..  More on that later..........

back on topic

Pictured above is two lovely people getting ready to leave Wilmington.  This picture w
as taken by someone else.  I am not going to name them because I have not received permission from them to post their name all across the internet.  I don't know why they would care but who knows.  some people are weird about stuff like that.  In this picture we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into.  

This picture was taken way early on the second day of our trip.  We found an abandoned building in Swansboro and set up camp behind it.  It was the coldest night in November in Swansboro ever in recorded history. (it was cold) .     we rode 71 miles the first day to get there.

This is the morning of our second day.  Brutally cold but beautiful day.  On our way to the cedar island-ocacroke ferry from Swansboro  (map tip)

Shortly after this photo was taken, Sarah was grabbed by three large warlocks and taken into their cave.  Some how I didn't get any photos but I was able to retrieve her using the force.

We found The shortest bike route ever.... and subsequently murdered it.  It might have been a block and a half.  We got all excited at the beginning of it but were let down shortly there after.  It was located on the outskirts of Morehead city.  

After we made it through Morehead city, we battle a river dragon, and then ate lunch in Beaufort.  We then made our way through some back roads all the way to cedar island.  Home of the not so famous cedar island ferry.  The above picture is on top of the bridge to cedar island.  Whole lot of nothing around.  We were successful in our trip to ferry and were able to catch the last ferry to Ocracoke.  It was well past dark by the time we arrived in Ocacroke (I'm not sure how to spell this so I plan to try and spell it every way possible at least once.)  There are no abandoned buildings or anything of the sort there so we were forced to rent a campsite.  We rode another 70 miles that day bringing our total to 141.  The first two days we were averaging around 15 mph.  

The next morning we woke early as usual and rode to the north end on the island where we caught the ferry to Hatteras island.  

We had to wait for about 45 min for the next ferry so I made some delicious french press coffee while we waited.  You can see our mugs up above.  That picture was kindly taken by one of the ferry boat workers.  After arriving on the shores of Hatteras, we made our way up the coast.  Through the village, through Buxton, Waves and so on.  Our goal was to make it to south nags heads and find a house to sleep under for the night.  The ferry pushed us back a bit and we got caught riding over the Oregon inlet bridge after dark.  I'm a man, so I don't get scared, but it was scary.  Sarah didn't want to die.  Either did I.  Bridges suck.  So do saber tooth teradactals.  Well rest assured that we made it over the bridge just fine and were able to continue on to south nags head.  It was supposed to rain that night so I wanted to find some protection in the form of a car port.  We found one and we slept well.  

The next morning we awoke to a cold wet windy mist.  We each had a bagel and a half and a cup of wonderful coffee.  We adorned our rain gear and started out.  Holy moley was it windy.  20 mph wet wind right in our face.  We moved really slow the fourth day but trudged along.  We rode from south nags head to Currituck and caught the ferry over to Knotts Island.  

This sweet huge ass hammock was on the side of the rode somewhere along 168.  We stopped and took an hour long nap in it.  It was the best nap Ive ever taken.  After the nap we continued on towards the ferry.  We stopped at a subway in the middle of nowhere and met the coolest guy of the trip.  He was a true sandwich artist, and very genuinely nice guy.  I told him that and Sarah tipped five bucks.  I think we changed his life forever.  We made it to the ferry in time and I called my cousin George to see if we could camp in his barn for the night.  He told me No.  He did tell me that we could sleep in a bed and take hot showers though.  After much debating me and Sarah decided that it was a fair trade off.  

We arrived at George's later that night after riding less than a mile from the ferry dock.  It felt so good to get off the road.  The wind beat us down and while we only rode 53 miles that day, we averaged 8 mph.  Extremely slow.  George and his wife Sue are my closest relatives.  They have always been super kind to me and always a lot of fun to be around.  When we got to their house we were immediately welcomed with open arms and brought inside.  They showed us to the room that would be staying in, showed us the shower, and then brought us to the kitchen where we had coffee and tea while we waited for dinner.  Sue cooked us some chicken and macaroni and cheese, and gave us some homemade BBQ sauce for the chicken.  After eating bagels and dry ramen for four days this was a god send.  We both took showers and quickly hit the hay.  The next morning we awoke to more fresh coffee and orange juice.  Once again Sue was cooking up up storm and we had bacon egg and cheese biscuits for breakfast.

This is me wondering why the hell we were leaving such wonderful hospitality.  George and Sue are really too kind.  I need to call and thank them once again.  Well with our belly's full we began the final leg of our journey to Virginia beach.  We had but just 30 some odd miles to go.  The wind had died down a lot and we got on the road.  

This is our shadows crossing the land bridge that connects Knotts Island to the Mainland of Virginia.  Knotts island is mostly in North Carolina but the northern tip sticks up into Virginia.  At the end of the land bridge you enter into Virginia and subsequently Virginia Beach.  

Well We made it to Virginia Beach as the pictures show, but we still Had another 25 miles to my parents house.  We made it safe and in plenty of time to eat lots of turkey.  The next four days were spent on the couch eating five to six times a day.  My parents are amazing and my mom has the most ridiculously stocked kitchen ever.  Mom and Dad:  me and Sarah cant thank you enough for everything.  You rule.  

Well the trip was a huge success and was an amazing experience.  Sarah is the best travel partner ever.  It gave a little idea of what its going to  be like being on a bike for two months in New Zealand together.   Cant wait for that to happen.  If anyone actually reads this....I LOVE YOU..........hopefully i know you because i don't say I love you to strangers.  Forrest Gump would not approve of such behavior.

Who the Hell Knows

Well Here it goes.  I having been wanting to start blogging my life for sometime now.  I am always doing things that I myself find rather interesting.  I actually find my daily activities alot more than interesting.  I love my life, and I know that sounds lame, but I do.  I have awsome friends, an amazing girlfriend and two jobs that all fill me countless laughs and smiles.  I try to travel as much as I can and am constantly trying to get out.  I plan to use this blog not only to let people into to my world, but to also preserve it for myself.  There are so many memories that we have that are so easily lost to time.  I want to be able to have something to look back upon and keep remembering my smiles.  

Sob story shit out of the way.  

I'll warn you.  I ramble when I type, and constantly jump to topics out of left field.  Deal with it.  You can send my webmaster an email if you like.       No I dont have a webmaster.  You can send me emails if you like.  It doesn't have to be about anything really, you can just send me an email about the weather.  I like getting emails.  Actually send me some funny shit about unicorns.  That is your job now.  go do it

*edit:   WOW, I read the first paragraph and its pretty funny.  It sounds like I am having to explain my blog to a class or something.  I didn't mean any of that.  Well actually I meant all of it but dont tell anyone.   Sorry if you actually read that.  Dont do it anymore.