Sep 28, 2013

I headed to Shamong, NJ in the morning to meet my crew for the Rebel Race mud run. It was on a large horse farm outfitted with obstacles and caution tape. I met the group I was working with, got my staff shirt, and then shot some preliminary photos before heading over to my obstacle. I was going to be on the monkey bars, but when we saw the fire jump it was decided that it would make for better shots. I had to test it out of course.

After I got used to where I should stand I got some great shots of people jumping over. The two volunteers working the obstacle were young and not really doing a great job. To be fair, they weren't given many resources. Only a few firestarter logs and they have to scavenge for wood constantly to keep it going. It was dying down quickly.

It got boring pretty quickly since there weren't a whole lot of participants. It was a slow filter of people through my area and there was not really any communication available between obstacles. Two or three times someone got hurt at the monkey bars obstacle and they had to yell and run toward the finish line to get someone's attention to send the EMT. It was all very poorly thought out. I was done once I walked away from the fire area for a minute and the idiots that were manning it decided to use the fire extinguisher "just to see what would happen," and covering my camera and food bag with powder. I grabbed my stuff, dropped the photos to my laptop, and got on the road.

I got to Starland Ballroom to see Into It. Over It. and they were amazing. I'm glad I got to see him play with a full band, and now I wish I listened to him more often. Geoff Rickly played next and had the crowd excited as always. He played some Thursday covers, an original song, then he covered "The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot" and talked about how hard it is to be a fan of Brand New with the way they release albums and play shows so infrequently. Geoff invited his friends in Gabriel the Marine up to play one of their songs and then "Understanding in a Car Crash" to close the set and it was the coolest cover of that song. I want them to record it. And I want to listen to Gabriel the Marine.

Saves the Day was up next, kicking off the set and never letting up on the the throttle. They never fail to play a great set full of old and newer songs and keep the crowd into it. Chris seems very enthusiastic and humbled by the diehard fans that are always there. They played quite a few new songs that were fun as well as a set of three songs from Can't Slow Down. A guy got on stage and proposed to his girlfriend in the middle of the set and made Chris cry. It was nice.

After an awesome show I snuck out a minute before the end of "At Your Funeral" so I didn't have to deal with traffic. It was a nice, quiet drive home down the Turnpike listening to podcasts.

Jun 18, 2012

Kate and I got our stuff together and headed north for our trip in the morning. We stopped at the Pez factory in Connecticut, but they charge quite a bit for a tour so we skipped it.

It took us a while, but we made it to Vermont! And then we still had quite a while to go through the state.

Since it's right off the highway we stopped at Harpoon Brewery for a few samples of things like the Leviathan Quad and their small batch Saison. We looked around the store for a while and then got back on the road.

When we got to our campground we put up our tent, started a nice fire, and then got to drinking.

We ended up drinking quite a bit and had the fire going really well for a while.

It was a fun and slightly drunk night. We retired to the tent after the fire was totally out and we couldn't drink anymore.

Jun 14, 2012

This story is best told through photos. We slept in for a while and then got up to eat and head to the Dragon's Tooth hike along the Appalachian Trail.

The hike started off rocky and uphill. This feature would show up continuously throughout the day.

There were also some nice flat, heavily wooded areas.

It wasn't too long before we got to the Dragon's Tooth feature, which was on an offshoot to the trail. We had to climb up to get to the very top.

The view was beautiful from the top, though it was a little scary standing up straight on the narrow section.

We hung out and had a snack while we sat up there and then we climbed down and hiked back down the trail we came up.

We went to a little gas station to get some snacks and drinks to go with our food for lunch and took them out to a field next to it to have a little picnic. We ate and lay in the grass. And Steph ate her green pepper like an apple. I have never seen that before.

After we hung out for a while, we headed over to the trailhead for McAfee Knob, another Appalachian Trail section. Steph and I waited in the car for a while as Jess hiked ahead.

The trail was interesting and well-maintained with bridges and log steps that took a moderate grade up the ridge.

It got more rocky at some points and we were rewarded with some overlooks along the way. The trail was mostly wooded, though it passed through some open fields and under high tension wires.

When we got to McAfee Knob, it was an amazingly beautiful view. We took a lot of photos of the view and then of each other on the famous outcropping. We had a lot of fun taking different shots and trying not to fall off as we got close to the edge.

The sun started to go down and we were treated to a gorgeous sunset of orange and deep purples. I got some amazing shots.

We took some fun silhouette shots after it got a little darker. We tried a bunch of things like getting Jess and Steph to jump at the same time and make a heart with their arms. Then I had them flip their hair around. We had a good time.

As we walked around we ran into some thru-hikers who had made a fire at the top. They were planning on camping nearby. We talked to them for a while about hiking the trail and how nice the place was.

We went back to the knob area to take long-exposure shots of the stars. I got some nice star trails. This shot looks better after I edited down some of the city light and brought the stars up some.

Our hike back to the car was fun in the dark. We had a couple of flashlights out the whole time, but we were taking it slow so we didn't trip. We did trip. It was slow going and we worried that we might get lost at times, but we found our way back and happily headed back to our camp.