Steve-Z.com

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving” – Albert Einstein

June 5th was National Trails Day, and I lent some photographing skills to help promote the creation and maintenance of our local trail network. Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance hosted a big trail building day at Betasso Preserve. In case you didn’t know, Betasso is getting a brand new loop, called the Benjamin Trail, that will double the amount of trail in the area, and provide an alternate entrance from Four Mile Canyon.

This was the third trail building day out of the year out at Betasso. There are many more days required before the trail will be open for riding. So do your part and gather your friends and come out for the next work days. As a bonus, there will be food and beverages and beers to be had at the end of the day. Check out BMA’s website for the latest schedule and calendar of events.

I believe that mountain goats are actually from another planet. True story.

Prior to getting into photography, I didn’t really appreciate junk. But now, oh now; things are different. There is nothing that I love more than the burned out, rusted in, toppled over, crumbling down, peeling onto, smashed under feel good scratch and sniff goodness of a desolate pile of junk. I wish Westerners weren’t so damn territorial about their junk. I won’t sue you if I impale my foot with a rusty nail, I promise. It isn’t your fault that your junk is so damn beautiful. But alas, sometimes I just have to admire your junk at 65mph.

I set out on a good old fashioned road trip last week. It was part of a staycation that was the result of a visit from an out of the country friend. We headed down to the Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado. The dunes are one of those places that I’ve been meaning to visit for years but never quite made it. Since my friend is a pro photographer as well, we took way too many pictures, and it’s resulted in way too much editing! But wacky fun images of me trying to snowboard on the sand as well as some nature shots are on the way.

So I’m going to kick things off with one of those nostalgia inducing images. You know that you are experiencing the freedom of summer and killing time on the open road when you’re hangin’ your feet out the window. I wonder how many people have had their feet stung by bees while doing this?

I did my first two rides in the high country this weekend! The trails are running sweet in Ned, with the exception of the higher stuff which is still clogged with snow.  I got turned around on School Bus by snow drifts.  But I did ride the new Re-Root section of Root Canal.  It’s pretty sweet and even has a couple rock features.

I was riding solo so I don’t have any action pics.  Just a couple tilt shift still life portraits of the Bianchi SS.