If you want more, click on over to our Flickr set and enjoy. Have a great weekend, may the sun continue to shine on you.
01 Busted

01 Horchata

Have a nice weekend.

This wasn’t out of the blue. About a month ago, while trying to get her to take a nap, I gave her the basic run down on shadows and light: hard shadows, soft light, reflection, etc. She may have just been trying to stall, to delay her bedtime. I took the bait.

We talked about how the light was coming from the doorway instead of the window because it was night. We looked at the shadows the ceiling fan made. I demonstrated how the closer your hand gets to the headboard, the harder the shadow is. Then I demonstrated the same by creating a shadow on my face. She pulled her little hand under the covers and said, “Don’t make it dark on my hand.” I could see the fear in her eyes. The very real fear that darkness holds for a child.

As an adult, I don’t often consider darkness in this sense. I mean, I have a flashlight app on my iPhone.

LOST.

Anyone who has been truly lost can instantly remember the feeling. You may have felt it when I typed that word in bold just now.

Being lost and in complete darkness is not something I’ve ever experienced. I can’t relate to it at all. Which is why it is so easy to forget about lighthouses. Most of us don’t travel by sea, battle monster waves or yearn for a glimpse of light through the storm that could mean the difference between life and death. So, until we’re driving down the coast and spot one, or a sign telling us one exists, it’s easy to let them slip from our minds.

Then you turn on your blinker, park your car at the turnoff and hike it in. You walk into a world where pure darkness exists and is battled every minute. A world where brick is laid by hand and then whitewashed into place, and the steel staircase doesn’t need repairs for centuries, if ever. Where a lens manufactured in France makes its home, by way of the Panama Canal. A world where kids walk a mile through the forest each way to school, while you’re doing the most important mundane work that exists. Where constant attention must be paid to every dull detail, or lives can be lost. You bring light into darkness, direction to the disoriented; you work with your hands, and your day job means something.

If you’re lucky, you bring your a camera along. I brought my camera.

I was turned on to this company, Saddleback Leather, through a Rivendell Owner’s discussion group.

A number of items caught my eye.
The wallets all seem to be a great value. I’ve been needing a new wallet, so this pulled me in right away. It’s got most of the features I’m looking for: small, simple, fits in a pocket, and is built to last:

The business card holders would be a nice touch, and useful:

This last year I’ve been trying to replace one of those terrible rolling carry-on suitcases that busted. So far I haven’t found the perfect replacement. If I had $500 to spend on the perfect replacement, this would be it:

I haven’t needed a giant suitcase in over 8 years, but I plan on one day being a distinguished, International Man of Mystery-type traveler. When those days come, this is the suitcase I’ll take with me:

The bag I settled on, of course, is a daily use bag. The kind I love to lust after from afar: The Saddleback Leather Messenger Bag.  Usually, when you hear Messenger Bag, you think shiny and plastic. That’s not what I want, and that’s not what I get with this bag.

Here are my criteria for a bag:

1. High level of craftsmanship. I’ve discussed here how frustrated I’ve grown with what passes ‘quality checks’ these days.

2. Durability. If I’m going to be paying for craftsmanship, I want it to last. Forever.

3. Distinguished good looks. When I develop distinguished good looks in 20-30 years, I want my bag to be there waiting for me. In the meantime, it can help signal to people that I’m not 18 years old.

Here is the bag (Since I don’t own one of these yet, I stole all the photos off of this excellent review of the bag):

It can be simply transformed into a backpack:

And has all the hefty, destruction resistant features you could ask for: rivets at stress points, D rings, leather straps, no breakable parts.

These pictures are of the Dark Tobacco Brown color. If it were me, I’d go with the Dark Coffee Brown in this photo:

It costs a pretty penny, but comes with a 100 year warranty. That’s right, 100 years.

Rugged, good looking, distinguished and built to last. What more could you ask for?

I was helping a friend load up his moving van when I came across this old school Kelty backpack, I couldn’t help but yell out to him, “This is a great backpack!” and snap a picture.

The colors hint at a Rastafarian phase long past. It is well used, but no worse for it. The sign of a well made product put to the test.

It passed.

And now it is in a huge truck on its way to Utah.

I ride my bike to work most days of the year, rain or shine, so I was excited about participating. Some fun facts I have discovered since joining the challenge: In four days worth of commuting I’ve saved 19 lbs of CO2 emmissions, I’ve burned 980 calories, and I’m a big bully for forcing other members of Four + One to actually sign up and participate in such a stupid thing instead of just appreciating the fact that they have been biking to work.

We’re having a good time with it.

From time to time I start feeling great about myself and how I’m minimizing my impact on the earth. Luckily, there is always a gas-guzzling SUV ready to shatter my delusions of progress and grandeur. But it is nice to make a difference, even if the only difference are in how I see the world, in my energy level and (slightly) in my waistline.

In the spirit of making a difference, I throw out a challenge to all of you who have bikes and a non-home-office-workplace. September is a beautiful month to ride. Join us.

For inspiration, here are some photos of my route to work. If you click on them, they get bigger.

This may or may not be Mr. Grumpy Pants

I thought you all might need a little Johnny Cash to take you into the weekend. Here are my three selections:

1. My all-time favorite Cash song. As the fellow says about telling a story, give the audience what they didn’t know they wanted. With apologies to the parents of the character in Swingers, this is not a road I’d go down.

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2. He is what we thought he was.

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3. This is a bit lesser known title, “Any Old Wind That Blows” but there’s something about the plain-spoken poetry that captivates me. He’s much more of a wordsmith than he gets credit for.

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Enjoy the sun, wherever you may be.

A story is coming, and it involves video footage and more photos like this. Look for it in the next week.

Man, is he cool.