9 November 2012 - 10:58Behind the Bars

It seems as if it were only yesterday that I was hovering over my computer, furiously trying to come up with a submission for the Green Mountain Showdown. I had run into MTBVT head honcho Ryan at Interbike, where he gently twisted my arm into participating. It wasnt that hard, as this was after 5, and I was on my way back from the tequila hour at one of the booths.

Of course, I put it off until the very last minute.

Which is sort of funny, cinsidering. Anyway, one of the hardest things about it was coming up with the right “tone”. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I tend to be a bit overly self conscious in these situations. I had an idea, but no point of reference. I agonized for days on how I was going to execute it, what content was going to be in it, was it going to be mixed media, what music to use etc to the point where I almost went batshit. Oh, and I had to make it run in a time format that wouldn’t send people towards the door. Had I not procrastinated so hard, it might have been better.

So what we have here, is my submission. I ended up just going with a photo slideshow set to music. You’ve seen some of these images on this blog before. I wanted to come up with a little something that not only showcased  my pictures, but was also a sort of photo diary of the last 18 months of my life.

As we all know, my last 18 months have been rife with change, some of it not so good. These are images from my escape. I never stopped riding my bike, for a long time it was the only place where I felt like things were OK. It took me places I can only partially tell you about with pictures. The music I selected tells another part of the story. No one creates soundscapes like Ennio. Plus I’m a big sucker for Spaghetti Westerns. It’s a story of the big open spaces I’ve navigated through on my bike, both mentally and physically.

Unfortunately, the night the Showdown was to take place, it decided to rain cats, dogs, geese and chickens sideways. This pushed back the start of the event, and I was ultimately bumped from the line up. I was a little bit miffed, but stuff like this happens, sometimes you just have to roll with it. There were some really good submissions, and it was good to see so many people turn out in spite of the deluge. The best part about it, was that I got a little bit of validation in my efforts. My submission was different, but at least as good as some of the others.

This has me thinking about the next Showdown…