There are around 1800 photos overall, but I pared it down quite a bit into a few image galleries:
July 3rd: Practice, brief Stunt Show
July 4th: the main stunt show, the crowds, the fun.
The parade float, complete with a burnout stand and other fun stuff.
Local Riders – These guys got lessons from JasoN Britton!
Enjoy! Prints are available, if you’d like. Just find the “Contact me” link on the upper right of this screen, and we’ll get you the details.
I have to say I’m really disappointed. Ever since the day I attended the groundbreaking where the various mayors and senators congratulated each other and the architect drawings (done by my friend Alex, by the way) were unveiled, they’ve been talking about how this is going to be a site of interest with lots of foot traffic and memorial parks at either end. That’s why I can’t believe the oversight I spotted this week: there is no walkway on the north side!
Question: how is a person going to get a view like this without dodging traffic on the new bridge? Answer: they aren’t. There’s a walkway on the south side of the bridge, but the only time of year the sun sets on that side of the bridge is in the dead of winter. Not aesthetically pleasing, and cold on top of it. Sad.
I give the new bridge a big thumbs-down for this fact alone. If offered the choice of a walkway on the north or on the south, I’d have definitely recommended the north. Sadly, that choice wasn’t mine to make. Oh well, maybe they’ll make a wide shoulder and I can dodge traffic to get the right shot. In the mean time, I’ll just have one more thing to whine about!
This also happens a little bit before June 21st, the longest day of the year. I wasn’t able to catch it at that time. Last year the weather conspired against me and I wasn’t able to catch either occurrence, so tonight was a pretty good treat.
I actually tried last night, but the sun was still a little above the horizon when it crossed the capitol building. It looked like a lollipop of sorts. I may still try to get another shot tomorrow night, with only a portion of the sun behind the capitol building. I’ll have to do it one minute earlier than I did tonight, however; we lose a minute of daylight every day now.
If you were born in the 60s, which I was (depending on which time zone you were in), you probably drooled all over one of these. This is an all-original 1971 Schwinn “Pea Picker” bicycle. It was ridden by my friend Justin this weekend at the Cycle Hutt extravaganza, and I was blown away when I saw him come wheelie-ing out with it.
I got some really amazing photos over the holiday weekend, all of them centered around the Cycle Hutt event and Jason Britton’s visit. Jason told me he didn’t mind how close I got when he was stuntin’, so I got some really sweet angles of him and Tony doing their thang. I’ll post pics from the weekend down the road as I sort through them.
I don’t care much for scaffolds, ladders, and the like. I didn’t like heights at all in general until I spent some time working at the Big Sky Ski Resort back in the late 80s and early 90s. Countless trips on various chair lifts and gondolas solved that. I’m still a bit leary of things like bucket trucks, though…so to have to venture over the side of the bridge like that would freak me out.
There’s only one exception: if I’m holding a camera, of course! My friend Chris and I spent some time atop a fully extended Datsun forklift over at Cycle Hutt this weekend. It was a little wobbly in the breeze on Friday, but otherwise was fine. Saturday I worried a little bit about lightning, as some wet-looking clouds rolled in. I just kept my eye to the viewfinder and kept shooting.
He’ll also be taking part in the Hutt’s parade float Friday morning, so don’t forget to keep an eye out for the flashy green Kawasaki! Then hop on something with two wheels and head over to Cycle Hutt for the 1:30 performance and some fun that will last throughout the night. Anyone on a motorcycle will be invited to hang out and watch the fireworks after dark.
There was a lot going on at the Hutt today, too…I have hundreds of photos of course, which I’ll post in due time. There was free pizza and Dew, so I was pretty much in heaven; pizza, Dew, sportbikes, and photography. Wow!
Don’t forget to take part in the festivities at Cycle Hutt! They’ve really gone out of their way to do something fantastic for fans of sport motorcycles in Bismarck-Mandan.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the peaceniks have every right to their feelgood events, bumper stickers, and PEACE signs in their yards. That’s what America is all about, and it’s their right of expression. I just think they’re horribly naive and have a tenuous grasp on reality, and that’s my right as well.
Let’s take Africa, for instance. Do you think the murdering thugs in Zimbabwe, Congo, or the Darfur region of Sudan care one iota what a bunch of pacifist liberals in the USA think? They’re already murdering, raping, dismembering, and torturing their own people. Feelgood liberal attempts at “dialoguing” with someone like that will have little result. Not only are the people subject to violent oppression worldwide oblivious to the choice of bumper stickers affixed to your Prius, they’re also unaffected by it.
Evil people understand only one thing: consequences for their actions. If all they have to fear is some finger-waving UN adviser or tie-dye wearing liberal peacenik, then there is no fear. Consequently, the violence goes on unhindered. All the concerts, awareness campaigns, and other such nonsense have zero effect outside the idealistic bubble that these folks have made for themselves.
I suppose this is the product of so much humanism, secular and otherwise. In order for a peacenik utopia to ever take form, there would have to be an inherent goodness in man. Guess what? It ain’t there. And if you remove that item from these folks’ ideological house of cards, the whole thing comes crashing down.
Well, I hope the folks at the concert had a good time. They sure had the right weather for it. I also hope nobody walked away with the illusion that this was actually “for peace.” Even if they persuaded a hundred people at a concert like this, it wouldn’t make a single difference; the only people whose hearts need to change are the murderous thugs all over this world, and you’re not going to do that with a guitar.
