Road Trip Warrior

Well its quiet here on the ranch.  Most of the guests have gone and we are going about our routines as if it was April again.  I am trying to get as much done here at the ranch as possible.  To leave things in good shape for next year.  However, I also feel I need to get some rest because this next month is going to be exhausting and fruitful.  Exhausting in the fact that ill will drive almost 8,000 miles in a month (thats not a typo) believe it or not.

Minnesota vs Michigan

So let me give you a little run down of October.  Leaving the ranch on the 29th of september for work to drive to New Hampshire 2600 miles of road trip.  Good news is that the wife will be coming with me which is awesome.  We have also planned to stop in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan to see a football game and its actually a Big Ten Game.  Its the day before our 1 year anniversary and I think thats a pretty cool 1 year gift to the both of us.

After that we will make our way through upstate NY and then Ill drop erin of in Albany to head back to the ranch.  Then Ill finish the drive to New Hampshire and begin a workshop with the boss for 5 days.  I am really excited about this work shop.  Here is the link to the workshop check it out  http://www.captureintegration.com/2011/06/30/nelandscape/.


It will be a great chance for me to improve on my skills as well as get a valuable and much needed portfolio review by some of the best landscape photographers in the industry.  It will be very awesome to shoot in New Hampshire  with the fall colors fresh and blooming.  I expect to add a few more images to that landscape portfolio of mine.  From New Hampshire we are headed south for a few stops.  NYC is an option where we might be able to get to see Annie Lebowitz's Studio.  Then to Virginia for some meetings and more fall colors and hopefully some caves in the Shenandoah Valley.  After that we head to Charlotte to get some night shots of the city for one of the cab companies to display in their offices.  After that off to hopefully savannah for a few days of rest for me while the boss and his wife play.  After that off to Nashville for some more photos for a local cab company.  Then back to the ranch for a day to pack up and then we head straight back across the country to FL for some well deserved rest an relaxation.  It will be a busy month and Ill do my best to post as much as possible and show all you what i am getting to experience.


So as we wrap up at the ranch there are a few things that i know ill miss and plan to get my fill of in the next 8 days.  I am really going to miss just being able to Shoot Guns when ever i want.  In LA I have to go to the range which is a pain and costs some money.  Well hopefully Ill get my fill in the next few days and it will last me till December.  I also miss horseback riding.  Ill miss the ranch its charm and its location.  But Ill be back next year and get to experience more new things.

On another cool  side note after this trip I will be 2 states short of my 50 ( Oregon and Hawaii).  I feel like I should be able to easily accomplish those by 30.

Sorry about the random Photos Hope the food makes you HUNGRY.

Be Like A Small Rodent

Well today was filled with a few new firsts for me.  Today I am wearing many hats but most notably the hat of Darius' helper.  Which is great - Darius and I get along real well and keep each other laughing throughout the day.  Today's task was to finish the heating in the artist's cabin.  Cool - a new skill I'm getting to learn.

So earlier last week Darius and I took a chain saw to the the side of this log cabin to open up a new section for us to run pipe into the house from the new (recycled, because it was the old one used for the lodge) HVAC unit.  Today we had to make it functional - well sort of....  We began by mapping out where the registers would go inside these cabinets that are built into the floor (they are really cool cabinets by the way).  After we mapped it all out came the fun part of taking the sawzawl and chainsaw to the floor and making holes for us to run our heating duct.  Before we get to the next part i want to give a brief little back story about this next step.  Darius knew in advance that we would have to crawl in the crawl space under this house to install this heating duct and had inspected it last week.  He commented that he thought there was a Badger or some small ground rodent living under the house.  This was true however it was not a badger it was a skunk.  No I didn't get sprayed by the skunk.  However on Saturday night JW noticed a skunk running out from underneath the cabin and Johnny-on-the-spot ran to his truck grabbed his brand new 45 revolver and let loose on this skunk.  Killing it dead in 2 shots from 40 feet away with out getting sprayed.  So lets just say Darius wasn't ever going to get down under the house knowing that skunks and or badgers had been living there, he is afraid of getting maimed by a small animal in its home.  So i volunteered to do it knowing that he would end up trying to MACGYVER  some sort of way for us to not get under the house and consuming about half a day in doing a 20 min project.  Well im a big guy and the hole was really tiny so i shoved my 6'4" body into a hole that was maybe 2ft.  Head first crawling under this house like im stalking Al Qaeda at night with a head lamp on.  I'm very sneaky when i need to be....  No skunks or badgers just a lot of pipe that needed to be run.  However I did run into ALOT of POOP, needless to say there is a long shower in my future with lots of antibacterial soap.  So all in all it was a good day, learned some new things, didn't get skunked, and picked up dead mice all over the ranch for my darling wife who is a cleaning guru (she gets it from her mom).

Note from the darling wife: I picked up some of the dead mice myself. And I now have to RECLEAN the Artist Cabin which I spent about two days on last week.  Eh...  At least it will be warm. :)

Double Mugging or Bulldogging

Food highlights from the week: Duck with coconut rice, curry sauce and roasted veggies.

So another week has come to and end on the ranch and well, it was a long week.  All hands on deck as we clear off the winter dust and frost, de-mice cabins and fix broken water heaters, replace sprinkler lines and redecorate the cabins with newly-made, western-themed lamps and tchotchkes .  We are getting the Ranch ready for guests.  So that means I'm doing a little bit of everything, which I love. Tuesday I helped JW finish the fence.  Wednesday we put up new walls in the gallery and finished mounting the rest of the 9 foot prints which are up.  Check out the full video tour of the gallery check out the link.

http://youtu.be/9AVSSrEdCmU

Thursday and Friday are kind of a blur I printed some more photos and worked outside on numerous projects.  But today was about getting new prints up all around the ranch and getting the boss' studio cleaned up and hanging a bunch of new photos.  At the end of the day I got to help JW in the arena herding steer. Well, chasing steer is more fitting.  I learned how to operate the chute that the cows run out of in all those roping events you have seen on TV.

Caprese salad with a pesto gastrique and balsamic vinegar.

Earlier this week JW told me about this amateur rodeo event call "Double Mugging".  Simply put, a steer is loaded into a shoot and reeled.  Then the rider (JW) ropes the head of the young steer.  Your partner jumps off the fence once the steer is roped, grabs the steer's head and flips it over on to its back.  Even though the steer are young they still weigh about 300-400lbs.  Then the rider jumps off the horse while his teammate pins the steer to the ground and ropes the steer's leg.  Bob's your uncle and thats about the best I can explain it.  So I got to do that today and boy did I have a blast.  There is some technique involved in doing it correctly and after about 3 minutes JW and I had gone over it pretty thoroughly.  Time to put theory into practice.  JW ropes the horse and I go flying toward the steer, put it in a sort of headlock and just pancake it.  No style, all force.  Try again, and this time I get the grip right but in taking the steer to the ground I rolled the steer over the top of my body and over my face.  Third and final time, get the grip right and take the cow to the ground while thrusting my hip into the cows shoulder and performing a sort of wrestling move called the ddp.  Good news is that JW and I are gonna enter one rodeo this summer and do this event for real.  I think we have a good shot at winning the $250 first prize.  Can't wait till Monday when I get to practice again, I think Erin will get a video of me bulldogging on Monday.   Off to Yellowstone to hike and have fun before the all the tourists descend on the park and make it a cluster-fuck on all the roadways.

Deconstructed Cheesecake with berries - the cheesecake is on the right, and that's the graham cracker crust running down the middle.

Chicken Coq Au Vin with Polenta and Ratatouille

Awesome day at the ranch.  I worked hard out side with the Ranch Manager setting out fence posts today.  Im sore and have a sunburn; but all is good.  But enough about that here are some more food pictures. Bon Apetit !

Living high on the hog

Well our chef is here.  Everyday we are treated to two special plated meals.

 Lets just say Erin is the happiest person on earth and getting really spoiled.  I do my best to make good things that are gluten free but lets face it, I'm no chef. Tony our chef makes Erin friendly food everyday!

 So today we had a great french onion soup for lunch with a fresh salad.  This evening was even better roasted herb chicken on a bed of polenta with asparagus covered in a roasted tomato beurre blanc.  Its amazing and I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to live with Erin after she is being so spoiled.

 I also found out from the Boss that it is my new job to photograph the food.  Im excited about my new job. I only hope I can make it look as good as it tastes.