New Web Site

A new Web site is up for my book, The Farmall Dynasty. Peter Bodensteiner made a YouTube video of me talking about the book and how I came to write about the topic, and you'll also find a photo gallery of my images. Check it out!

Web Galleries

So I'm using SmugMug to allow people to buy prints of my images. I've had a lot of requests for this over the years, and when I discovered the service (which is very slick), I gave it a shot.

I have a few SmugMug galleries up right now. One is a few photos from my Slovenia adventure last fall, two others are old farm tractor photos, and one is a gallery of photographs for my upcoming book, Motorcycle Dream Garages.

The Dream Garages gallery has gone crazy. It had 5,000 hits in the first few weeks, which I thought was crazy. I posted a link to the gallery on two of my favorite Web sites, AdvRider (for motorcycle adventure nuts) and Garage Journal (for people into garages). I've had a few responses to those posts, and the numbers have gone stratospheric.

But the number of hits on the photo site is completely out-of-control. The site more than 40,000 hits in the last 24 hours, and shot up to more than 100,000 hits in the first week.

What gives????

Overhead in the Emergency Room at Midnight . . .

So I was sitting in the emergency room at just after midnight one night a few months ago (all I have to say about that is Joan will NEVER eat clams again), and two guys walked in. Both looked like contractors who went out for a drink after knocking off at 2 in the afternoon and stayed out three drinks too long. They wore jeans, work boots, and t-shirts. The 30ish men were jocular and appeared to have all limbs attached with no blood-spurting injuries, which is not what you'd expect from contractors who walk into the emergency room at midnight on Saturday night. One appeared to have a hole in the front of his pants, near his most private area.

They walked up to the young woman at the desk to fill out the admission form. The Hole-in-the-Pants Guy wrote a few lines on the form, presumably his name and such. And then I assume he came to the line entitled, "Reason for Visit."

He paused, and then turned to his buddy.

"I don't even want to write that down," he said.

His friend thought for a few seconds.

"Just put 'groin problem,'" he suggested.

Midnight emergency room visits on a Saturday night are never welcome, but this one seemed a whole lot more tolerable after I heard that line.

Book News

I have a new book out! The book came about mainly because my out-of-print book, International Harvester Photographic History has become an expensive item used. Plus I wrote WAY too much text for the original book—something like 40,000 words more than the word count specified by the publisher. It's a great text, and the few copies of the book available are selling for between $40 and $100.

So I have taken that admittedly overdone text and combined it with some great archival photographs as well as a few new ones to create The Farmall Dynasty. The book is an all-new design and layout, and it now includes the complete history of Farmall from after the Case-IH merger to today. I also updated the sidebars, wrote new leads, and edited the entire book.

Plus I'm the publisher, which is an exciting change after so many years working as an author and editor. Fifteen books sold in the first few days and I can hardly sit still I'm so charged up.

Purchase the book.

(Hint: A case of 50 of them would make a unique coffee table).

THE PBE

My brother-in-law Tom loves food adventures. He has flown to Memphis to become a barbecue judge, spent a weekend in Shreveport for Mudbug Madness (a crayfish festival), and has oysters flown to him for holidays.

Like my uncle Pat, his love of food makes him a great cook. Both men, now that I think about it, have a way with what Homer Simpson called "the magical animal." (Not THAT way, as far as I know.)

One of Tom's dreamed-up food adventures was to cook Homer's favorite animal luau-style. That's to say, digging a hole, making a big fire in it, pitching a whole pig (dead) on top, and covering the thing up for the day to let it cook.

Last February, Tom had conned myself and my family into doing the deed up at our family cabin in rural Wisconsin. After talking with Tom about the roast during a family dinner in February, I excitedly asked my sister, Wendy, what she thought about the Pig Burying Event. She wouldn't even acknowledge I spoke to her. She just kept walking out to the car without dignifying the comment with so much as a roll of her eyes. Clearly, this had been a topic that Tom had perhaps discussed beyond my sister's capacity for pretending to be interested.

Wendy's response matched that of most of the respectable women I know (an admittedly short list). My then-new girlfriend, Joan (one of the other respectable women I know) was equally unimpressed.

"Sounds DISGUSTING," she said.

That settled it. This was going to be a guy's weekend. A time to drink beer, play bocce, and eat lots of pig. Calendars were consulted and July 19 was the date.

I loved the idea, and began to try drum up some bodies to help eat a whole pig. When asked what I was doing that weekend, I would say, "I'm going to bury a pig and eat it. Want to come?" Surprisingly, very few accepted the invitation.

So I tried to better hone my patter.

"We are cooking a pig man-style. Would you like to join us?"

The typical response was a cheap shot about my abilities to pull off the feat. So I gave up trying to drum up supporters and had fun with it. I began to refer to the event as the Pig Burying Event.

A few weeks before the PBE, Tom sent out an e-mail describing all the things we'd need. The list included sheets of plywood, twine, chicken wire, banana leaves, apple cider, 20 head-sized round rocks, apples, garlic, salt, pepper, a meat thermometer that could buried, a whole pig (dead) and lots of beer. I bought the pig from my local butcher, uncle Pat dug the hole with his tractor, and Tom found the rest.

The day arrived, and Tom and my Dad were up at 5 am building the fire. I rolled out of bed, well, later than that but just in time for the rock-throwing event. Now that I think about it, most really enjoyable activities involve rocks. Seriously. The list of good things that involve rocks includes dirt biking, rock-skipping, mountain climbing, mountain biking, and beer-drinking (which is often done on rock ledges, outcroppings, crushed rock driveways, and so on). Well, maybe I'm reaching on that. But rocks are good fun, of that I'm sure.

Anyway.

Before you can throw the rocks in the fire, it has to be really really really hot. Like hotter than the sun (I think). We didn't have a thermometer, so once the fire appeared to have reached solar power, we threw the rocks in. With gusto. In fact, we threw all the rocks in the pit just for good measure.

The fire went out.

Lots of thinking and discussion ensued. Or at least some did. After about 15 seconds of careful consideration, we took all the rocks out of the fire pit. With shovels. And then with our hands. The fire had not been quite solar-hot. More like stove-top hot. Or even slightly lukewarm-hot.

We restoked the fire and got it really really hot, and put the rocks in about 20 minutes later. This time, we put them on the EDGE of the flames and the fire kept burning.

According to what we knew, the rocks needed to become white-hot. Our method got them maybe gray-hot. But we had hot rocks, a dead pig, and lots of beer. How could we go wrong?

While the rocks heated, the pig was prepped. It was rubbed with salt. Garlic cloves were inserted into cuts in the skin, and the carcass was lined with banana leaves. A temperature probe was inserted in the rear haunch, with the lead left loose to be attached after the pig was buried. Hot rocks were carefully placed inside the carcass, which was then closed up and wrapped in apple cider-soaked burlap. The final step was to wrap the pig in chicken wire, which is used to hold it together and put it in and lift it out of the pit.

Next a sheet of tin was placed over the smoldering fire and hot rocks. Another sheet of tin goes over that, and then a piece of fiber board goes on top of that. We covered the fiber board with dirt, and then the hard work began.

We had to set up an awning, drag out lawn chairs, and find the bocce set. This wasn't easy, believe me. The awning came in a tiny little box and had maybe 7 million parts to put together. We had to get my aunt Kay to help and after lots of thinking and reconfiguring, the awning was up and looked like a saggier version of the picture on the box it came in.

Finding the bocce set was another challenge that led to some panic. You can't serve pork without bocce. It's un-American, or at least not much fun. We found the bocce set buried underneath Christmas decorations in my uncle's cabin.

We prevailed. Meaning we opened beers.

Every hour or so, we'd check the temperature of the meat and then break to play bocce, drink beer, or maybe both. The temperature was monitored carefully and my Dad proved that math teachers never truly retire by recording the temperatures and then drawing a graph showing the projected temperature of the pig at 6 pm.

In the end, the gray-hot rocks proved to be not quite enough heat. We were shooting for a final temp of 170 or so, and only reached the high 150s. That was enough to kill botulism and any other dangerous things that live in dead pigs, or so we surmised. Plus it was late and we had 20 people to feed.

We didn't expect that many, but my friend Sam had flown in a group of cleanly scrubbed college-age rowers to stay at his Dad's cabin (which is a short potato cannon shot away from my family's cabin). Why they were there is too complex to explain, suffice it to say that Sam is always dragging people who should know better to redneck places. And trying to get them to do shots with him down at the tavern.

He's also the guy who forced his wife to come up with an entirely new guest list for their New Year's Eve party by drinking an entire bottle of Maker's Mark and then explaining to the deacon's wife the meaning of the word "MILF."

So these college kids had no idea what they were in for. But by the time we were unveiling the pig, they were getting an idea.

Anyway, we carried the pig up to the garage, cut off the chicken wire, and unwrapped it. The smells were magical enough to do justice to Homer's favorite animal. The skin was very, ummm, white and not terribly appetizing, but the meat underneath was succulent.

Gloves were donned, and the process of stripping the meat off the pig began. Actually, feeding the masses also began, as the entire crew crowded around the pig and began eating pieces of the animal. People were stuffing giant slabs of pork into their mouthes, feeding like a wolf pack on a fresh kill. It was the most carnivorous experience of my life (with the possible exception of eating a freshly-grilled freshly-killed cow in Bolivia, which I'm still convinced was some kind of skinny mule because it was so lean and it tasted like ass so it doesn't count).

Pat came up with the idea of just passing out plates and letting people serve themselves, which we did, and 20 hungry people were fed with enough left over to feed most of the township (maybe another 25 people--it's a pretty remote township).

Noone got botulism or died, the college kids didn't appear permanently scarred by the event, and we drank all the beer.

Success!

Plumbing at 9 pm is a bad idea . . .

Trust me on this. Don't do plumbing in the evening. It's a Bad Idea. One of those Bad Ideas like Running With Scissors and Taking Explosives on the Plane.

How do I know this? Funny you should ask. You see, I'm very excited about working on my little house. I've been thinking about doing this stuff for years. And now I'm finally making this little place right. I don't even care that I'm going to sell it. The act in and of itself is a good thing. Like finally getting in shape, eating right, jumping out of an airplane, or doing whatever it is you've been wanting to do for a long time and just didn't quite find the time.

So I've spent all day working on deadlines. I made a list this morning of what needed to be done to keep the Editors at bay. The list looked very doable, like I could finish it by 2 pm. All my lists look doable, now that I think of it.

Finishing the list took longer than expected, partially because I found this cool new software and started correcting photos that I shot with my 15mm lens and looked like I shot them through a funhouse mirror. Which was cool, even though in the back of my mind I was thinking about getting to work on my basement. I was particularly excited to move some plumbing and make the laundry area decent instead of so disgusting it made you want to throw up. I've been hating that laundry area for EIGHT years and tonight was the night to fix it. So I really wanted to get my work done.

Somehow surprisingly it was 7 pm by the time I finished my 2 pm list. And then Craig, my neighbor stopped by. I made him help me move the dryer and washer and then he mumbled something about having to go clean his house and bolted. He could tell I was going to work on that gross basement. I don't blame him.

So at 7:30 I started the clean-up. My plan was to clean, pour concrete, and plumb. And I DID clean. It was pretty gross down there. I'm covered in cobwebs. The floor was FILTHY. I swept it and had a coughing fit.

Then I put all the debris in a garbage bag but couldn't find my contractor bags so I used the Super Steel ones which are not strong. At all.

And when I went to carry that bag full of stuff from the floor like dust, dirt, pens, cat toys, splinters from 2x4s, and some little chunks of concrete, guess what happened? Yeah, and it did while I was halfway up the stairs.

So I cleaned that up and went and found my contractor bags and bagged all that stuff up again. Took it out to the curb for the garbage man to deal with tomorrow (and probably overcharge me for that).

After THAT, I was looking at my plumbing lines and thinking about how badly I wanted to move them so the washer sat nicely. I couldn't stand it--I really wanted that washer moved, even if I only used it three times before someone else bought the house.

I had the shut-off valves. I had a hacksaw. All I had to do was drain the water out of the system, cut the pipes, and install the valves.

You see, whoever plumbed the washer didn't put in any shut-off valves. The only way to shut off the water to the washer is to shut off the water to the whole house. You see where this is headed . . .

So I drained the water and took my hacksaw and cut off the cold water pipe. Next step--install the shut-off valves. They were compression valves, meaning you just slid the nut and the collar over the pipe and tighten them up. Easy as pie.

Well, the collar and the nut didn't fit. They were too loose. I had the wrong size valves.

Happily, Menard's is open until 10. So I went down there to get the right parts.

I went to the plumbing section looking for valves that fit over my pipe. I even cut off a piece of it so I would know if I had the right valve.

And it took 30 minutes and three sales people, but I did get the right valves. And bought a laundry tub, t-fittings, and some copper pipe as well. AND a pipe cutter.

So I came home and installed the shut-off valve, which took like 20 seconds. I turned the water on and it didn't even leak.

Amazing.

And it was only 9:30. I didn't want to quit. So I mixed some concrete. The funny thing is, when I turned the water on the faucet in the basement, water sprayed out of the cut-off tube. The tube was pointing directly at my head, as luck would have it.

And the concrete, which had been sitting in my basement since, oh, 2004, had turned into concrete. What I mean to say is it was no longer the powdered stuff. It was the real stuff.

Which didn't stop me from trying to mix it with water and pour it.

The concrete is now out in my back yard, and I'm upstairs drinking beer and contemplating what I've learned tonight. Which is that plumbing at 9 pm is a bad idea.

The Home Front

I have been working on things other than my usual gig of writing about and photographing garages, motorcycles, and other guy-stuff (which is what an editor I met with at the ASJA conference dubbed my niche, "Oh," she said as her eyes glazed over disappointedly, "You write about guy stuff").

Right now, the task in front of me is getting my little home in Oakdale up to snuff. So I'm painting, landscaping, and doing all the other things you tell yourself you are going to do when you buy a house and never do until you are thinking about selling the place.

So I'm chronicling that with what I'm calling my Home Improvement Photojournal. I'll be posting progress on the house regularly throughout the process, and you can even subscribe via RSS feed if you go here. And, yes, this also means that friends, family, and neighbors can take this as a good reason to avoid visits (as they are likely as not to end helping me move, paint, or build something) OR they can take into the account the fact that I have about three cases of beer chilling in my garage fridge that I'll happily part with in exchange for a few minutes of labor.

This process began when I bought this little 1953-built house in 2000, thinking I would remodel the house in order to take advantage of a beautiful lot. I did some work over eight years, painting a couple of rooms, adding some new flooring, and doing some remodeling that I thought was lovely but was in fact, well, NOT. And time slipped away, as I have a way of finding better things to do than remodel, like foreign travel assignments, riding motorcycles, building a garage BIGGER than my house, rambling blogs, racquetball matches, nights out on the town with friends, or (when things get really desperate) watching episode after episode of Firefly or old Sanford and Son reruns. So now I'm busting my butt on the place. Such is life!

Kelowna, British Columbia

I just returned from a trip out west that culminated in a shoot for my upcoming book, Motorcycle Dream Garages. I found the garage on my friend Sam Martin's Manspace book blog, and discovered an amazing garage as well as a gorgeous corner of the world.


The garage is the creation of Geby Wager, the developer behind Woodland Hills who also happens to be a gearhead and all-around regular guy. His homes feature incredible views, amazing outdoor spaces, and optional gearhead garages that are out of this world.

Geby and his homes are in Kelowna, British Columbia, which is Canada’s premier wine country. Think of it as Napa Valley combined with Lake Tahoe. The area has hundreds of wineries located on the 92-mile-long Lake Okanagon, about 3 hours north and east of Vancouver. The lake has terrific beaches, and the mountains above the lake have great skiing in the winter and incredible mountain biking, hiking and fishing in the summer.


One of Kelowna’s residents happens to be custom motorcycle builder Roger Goldhammer, and he brought out a couple of his stunning creations for the shoot. Goldhammer’s bikes are a rare combination of function and style, and his latest creation just returned from winning the world championships. The supercharged, fuel-injected bike also set a land speed record at Bonneville last fall. Roger couldn't have been more gracious and modest, by the way.

In addition to the Goldhammer bikes, a number of other local riders brought customs and sport bikes out as well. Everyone pitched in to help move bikes, set up the garage, and arrange lighting for the shoot. Honestly, I couldn't have made the images without a ton of help, and thanks are due to everyone who showed up. Extra kudos go to the guys who hauled in bikes, and to Stefanie Giddens and Patti Cook from Woodland Hills, as well as my lighting assistant, Kathrine Gountas.

Oh, and Geby also runs Creative Motorsports, a company that builds custom-built trucks that are $100,000 independently-suspended engineering marvels capable of hard-core rock climbing as well as getting the groceries. And (of course) the first one of these Geby built won Four-Wheeler magazine's Top Truck Challenge in 1997.

Visiting Kelowna was an entirely surreal experience, as I simply didn't know much about the area and found a stunningly beautiful place populated by modest people doing incredible things.

I'll be back!

Coffee and Radio Daze

It's been a while since I posted, so I'm taking a few minutes to write. I'm working at my favorite coffee shop in St. Paul, The Black Dog Café. It’s a funky contrast to the younger, hipper Spyhouse Coffee shop I was in yesterday.

As I sat down today, I was happily struck by the fact that it takes very little for my business to come with me these days. Wireless, a power outlet, and coffee do the trick. Add a chocolate and macadamia nut cookie and you have found freelancer Nirvana.

But I digress.

The point is an update. What’s happening with me? Well, I’m working like a dog on my house. A lot is happening there, mainly because my neighbor, Jake, is a hard-working kid looking to make a buck to keep his hot-rod Civic on the road. The Klancher pad is looking up!

On the wrting front, things are happening as well. I’ve been doing radio interviews for How To Build Your Dream Garage, and had a good time talking garages with Joe Prin at 580am in Idaho and Bob Long at Motor Trend Radio. You can find the Motor Trend Radio podcast on iTunes, by the way. The episode before mine features a friend of mine, Hollywood car builder and inventor Eddie Paul. Check it out if you get a chance.

I have an interview with Bob Strong aka Handyman Bob on his show Around the House coming up on Saturday, July 26 at 1:00 p.m. PST.

I have a short (VERY short) piece and a small photo that ran in Men’s Journal this month. Check out page 34. Working with them was a pleasure—they are professional, hard-working and pay well and promptly.

On a fun note, my friend Stephen Regenold (The Gear Junkie) did a piece entitled, The World’s Scariest Roads for Travel and Leisure.com, and wrote about my adventures riding the Wilderness Road in the Bolivian Amazon and Brazil's Graciosa Trail.

The Moon Over Galveston

I returned to Galveston for the first time since college, and it was a great break. This photo is of one of the breakwaters under a nearly full moon. The light on the rocks was cast by the streetlights and neon on the strip.

Back to deadlines . . . enjoy the pic!

The Trucks of Austin

Texas is all about trucks. Even in the liberal oasis that is Austin, everyone's driving one, and the best carry the patina of decades of hard work. I photographed a few of them while in Austin, went for a ride in a Pinzgauer four-wheel-drive that was used by the Swiss Army (what exactly do Swiss military people do, anyway?), and drove a 1948 Ford 1-ton around a back pasture north of Dallas. So I thought a few photos might be fun for the blog.

Some of these were trucks I found on the block while walking the dog, while others are old workhorses abandoned in the back yards of the owners of tractors I was photographing for my calendars.

A favorite of mine was the Waterloo Brewing Truck, which Joan and Bosco found just down the block. The owner's son was washing it one day as we walked past, and I stopped just long enough to find out the owner used to run the Waterloo Brewery, and the truck served time delivering beer around Austin. The gas tank consisted of a plastic can and a hose. The only drawback? That gem of a truck wasn't for sale!

Spring Skiing, Mushroom Steak and a New Web Site!

Yikes, I'm a little behind on the blog. Busy times for yours truly. I did manage to get a new Web site up and running. The tech challenges were nearly beyond my skills, simply because finding settings on some of the hosting sites is a bit tricky. And there was a bit of a panic when I typed in Leeklancher.com--a domain I thought I had purchased--and found what looked to be a British Leek retailer. All turned out well, and I have a servicable site up and running. Check it out at Leeklancher.com.

I also have an entry I meant to post but kept getting sidetracked by deadlines and other projects that actually pay the bills. Anyway, I traveled down to Austin early this month. The day before I left, the Minneapolis-St. Paul area was hit with about five inches of heavy, wet snow. I woke up bright and early the morning I was supposed to leave and went out for a sunrise ski down at Lake Elmo State Park not far from my house. It was beautiful and a bit of a Aldo Leopold morning, as geese, pheasant, cranes, and ducks kept me company on the 5-mile ski.

I had a business meeting that morning, and then was off to the airport. That night, I was greeted in Austin by a steak dinner out on Joan's porch. The weather was a balmy 70 degrees--a perfect night to sit out among the now very-green and summery-to-a-northerner Texas weather! And the steak was the Best Steak on Earth (seriously).

Stay tuned for my take on the ups and downs of working the freelance gig 1,000 miles from my office, as well as a tour of Texas trucks!

Handcrafted Places

I've been writing a narrative book with Michael Kranefuss about his career in racing. I'm learning the magnitude of the challenge of creating a good biography, an enjoyable task that also happens to be a helluva lot of work.

The cool news last week is my dad finished a desk he built for me. We picked out plans online, and Dad went to town putting it together. He's become quite a craftsman, and the results are gorgeous. He's also incredibly productive--we bought the plans about six weeks ago, and he has it complete! Don't get in the way when my old man is on a project--things happen quickly!

One of the joys of the freelance life is spending my days working on a desk that was made with my father's hands. Some days, it's the simple things that make working as an independent contractor worthwhile.

A Cold Day's Inspiration

Well, it's been cold and clear here the past few days, and the weather reminded me of cold night spent sleeping in a yurt on a mountain pass above Leadville, Colorado this past December.

I decided to celebrate the end of the year by getting the hell out of dodge and going to Colorado. My good friend Peter Peil and I booked a yurt from Leadville Backcountry in late December. This would be my first trip to Colorado all year long, which is some kind of record as I usually make it out there at least twice a year!


This turned out to be a great decision for a number of reasons. I spent a great afternoon hanging out with Mike, an old friend from MBI who I hadn't seen in much too long, and my research assistant, Kathy, met me at Mike's so we could head up to Leadville and then trek to the hut.

We drove to Leadville and met Peter Peil, a good friend of mine who just happens to be from the same area in Wisconsin and also happens to share my love of the outdoors and crazy motorcycle vacations. The three of us set off to go up to the hut in bright sun with packs full of food, sleeping bags, and wine on our backs.

The hike up to the hut is about six miles, plenty of that running straight up the hill. I brought snow shoes, while Peter and Kathy skied. The snow was packed hard, and my snow shoes quickly came off and I walked up in hiking boots. I have to admit, I had forgotten how much work it is carrying a 30-pound (light, I know) pack up a snowy mountain trail, and I was struggling for the first couple of miles.

But I settled in, and was boosted by the fact that Peter and Kathy are great outdoors companions--both are very upbeat people who like to laugh and joke around.

The second half of the hike is the steepest, and was the most difficult part of the day. We were all moving slowly but steadily . . . well, Pete and I were, while Kathy ran up ahead!

Near the top, you come to a little broken-down cabin that breaks out into the pass. Kathy had been going ahead of Pete and I, and was sitting under the one tree by the cabin and shared her frozen rock-solid Snicker's bar with us. We only had a 1/3-mile left to go, and all were up and optimistic. That last 1/3 mile was brutal, as the snow was deep, the path is very steep, and the yurts are out in the open so the wind is just vicious.

The real temperature, by the way, was -18, and the wind had to be blowing at better than 20 mph. I don't think I want to know what the wind chill was!

It took a long 30-40 minutes to climb that last 1/3 mile and we were exhausted when we got in. We made a fire inside the yurt, as it was COLD in there (zero as I recall). We huddled around the woodstove in our little yurt, took off wet clothes, and drank hot tea. It took about two hours for the yurt to warm up to 50 degrees or so, and then we made supper, told stories, and drank all of the wine.

The next morning we had to go back down the mountain, and it was a long, hard trek. The wind was blowing very hard, and snow was coming down--it was a blizzard! The first section was all downhill and no problem, but the last section had a very long gradual uphill that was rugged. I was wiped out when we made the car, and we were pretty glad to go back to Peter's house. We went out for burgers and then watched a movie (or Peter and Kathy watched a movie--I fell asleep!).

That wasn't the end of the Colorado adventure. I spent New Year's Eve seeing an old friend, Joan, who was staying with friends in a condo at the Keystone ski area.

The blizzard we walked through to get down off the mountain was part of a huge storm that hammered Colorado, and by the time we had settled in and were watching our movie at Pete's place, Interstate 70 was closed! We were concerned we wouldn't be able to make it over to Keystone, but fate was good to us and the ONLY roads open near Leadville were a short piece of I-70 and Hwy 91. Those two roads led to Keystone. We made it there. When we exited off 70 at Silverthorne, the freeway was closed from traffic going further and a long line of cars were sitting there, waiting for the interstate to open up again.

Joan had just come off the hill when we arrived, and it was COLD on the hill. We went back out and the skiing was still a little cold but the lift lines were short and it was awesome skiing. Conditions were nearly perfect on New Year's Day. In fact, New Year's Day was a Perfect Day in general, and included skiing, swimming, good wine, and a great fondue meal at the top of Keystone (you have to ride two gondolas to get up to the restaurant).

I was reminded how much I love Colorado by the trip, and can't wait to get back out there!

On the Bookshelves Soon

Well, I've been busy the past few months and have been bad about posting, so I'm catching things up to get back on my regular schedule of semi-monthly posts about my journey into the freelance world.

I've been buried in more office work than travel, and I completed two books calendars during this past four months. I'll schedule a little more carefully next year--trust me on this point.

The first is How to Build a Dream Garage (MBI, June 2008) which came about because I built the garage office I'm sitting in this morning back in 2004. When I do a project of just about any kind, I like to read about it (surprise, surprise), and I couldn't find a book that outlined the practical challenges you face when contracting and building a garage. I felt a book that did that would be worthwhile, and the guys at MBI agreed, so this book resulted. One of the best features came naturally--I'm a cheapskate, and the book has lots of tips and step-by-step projects readers can do to save some dough. Editor Dennis Pernu, graphic designer Anne Ulku, and layout wizard Chris Fayers did a great job making the book read well and look great. Watch for it in June.

The second is a little photographic brick, Farm Tractor Classics (MBI, September 2008), which is a new book package for MBI that is a small trim-size 400-page package that is a great showcase for the photography in the book (my own as well as others). Editor and ex-work-wife Leah Noel did a nice job with the editing, and I'll be seeing the layout for that in the next few weeks. The best part of that process was digging into history, and trying to work just a few tidbits of agricultural history into a book for farm tractor fans.

The calendars are Vintage Farm Tractors 2009 and Farmall Tractors 2009. Photographing these calendars is always a challenge that I enjoy, and this year's batch was no exception. Highlights include the Lyle Johnson night shoot mentioned previously in my blog; another evening shoot with Ranier's John Coffee in which we lit his Cub with table lamps; Joe Hickman's photogenic barn cat which couldn't seem to stay out of a shoot in southern Minnesota (and yes, made the calendar); discovering that Dave Preuhs' love of rare early 1900s Hart-Parrs accidentally set up he and his wife with a retirement fund; and photographing the collection of Dave Lulich, the world's highest-energy shop teacher (he does a half-dozen restorations a year in his "spare" time). I also learned about the game of buying old iron overseas from Mike Schmudlach and spent an early morning laughing and swapping stories about life, politics, and our mutual friend Roger Welsch with outgoing businessman turned part-time farmer Verne Houlobek.

Some days, I'm amazed I actually get paid to do this job.