Troy and I on our bikes in front of the stage.

Fun panoramic just before we started biking.

The funniest thing all day was these two guys. The guy on the back was cooking hotdogs and burgers on a mini grill and the guy in the front was biking and serving the condiments. You would bike up and hold out your hand to pick up your order while everyone was biking.

Tons of bikes were parked once the beer started flowing.

Jeff Newton is a friend of mine who also earns a living with photography. Unlike myself, he’s just a “Cool Dude”. I mean just look at his hair…

…see what I mean! How could anybody with hair like that not be cool?

Anyways…I just wanted to send a shout out to my friend who’s done a wonderful job in his business. He works with so many amazing clients from Nike, Ritz Carlton, ESPN Magazine and most recently Men’s Fitness. His recent magazine cover features Larry Fitzgerald from the AZ Cardinals.

Check out his latest stuff at http://www.jeffnewton.com/news-sept09.html

P.S. – Yours truly designed and created his website.

Today was the annual Mighty Mud Mania at Chaparral Park in Scottsdale, AZ. The entire event is about MUD and kids.
The main event was the obstacle course with a line over an hour long of kids waiting to race each other and get covered in mud.

The last dive into the mud pool was the best part to watch. They would come up entirely covered in mud.
One tip: If you plan on diving into a mud pool, be sure you have ear plugs in.

Here’s just half of the waiting line for the obstacle course.

There’s nothing like a nice mud bath in the morning.

They also had a huge soap slide down one of the hill in the park.

I wish they allowed adults to participate. It would have been a blast to try.

More photos and prints available in
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On my tour of Southern California I visited all my friends in Santa Barbara including the guys behind FotoCielo. They were having MokaDesign redesign their website so it was nice to talk through some of the ideas and proofs while I was there. I think that might be my only web design client that I’ve ever met with in person.

Ricky and Tim run the operation and Kiel is a photographers/office dude/nutrition expert.
(Tim, Kiel, Ricky, me)

They were super nice to take me out to my favorite sushi place, Sushi Arigato on State Street.

And I made a stop by David’s place although he seemed to sneak away with a girl before I could get a picture so here is the view from his house.

We headed down to Balboa Park and saw part of the Body Worlds exhibit. It’s so crazy to see the human body in that form.

There was also this very interesting entertainment group on the pathway. They were a bit creepy. It sort of reminded me of the singing ghosts from the Haunted House in Disneyland.

My brother Darren

Troy

Me

My brother and dad

Oh yeah!

San Diego and the bay

Joe and Teresa were busy teaching everyone about the art of making espresso drinks.

Jess Harter covered the story well on his blog.

A few quick facts:
-The capitol building was completed in 1888
-It was paid for with land, around 3 million acres, not dollars
-It stood 15 feet higher than the US Capitol building in 1888

Here is a friend I made in the garden

These door hinges were unique and apparently weigh over 7 pounds.

The house chamber

Just chillin’

Last weekend I attended my first Texas high school football game. Football is huge in Texas and especially in a small town like New Braunfels, where I’ve spent my summer. It was homecoming for New Braunfels High School and my friends Chris and Troy were in town from AZ so I figured it would be a fun evening.

It was a beautiful evening for a game.

The stands were packed.

There was of course some drama in the stands about who would be crowned King and Queen. It happened that the football player was crowned king but his girlfriend was only crowned princess and not queen. She’s in the black dress and as you can tell she wasn’t having a very good time and he knew not to look to happy either. Oh, the drama…
(UPDATE: I received a message from Katherine[in black] and she mentions that her boyfriend only ran for King to support her. Good man! Sorry you guys didn’t win as a couple.)

New Braunfels making a run in the 3rd quarter.

Chris and Troy had a good time hanging out.

Here’s the whole group.

Can you guess why I took this photo?

Ahh…the river walk. Its a great place to walk around and then grab dinner at.

Then the Alamo

After the Alamo we headed over to Hemisfair Park which I had never seen before. There were a number of old buildings in the park and the Tower of the Americas which had some cool fountains around it.

On our way back to my car we ran across a cool restaurant and a small village area.

We both thought this was a funny sign. Not tacky at all to have on the front door!