THE BLUR'S THE THING

Needed some photos for a trail-running story I wrote and some friends were kind enough to let me shoot them, as it were. (Thanks Carol Beebe, Polly Favinger--fresh off the Boston Marathon, Glenn Gervais, Paul Ricci, Scott Young, and John Clark.) Headed to Whatcom Falls Park, a place I haven't been for a while. Even though I've lived here almost 20 years, I'm still amazed at how beautiful it is.

Friends were very patient as I had them run back and forth, back and forth about a hundred times. And then look what I end up shooting, I bet they're thinking, a bunch of blurry shots and their backs. Oh, but it's so much more than that. Only John Clark was a temperamental diva about the whole thing but I kinda expected that from him.

Speaking of Clark, we rode the Donut Ride Saturday morning, a B'ham institution since the mid-'80s. Up to Ferndale, where a macho hill-climb battle ensued then on to Birch Bay, where John and I peeled off and headed to Lynden and points north. Rode that road along the border where the Minutemen were on patrol: a beautiful sunny day and they're sitting on their arses in their stuffy cars, on the lookout for Canadian geese sneaking into Sumas.

Riding through Ferndale, John broke a spoke on his back wheel. His second broken spoke on (two different sets of wheels) in about six months. His wast 10 miles were qwite the wobble. Nooksack River was very high (rain and snowmelt in the mountains) and near the Lummi Reservation, we had to pedal through about 4 inches of the Red River which was covering Ferndale Road.

Seventy-one miles in all. A great ride.