Earlier this year (probably March or so), I was stalking Raleigh news (as usual) and noticed that some friends were putting on a music festival. Not like our standard NC music festivals, which involve shitty U2 cover bands as headliners. This was a legitimate music festival, with good, independent, relevant bands. It was to be legitimately awesome. So, naturally, I impulse-bought a $120 VIP ticket.

I guess I’d be going to NC in September.

Months later, everything came together and I was packing my bags to spend an entire ten (!) days in North Carolina. It turns out that The Independent (the publication who was putting this whole thing on) needed some press photographers, and I jumped at the chance. I sold my old VIP ticket (to the much deserving Kelly Reid) and secured my press pass. I was ready to go.

But then things got complicated.

Complication #1: San Bruno explodes.

Thursday night. I’m finishing up with preparations before Aaron takes me to the airport. I’m in the kitchen when I hear… “Uhhh, Helena? I think we may have a problem.”

I come into my room to see Aaron watching the news. Apparently San Bruno’s on fire.

[photocredit: Scott Fong]

I feel like most of you have caught wind (no pun intended) of the news as it since went national, but apparently a giant PG&E pipe exploded underneath San Bruno, setting the neighborhood on fire. Total unworldly catastrophe. I should mention that San Bruno is right next to the airport that I’m supposed to be flying out of in four hours.

We continue to watch the news to see what we should do, and see that the Highway 280 (what we would use to get to the airport) is completely shut down. That puts a bit of a damper on our plans. Hm.

After a couple of hours, we decide to take the scenic route down the 101 to the airport, and surprisingly, we arrived quickly with not an obstacle in our way. We gazed at the burning mountain passing by us as we approached the airport.

Aaron drops me off and we say our goodbyes. I was in.

Obstacle 2: The plane doesn’t work.

I quickly get through security and arrive at my gate with plenty of time before my flight. I’m taking the redeye – I’m to leave SFO at approximately 12:30, and will arrive in Raleigh before noon, just in time to catch all of the Hopscotch day parties, and see lots of old friends I haven’t seen in ages, including the Hometapes crew, who I toured with last summer and haven’t seen since, and who happen to be hosting a 7-hour day party with my favorite bands, people, PopTarts and nachos. Needless to say, I was looking forward to it.

We board the plane, I check my bag at the door (if you haven’t tried it yet, don’t check your bags with Delta! You can just check it at the plane, and save yourself $25), and get settled. I casually glance at the checked bag receipt. Flight 666.

We sit. And we sit. And we sit. We sit for like an hour. Finally, the captain comes on at 1:15 or so and tells us that the left engine is broken, but they’re trying to see if they can “fix it real quick before we take off.” This feels good.

Around 1:30 the captain tells us it’s still broken, but they’re continuing to hack at it. We continue to sit. The engine is clearly shot but we’re just going to sit in it for a while anyway. Maybe it’ll work if we sit in it long enough.

Finally around 2 am, the captain tells us that our flight is in fact cancelled, and we’re all to head back to the front gate to see if we can be rescheduled for another flight tomorrow. I now miss a full day of shooting, as well as seeing all of my friends at the coolest day-party-friend-reunion I could possibly imagine. Fantastic.

Let me tell you, I have a history of exceptionally bad experiences with Delta. Well, maybe they’re not exceptional, because it seems like everyone hates Delta. If you used to be on my old travel-adventure email list, you may remember one of my previous Delta nightmare stories, which actually resulted in me getting a $400 voucher which I used on a vacation to San Francisco which caused me to fall in love with the city and eventually move here.

Anyway.

Delta semi-reschedules me for a 6 am flight. I ask the teller if I’m guaranteed a spot on this flight, because I HAVE to get to Raleigh for a job tomorrow. He says yes and gives me a $12 food voucher for my troubles. THANK YOU DELTA. I walk away, checking my ticket. I’m on the flight’s waiting list. This is all going wonderfully.

So now it’s 2:30, and I’m stuck inside my own airport. What do I do now? I give Aaron a call, despite the fact that there’s nothing he can do about it. Apparently he thought I was the alarm clock, because he “snoozed” me twice. I call my mom, because at this point I’m delirious and apparently don’t mind being a late-night calling asshole, but she didn’t answer either.

Man, it’s a pretty awful feeling being stuck in an airport overnight. You sort of feel homeless. Since security was closed until the morning, I couldn’t even go into the gates to sleep. I trudged into a tiny food court at the front of the airport and settled into a booth to sleep.

[this is the view from my regal food court bed.]

My mom calls me a half-hour into my nap to tell me that she was already expecting this to happen, as her horoscope told me that my flight would have complications and that it was all happening for a good reason. Susan Miller‘s on point ya’ll, just sayin’.

Fast forward to 6 am. My name is finally called as the last one on the waiting list as I gobble my shitty twelve-dollar breakfast panini, compliments of Delta. I hop on my flight, finally en route to North Cack.

I arrive around 5 pm. My mom and Barry Barrington (that is her boyfriend and yes that is his name) pick me up and take me home to rest for about 15 minutes. I try to make myself look slightly less homeless, then head straight downtown to begin shooting. I’m feeling a bit strange, having only physically laid down and half-slept for one hour in two days.

Hopscotch night one was rad. I saw approximately one million people I haven’t seen in nine months. I saw lots of incredible bands. I got to spend time with my best friends. Hopscotch night two was about the same, and I was fortunately a bit more rested. I won’t get into much more detail, mostly because I was in zombie mode and don’t remember much of it, but here are some photos from the weekend.

Broken Social Scene

Americans In France

Panda Bear

Atlas Sound (my favorite performance of the night)

Raekwon

The Rosebuds

Sharon Van Etten

Bear In Heaven

Spontaneous appearance by Helping Hands Marching Band during Public Enemy

Megafaun

No Age

The Love Language

NC adventures part 2 to come. END!

Raleigh phase 2 was all that I love about Raleigh. My friends make adventure.

This particular adventure was centered around the birthday of my dear friend Tim Lytvinenko. If you kept up with my blogs this summer, you know that Tim toured the country with me with Bowerbirds + Megafaun, and he takes care of Raleigh for me while I’m in California. He’s a kickass web developer and is doing some incredible work with Luceo Images (who happen to be showing in NYC right now – go find them if you’re in the area). You should check them out.

Anyway. For Tim’s birthday:

- A big group of compadres gathered at Tim’s for an epic curry feast, courtesy of his family.
- We kicked around a large ball containing ice cream ingredients until ice cream was formed. Flavors: avocado and Guinness. Yum.
- One full, we all sat down and began a white elephant gift exchange of sorts – the only real difference being that, instead of people picking gifts, ladies were picking men.
- Once men were drawn/selected, the pairs were matched up and handcuffed together. Yes, you read that right.
- All of us, once handcuffed (there must have been at least a dozen pairs), headed to the bus stop to be shipped to the one and only Glenwood South to do what we never do… go dancing on Glenwood South. Destination #1 = The Pourch. (punny, yes.)
- We quickly dominated the club, dancing in attached pairs, sometimes getting creative and find ways to interlock multiple cuffed groups of people into one giant dancing human mass.
- It wasn’t long until we all got kicked out. No big reason… just for being handcuffed.
- We then found the R-Line, which toted us to our favorite downtown neighborhood, where we only had time to run to Landmark and Busy Bee, where we danced, still handcuffed, til the bars closed. People began finding ways to disconnect, but Chad and I were determined to be the clustercuffs winners and stay hooked together until approximately 3 AM. We deemed ourselves winners until Logan and Stefanie arrived and were in fact handcuffed the longest. Assholes.
- Then we all danced around Tim’s living room until 6 in the morning.

Normal birthdays FTW!

Ok, here are some photos. I didn’t bring my camera downtown, as it’s not really possible to take photos while handcuffed… you’ll just have to imagine the chaos for yourself.

Raleigh adventures, I love you. Please don’t ever change.

As you may have inferred from my New Year’s post and wedding post, I’m in NC. As per usual, I’ve taken my travel time to extremes and am hopping around the east coast for a MONTH.

It’s cold here. I have realized how ridiculously spoiled I have become living in SF. I can function completely without a car, I don’t wear pants half of the time because it’s between 50-80 degrees all year, and coffee is as thick as espresso. Oh, and the surplus of cornerstores with awesome juice selections. And the lack of jesus billboards and general perceptions of “weird.”

I can work via le internets, so I can still maintain my projects from wherever, which is really nice. It will be nice to get back to the new SF homeland though, as while most of my projects are online, they’re very locally-intensive, and you can’t do much local bay-area work from the east coast. Well, you can, but it just doesn’t feel right. I’m ready to see real faces instead of email addresses and twitter names.

There are plenty of real Raleigh faces to bide my time, though.

I’ve just been doing what I usually do in Raleigh. Work on projects in Helio’s or Morning Times all day, then when I become restless, begin wandering around downtown, seeing and catching up with familiar faces on every corner, grabbing Lebanese food at Sitti, BBQ + Aventinus at Raleigh Times, local bands + Big Boss at Tir Na Nog, ginger ale at Foundation, greyhounds at Landmark, the sting at Busy Bee… inevitably getting into adventures that last me through the rest of the night. Wake up on friend’s couch, get up and do it all over again.

Note: I bought my entire family Luchador wrestling masks for Christmas. They happened to make their way around Raleigh before I wrapped them.

END!

After awaking from my 15-hour couch nap, I was onward to Phase 3 of my trip: hitching a ride to my hometown of New Bern, NC.

My brother was off work for the night and offered to tote me. He would arrive at 1:00. This would all be great, if my belongings weren’t strewn all over Raleigh.

Most of my luggage was stored at friend Sam’s house, which wasn’t of much use, as I hadn’t actually stayed there at all during this trip. As many of you know, planning while traveling isn’t really my thing.

It would be easy to swing by and pick up my stuff, but unfortunately, Sam was nowhere to be found. So Logan and I decided to go search the establishment most likely to find her in – The Busy Bee. I decided to call brother Kane and friend Erika over to meet us for brunch in the meantime.

We found Sam, and we found brunch. I got a key, and we were on our way to find my luggage.

Upon arrival, I spend a good five minutes trying to get in the front door of her apartment with the key she had provided me, but to no avail.

I try and try and try. Kane asks me if I am sure I have the right door. I tell him he is being silly.

I was definitely at the wrong apartment. I’m sure the crowd of people cooking out outside were a bit confused to see me try to break into two adjacent apartments, successfully entering the second one. I hastily grabbed my luggage and we were on our way.

After two hours of observing eastern Carolina’s brilliantly designed storefronts and billboards, we finally arrived in the homeland to find my mother and my baby catchild, Raphael, waiting for us.

Raphael was my partner in crime in Raleigh. He was my only roommate, and we were serious compadres. I gave him to Kane to babysit while I toured the country this summer, and he soon ended up with my mom in New Bern. I had all plans to fly him over to California upon my settling in, but as I predicted, my mother has become quite infatuated with him and is not so ready to give him up. For now, it is probably for the best, as I will probably be touring and traveling quite a bit in the near future… but I do miss him so so much. He is my precious white monstrous yeti cat child.

Raph apparently has a new fun habit of climbing onto the outside edge of the second-story patio, just for shits and giggles. I’m not entirely sure how he hasn’t died yet. But there’s not much you can do other than just let him do it.

Anyway. Enough about the cat.

My one night in New Bern was great. The three of us ate soup, sat on the porch, played fetch with Raph, and nerded out on our computers together until the wee hours of the morning.

The next day I spent my last New Bern meal at none other than Carolina Bagel (yet to find bagels that compare, even in San Francisco), then took a final walk around downtown with the family, shooting some glamour shots here and there. I’m getting them to work on their sweet model poses while I’m gone. All of us will be pros by Christmas.

(PC: Annette Stone)

Goodbye, North Carolina. I love you, but west coast is calling.

END!

The primary reason I came back to Raleigh so soon, other than to catch up with old friends by wandering the streets of my hometown neighborhood (as I accomplished in my last post), was a wedding.

My close friends Bill and Jessica are getting married. I met Bill while packing a giant van full of instruments, which we were to drive around the country in for the month immediately following. I toured with his band, American Aquarium, for a good portion of 2007 and some of 2008. I can’t even begin to cover the ridiculous adventures we’ve been through together (though I did post some old tour logs on the blog here and here). I met Jessica briefly during that tour, and we became good friends soon after. They have been dating since high school, and it was no surprise to me that they decided to tie the knot. Not one of those… we’ve-been-together-long-enough-so-we-might-as-well kind of things. They really dig each other. It’s pretty neat.

Anyway. I was a bridesmaid for this thing. The only bridesmaid that happens to live not only outside of the greater Raleigh area, but on the opposite side of the country. I was totally out of the loop as far as everything that I needed to do and how this all was going down. But I winged it.

Winging it = Me being the only bridesmaid with black shoes (the rest were wearing red with their red dresses… how logical), black nail polish, and hair down. West coast bridesmaid represent!

The wedding was great. I saw so many old friends, and met some new ones. I ate lots of glorious buffet food and danced around the top of the Clarion, Raleigh’s signature cylindrical hotel with a bar at the top.

I didn’t take many photos, as I was a bridesmaid, not the photographer. But I managed to snag a few.

I definitely planned on going out with the wedding crowd post-reception, but I ended up passing out instantly upon Logan’s couch and waking up 15 hours later.

END!

Greetings from North Carolina. I write to you as I wait patiently for 4:30 AM, the time I should awake and begin preparing to head to the airport. I have just finished up a week in my glorious home state.

I arrived at approximately 9:49 AM Thursday morning. I had expected ample sleeping time on my red-eye flight, but the fact that I was situated in the middle seat prevented that. And with the token obese-man-with-gas-problem to my left, I was at the optimum level of contentment, I assure you.

Raleigh couldn’t come soon enough. My compadre Sam was kind enough to tote me downtown, and I had things to do.

Day 1: Day of Raleigh clichés.

Objective: Basically do everything I would normally do in my typical Raleigh day prior to moving.

Tasks:
- Do work at Morning Times. Probably buy an iced soy chai latte with a shot of espresso. Maybe a apple brie sandwich as well.
- Go to Sitti (bar where I worked when I lived in Raleigh). Receive back massage from Ken the bartender. Order to-go food (likely a goat cheese and orange salad, chicken kabob, hummus, maybe okra stew, bread and bread and bread) minutes before dinner hours to have access to lunch prices.
- Take to-go food to Blue Martini (other bar where I worked when I lived in Raleigh). Set up elaborate Lebanese food buffet across the bar to be enjoyed exclusively by me and Tara, my homedog/general manager. A Wednesday tradition.
- Have a Dagmar (the martini named after me) at Blue Martini while food settles.
- Go to Raleigh Times for dinner. Likely a BBQ sandwich. Greyhound may also be involved.
- Go to Foundation to check out seasonal drink menu. Pick one. Enjoy.
- Go to Busy Bee. Mandatory order of The Sting and tater tots.
- Go to Landmark for bloody mary or Kriekbeer.

And that I did.

I’m surprised I didn’t take more photos. It may have had something to do with the 80 people I ran into on every corner. I kid you not – I probably caught up with more than 150 people in the first day, just strolling around the neighborhood. Good to be back, Raleigh.

END!

Hello all!

This has been a very productive week for me so far. I have some important updates to share with all of you. I will explain further below.

But first, here some photos from the past week’s adventures:

A few days ago, I went over to help friend Mark work on his particularly large project of renovating his abode. He is currently building a rather large addition to the back of his home, and I, wanting to pacify my need for being around architecture and construction, offered to help. However, my homebuilding/welding knowledge and physical strength is limited, so I offered to make sandwiches and take pictures instead.

So I did.

How to open a can of Dew with a nail gun. By Mark.

My valuable contribution to the project (other than sandwiches).

While you’re at it, check out Mark’s loverly band, The Bowerbirds. You will be pleased.

Yesterday I spent some time running around both downtown Durham and downtown Raleigh. Stop 1 was a trip to see the Durham Bulls play for friend Eric’s birthday. Hot and schweaty and fun.

Durham tracks jump.

Then back to Blue Martini for a staff jump.

And so began our hike around town to climb and jump on everything possible.

This immediately led to Todd’s plight from the trash can to the pavement resorting in ACL problems for the remainder of the day.

Todd remained on the ground whenever possible.

We had quite an audience for this shot. A few angry cars as well. Oh well. We do what we want.

Ok, now for the important stuff.

First of all, my work has been selected for display at the Busy Bee for First Friday!!! This is a huge deal to me, and I am so excited to be an official part of the First Friday arts scene for my last month in North Carolina.

(photocred: New Raleigh)

Second, I have acquired a second travelmate for my trip across the country.

(photocred: Tim Lytvinenko)

His name is Tim Lytvinenko, a photographer based out of Raleigh. I remember seeing his photos and reading great things about him long before I met him. (His track record includes being touring photographer for The Rosebuds. Lucky bastard. Read what they have to say about him here.) I eventually met him and let him write about Ukranian beer in my Moleskine book before I ever knew he was THE “photographer Tim.” I pieced it all together eventually. He gave me some great advice when I was putting together my grad school portfolio, and I still owe him about 800 beers for it. And now, he will officially be part of my gigantic cross-country photo/blog/video adventureproject. With me+Logan+Tim together for an entire month on the road, I can’t even begin to fathom what we’re getting into. It’s going to be absolutely ridiculous.

That said, I have decided to make Friday’s photos a collaborative project with work from all three of us, in order to help build a buzz around our upcoming project and give people an idea of what we’re all about and what adventures we’ve managed to get ourselves into in the past.

The photos will go on display this Friday (June 5th), and we’ll be present for a casual reception of sorts beginning at 6 p.m. This will give you plenty of time to come by, meet us, take jumping photos with us, get some grub (either at the Busy Bee or one of the other 10 great restaurants around the block), and continue on with your First Friday plans. Regardless, take a minute and pencil in a time to come visit us that night.

Check our our First Friday Facebook event HERE.

Read what OkayGreat.com has to say about our show HERE.

If you haven’t had the chance to read about my cross-country project that will commence in approximately one month, read about it in my previous blog post here.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for more updates to come.

hp

Just another day of jumping around Raleigh.

I noticed this little gem on the way back from the Bain Project. Never knew it existed. I fell in love with it immediately.

So I brought back witnesses to jump in front of it with me.

Jumpfail 1.

Jumpfail 2.

Jumpfail 3. Seb is winner.

Then off to the graveyard.

Jumpfail 4.

SUCCESS!!!! I really need to get a remote, so I don’t have to deal with this timer hassle anymore.

And then we rest.

Just a hodgepodge of random Raleigh photos from 2009.

I finally graduated from college. I say “finally” as if it took me longer than expected, but I finished in four years. I’ve just been ready to graduate for about 3.5 years now.

Graduation jump.

The day eventually progressed into what became a night of drinks and debauchery with an eclectic group of folks, including my mother.

State Capitol grounds post-beverages jump.

A night to remember.