- I was working yet another Eve in the service industry, this year as a cocktail waitress at Blue Martini in Raleigh. The bar is shoulder to shoulder, but all of the customers are ordering from the bar (therefore not from me). I remember the pinnacle moment of my night, where I’m stuck in the middle of the bar crowd, carrying a tray of several dozen mini champagne flutes over my head, trying to get to my tables. As I attempt to push through the crowd, the people around me begin stealing the flutes off of my tray, getting so out of control that the entire tray falls over and I find myself covered in champagne, flutes strewn all over the floor. This all happens as the clock strikes midnight. I silently observe the entire crowd begin screaming and making out around me as I stand, defeated, soaked in champagne. I remember thinking… “next year things will be different.”

Other general conditions of the time -

- I lived in North Carolina.
- I was in school.
- I was waitressing at Blue Martini and bartending at Sitti in downtown Raleigh.
- I hadn’t really begun pursuing photography, and didn’t even own a real camera. I just knew I liked taking pictures.
- This blog didn’t exist.
- I had no intention of moving to San Francisco or pursuing grad school.

So yeah, a few things have happened.

January: I bought an SLR and began taking photography more seriously.
February: Friend Kate called and asked me if I’d join her on a random trip to San Francisco, knowing I say yes to every travel opportunity offered to me. I said yes.
March: Visited San Francisco, accidentally fell in love with an MFA program and decided to pursue it. Applied, got in.
May: Graduated from NCSU. Decided to start a blog to have somewhere to place my stories and photos. Bought Queen of the Pavement domain. Also decided to make a project out of my upcoming trek across the country and plan a national phototour.
June: Gave up my apartment + began floating around houses in an effort to save money for traveling. Have my first (and last) photography showing in Raleigh at the Busy Bee in promotion of the phototour.
July: Set up phototour website. Leave Raleigh, begin phototour. Spend six weeks traveling the country with photographer Tim Lytvinenko, meeting up with Bowerbirds and Megafaun for the later portion of our trek.
August: Arrive in San Francisco. Realize I haven’t lined up a place to live or a job. Decide to drive to Arizona instead of figuring it out. Arrive in Arizona. Land a temporary place to live in SF. Drive back to SF and settle in to my temporary home in the Mission. Begin to settle into life in California.
September: Find permanent place to live near Hayes Valley. Begin graduate school. Meet neighbor Mark Growden and am incredibly impressed. Begin doing some freelance projects for him.
October: Quit PR job to help work on Mark’s CD Release. Mark gets signed to Porto Franco Records.
November: Porto Franco Records offers me a full-time job.
December: I finish up my first (and last) semester of grad school. I decide not to go back to fully pursue my career in the tech and music spheres, accepting the job with Porto Franco. Dream life begins. Spend New Year’s Eve dancing in the backwoods of NC with great friends + a bonfire.

So yeah, the year’s been good. It’s been a fucking whirlwind, frankly. I feel incredibly fortunate to have crammed this much intense life experience and adventure into one year, and there are so many incredible people I have met along the way.

Now as for last night. I started the night off with pizza night at Reagan’s. I did not know Reagan until I arrived in her home, but I feel like I knew her already, as she is girlfriend of David Millsaps, who I have known for a bit. Tim and I had a photocolumn for a short bit in his incredibly successful blog, NewRaleigh, while we were phototouring. Reagan apparently reads my blog from time to time and feels like she has known me for a while as well. I always love finding out when that happens. We became ladybros quickly.

Other new ladyfriend Katie Aiken was responsible for introducing her mother’s signature pizza recipe to us for the first time ever. It was a succcess. Lots of fun things involved – homemade wheaty crust, kalamata olives, mushrooms, goat cheese, pine nuts, etc etc. Awesome.

After we had all consumed our fill, we headed to the backwoods of Wake Forest for Burninator, hosted by our friend Will Reynolds. You may know him as “dancing Will.” Apparently his family has property out in the boondocks, which he decked out for the event, with a giant circle of Christmas lights (“the dancefloor”), three bar areas, lounge areas, and a huge bonfire area. Oh, and a waffle making area, naturally. We spent the night burning Christmas trees (at least a dozen of them), eating waffles, and dancing around the woods til the wee hours of the morning. It was wonderful.

I think the year is starting off just fine.

Ok, that’s all for now.

END!

I now live in San Francisco. Holy mother of god.

Adjusting to your completely new hometown isn’t so bad when you are surrounded by former-hometown-folk to keep you occupied. Tim is here for another week or so, and my friend Brandom happened to fly in on the same night we arrived.

So began adventures with Brandom.

We started things off at Boogaloos, who I have already deemed my favorite brunch in San Francisco. Not that I have come remotely close to trying 10% of the brunch spots in San Francisco, but I AM obsessed with Mexican food and eggs in combination right now and they do a damn good job at providing me with it. We split a temple-o-spuds and a polenta + eggs plate. The day is a win already.

I decide that it will be best to drive Brandom to all of my favorite places in San Francisco, as I am not adjusted to the walkability of the city yet (aka I am lazy) and I figure that if I keep the car moving, I will reduce the number of parking tickets I’ll inevitably acquire. So… first stop: Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks is the biggest hill in SF. You can see everything. You just have to make sure it’s a clear day, because 80% of the time it’s foggy and you can’t see two feet in front of you. Today we can see!

I wanted to take a jumping photo but it was so windy we thought we may die just standing up. So we took some normal photos and went on our way.

Next stop: Crissy Fields. Fun park and beach with a nice view of the Golden Gate. I’ve taken many a photo here before, so it’s fun to see how they end up changing every time I come back.

I wanted to drive Brandom around the west side of the Peninsula, where the road lines the hills and you see nothing but water below you, but we got lost and ended up at the Harold & Maude graveyard. This happens to be one of if not Brandom’s very favorite movie, so he freaked out and demanded we go in and take photos. And so we did.

By this time, the day had passed and we were tired. And so ended adventure day with Brandom.

Fast forward.

With Brandom and Tim both leaving the next day, I decided it was necessary to take everyone to Land’s End.

Land’s End is this somewhat secret location that a lot of SF folk seem to know of, but have no idea how to find. And somehow I managed to find it last year, by following really vague directions given to me by my SF veteran compadre Nick.

Basically, you take several disjointed bus rides to the Legion of Honor parking lot, wander through a golf course directly behind the property, hope you take the right path until you see another path going into the woods blocked off by a gate, walk around the gate, continue until you see a staircase, walk down the staircase until you reach a dirt path, walk up the dirt path until you can’t walk anymore, because you are standing on the edge of a cliff where the ocean meets the bay.

So me, Tim, Dakota, Brandom and Lewis found the cliffs once again. It was pretty foggy and overcast, which at first we thought would be a huge visibility problem, but it ended up being quite cool actually. The fog rested on top of the hills and actually rested on top of the Golden Gate, leaving a clear hole underneath it that you could see through. Brandom described it as a hole out of purgatory. If purgatory were an awesome oceanfront array of cliffs and giant rocks and waves.

I said my byes to Brandom, then went out for one last night of welldonetour-dom with Tim and company. My fellow road warrior is off to Raleigh tomorrow. Our 2009 phototour adventure has come to an end.

I would have some sort of profound synopsis for you here, but I really haven’t had any time to process all of the ridiculous incredible things that have happened to my life in the past six weeks. Maybe I’ll have have my brain reassembled by then.

All I can say now, is that tour made me grow in so many ways, as a PR professional, as a photographer, as a planner and a thinker and a friend and a person. I don’t think I’ll have a grasp on the amount I’ve learned through this for quite a while, but know for sure that I am definitely a different, better person leaving this tour. I got to spend my summer with some of the most wonderful people I’ve met in years. I love Bowerbirds and Megafaun and Tim and Sarah oh so dearly and can’t wait to see them again, and I’m going to stop typing now before I get emotional in the middle of this coffee shop.

END!

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