Restart

I have been struggling with the idea that no one will ever care about my pictures as much as I do and the people who have a direct connection to the pictures I take.

There is a place in The Central Valley in California called Blackwell's Corner. It is a small general store with a soda fountain and aisle after aisle of shelves of almonds and pistachios of any named variety. When you leave the general store there is little more to look at than a dry place that was once a frontier called the American West. Blackwell's Corner was the last know stop for James Dean before he crashed his Porsche and died. The night before we camped next to another general store/restaurant that showed up as a town when seen on a road map. That place was called Cholame.

We had hoped to find a friendly house where we could pitch our tents on a small patch of grass in a vast desert. Instead I rode up to a green town sign that read "Cholame pop. 119." But there was no proof that the population was more than zero. There was an old cafe just up the road called The Jack Ranch Cafe and beyond that only more dry hills, rattle snakes and jack rabbits. They had a small patch of grass and a James Dean Memorial because after leaving Blackwell's Corner Dean crashed his car 400 yards down the road from the Jack Ranch Cafe in Cholame.

I found it pretty neat that James Dean lived a short life and became a fixed icon of American Spirit, but that he died next to a restaurant that was around long before he was even born and is still in business today. James Dean was a shooting star that burned out fast and brilliantly but I believe that American Spirit is more about tenacity and quietude. The ability for two small stops on a little travelled highway to weather over a century of life. They weathered in the same place where Steinbeck's family inspired The Grapes of Wrath, and through the assassination of great leaders, through World Wars and revolutions of equality - through history.

Riding a bicycle through these places gives them so much perspective. Often it felt like being a cowboy on horseback. We were vulnerable, self contained, just trying to find a place to sleep at night, food to eat and water to drink. The only other thing we had to have was curiosity and wander about the world around.

After experiencing these places the way I have and feeling history in the present I look at my pictures and truly care about them. I love them because they are of places holy and one day ancient. Places that our lives affected forever and that affect our lives forever, just as they did those who came before and those who will proceed us.

I was excitedly posting pictures as I scanned and spot toned them from this trip and now have taken them all down so that I can post more slowly and with introspection and writing that will let you know how much they mean to me and hopefully allow you to view them more deeply.

Rush