My sister found this video of my cat waking me up in the morning. This is how i get up everyday. Today it was at 4:47 A.M. . I know there are none of my photos in this post, but, I think that this is OK because it is actual video. Enjoy.

I'm packed. Who's comin' with me?

I missed Japan the other day.
I dug into the pictures on my computer and pulled out a few that didn't make the travel blog but will fit perfect here on my super artistic-fancy-pants-photo blog.
I'm ready to go back.

Shrine at a temple in Nagano.
This is one of the biggest shrines I saw. People donate some money and take some incense to burn. Then they said a prayer, and washed themselves in the smoke. There were even a few little kids in the crowd and they closed their eyes and held there breath as their parents picked them up and held their faces in the smoke.

Tokyo Tower.
I think this was taken on me and dads second to last day in Tokyo. We spent it going back to some of our favorite places, and buying souvenirs.
I don't think this guy moved all day.
There were a lot of fancy little statues around the Nagano temples. Around all the Temples for that matter.

Sunset over Tokyo from the bullet train.
The bullet train was one of my favorite ways to see Japan. There was so much there to see and the bullet train took me from the middle of the largest city in the world to a nearly deserted farming community, in less then an hour. I was worth it. Me and dad were a little worried about paying the $280 for a one week rail pass, but it is the only way to go. I will get another pass next time I go, no question. And its not just the bullet trains, it works for any trains. And the trains go everywhere. Buy a pass if you go.

Com' on. Give the guy some money.
He has to pay for the hat somehow.
This guy was cool. He walked at about 1/4 speed and would ring his little bell every other step. They even pan-handle with style.

Worst job in Japan.
Yet another cool little detail that makes me love Japan. Every thing is important and needs to be special. I'm sure this guy even has a back story. Next time I go to Japan I will speak enough Japanese to at least ask about him.

Instead of pigeons, Japan has crows.
There were packs of crows all over down town Tokyo. I didn't see a pigeon for the first 3 days.

Temple in down town Tokyo.
We stopped here on our first tour day. We had been on the bus for too long and we had taken a vote to spend only very limited time at this temple in order to get to the much more important automotive tourist sites. Our guide was more then a little confused that a bus full of tourists would vote to spend only 30 mins at this beautiful temple so that we could spend and extra hour at Up Garage, a used car parts store.
Next time I will spend a little more time there. Depends on what car pars I might be able to see.

I love Japanese used car lots. So sexy.
Here is what we cut our temple time short for. Worth it? I think the picture speaks for its self.
The yellow building in the back ground is Up Garage. And this was a tiny preformace car lot next door.

This statue is right outside the Nagano train station.
Nagano is worth a visit. Very worth it.
I was worried about getting lost over there after being in Korea and seeing how random the streets were laid out there. Japan does have a lot of randomness, but, they also have big main streets to and from the train station. There is also a pile of free maps in each station with helpful English speaking workers handing them out.

OK. This isn't Japan, but it was the same trip.
Pluckin' in San Fran.

S.F.F.D. #1

This cow was chilling on the outside of a Catholic church.

Coit Tower.
I made Kip walk up a really big hill to get this picture. I hope it was worth it .

China Town.
We ran into a few of these tired looking Chinese men playing for money. The music was definitely Chinese and really cool. This guy should form a garage band and sell Cd's out of his trunk.

The Kip and The Vida

My family tends to look like people we can't recognize when we get our 'family portrait" taken. We are always standing there, wearing matching clothes, hair neatly placed, standing closer then seems right. I don't know if you have ever met me or my family but we rarely stand while wearing matching clothes with straight hair, but, we are huggers so we do stand close before.
My Vida (Mom) asked me to take a few photos of she and The Kip (Dad). She hoped that at the very least they would look like them.
So I rode my bike up to the park to meet them and take a few pics. I gave them no instruction, didn't tell them what to wear or where to stand. Let me know if it looks like them.

This is my favorite. When i think of Mom and Dad this is how I picture them. Close to one another and laughing. That's just the way they roll.

I just like this pic.

Can you wear a wedding dress too much?

If your Melissa(or possibly any girl about to get married) the answer to the title question is a resounding, loudly stated, "NO".
So, she was more then happy to throw it back on for me to snap some shots.
She even talked her friend Shana into coming over to tie it. (I think she mainly just didn't want me screwing the ties up.)
F.Y.I. That is not the actual Mona Lisa on the wall.
I made her stand in a bog. She smiled and said , "OK!"
I love these red carts!
Her hair was very helpful as well.
Behind she and Wood's new pad.

drifting and hair time.

I had a pre-season drift event at Rocky Mountain Raceway this Saturday. It was a test & tune hosted by Drift Enterprise. I was a great refresher on a super technical course after the winter off. Its good to be sideways again.
Here's a pic of my drifting pile. It might not look like much, but its a goer. It's ugly, and I love it.
On the way home I stopped by Elvira's , the salon where my cute cousin Melissa is getting her wedding hair-do did. Here are a few of the 50 pics I took in the 20 mins or so I was there. And lucky for you I sneaked(that is the correct word) in some pics of her cute stylist, Lindsey. Enjoy... or else!

P.S. I would like to formally apologize to - and its employees for coming into there nice salon directly from a morning drift session. I was super dirty, looked like I was there to steal stuff and definitely smelled of burning tires if not worse things. And all of them were super nice. Even apologizing when I was in their way. Thanks again.
Isn't she cute.

Hooray for piles!

It’s story time. I was planning on telling you the one about the time a priest a duck and a trumpet walk into the bar but I forget the punch line. So I will make something up…
Once there was a man, living in a town. He was a plain man living in a nondescript town. This man and his town were located somewhere near nowhere in Utah. As you can imagine, that’s a boring place to be located.
He was a good guy and did right by his family and friends. He worked hard at whatever his livelyhood was and ate well most of the time.
Until one day he heard a whisper, “If you pile it sky will come.”
Now as you can imagine he was confused. But that’s to be understood because that is a confusing phrase. “If you pile it Sky will come.” It’s nonsencicale. What is “it”? Why would he want “it” in a pile? Why would he want “sky” to come?
So he ignored the whisper and went back to his life. But the whisper didn’t go away. “If you pile it Sky will come.” “If you pile it Sky will come.” “If you pile it Sky will come.” All day everyday.
“Fine!” he said to the no one that was whispering. And just like that it stopped.
But this wasn’t as easy as the whisper had made it sound. He spent weeks piling different things only to have the whisper return telling him, “If you pile it Sky will come.” And it would stay until he tried piling something else. Each time he would get a nice pile of something going the whisper would return, “If you pile it Sky will come.” And this is the way it went for him. He would start a nice pile of books and when the pile was nearly six feet high the whisper would come, “If you pile it Sky will come.” So he cleaned up all the books and started on chairs. At seven and a half feet the whisper returned, “If you pile it Sky will come.” So he switched to shoes, then pens, then cheese cake, then cows (horrible mistake and possibly the worst pile ever, but in his defense its very hard to pile something that can walk off), then shoes, then … and the list goes on like this for some time.
Three months, 107 piles, and countless whispers later he tried sand. No whispers at three feet. No whispers at 10 feet. Nothing but beautiful silence at forty feet. After renting a considerable amount of equipment he reached 230 feet. If you have never seen a pile of sand this high, its quite a thing. He stepped back to admire his pile and smiled. This was a pile to be proud of. After months of work he could sit back and wait for “sky” to come.
He hadn’t been sitting for an hour when the whisper came again, “If you pile it Sky will come.” This time he was mad. He had piled it. Now it was “sky’s” turn. He was done. So he leaned back and closed his eyes. The whisper came again, “If you pile it Sky will come.”

“No.” He said.

“If you pile it Sky will come.”

“No! I piled, now “sky” can come.”

“Higher.” Came the whisper.

After all this time the whisper said something new.
He stood up and started to pile sand again. And he kept piling until the day he died.
And a fantastic pile it became. So big in fact that it was named after the sand pile of sand piles, the Sahara. So Little Sahara sand dunes were born. And now I (Sky) go there and ride my 4wheeler around with my friends.
Here are the pics to prove it.

This is one of my favorites. Thanks to Paul the model.

Cort climbing Jim Hill on Paul's Banshee.Cort jumping one section of Jim Hill going about 50mph.

Cool pic of me taken by Hayley with my point and shot.

If you didn't know Matt is "STAFF" at the dunes.

Tree.

Cort's ring.

P climbing again. He was basically born to do this.

Fish Eye.

I bought a new lens the other week, a fish eye. I have been a fan of fish eyes for a long time, days even. But who hasn't looked at there friends and thought, "Matt's cool but I wonder what his head would look like if it were half moon shaped." or, "I wish I could see all sides of Kurt's head at once."
These are a few of the pics I took while wondering around.
Finally, I can see Matt with a crescent moon head.
Kurt "The Kurt" Widebird
Sometimes I lay under trees.
Poor horse. Born with tiny body syndrome. He's got a hard road ahead. We're all pullin' for ya lil' creepy buddy.
I even took the lens to the grocery. This is what cabbage looks like. Just FYI.