Ross Fly Fishing: March 2013

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Bikes and Swedish Cinema: Choose Your Favourite Contest Submissions!

The deadline for the Pilen give-away contest was last night, and the entries are in! To recap, readers who fit the height criteria (this is a large bike) were invited to submitan image that depicts a person and a bicycle, and evokes some aspect of Swedish film. The winner will receive the beautiful Pilen Lyxthat I am test riding for the distributor, BoxCycles. I received 30 eligible submissions, and most of the pictures were so thoughtfully done, that it seemed only fair to feature them all.

To select the winner, I will first choose five finalists based solely on the pictures. Then I will have a closer look at those entries, read their submissions carefully, and possibly contact them via email with some questions.

If you are up for it, I would love to have your input regarding which images belong among the finalists. I have some tentative favourites in mind, but if popular opinion differs from mine I will reconsider. There are too many entries here to turn this into a poll, but please feel free to let me know in the comments which images appeal to you. Here they all are, numbered 1 through 30:

1. entry fromJenny

2. entry from Marisa

3. entry from Amy

4. entry fromKitty

5. entry from Amanda

6. entry from Lauren

7. entry fromJulie

8. entry fromDavid

9. entry fromCris

10. entry fromMaddie

11. entry from Stephanie

12. entry fromKara

13. entry fromMike White

14. entry fromLouisa and Bojana

15. entry from Anders

16. entry fromJanice

17. entry fromDavid and Kate

18. entry fromMarcella

19. entry from Paris

20. entry fromOlivia

21. entry fromBrooks and Marya

22. entry from Trevor and Melissa

23. entry fromTraci

24. entry fromKate

25. entry from Kimon and Rhonda Haramis

26. entry fromGretchen

27. entry from Audra

28. entry fromFieldofBluebells

29. entry fromCate Fitz

30. entry fromRiding Pretty

Thank you again for taking the time to create and submit these pictures. Regardless of who wins, this is a visual treat and I hope they were fun to make. Thank you also to BoxCycles for donating the beautiful Pilen! I hope to announce the winner next week.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Burning Turns!

My buddy Kevin sent me this one today after I begged him for the pictures and called him nasty names for getting in some awesome turns without me.

This may be worse than missing a good day on the ice.

"Woke up at 3 am Friday morning to get up to heliotrope ridge trail head. We were the second car at the TH and followed a set of skin tracks up the mountain. Our original intention was to climb and ski the Coleman-Deming route on Baker. However upon reaching an area just before Colfax we

realized that our group progress was too slow - especially with breaking trail in all the new snow. Instead we ripped skins and enjoyed great turns down. We picked a point to drop off our glacier gear and ended up doing several laps on the face. Around 3pm we called it a day since one member of our group had to be back in Issaquah for work that night!"

Jealous? Ya, damn right I am jealous! But some nice turns in those TLTs Kevin :) Be sure to dbl click every photo for full effect.

Photos and trip reportcourtesy of Kevin Oberholser

Jealousy?...all mine!

They even had someone setting track for them. It is killing me!!

Friday, March 22, 2013

Winter Moonlight on the Pigeon River

Thanks to unfavorable photography conditions for most of the past week (nothing but gray skies and flat light), I've been searching through my archives once again looking for images that I've wanted to put on my website but hadn't for one reason or another. This shot was taken at 3:17 AM on January 1, 2007 - only a few hours into the new year! The moonlight on that night was spectacular, and I had spent almost the entire night out in the woods with my camera. This photo was made with my old Canon EOS 20D camera with an exposure time of 20 seconds at an aperture of f4.0 and an ISO of 800. I hope to have some nights like this over the coming winter!

Visiting My Family in Jackson

Most of us headed over to Jackson to see my family today. Nathan has been sick, so he stayed home. I have an insanely large family, so to get us all together is a big task. We did pretty good this time. I was so touched that everyone scrambled at the last minute to come and see us. My sister Traci and my Mom cooked us all a great steak dinner and we got to chat some. And we even got a group picture! Not all of us are in it, but we at least were able to get a group shot of some of us.

I wish I'd have grabbed more pictures while there, but it was pretty hectic and the time flew by way too fast as it was. I'm grateful to have days like this since I don't get to see my family very often anymore.

We left Ashleigh and Elijah in Jackson. The RV will be extra quiet without them. We really enjoyed our visit with Ashleigh so much. I am especially grateful for the time with her this past week. I didn't know exactly how it would go, because we don't really have company stay with us in the RV very often. And we haven't been around Ashleigh day in/day out for a few years. On top of that, we've had some hard years that were painful for both us as parents, and for Ashleigh who was going through hard things. As the oldest child, she has had to forgive us as parents far more than the other ones. She's been vocal at times about that fact. Within ten minutes of her being around, it was just like she'd never left. Which was really cool to me.

It was so moving to me to see the person she is growing into and that she is still Ashleigh, with a huge heart, even after going through rough things. Just a more mature version of Ashleigh! We love you so much, Ash, and you still crack us up. Get your RV so you can join us on the road!

Living the life in Michigan!