Harriman State Park by Moto

I brought a real camera with me last weekend for an early AM ride through Harriman State Park. It was perfect riding weather. Early morning, there was hardly any other non-motorcycle vehicular traffic (unless you count pedal bikes). Can’t wait to get back up there when the leaves are changing. I rode with my friend who also has a monster. Got some snaps similar to some from last year around this time.

Complete with obligatory timer selfie-

Split’n Lanes Dodgin’ Gutters Recap

About half of the weekends that I have spent in NY this summer have been rained out. This weekend fell squarely into the rainy category. I meant to ride Saturday AM, but Thor had other ideas. Sunday evening was equally soggy. Despite the precipitation, BK Bowl hosted the above referenced classic bike exhibit. I went. I took my cam and got some pics, despite the weird BK Bowl stage lighting. It’s funny how after only 1.5 years as a resident of Brooklyn, I’m seeing so much overlap at these shows. Whatever. I would gladly peep these bikes again over sitting home watching the rain come down. Here are a couple of snaps from the event-

Midsummer Moto Report

It’s hard to believe that we only have one month of summer left. I feel so much pressure every summer to make sure that I take advantage of all of the nice days, and make the best of the ones that aren’t so nice (because they are still nicer than the best day in winter). Summer is B’s busy season, including weekends, which leaves me with a bit of free time on at least one day of the weekend. I have been getting a bit of moto riding in, and bought a cheesy bar mount for my old skool gopro hero3. I have been experimenting with it a bit, mounting it in a few different spots on the bike. The vid below is a little slice of one of my usual weekend rides. The segment at the beginning- getting out of the city is sped up to 20x. It slows down to normal speed when I get to Harriman State Park. I have unfortunately been riding solo for most of this summer because everyone is having babies, etc.. Hoping to get the right camera situation dialed in before the next ride with my crew, and possibly upgrade to a gopro that shoots better than 1080p. I feel like that footage would be a lot more interesting to view. Anyway, for those who have 9ish minutes to spare, here’s a nice cross segment of city and country riding–

Basic NYC Weekend Moto from Jacob Breinholt on Vimeo.

Oregon Coast

After spending Friday night and Saturday in Portland, we drove south toward Newport where we met up with some other good friends of ours. They had secured a beach house for the weekend in the town of Waldport. The weather was sunny and awesome. We explored the beach and flew kites Sunday afternoon. Monday, my friend Jon and I caught some rock fish in the morning, and we ended up grilling them up for dinner. We were having so much fun being social that I didn’t really get any snaps (except a sunset) with a real camera. So there are a mix of celly shots in this post. Apologies for the crap quality.

Tuesday morning we drove up the 101 north. One of the highlights was Cannon Beach, and Ecola State Park.

B snapped this one of me below, posing at one of the 10 or so view points along the 101, where we pulled over to take in the sights.

The pano of Crescent Beach below was a celly shot. Here is a link to the full resolution, for kicks.

Portland OR

We spent memorial day in the pacific northwest. Some good friends of ours were tying the knot in Portland, and it gave us a great excuse to explore the Oregon/Washington coast. It always blows my mind how green it is in that part of the country. We arrived in Portland late on Friday night and spent the next morning exploring the city by foot before the wedding. Luckily, we were still on NY time. So we were up early and did a lap of the waterfront and most of downtown before noon. It was overcast and a mild temperature. Here are some snaps. The Faith47 piece below was one of the highlights for me.

Oslo

On our way home from Morocco, we stopped in Oslo for almost a full 24 hours. It was a gorgeous spring day, so we took advantage explored the city a bit. The city center was pretty easy to navigate and small enough that we did the whole thing on foot. The airport is a very quick train ride from the main train station in the center of Oslo. Some of our favorite spots were the opera house (top photo was from the roof of the opera house), and the Mathallen food hall. I didn’t get any photos of the latter. But it has a similar vibe to Chelsea Market or Gansevoort Market. Here are some other snaps from various spots around the city.

 

Ourika Valley

The last day in Marrakech, we did a day excursion and hired a driver to take us to the Ourika Valley, in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains (as seen from Marrakech in the image directly below). It rained on and off for most of the day that day, so it turned out to be a good time to spend riding in the car. Those who know the desert, know that it completely changes when rain falls. Most notably, all of the green comes out. I wouldn’t really recommend this excursion to anyone because honestly, it turned out to be super touristy. But seeing the desert in bloom from the rain was worthwhile. The fast moving clouds also provided for some dramatic lighting at times.

Marrakech

I had the occasion to spend some in Morocco recently with B. Actually, she put together the whole trip, and I was just along for the ride. As Morocco is a very visually stimulating place, I put on my shutterbug hat and went wild. During the span of our 10 days there, I snapped well over 1000 frames. And judging by the length of this post, one would think that I put them all on here, haha. The images in this post are from the five days that we spent in Marrakech. I’m have organized them into three groups:

  • Places and People
  • Things
  • Details
  • Landscape/Night

A bit about Marrakech:

I wasn’t really sure what to think about it before I went. When I arrived it certainly wasn’t what I expected. We stayed inside the medina section of the city. The Medina is the old city center, a labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways enclosed by a perimeter wall. To say that it is easy to get lost is an understatement. It took us a solid day just to get our bearings, using the riad we stayed in (seen in the first image above, and would highly recommend to others) as a reference point. It was a very invigorating and occasionally frustrating experience. I will say that 5 days was more than enough time to spend there. If I could do it again, I would probably have shortened it to three days.

Here is what I saw, starting with Places and People:Continue reading

Some Art, Some Running

Even though it is March and the days are getting longer, it still 100% feels like winter out there. Despite the temps, B and I forced ourselves to be out and about last week. Thursday night we hit the Retna opening at Chase Contemporary. I have been a fan of his for a while. Here is a sample of his Bowery wall mural, as I saw it in March 2012. Anyway, we saw some equally awesome stuff at the gallery opening on Thurs.

That being said, I kind of feel bad for anyone who opened an exhibition last week in NYC, because the town was all abuzz with the fact that Banksy was back in North America and had put some work in NYC. So much hype that even the local news covered it, hahahaha. Lordy, it was like listening to a couple of elderly ladies talking about “the grime raps” or something. Speaking of the Bowery Mural, B*nksy has turned it into his latest propaganda piece.

I haven’t made it over to see that one yet. But we did wander into Chelsea to look at the rat. Here are a couple of snaps, along with a couple of my faves from the Retna opening.

Aaaaand finally, B and I both ran the NYC half on Sunday. It was a new course, starting in Prospect Park, ending in Central Park. The course went over the Manhattan Bridge, which was awesome for me since I mix that bridge into most of my longer runs anyway. The difference being that I usually have it to myself instead of sharing it with 20k other runners. Back to the weather…. this was probably the coldest race I have ever run. It was fine, once I finally got going and the sun came up. But man, waiting for it to start was brutal! New course is amazing. B got a PR. Overall, a really decent day. Here is a crappy pic from my celly of my fellow runners freezing their booties off in Prospect Park.