Just a few weeks ago I went to the Outer Banks of North Car­olina. My goal was to relax, recharge, ride, and shoot. I accom­plished all of them.

I spent a lot of time shoot­ing land­scapes — some­thing I don’t do very much. Wak­ing up at 5am to catch the sun rise wasn’t as hard as I thought. It does help if you get to bed at a descent hour :) Sec­ond by sec­ond, watch­ing the clouds, sand, water, brush, peo­ple… all come into detail. It’s absolutely worth it — the light is glo­ri­ous and every­one should expe­ri­ence it. Sounds cheesy I know but really… get­ting out there while it’s still dark and just wait­ing for the sun to make it’s appear­ance… calmly and pow­er­fully like it does… it’s quite amaz­ing. OK, enough of my zen moment ;)

We were all going to trailer the motor­cy­cles because the weather was not look­ing good for the ride up, but 2 bikes didn’t quite fit. It was decided between them that they would both ride up. Did I men­tion it’s a 2-day ride and it’s about a 400+ mile ride for just the first day? Quite a lot of miles. It was quite the adven­ture. The weather was look­ing awe­some but that ended a few hours later when the first shower poured down on us — our 2 rid­ers included. We stopped at a gas sta­tion to fill up and get off the road before it got really bad. Wasn’t long before the wind picked up and the light­ning started hit­ting. Our rid­ers were drenched but thank good­ness we were not on the open road while all that light­ning was hit­ting. It was a “scat­tered shower” which was really a mini storm — a hit and run type of storm. Short but mean :) With rain gear now on the rid­ers took off once again and the trailer car­a­van took off as well.

Now the weather is dreary… we could see we were approach­ing a new storm in the dis­tance. When it hit, it seemed sud­den like a huge water­fall wall we were pass­ing through. At 15 – 20 mph we kept mov­ing. The bikes had to stop of course, but they could ride faster than we could pull the trail­ers so they’d even­tu­ally pass us by. Day became night and we finally arrived at our first stop — one of my friend’s mom’s house.

The next day began with a won­der­ful home­made break­fast — way bet­ter than my mom used to make…shhhhhh don’t tell her I said that :D This day I was rid­ing. It was about a 200 mile ride to the final des­ti­na­tion at the beach. We road through the beau­ti­ful back roads of North Car­olina. Once we were get­ting close, we road over the water… that was the best part for me. If you know me, you know I love the water — swim­ming and being all around it.

I took the oppor­tu­nity to meet a fel­low iStocker who was just around the cor­ner on vaca­tion with his fam­ily — mem­ber EricVega. He and his wife, mem­ber MrsVega, were both very gra­cious. We went out for a lovely din­ner and spent a few hours shoot­ing the next day with his kids on the beach. A very laid back shoot. Just what my vaca­tion ordered.

Just before the jour­ney back home, I man­aged to squeeze in a mini shoot at 5:30am… uh yeah lol. I’ll share the results of that in a sep­a­rate post — this post has cer­tainly gone long :D I had a great time with great friends and hope to make it an annual event. I won’t bore you with more details… here are some snap­shots for ya!