Last Saturday on the century my teammate Floyd rode up behind me, whipped out his camera and grabbed this shot. He did it quickly enough I didn't have time to process more than "Camera equals smile," and I like it! I look happy, and I feel proud, remembering at the time - mile 15 of 100 - how well I felt the ride was going, how much progress I felt I've made.
One of my friends, Joe, I met while he was at SFSU on exchange from Britain. In the couple months we hung out, I drove him all around the place - up and down California, Vegas, the entire Bay Area - and he would buy a disposable camera about every week and take some fairly boring photos. Finally, being overly opinionated and far too forthright, I told him he was taking pictures of nothing he would remember, or nothing special enough to be memorable. He looked at me and told me one of the best things I've ever heard (as well as something that ages his comment at just before the digital watershed). He told me that he was taking a picture of what he was seeing at the moment that he was FEELING something he wanted to remember feeling, and that the vista he was capturing would basically just be a psychological mnemonic - that when he remembers trips, he naturally remembers the highlights, but then gets out these unremarkable shots and has memories flood in of the minutia that really made up the texture of an experience. Needless to say, beyond the fact that I'm proud of...well, LOOKING like a triathlete, the bigger importance of this photo for me is just that - it got sealed with everything I was feeling when the shutter closed. Here it is.
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