A dash of Salt

How shall we start this journey? Where does the road begin? Well, if you were on our trip to Utah, the trip began in a little town in southern Alberta called Longview. The name is fitting of such a place. From a hilltop; a stones throw from the main drag through town, you can see for miles in any direction. This is how our story starts. With an incredible view, and the start of an incredible journey.

I was sitting in my living room at 4:30 in the morning on Saturday. I grabbed the video camera and fumbled with the settings. I wasn't awake yet as I had only gone to sleep at 11:30 the night before. My wife had taken the night shift at work and I wanted to stay up just long enough to see her before I left the next morning. I was too tired and fell asleep. My alarm never went off and by shear luck (or misfortune) the sharp beep at the top of every hour from her wrist watch woke me up at 4:00.

With the camera rolling, I began the task of loading all the gear into my truck. I was trying to be as quiet as possible, as my two year old son was a very light sleeper. Once the gear was loaded, I took a quick dreary eyed peep into my sons room to check on him, a quick tip toe into the bedroom to kiss my wife good bye, and out the door I went. The Cafe Racer "Double Shot" was strapped into the trailer, looking like it was tied down for fear of it roaring to life and racing off. The morning air had the usual hum from the air handling units at the arena down the street and even at this wee hour the nearby highway carried its constant rumble of traffic. Time to hit the road.

As I drove out of town all I could think of was the warm bed I just left behind and my family. I'm not a morning person. So why up so early? After all, the meet up time wasn't till 7:30 and I only needed to travel an hour to get to Longview. The reason my friends, was the sunrise. I have long held the notion that a sun rise is far more valuable than a sun set. Not being a morning person meant I had to be well outside my comfort zone to appreciate such a thing, and the sun rise was due at 6:00. I had all my camera gear for the purpose of filming this adventure, so I really wanted to not only enjoy the sun rise but to set up some time lapse photography to share with our crew after our return home in eight days.

I needed to stop in Okotoks prior to going to Longview to drop by my parents house. The supplies, luggage and maintenance equipment all needed to be loaded up in the truck as I was not only one of the film crew, but the support and chase vehicle should any of the riders need assistance. Each member or our bunch paid an even hundred dollars as an insurance policy should they require it. In the end, some did, some did not. That's the funny thing about insurance, its never a sure thing your going to use it, but you can bet your bum there's always a reason to need it.

I finished loading the gear, had a brief conversation with my Dad about the trip and agreed to meet him at the rendezvous point at around 7:30. I pulled into Longview a touch after 5:30. Let me tell you, there's not a lot going on in that town at 5:30 in the morning. The horizon was getting pretty bright, if I was going to get any shots of the sun rise, I had better get things on order quick. Just to the east of town is a large hill with a cell phone tower. I noticed coming in that there was a road leading up to the top. I high tailed it back to the road and set up the camera gear just in time to catch a glorious sun rise.

The greatest thing about the time lapse photography that morning was the peace I found when the gear was set up, and all I could do was wait. No city noise, no rumble of the highway, no air handling units. Just open sky, the sound of a distant red tail hawk catching an early morning thermal, and the constant noise of the shutter gulping in each moment at exact intervals of four seconds. Heaven. I took two segments of 400 shots and loaded up my gear to head back down the hill the meet the crew at the gas station to follow up with some more video and group shots.





This story will take a few days to tell so you'll have to be patient.

See you all tomorrow.