This past weekend we shot the first two episodes for the 2011 season in Moab, UT and Grand Junction, CO. As always, it was an interesting experience.

After three planes, five hours of cumulative layovers, and a two and a half hour drive, Ben (the producer, and now shooter too!) and I arrived in Moab about 1:00 am last Friday. We weren’t shooting till Saturday, but I knew this was going to be a brutal trip so I built in a day to recover.

I had never been to this part of Utah, and we had come in under the cover of darkness so I really didn’t have a feel for what the area looked like. When I got up Friday morning tho, I was blown away by the strange and striking landscape. With all the red rock and bizarre topography, it could have been Mars (except for all the healthy looking people on mountain bikes, that is).

We had Friday to kill so we headed to Canyonlands National Park about 30 miles southwest of Moab. This is Utah’s largest national park and it probably covers close to 300 square miles. There is no way to see it in one day (or even one week) so we decided to just hit one of the more accessible areas known as Island in the Sky.

It was pretty chilly, windy, and overcast but the views were spectacular. We drove the 20 miles of paved road in this area, stopping frequently to hike to particularly scenic vistas and shoot some photos.

If I look cold in this picture that’s because I was!

Fortunately, the weather straightened out, and we had a perfect day for the car show on Saturday. The show is called April Action, and it was in its 18th year. It’s held in the city park right in the center of town, and they managed to pack over 600 cars into a fairly cozy grassy area surrounded by red cliffs.

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On Thursday I leave for Moab, UT for the first shoot of the 2010 production season and from that point on, I’m pretty much traveling every week till about mid November. However, this past weekend wasn’t booked with MCC activities and I wanted to make the most of it so I invited my brother, Guy, to come down from Indy and go motorcycling with me. After all, I had spent all that time getting my Triumph Trophy running again, I figured I should get some benefit out of it.

Guy only lives three hours from me but we rarely see each other. It seems our schedules never coincide and we both have a lot going on. Life tends to be that way. However, this was something I’ve wanted to do for a long time so we decided to just pick a weekend, commit to it, and do this thing; rain or shine. That was the only way it was ever going to happen.

I’ve got two big, fairly modern touring bikes in my collection; the ’98 Trophy and a ’93 BMW R1100RS, and it looked like we were going to get lucky with the weather because the forecast was for a cool (highs in the 60’s) but clear weekend. So Guy drove down to E’ville Saturday morning and we suited up and were on the road about noon.

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