As you may or may not know, my office is above a Vegan bakery. It’s cool because I get all the coffee and vegan pastries my heart could possible desire, but the catch is, when Lisa needs something requiring my skill set, I can’t say no. So when someone from the Food Network called asking her to try out for Cupcake Wars, it was my job to make the video. Not that I would have said no, as this is clearly my latest big break! Jared did most of the filming (though I will definitely claim the shaky shots — there is free coffee here.) I did the editing and this is the result. Now Lisa is a shoo-in for the show and when she wins, I will definitely take partial credit.

It certainly took long enough this year, but it is summer! I know I am supposed to be a snowboarder, but I have no complaints about this season. I’ll take the heat, the sun and happily trade dirty mountain condos for luxurious lakeside houses any day. I did attempt to snowboard, twice, before deciding I’d rather save it for winter. It seems now that I’ve retired from stunts, there’s not much for me to do up at summer camp other than leg burning laps through slushy snow. Plus, there is plenty to do down here.

Summer Fun idea #1: Oaks Park

You know those scary-looking carnivals that pop up on the side of the road in the summer. The ones with rides that may fall down at any minute? Well Portland has a permanent one! Jared and I went down to check it out last weekend, got nauseous on a couple rides, and then he won me a candy necklace by throwing a dart. I had my choice between the candy or a plastic hat, and while I may have gotten more long term use out of the hat, I feel good about my decision.

Summer Fun idea #2: Wakeskating

After more or less retiring because I was too lazy to ever drive to Salem, I discovered a friend with a boat 15 minutes away. Yes, the water is downstream from downtown Portland, and it’s sort of cold, but man is it fun. With enough evening sessions, after the kooks have gone home, I might even get good at it. But probably not.

Summer fun idea #3: Eating!

This morning I rode my bike to the fruit stand and bought raspberries to put on homemade waffles. If that doesn’t scream summer, I don’t know what does. In the last week, I’ve also made a cherry pie, cherry stuffed grilled chicken, fresh pesto with the basil plant you can buy at Trader Joes for cheaper than you can get a package of the stuff at Safeway, etc etc etc. I always make sure to eat well, but in the summer it’s even better.

Summer fun idea #4: Gardening

The cold spring was not really that nice to my garden. My beans didn’t come up, and my cucumbers died before they even started. I did harvest some peas (made shrimp with pea pods and a pea pod salad that were pretty good) but those have died off in the heat now. The zucchini are looking promising though, and even though I have spent way more money on plants, fertilizer, etc then I would spend on produce, it still feels like free food when you pick it and eat it.

Summer fun idea #5: Outside Time

I realized recently that this is the 4th summer I’ve been in my house. In that time we’ve managed to take the yard from useless, to fricken sweet, so one of my favorite things is to just sit on the back deck. Today, Tyra mastered fetch, which was probably the most productive thing that’s happened back there this summer, to give you an idea of what goes on. I’m into it.

Of course, there are other things too. Skateboarding is cool, I do that sometimes. Yesterday we floated the Clackamas, which is a good once-a-year occasion. (I can only handle so many bad tattoos…) And there is no better way to spend an evening than a BBQ. Seeing as the CW is already advertising it’s new September shows, summer will be over before we know it, so I’m gonna quit this blogging crap and go work on my tan!

Dear PR People of the World,

Thanks so much for sending me that highly interesting press release about your amazing product/brand/event/team rider! I cannot express how anxious I am to get it posted on my website! The only thing is, it appears you’ve sent it to me as if you think I am putting it in a magazine. See, on “the internet” photos don’t need to be 300 dpi and 3000 pixels wide. In fact, most websites top out at about 640 pixels wide, which means I must take your giant pdf or eps file and resize it, which will greatly slow the speed with which I can get this exciting information out to the public! It also fills up my inbox and makes it a lot more likely that I will just delete your email.

While I am sharing, it would also be fantastic if you could give your image files a reasonable and unique name. Believe it or not, I probably already have a file called image.jpg on my desktop from someone else! I wouldn’t want to accidentally overwrite that file, now would I? And even better, if you give me actual information in the file name, I’ll be able to use that information to make my post better and more informative. If my post looks better, we all look better, right?

Finally, I am not a big fan of typing when it comes to posting press releases, so if you could please include the text in copy and paste-able form, that would be great. I’m sure your designer spent awhile laying the text out in that jpg, but Google bots can’t read it! And my site looks awfully funny if there is no readable text in the sections that ONLY SHOW TEXT. It’s also a great deal more likely that I will incorrectly type out the information, and your message will get lost in translation. We wouldn’t want that, now would we?

Well, thanks so much for reading! I am really looking forward to hearing about the latest developments you have in store! Have a great day.

A Web Editor

Every once in awhile, a phenomenon occurs that I can really get behind. Usually, it involves drinking, so this whole “icing” thing is right up my alley. Inspired but the guys at Dude Barn, I decided to Ice both Party Time Nate and Timbro yesterday.

Nate exercised proper form and after putting it down lamented he was surprised no one had iced him sooner.

Tim took advantage of “physics” and used a straw for ventilation to aid in his icing.

Now the bad news about this is I now have to carry around an ice for blocking, which seems really inconvenient. But it was worth it, watching your friends suffer through drinking a Smirnoff may be the best thing since Wizard staffs.

I used to not check any of the “major” snowboard sites. Frankly I didn’t care or even want to know what they posted. For me, the only thing that mattered is that I was happy with what I was posting on YoBeat. But once I started selling ads, it became pretty apparent, those other sites were competition, and I’d better know what they were doing if I was going to convince people to give us money rather than them. So I set up a Google reader and started paying attention. More often than not, the other feeds looked similar to, if not exactly the same as, each other (of course this method of tracking is faulty because it doesn’t differentiate between site sections, and half the time is hours behind). Not to say I was never guilty– I’d often post some of the same stuff, mostly press releases and teasers. (This is also a necessary evil if you want to keep advertisers happy.) I should have known it was a slippery slope.

It’s hard to keep a website going and updated every day. As a lone person, or even with a few people, coming up with brilliant, original content on a regular basis can only last so long. And the web makes it really easy to get lazy, especially with the sheer amount of videos and brand-created content, uploaded every day, just there for the embedding. Why spend money and time creating new content, when you can just take what’s already there?

So here’s what happens. Eventually it stops being about having “good” content and just about keeping the site updated. Content=traffic, right? I’d find myself posting things (such as the infinite number of teasers,) without even watching them. And this morning (an especially teaser-heavy one) I realized my site looked just like all the others. Same embedded video. Same copy and paste description. Why bother?

I ended up breaking my own rule and took down a couple of those posts. I replaced them with this. It’s still the same teasers, but what’s this? It has an angle. It’s a little different. It’s a reason for someone to come to YoBeat instead of the others. And it makes me feel better, at least.

In writing this I realized I don’t know what I am trying to say. I’m definitely not trying to give anyone advice on how to make a good website! In fact, the more time I spend updating the Internet, the less I feel like I know whats good, bad or even interesting. I think mostly I just need to put this out there for myself as a reminder: if you’re not gonna try, you might as well not bother.

June 19, 2010. Portland, Ore. A fairly typical Saturday night. Temperatures were hovering in the low 60s and the moon was peaking through the clouds. Perfect weather for an estimated 10,000 people (or more) to strip off their clothes and ride bikes in a giant pack through the city. It was my first naked bike ride (and if you know me you know I’m not big on bikes) so I took pictures.

The onslaught of the Burnside Bridge.

The intersection of 2nd and Burnside, and a bunch of naked people.

What, you don’t want to get naked and ride your tall bike through the city sometimes?

Another night on the job for PDX police.

Many participants yelled for spectators to get naked. Eventually, these guys did.

Pretty sure these spots were all natural.

See ya next year…

I’ve been threatening to reedit this video for awhile, and now that I have things to procrastinate, it seemed like a good time. So here is our attempting at cutting down a tree, in under 40 seconds.

Believe it or not, I didn’t just travel down to Texas to check out my first flash flood. I was actually already there and the flood just happened! Why, you might ask, would anyone be in Texas already? On this occasion it was in fact a cable wakeboarding contest that Alliance was sponsoring. I took pictures, got a sunburn, and generally killed it, as usual. Here are a few pictures that were taken during my moments of artiness, and not really appropriate for the wakeboard website. If you want to see all the hot action shots, check out the posts here and here.

Rupert!

It seems every time I go to Texas I manage to bring some sort of weather-related disaster. On my last trip to Dallas, the Cowboys practice stadium collapsed a mile away from me, and this time, it was a flood. The rain had kept me up all night, pounding so hard on the roof along with frequent thunder and lighting. I went back to sleep in the morning after it somewhat subsided, only to be woken up by a wailing siren. I immediately thought tornado, but this time the siren meant they were opening the flood gates, literally. Once the first siren sounds, you have about ten minutes before hell breaks loose. Better get the boat out, brace what you can and hope for the best.

The water rose probably 20 feet within a matter of hours. First I watched the water creep up over the island protecting the canal I was staying on. Then it climbed and climbed, until the normally steep yard was one big rushing river. I headed over to another house, right on the river, where they were having a “flood party.” They’d gotten the boat out in the time, but needed to stand by and knock debris away from the dock. Most people sat on the porch and watched boats, jetskis, gas tanks, and everything else float by. Then, a few hours after it started, the waters started to subside. Who knows where all the debris ended up, but I sure am glad I don’t have to clean it up!

Gabe Lucas standing on the upper deck of his dock. Normally this is 12 feet off the surface of the lake, and there is a boat underneath it. And yeah, that’s a boat bobbing by in the background.

The dam is open.

A constant stream of debris

50 grand, floating down stream, headed for the next dam.

This pontoon boat was in that boat house for awhile, until it finally found it’s own way out.

Nothing to do but watch.

Another boat floating in the stew.

Bye Bye boat!

Surveying the damage. Looks like a free bench washed up!

The celebration of survival!

Bathrooms and kitchens sell houses, or so they say. I’m not really in the market to sell my house actually, but the peeling linoleum floor, industrial plastic trim, half-working toilet and press board vanity in my bathroom needed to go anyway. I happen to have a resident handy man, so when Obama hooked me up with a decent tax return this year, it was on.

Over the past four years we’ve almost redone every thing in my house, inside and out, but I was in no way prepared for the joy of ripping out and redoing the house’s main bathroom. Luckily we have a sort of workshop half bath in the garage, but several days of being forced to use it were inconvenient to say the least. Now though, radiant under-floor heating keeps the Philadephia travertine warm, the custom made bamboo vanity is not disintegrating, and the toilet actually flushes every time! As for selling my house, assuming it holds up until the time comes, I don’t think it will hurt. Check out before before, after and during pictures after the jump, and for close ups and nerdy technically info, go read Jared’s blog.

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