Category: Photography

The City of Light

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

Just before Christmas the news was filled with people stuck in the major European airports for days due to weather delays.  I was one of those souls.  I, however, made lemonade out of lemons and spent an afternoon roaming central Paris, the city of light!

I was bumped from two flights and told to come back to the gate for the next available flight – in 12.5 hours! Uhhh… OK….  I have been to Paris enough times over the last 10 years to have a pretty good handle on the transport system.  From Charles de Gaulle Airport there is a RER train that, for $10, will take you into the heart of the city, a trip that takes around 35 minutes.  It had been snowing like mad that morning, but when I stepped off the train at the Saint Michel Metro stop, the grey skis parted and the sky turned a brilliant blue.  It stayed that way for three hours before the clouds and snow moved back in.

I rushed over to Notre-Dame because in the 20-odd times that I have been to Paris, I have never been inside.  It always seems to be summer and the line to get in is normally oppressively long so I skip it.  Being a COLD winter day there was no line at all!  I removed my hat, opened the door walked into the naïve, kneeled, crossed myself, and proceeded to tear up like a little girl.  It was stunning!!  I walked around the church for almost two hours, exploring every corner.  There was so much beauty and a glossy magazine worthy picture opertunity at every turn.  I just wish Laurel and the kids could have been there to see it!  We will be back.

I reluctantly left Norte-Dame and headed over the Seine to Shakespeare & Co. bookstore.  It crowded dusty shelves make me oh so happy.  I browsed, listened to the proprietress’s sweet voice laugh and chit-chat in both French and English, I took a few pictures and bought a couple of books.  From there I walked to a Crepe stand in the Latin Quarter and ate my savory crepe in the shadow of the “oldest” tree in Paris.

At 4:00 I headed over for the Catacombs tour.  6+ million of Paris’s former residents now reside in former quarry tunnels under the city.  In a word, spooky!  I left the hour long tour is a pensive, reflective mood.  I took the RER back to the airport, my “scheduled” flight was still active and I settled in for a wait.  After a few more delays, I flew out just before all flights were cancelled and an hour before Terminal #2 was evacuated because of the weight of snow on the roof.

Halloween – Past and Present

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

There are certain advantages to being married to a costume designer whose resume includes stage, TV, and film production…  It takes the Halloween costume planning and execution to a whole different level.  There are no half-ass Wal-Mart last-minute plastic ensembles allowed in the Talley house.  Oh no!  Outfits are tailored, accessories are found after hours of internet trolling, wigs are clipped and styled, and the fat suits are tubby perfection!  Stamps-With-Foot took a small little ember of Halloween love in me and made it into a choreographed 3-alarm house fire.  Below are some pictures of our costumes past and present.

Our Second Wedding

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

The ladies

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While most people wait until their 20th anniversary to marry their spouse again, we decided to move the time-line up a bit and do it on our 3.75 year anniversary. We is just sort of roll like that… No really, we eloped those long many years ago in Southern California just before our move to Germany. We had planned to have a get-together for family and friends the next summer, but life got in the way. Life kept getting in the way. There has been some increasing pressure from a couple of friends and my mother-in-law to get it done already.

During a visit at Christmas last year (I was still heavily medicated from the latest shoulder surgery so I was in an agreeable mood…) my father-in-law and I went running at Camp Long and happened into the lodge, a WPA built stone and timber craftsman beauty. Donald and I talked about it being a perfect place for a wedding reception and then enrolled Laurel in the idea of having our “DO” close to home (the park is 1.5 blocks from La Maison du Talley) this would simplify planning and logistics and with the rental of all ten cabins on the site, there would a place for everyone to sleep off what promised to be a beverage filled evening. Simple was the plan… Stress was the eventuality, but to see Laurel dressed in radiant white, surrounded by our family and friends was worth every hypertensive moment.

With the amazing help of those gathered, the day of our ceremony went off without a hitch. Our caterer was GREAT, the beer was cold, wine flowed, Donald made killer appetizers, Herbert was on flower and wine delivery duty, Matthew delivered the Nana and was a terrific MC, Henrik was took more pictures than Matthew Brady and Annie Leibovitz combined. Michael delivered the beer, Dani played the violin as if she were truly an angel, Beckie made the cakes beautiful, Gin read the poetry with great flair, Emmy arranged the flowers was Laurel’s rock, Sarah remade the dress, Miguel added the sweetness, the Aunts decorated the hall, Jan was maestro of our crazy little orchestra, Bob the photographer was on time and worked it, Leif was the official dog walker extraordinaire, Brodie was an awesome ring bearer, Nick steamed dresses, Nana folded programs into the wee hours, and the entire Brezynski family was the oil that made it all run smoothly.

The ceremony was held outside in the large meadow and an old Burton family friend was the officiant. I saw my beautiful bride being walked by her father and I cried like a little girl who had her Princess Pony taken away. She looked amazing and graceful and so happy. We said our vows, everyone cheered and at some point I stopped crying. Pictures were taken and we all retired to the lodge for drinking, eating, speeches, dancing, and laughter. As the evening closed, I gave my bride her wedding present. A gift that will always remind her of me and will speak to our journey through life together: a restored 1967 red Schwinn Twin tandem bike. She wanted to ride it in her wedding dress – one of the 10,000 reasons I love her.

schwinn-twinn1-1966

Being Good and Bad in the Garden

/ Matt Talley / 6 Comments

Our yard (front and back) is in bloom and we have all sorts of flowers, herbs, and veggies coming up.  The grass is thick and green and the couple of bare spots where the overgrown bushes used to be have now been reseeded and they are now sprouting tiny green slivers of Kelly green cover.  The vine maple is in full leaf and is a pleasure to both look at and to lay under in an afternoon hammock snooze

I woke up early Saturday morning and took some pictures of the rhododendrons in the front and various sprouty things in the back just to document the current state of affairs for some friends and family who have been asking.  Progress in the yard redo is slower than we had wanted – mostly due to us being overly ambitious for the first year in the new house, my own inaction, a screwed up shoulder, and our convoluted schedule.  We had planned to have the garden boxes in, but it doesn’t look like they are going to make it this season as I am just running out of time and more projects inside the house have appeared.  For now we are growing our kitchen herbs, garlic, and tomatoes in planters/containers and will expand that little by little for the next month to include peppers, three additional tomatoes, two more blueberries, and some yellow squash.  I had hoped to have the apple, lemon, and cherry trees taken care of, but as yet the Lapin cherry is the only thing that is growing roots.  The raspberries and thorn-less-blackberries are chugging along and I have started tying the canes to galvanized wire on the fence.  Someone is going to have cool fresh raspberries in his cereal come June J

The plan for our front yard is currently going through a bit of a shift, mostly because of the neighbors to the north of us:  It is a rent house with two 20-something guys (referred to by some of the other neighbors as Bevis and Butthead) who are in a metal band,  work(-ish) in construction, and are living what could be called an extended adolescence.  Loud band practice at 1:30 AM, wafting pot smoke, firecrackers in the middle of the night, beer bottles on the sidewalk, grass two feet high, trash all over the front stoop, trucks occasionally parked in the yard, etc…  They are nice enough guys to talk to, but we don’t want to look at that every day.   So, we have left the two 10’ tall rhodies on the north fence until either they move or accidentally burn their house down in the middle of the night while lighting the bong.  The Belgium fence of heirloom apples and roses is on hold until then.  Additionally, I had wanted to rip out the two rhododendron bushes in the front and replace them with red and white azaleas – Laurel made me wait until they bloomed and she was right, they are beautiful and they get to stay.  We are going to thin them some after they are finished blooming and will plant just two white azaleas on each front corner of the house.

I have been watering and potting and weeding in the back a little when I get home in the afternoons and this is exactly the bliss that I had imagined and wanted when we put the offer in on Casa d’ Talley in June of last year.  Gathering sticks and string for our nest…

My AWESOME wife:

/ Matt Talley

It is windy and raining today and we are sitting inside snuggling with the heater in the living room, but the weather last weekend was nice enough for us to get out and ride our bikes to the city center on Saturday and to Altona the next day for coffee and books. My muse/wife was also gracious enough to let me snap a few pictures of her. She is her own special Betty Crocker/Jenna Jamison/Laurel stew and I couldn’t ask for a better friend or wife or partner in crime.

Fact: My bike is cooler than yours.

/ Matt Talley

Earlier this summer, Laurel (my amazing wife) and I took her bike to the shop to have it repaired – warranty issue. While there, we saw a Penny Farthing (also called a Hiwheel or a Bone Shaker) in the window of the shop with a price tag on it. You NEVER see these things for sale! Some guy will have one is his window as advertising or just to be cool, but they never sell them. Well, we found a place that did. Laurel wouldn’t let me leave the shop without taking this baby home: that is how cool she thought it was. She even let me stay in the shop stroking it sweetly as she went to an ATM to get cash. I love my wife!

I am not going to tell you what she paid for it, but it wasn’t much. We had to walk my “new” bike home because I was wearing flip-flops. About halfway there she looked over and asked me, “Umm, can you actually ride this thing?” Fvck yes I can!! I went right home, put some real shoes on, and took it for a cautionary spin around a local school yard to practice mounting and un-mounting – it has been about 22 years since I was shown how by a visiting clown at my elementary school. Just like riding a bike…

After a few adjustments, I rode the thing from the house to downtown Hamburg, around the Klein Alster Lake and back – about ten miles. I turned heads and made people smile and wave (neither is a common site in Hamburg) wherever I went. I even let some old guys have their picture taken with it. Not a chick-magnet, but it pulls old dudes out of the woodwork to talk about classic bikes. I had a lot of fun that first day, but paid a high price. The seat that came with the bike was an old unicycle saddle with no springs to cushion the cobblestones and bumps. I ended up getting a blister on the tip of my tailbone that hurt so bad I couldn’t ride any of my regular bikes for a week.

Our first ride together

My Boneshaker on the Alster in Hamburg

Over the next few days, I found out more and more about my new stead – the original builder’s son still runs the company that built it and really helped me out with info about the bike. She was built by Rideable Bicycle Replicas in the late 1970’s as a copy of an 1875 French Boneshaker and brought to Hamburg along with 20 or so other hiwheels for a bicycle show. My bike was one of 13 that were sold to a guy who rented them out for TV shows, movies, as decoration, and to museums. By 2008 he only had 4 left and mine was the most complete, as it had spent the last ten years in a puppet museum; sparing it a hard life. He sold my bike, two other complete, but ugly/bent ones, and the heavily damaged forth hiwheel to the bike shop owner who then put the best one in the window. The only notable damage to mine is where some jackass drilled strait through the headbadge, the head tube, and the fork to suspend the bike from the ceiling so an evil little puppet could sit astride it – sorry it sort of feels like thinking about my wife kissing some old boyfriend – makes me twitch a little.

Since the initial tailbone trauma, I have installed a new seat (two different ones actually), new bars, given her a good scrubbing, and ride her around town for errands on the any weekend afternoon that the sun is shinning. I even rode her to a local wilderness park to get on a few trails with my wife– not recommended. I didn’t go ass-over-tea-kettle, but it is not the greatest bike I have ever ridden on dirt. To be completely honest, I have had one accident thus far: the cobblestones on my street were wet a couple weekends ago and I slipped off while mounting in front of about fifteen neighbors. They think that I am ‘that crazy American that lives in the red building’ anyway, so it only hurt me pride a little.

At the Niendorfer Gehege Park in North Hamburg

Riding on the paths in the Gehege after a picnic lunch

Spring in Nord Deutschland

/ Matt Talley

It is springtime here in the Far North! You cannot imagine how much the winter here SUCKS! Last week was amazing: 20°C, bright sunshine, blue skies, cool breezes, the flowers were in bloom, I had a three day weekend, birds were singing, the apple tree outside my window blossomed, etc, etc, etc… Time for a Bar-B-Q! We had a little get together in the back yard – friends and neighbors – cooked some Fleisch on the grill, drank a couple or four cold beers, laughed about the guy across the street with the giant TV (80”+…) and his propensity to walk around his place without pants – his boys swinging in the breeze – to the horror of the two buildings on our side of the street. Winter was hard for us, but with the coming of spring is a renewed love of our adopted city.

In the back yard of our building – notice the wine AND beer. I am an equal opportunity consumer.

Taken at Planten am Bloomen in the heart of Hamburg

This is the finist flower shot I have ever snapped – A large matted print will soon hang in our livingroom.

Single-Speed love

/ Matt Talley

Gabby, my new two-wheeled mistress. Hold your curser on the pic to see what she looked like on our first date…
My Singlespeed/fixie:

I fell in love with singlespeed/fixed gear bikes a long while ago. What’s not to love? They are quick, light, there is nothing on them to steal or screw-up, and they have a certain cool factor that is generally limited to things like Triumph bobber motorcycles and Hellbilly music. After my admiration started to border on obsession, I thought about picking a new pre-built and ready to ride Raleigh, Alta, or Giant up from a local shop. When I casually mentioned this “plan” to my loving wife, she MAY have exploded… She may have also pointed out that I have 3.5 (the .5 part is my unicycle – see “Nerdy” post below…) other bikes taking up space, time, and money in our lives and that there was NO WAY that I was going into a store and drop 500-800€ for a new “toy.” After some time had passed we reached an agreement of sorts: I could built a “new” bike if I spent less than 150€, slowly over time, and invested some sweat-equity in the project. Seeing an eventual path to my goal and not wanting to start Armageddon over a steel-framed bicycle, I agreed to her proposition.

I started right away looking on eBay for a suitable candidate bike, but the sellers there were all pretty savvy and I would have blown my budget on the frame alone. I checked most of the used bike shops in town – I stopped counting after sixteen – and while some had just what I needed, their frames didn’t match my budget. I pined away for a few weeks and finally decided to stop looking for the ‘perfect’ frame and to maybe start checking at junk shops for something that I could make do with. The very afternoon I made that decision, Laurel and I were out walking and found a wrecked bike in the trash. It was in BAD shape: Missing the front wheel & misc. parts, a shattered rear wheel, rust and dings everywhere, but the frame was straight, the forks were still there, the chainring was OK, and other than being filthy and banged up, the cranks were just what I needed. It was like Manna from Heaven. I took it home, cleaned it up, and stripped it down to the bare frame that same night.

For the last couple of years I have been a daily visitor to fixedgeargalley.com for my morning dose of bike-porn. Many of the bikes there started their lives as crappy or moderate road bikes that were switched to single speeds. Some of these bikes are God-awful ugly: pink and lime green or with strange attachments bolted willy-nilly to the frame and bars, but the majority are sleek, well built, and very functional. The site served as my daily inspiration to complete my own bike. After looking at the entire 6000+ bike image library, I had a pretty good idea about what I wanted for my own bike in terms of look and function.

It turned out that the found-frame was two sizes too big for me and that the steel forks were an inch and a half out of true, but the frame was solid with no serious imperfections and no rust bad enough to cause structural problems. The drop bars were in good shape too, so I flipped them over and chopped them off to make narrow bullhorn bars. Work got hectic at that point and the frame hung on the wall in my basement for a couple of months, as I told anyone who would listen about my new project. For my birthday, my most dependable riding buddy bought me a bike jersey at the local messenger/track bike shop. Somehow this speciality shop had evaded my attention until that point. There I found what amounted to singlespeed Heaven. For that same birthday, my wife gave me 50€ to buy whatever bike parts I desired. Off we went on the afternoon of the 34th anniversary of my birth and I picked up a flip-flop hub, a 16-tooth freewheel for one side, and a 16-tooth fixed track gear for the other. I may have fondled it, wearing a perverse smile, all the way home.

I spent a couple of hours the next week building the rear wheel from a rim that I have had for a while. I had some trouble with calculating the correct spoke length and used the late Sheldon Brown’s online calculator to set me straight (Sheldon forgot more about bikes than I will ever know and his site was a crutch I used during the whole build process.). I went to a local BMX shop for new spokes and when I found out that they wanted 50€ for them, I laughed at them and left. The wheel and bike frame continued to collect dust until after Christmas with me picking up a few parts here and there: used brakes, a new seat, used seat post, and a used chrome track fork. I found that the original stem/neck on the bike suffered the same fate as the original forks, so I picked up a cheap lightly used one. The track bike shop, Suicycle, ended up building the rear wheel and supplying the new spokes for the same price quoted by the other shop for just the spokes. I was more than happy to let them do it as it saved me time and aggravation.

Shortly after the holidays, we sold my wife’s super-cool Moulton travel bike for a profit and went to buy her another bike that better suited her sense of aesthetics (long story…). While at the shop she spotted some pedals that I had been looking for. They were 75€ new and we got a lightly used pair and a used MTB handle bar for 30€ total. Oh, it was a happy day! She found a great bike for a lot less than she sold the other for and with some of the leftover funds I got some parts for my project. As I built the bike up I realized that we had been sold two LEFT side pedals… Laurel had business near the shop and was sweet enough to go there twice; the first time they didn’t have a RIGHT side pedal and the second to argue about a refund. I ended up buying a new set of similar ones at a local roadbike shop.

I had changed my mind about the cow horns. I wanted something sleeker and bars better able to fit between cars as I made my way through traffic to work in the mornings. There is a current fad among messengers and messenger wannnabes to chop the bar down to ten inches and your thumbs rubbing the underside of the stem. That is somewhat squirrelly for my taste and doesn’t afford me the space to mount brakes. As I have two kids to put through college, I need breaks on my bike. I cut the MTB bars down to fifteen inches, chose 2-fingered MTB break levers, and installed rubber grips to make for both a functional and nice looking setup. I did end up using the cow horns on my folding train-commuter bike. They turned out VERY nice.

A couple of weeks later, I spent a Saturday sanding, priming, and re-sanding and re-priming the frame. Over the next couple of days I put two nice, even rattle-can coats of matte black automotive paint on it and hung it up in my attic to dry. When the painting was done, I made one touch up, and then hung it in our shower with a wallpaper dryer on it all night to help cure the paint. The next day I cut the fork threads to length, installed the bearings, enlarged the brake calliper mounting holes, greased everything (including inside the seat tube) and put it all together in our living room, making sure to fit it as closely as possible to the geometry and measurements of my race bike. Everything did not go exactly as planned: My special ordered chain didn’t fit and my rear break calliper was too short. Those two things took a couple of days to sort out while my bike patiently waited for me in our living room. Did I mention that I have the most understanding wife ever?! Not only did she give me cash for my obsession and go to shops for/with me, bought me bike tools for Christmas, and in addition to not flipping out to bike parts all over her dining room table for a week, she was supportive of my little obsession the whole time.

On the first semi-sunny day (not a frequent occurrence in the cold north of Deutschland) that we had after I finished the build, I took the bike out for a ten mile shakedown ride on Hamburg’s streets, sidewalks, bike lanes. HOLY SHIT!! My new single speed/fixie is all that I could have wished for. It made me want to be bad… I found myself weaving through cars at red lights, passing perhaps too closely to pedestrians, shooting through spaces not ordinarily thought of as bike-friendly. I am old enough to realize that this behavior was something that would get me in trouble at home, but it was just so much damn fun!! The steel frame was smooth on the cobblestones, it was really responsive, and it tracked great when riding with no hands. The bike is light enough that hopping a tall curb took very little effort, the small bars were really comfortable to ride with, and I got a bunch of compliments while in a bike shop and while waiting for lights to turn. The only slightly negative comment that I have is that it doesn’t exactly stop on a dime, but that has to do with the brake lever that I used and can be fixed with an upgrade to BMX levers and stiffer brake pads.

In the interest of full disclosure, I spent about 100€ more than we agreed upon, but in my defence the forks were half of that and the bike still cost about a third of what a new bike would have cost. In addition to learning an absolute ton about gear ratios, inside bike builder tricks, wheel building, and rider fitting – I also had a hobby to occupy my time for almost a year, time that could have been spent bugging my wife and getting on her nerves. One COULD almost reason that a year free of certain aggravation might be priceless… If you see my wife and she is still ticked about the cost overrun, you could remind her of this, you know – if you want…

Like all my other bikes, this one has a woman’s name: Gabby – after Gabrielle Reese the pro volleyball player and model. She is named so because like her namesake, she is too tall for me, is quick, responsive, beautiful, agile, sleek, and if you don’t pay her the proper amount of attention while riding her you will likely end up on the pavement broken and bleeding.

I took pictures of the build process, and have put them here, if you want to take a look and the specifications for my home-brewed bike are below:

Frame: 80’s model 12 speed Raleigh roadbike, originally white.
Forks: Chrome Heson track forks from Holland.
Stem/Neck: Aluminium one piece from Italy.
Chain: Shimano BMX.
Pedals: Wellgo Commuter/SPD Shimano knock-offs
Crank: Solide 170mm aluminium from France.
Front Wheel and hub: 700cm Mavic Reflex by Wheelsmith and Dura-Ace hub.
Anti-theft front wheel skewer.
Rear wheel and hub: Mavic Wheel & flip-flop Phil Wood hub.
Handlebars: Bontrager MTB flat bar cut to 15 inches.
Brakes: Shimano 105 front and a 1970’s German Weinland for the rear.
Levers: One for each child. No-name 2-finger trigger.
Cables: Shimano
Chainring: 42 tooth aluminium that was found on the bike, flipped.
Sprocket: 16t freewheel and 16 tooth fixed
Saddle: Selle Italia Filante.
Seat Post: No-name fluted aluminium with shim.