I’ve been thinking about this post since my flight home on September 12th. A little recap of the summer that was, with pictures of my travels and a story or two.  Finally today, I had time to sit and put words to print.  The past year has been a pretty crazy roller-coaster for me.

I can say this with 100 percent seriousness: It feels so good to be home.

Charleston

If you haven’t been following along at home; at this time last year, Mackensie and I had made the crazy decision that we were going to pack up our lives and move from Pittsburgh to Charleston, SC at the beginning of this year.  As it turned out, that didn’t happen because I took a new job here in Pittsburgh. So we moved into a new apartment, got another dog and Mackensie made a huge career change too (which I am really excited about).

One thing is for sure, Mackensie and I will end up in living in The Holy City at some point in our lives. For now, Charleston will continue to be our second home.

But enough about that.

Summer of ’11 came into focus in May, when I was offered a position, as an extension of my job, to join the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross tour as a technical manager. In a nutshell, I would travel 10 weekends to the racetracks, and set up video feeds, jumbotrons, produce commercials, etc. Right up my alley for sure.

I started Memorial Day weekend with an event in Southwestern Pennsylvania, then I went to Maryland, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, another one in PA, and finally a trip to California last week.

Portland International Airport

I saw my fair share of airports this year.  If I wasn’t so lazy I probably would have wrote some reviews on each one.  Minneapolis and Portland were my favorites.  Pittsburgh, both Chicagos and LAX were the worst.

I’ve been told by travelers from elsewhere in the country that Pittsburgh is their favorite airport. And it is a pretty good airport, but it’s here in Pittsburgh and well I’m getting into a rant about Pittsburgh… not today.

Leaving every Wednesday and coming home on Sundays didn’t leave me much of a summer at home, but I really had a great time seeing the country and if things work out, I hope to do the tour again next summer.  I made some great new friends along the way and I learned a ton about moto and action sports in general.  I also had a great team of people working with me to make the live feeds work each week.

Before I end this post, I wanted to take a second to thank Mackensie for all her hard work at home this summer with the dogs, her jobs, our wacky apartment and our crazy families. I missed her like crazy while I was gone, and next summer I’m going to drag her along on a few of the trips for sure.

Worst part of the summer… I say ‘for sure’ all the time now. Shit.

Below is a gallery of shots from the wacky places I found myself this summer.  Oddly enough, almost every week there was some kind of festival, concert or street party going on in the city I was in.  And many times I found myself wondering how those people made it to work on Friday.  Since I didn’t spend every single day of the summer on the road, I added a few pictures from the non-working days.