Cover nostalgia and a farewell

For the last few years I've worked as an editor and photo editor for the Adventure Cycling Association. It's been a lot of fun, but recently I decided it was time to return to the freelance life. Last week was my last at Adventure Cycling. While I'm looking forward to spending more time outside and on my own stories, I'll miss putting together the publications with the crew over at ACA. As a farewell, here's a ride back through a few more of the covers I had the pleasure of creating (to see my earlier post on covers, go here)...

This is one of my all-time favorite covers from one of my all-time favorite adventure photographers, Cass Gilbert. My jaw dropped when I first saw the original image of Cara Coolbaugh riding a "road" high in the Indian Himalayas, and I was thrilled when it translated perfectly to a cover, even if I hated to crop the larger image. This was taken just over Sach Pass and was the beginning of a two-day, 11,000 foot descent. That, my friends, is epic...

This next shot is of Cass Gilbert himself, exploring country roads along the coast of Ireland. As far as pavement-riding goes, this looks hard to beat. I'd had this image on file for a couple of years and had always wanted to use it — there's just something about the simple composition, the curl of the road, the lean in the bicycle, and especially Cass's jersey, that makes this image work for me. And while there was certainly room for a lot of cover blurbs, one thing I always liked about Cyclo covers was that we could run them text-free. Just the image with the flag across the top. Clean and elegant, just the way it should be...

 

In the third consecutive Cyclosource cover for Cass, Cara makes another appearance, again in the Indian Himalayas, this time crossing a glacial-melt stream on the road from Manali to Leh. If we had more roads like this here in the U.S., I might spend more time road riding. I mean, how great does this look? Assuming, of course, that you don't fall and get swept off the roadside...

The Cyclists' Yellow Pages was another publication I put together, in collaboration with my friend Ben Ferencz. We had a lot of fun with these covers...

This shot was taken by Dave Turner somewhere deep in the Australian outback. It was for the final printed edition of the CYP, so as soon as the idea hit me for this cover I knew it was perfect. Night falls on the CYP, you could say. People were worried that it would be too dark for a cover, so I lightened the shot a bit (which always darken when printed). After that, Ben and I stuck to our guns and it ended up being one of my favorite covers. Here's the original...

Here's another one of my favorites — the cloud cover — photographed by the esteemed Gregg Bleakney somewhere in South America. Kudos to Ben for the serif font choice on the logo...

And the gorgeous original...

Here's an older cover featuring a photo of mine that I'll always love because it was a great trip and, well, it's got my Pops on it...

We'd just spent several hours cooped up inside that little tent waiting for the rain to stop, an episode that inspired an essay for the Big Agnes catalog that same year. Here's snapshot I took of us inside the tent that BA ended up using to illustrate the essay...




In closing, I'll offer a fond farewell to Adventure Cycling. It was a great four-and-a-half years. But life moves on, and I'm looking forward to writing the next chapter...