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Taos Pueblo
•September 9, 2022 • 1 CommentThe Pueblo has been inhabited for almost 1,000 years. Currently there are about 1200 people living there.
A few images from our stay at the Zendo, Horakuan, in Nagano Japan
•October 3, 2018 • Leave a Comment
Calligraphy with Kaz Tanahashi at the Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe
•December 17, 2017 • Leave a CommentKazuaki Tanahashi, born in Japan in 1933 is an artist, writer, and peace and environmental worker. He spend time at Mountain Cloud in Sant Fe recently demonstrating his calligraphy and discussing the writings of Master Dogen.
Kaz with Henry Shukman, the Mountain Cloud Zen Master
Discussing Dogen’s teachings
Making a large ensō
A week in San Miguel de Allende
•November 17, 2017 • 3 CommentsSan Miguel is quite a bit different than most Mexican cities we’ve visited. Lots of American and Canadian expats and tourists, hundreds of restaurants, great weather, and lots of charm.
We rented an apartment that was only 1/2 mile from the center of town, but was up a hill with over 200′ of gain in that distance. Lots of walking on the towns very unusual stone roads. All very charming, and a real workout (we walked 45 miles in 6 1/2 days).
San Miguel has a city-wide code on building colors. If you want to paint your building a different color, you have to pay a special assessment fee. Consequently, most buildings are very bright and colorful.
There are over 800 weddings a year there. These Mojigangas are all over town, and are used in the weddings. Something about her expression does not look particularly enthusiastic about the whole marriage idea…
The central plaza was a constant source of activity, day and night
We took a 90 minute bus ride to Guanajuato. It’a a college town and very different than San Miguel
As you can see, this woman was exceedingly noticeable. Clearly some enhancements…
A few other photos while walking around town:
The Length of Japan Cycling Tour is about to begin…
•September 2, 2017 • Leave a CommentThe Length of Japan cycling tour starts next week. I’ll be the ride leader for our 30 day journey from the northern tip of Hokkaido, Cape Soya, to the southern tip of Kyushu, Cape Sata. It’ll be over 1,600 miles (2,600 km’s) with more than 100,000 vertical feet of climbing (30,000 mt’s) on (mostly) fantastic roads.
There will be plenty of updates and photos on my Cycling and Travel Blog during the next month…
Women’s March, Santa Fe, NM
•January 21, 2017 • 2 CommentsSome photos of the Women’s March, 21 January 2017, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Ready to leave home… the weather was going to prove our commitment
Clearly the weather was not much of a deterrent… there are lots of people committed to this cause. Several thousand people came out.
Platinum-Palladium Prints
•March 30, 2016 • 6 CommentsFor some time now I’ve been working to improve my Platinum – Palladium printing techniques. It’s been a long road, but worth the effort, costs, and frustrations. Learning this printing process from scratch is not for the faint hearted, or those looking for quick gratification. I lost count of my dead-ends and trashed prints. But, I finally now am able to produce a predictable print that gives me the results I’ve been looking for.
Washi Artisan
I start with a Digital Negative, this part alone has a very long learning curve. I settled on prints with 50-50 Platinum-Palladium on Arches Platine. I tend to print small as I think this process lends itself to the intimacy that a small image offers. These prints are either 3.5″ square or 3″ x 4.5″.
Making Washi
Almost everything in my studio is DIY. I started exposing the image in the sun, but even in New Mexico, that’s too variable, so I made my own light box and contact frame. I made a sink because I could’t find a pre fabricated one that fit my needs. I made a light protective drying rack. Sure, all this was a lot of work, but I got just what I wanted.
Moroccan Cart
I started printing my Digital Negatives on an Epson R2880 using Epson inks, then I switched to Jon Cone’s Piezography ink-set. The R2880 was slowing dying and making my life miserable in the process, so I got a new Epson 1430. It has 6 ink cartridges instead of 8, and has been flawless for me. I’m still using Jon’s inks with the 1430.
Selfie
In this post are some scans of my images. The theme of these images is pretty obvious: It’s mostly People in their Environment, taken from my recent travels…
Shikoku Pilgrimage
Generations
Incense
The Mezcalero
Looking Smart
Making Goat Tacos
Textile Market
Taxi?
A sense of scale
Alison Stepping
Rice Field
Indian Laundry
Spiral
In the Jewish Quarter
Quietly Eating
Cycling Road
An Aztec Wedding Ceremony
•February 5, 2015 • Leave a CommentRachel and Noel’s beautiful ceremony, deep in the Mexican jungle.
Alison Keogh Sumi-Ink Throw #2 (video)
•February 5, 2015 • 1 CommentThe throw…
The result…
The process, the Ink-Throw Video:
Alison Keogh’s Sumi-ink Throw
•December 27, 2014 • Leave a CommentThrowing sumi-ink, blindfolded…
photos’s and video by robert j. mang
A Solo Journey: Cycling the Length of Japan
•September 21, 2014 • Leave a Comment
Last year I started my first solo Length of Japan cycle tour, but after 10 days and 540 miles I had to fly home unexpectedly. This year, I’m taking up where I left off.
Once again, I will be posting photos of my trip. In this “Phase II Tour”, I will ride 21 days, rest a few, and cover about 1200 miles from the very north of the main island of Honshu to the south of Kyushu.
If you want to be notified when I make a post, please go to my CYCLING/TRAVEL BLOG, and simply click the button “Sign me up!” under my photo (right panel) and enter your email address (you can set notification parameters, and unsubscribe any time).
Here’s the route…
N. Honshu: Aomori to Murakami, 250 miles, 11,000′, 4 cycling days
C. Honshu: Nagano to Mt Fuji, 180 miles, 20,000′, 4 cycling days
Kansai: Toba to Wakayama, 150 miles, 10,300′, 4 cycling days
Shikoku: Tokushima to Yawatahama, 240 miles, 14,200′, 4 cycling days
Kyushu: Beppu to Cape Sata and Ibusuki, 325 miles, 27,200′, 5 cycling days
A long-held belief confirmed today
•August 25, 2014 • Leave a CommentI’ve always believed that the vast majority of drivers do not hate cyclists, it’s just that they don’t consider them, they don’t look out for them, and they don’t always know what to do when they approach them.
Today, cycling up to the Ski Basin, on a stretch of road that was relatively straight allowing for at least several hundred feet visibility onto the left lane, my belief was confirmed.
Given that I was going up, my speed was slow enough that a passing car would only need to be in the left lane for a few short seconds. There was plenty of visibility for a car to safely give me lots of room. I was riding as close as reasonable to the white line considering that the edges of the road are still pretty crappy from the two-year old chip seal job.
A mid-size SUV passed me, and its left wheels did not even touch the centerline. Which meant that I could have stretched out my arm and hit the passenger side rear-view mirror. My instinctive reaction was to make a sweeping motion with my hand to the left while yelling, “move over” (actually, in all honesty, what I really said was, “move the fu**k over”, but I seriously doubt the driver heard me). However, the driver did in fact see my waving hand and thought I was in some sort of trouble, so the car stopped.
I pulled out my phone to record the conversation, only to have a middle-aged women stick her head out the window and say, “are you alright?” I asked her if she was “blind”, and that she came “way too close to me”, and said, “next time, don’t ride so close to cyclists”. And here’s the clincher. Her response? And I quote, “Oh, I didn’t realize”. I didn’t REALIZE. I didn’t realize… that I should not come so close as to scare the hell out of you, almost running you off the road.
I didn’t realize. I guess that’s the problem.
Rome at night
•May 13, 2014 • Leave a CommentRome during the day is spectacular, but at night, I think it’s even more interesting…
Paros, Greece
•May 5, 2014 • 1 CommentWe’re staying on the small island of Paros, in the town of Naoussa (pop 2800). In our travels we’ve been in places with zero tourist presence (e.g. a small mountain village in Tunisia), and in places that were overcome and obliterated by tourism (the historic and once beautiful city of Antalya, Turkey). Naoussa certainly has its share of tourism infrastructure, but not in a tacky overwhelming way. It has retained its charm, and is still an off-the-chart beautiful place.
An Opiate Withdrawal Episode… didn’t plan on this!
•April 7, 2014 • 1 CommentI’ve never spent much time thinking about problems associated with addiction and dependence. When I hear about other people having one of those conditions, I would usually chalk it up to a mostly controllable inability to simply stop taking the drug in question. Boy, was I wrong.
I learned there is a distinct difference between addiction (a compulsive drug use that effects the function of your daily life) and dependence (a physical adaption to the drug, and possibly, but not necessarily combined with addiction). One can be addicted and dependant, or one can simply be dependent. I was the latter.
After my recent cycling accident I was put on relatively high doses of oxycodone (an opiate). The drug did wonders for my recovery. It allowed me to breath, move, and deal with the severe pain I was experiencing.
After about six weeks, I decided it was time to get off the oxy. I knew hydrocodone (Vicodin) was sometimes used as a “bridge” drug, and so I switched to that. I was on 60mg oxycodone per day. Unfortunately, this plan was a huge mistake. My “only” physical reaction was severe pain (the very pain I was trying to eliminate), and my emotional reaction was a severe bout of depression. It was not pretty.
I went back on the oxy…though, on a slightly smaller dosage.
Then, over the next six weeks, I started a disciplined tapering schedule after visiting my doctor. 60 mg, 40 mg, 20 mg, 15 mg, 10 mg. When I hit 10 mg per day, almost three months after my accident, I thought, “NOW I can stop without any substitute”.
Wrong again. The reaction this time was far worse. The bout of depression was relatively mild (compared to before), but I ended up having most of the typical opiate physical dependence withdrawal symptoms: agitation, loose stools, irritability, endless sneezing bouts, runny nose, high resting heart rate, uncontrollable yawing, and the inability to get to sleep ‘cause I was like an out of control wind up toy in bed.
I went back on the oxy again – though, on yet an even smaller dosage.
Now I was on ½ a pill – 5 mg per day – for a few days. Then I thought, surely, I can quit NOW! Nope. Same symptoms. I was able to handle the symptoms on day one. Well “handle” may be overstating it, as I simply slept the entire day. It’s not hard handling something when you’re unconscious. However, getting to sleep at night was nearly impossible.
Day two was OK, I got some exercise on my indoor bike which felt wonderful, I even worked up a sweat, but still I needed a way to sleep that night.
So, another doctor visit. She said I fell off my taper a bit too quickly. 5mg per day is too quickly? Apparently. Now what?
She gave me three options: cut the pill in ¼ and take 2.5mg at bedtime for few nights, or take ½ an Ambien, or try an OTC sleeping pill. Well, there was NO WAY I was going back to oxy, so I tried the Ambien.
When I asked my doctor why kicking this drug was so hard she said it’s one of the most addictive prescription drugs on the market and some people are particularly susceptible. She said people get dependent on it for two or three primary reasons: first it solves their pain problem, then some people get a slight high from it, and most get an overall good feeling from it.
While on this drug, when life comes at you, you almost always just “feel good”…so who doesn’t want to feel good all the time? Other than The Buddha, I’m not sure any of us feel good all the time, and honestly, if I have to get that feeling out of a bottle, I’ll take not feeling good sometimes, thank you very much. Bring on life, I’m OK with it as it is. I’ll stick with my exercised-induced endorphin high. It’s safer – as long as you stay on the bike!
On night two I took ½ an Ambien and conked out in minutes. I had a restful sleep with no morning side effects. The next day, day three, I felt energized, I got on the bike and did some intervals. It felt wonderful. However, that afternoon I conked out and slept several hours and had zero energy the rest of the day. I may have overdone the workout, but screw it.
When I hit the pillow on night three I felt tired enough that I assumed I could do it “au natural”. Well, I fell asleep but woke up two hours later practically hyperventilating with a racing pulse. Going back to sleep unaided would have been impossible. So ½ Ambian came to the rescue, and I slept till morning.
Day four: could hardly extract myself from the couch to go in the kitchen and make a cup of tea, was mildly depressed, and had zero energy. I forced myself on the bike, indoors of course, ‘cause it was cold, windy, and really unpleasant outside. I think all my energy was expired simply getting ON the bike, so once there the riding part was relatively mild. But it was far better than being huddled in the fetal position on the couch under a pile of blankets.
The next few nights I took a half-Ambien to get to sleep, slept pretty well, and woke with a reasonable amount of energy. Looks like this process will take at least a week, but I honestly think I’m over the worst of it. Getting to sleep may still be a problem for a while, but I can deal with that as long as I’m not a fidgeting mess while trying.
What’s truly amazing to me is that when the doctors gave me the oxycodone prescriptions – a total of 5 doctors over the course of my recovery – not ONE gave me the prescription with a stern warning about how my body might become dependent on the stuff. It was only after visiting my primary doctor after my first failed cold-turkey episode was I told of the problems I was about to face.
The next phase is building my strength and endurance on the bike up to where I was last year. Now that is something I can get excited about!
Warning: oxycodone is nasty shit.
A slow day on the Plaza
•February 27, 2014 • Leave a CommentOne of the merchants (normally selling their goods) under the portal on the Plaza in Santa Fe. It was a slow day.
(Olympus E-M5, Leica 25mm 1.4 lens (50mm effective) – ISO 200, 1/000 @ f/4.0, B&W conversion in Silver Effects Pro)
My Spill of a Lifetime
•January 30, 2014 • 1 CommentNo matter how hard I try, the accident remains a blur. I can picture it in my minds eye, but I don’t really know if what I see is real, or only imagined.
I know for a fact that it was a great day for a mountain bike ride with three friends on a moderately difficult trail that I never rode before. Being a cautious downhiller, there were several sections where I walked the bike. On the last section, “The Spine”, I walked on more than a few occasions.
I’m positive I rode that last portion, which included the final descent before the end, because that’s where I fell.
I “remember” seeing a rocky, sandy patch as I was making the final drop, and I seem to remember thinking that I might not make it safely around or over this section. I seem to remember my front wheel turning in the sand and me lunging over the handlebars. That’s all I think I remember. What I know for sure is that I crashed on those rocks.
Only a few cloudy memories stay with me from that moment until sometime the next day. I also have some memories that were of hallucinogenic, out of body experiences.
Shortly after the accident, I clearly remember giving at least two people my wife’s cell phone number, which is kind of amazing considering that under normal circumstances I can barely recall it. I remember giving it to one of my cycling buddies, Brent, and also to one of the people in the helicopter as I was being moved into position for the ride. I also remember complaining, tongue-in cheek when the paramedics started cutting my clothes, “You’re cutting my shirt and pants! Do you know how hard it is finding a quality wool shirt in a small size!”
I also remember me repeatedly asking for my wife Alison, both on the helicopter and when being moved into the Trauma Center. I remember having this deep need to have her by my side, and I think I might have gone on about this for quite a while. Fortunately, she was there soon enough.
What I learned later was that I broke 7 ribs, suffered a “flail chest”, a punctured lung and spleen, fractured pelvis, a concussion, and that I hurt.
The first order of business when I reached the hospital was to get me into surgery to patch my punctured lung and spleen and to insert a drip tube for my lung. My recollection of this process, and I think even during the surgery, were hallucinations while under the drug Ketamine, which is really awful stuff. It’s under this drug that I felt an out of body experience, and was unable to grasp reality.
It was not until sometime the next day that I fully understood what had happened, and when I first became aware of my location. It was also when I realized just how much pain I was in. They gave me Dilaudid, which was almost as bad as Ketamine, so my hold on reality was still tenuous at best.
Thank goodness Alison was by my side from the moment she arrived at the UNM hospital. Sure, the Trauma Center may have saved my life, but there is no substitute for having a loved-one looking out for you when you’re in a hospital bed. She was levelheaded, present, and constantly engaged when a doctor or nurse came into the room. Which, of course, I was not.
Apparently the section of trail where I fell was not particularly difficult, and under other circumstances would be well within my capabilities. This accident was clearly not the result of me being foolish, or pushing myself too hard. It was just an accident; though, several unique circumstances may have contributed to the outcome.
First, I was on a new mountain bike, this being only my second time out. Not only was it new, but it was a “29-er” with hydraulic breaks and full suspension, features all new to me. I’ve been mountain biking for over 20 years, but never on a bike with this geometry or these mechanical components.
It was at the end of a pretty tough day, and I was tired and hungry. It’s unusual for me to forget food, but in this instance I had.
The trail was new to me, and while I’ve gone out separately with these other riders, this was the first time mountain biking with this particular group, not that this necessarily contributed to the accident. I like to think I “ride my own ride” no matter who I’m with, whether on the road or trail.
However, try as one might, a rider is always somewhat influenced by those in the group. I’ve always believed that it’s important to be aware of that influence, and only let it have a bearing on your riding to the extent you choose to let it. Mindlessly allowing yourself to be pushed by riders who are beyond your skill level is not only foolish and immature, but it can be dangerous.
Precisely why and how I fell will remain a mystery. Fortunately, my injuries should heal just fine with time. I was wearing a brand new helmet, which did not survive the fall. The bike however, remained in perfect condition!
According to the doctors, there are a few things for which I should be very grateful. First, the helmet saved my life. Yes, I had a concussion, and the impact cracked the helmet, but if I was not wearing it, which would be an insane thing to do on a mountain bike, I would be either be dead or would have suffered a very serious brain injury.
Secondly, I’m fortunate that I was physically fit, with strong lungs. Apparently, the mortality rate for a flail chest is disturbingly high, and given my remote location, it could have had a much more serious result.
And most importantly, I give my thanks, and actually my life, to my riding buddies who knew how to handle me after the fall, and who convinced the helicopter dispatcher to send a rescue team. The rescue dispatchers where not willing to send the helicopter because they said they needed an “official” authorization. Henry, a retired fire fighter, would not take that as an acceptable answer, and as he monitored my vital signs, ultimately convinced them if they didn’t come, I might not make it. It was the knowledge, common sense, and determination of my friends that really saved me. For that I will be forever grateful.
So, did I learn anything from this event? Yes, I leaned several things, and I also had some existing beliefs strongly reinforced.
First, I need to say that I get very cynical and weary of hearing people say, “that [fill in the blank] was a life changing experience”. Usually it’s for something trivial, such as a vacation to India or Nepal, or is part of a difficult physical challenge. Or, I’ve even heard it said about reading a book or listening to a lecture. Nonesense. If those are “life changing events” then your life isn’t very interesting.
Being told you are lucky to be alive, however, is different. So, what do I take away from this?
- I will always remember the importance of having a loved one in your life that you can support when they need it, and that you can rely on when it’s your turn. Pay it forward, as they say.
- My next reminder is seeing the value of being in the best physical condition possible. What happened to me could easily happen to anyone, even in, say, a car accident. People who let themselves get out of shape are not only lazy, but more importantly, they are selfish. If you don’t want to think of yourself, then consider your caregivers role after an accident.
- I will never ride on a dirt trail without a helmet and never on a new trail, or a remote trail, alone.
- When away from home, I will always bring a cell phone, and I will try to encourage others in my group to bring one as well.
- I will never leave home without an ID and an emergency contact name and phone number.
Time to get back on the bike!
robert j. mang photography 