My mutant ear has been fixed!

http://www.rice.edu/virtualtours/brc/tourfiles/flash/index_fs.html?utm_source=Tour&utm_medium=Virtual&utm_campaign=GraduateFull

What is wrong with this picture?

Recently Rice University added the BRC and the McDevitt Group to their virtual campus tour gallery. Each image in the gallery is a 360 degree view of a scene from campus that allows you to pan and zoom around through the entire scene as if you were there. The effect is pretty cool, except that I fell in the blend point between two images and ended up with two ears on the right side of my face! I love it! Hopefully they will be able to fix it.

Saliva Cardiac Nano-Bio-Chip

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2008/product/saliva-cardiac-nano-bio-chip


Research that I'm very intimately involved with at UT has recently won a 'best of what's new 08 award' from Popular Science in the health category. In the photo the latest version of the "Nano-bio-chip" is displayed just after fabrication. This device is used to process and interrogate whole saliva for diagnostic biomarkers at the point-of-care. One of the first and most promising applications for the technology is a 'spit test' for heart-attack, which can be generally hard to diagnose. You can read more about the McDevitt Group research at http://www.tastechip.com/.

On pause

I'm back at UT this semester enjoying being a Longhorn once again. I'm trying to finish my last few upper division chemistry classes to wrap up my degree. As a result, I've had to put photography on pause for the next two semesters so that I can survive an unforgiving schedule. That's the reality of working full-time and going to school part-time, especially as a chem major at UT. Why I went that direction I'll never know. I should have pursued a photojournalism degree.

So while my photo gig is on pause, I'm still hitting as many mountain bike and adventure races as I can as a racer, volunteer, support guy, whatever. This has been fun, rewarding, etc., without the days of editing following a shoot. I will be back to shooting this summer after graduation, and anticipate Primal Quest 2009 as my next major project. I'm going to do my best to get on the PQ photography team, but if not, I'll do it as a freelancer again.

Glen

In memoriam: Dave Boyd

http://www.glennonsimmons.com/gallery/dave-boyd/

The link above is a gallery of some of my favorite photos of Dave taken over the past year. He invited me to travel with him and Team MOAT to Montana for Primal Quest as their photographer. It was an experience I will never forget. Dave has impacted my life in a profound way and I'm deeply sorry that he's gone. He will forever remain an inspiration to us all.

http://www.alamosanews.com/V2_news_articles.php?heading=0&story_id=9247&page=72

Primal Quest day 8: The finish

June 30, 2008 12:43pm

MOAT finishes Primal Quest Montana greeted by family, friends, the press and Don Mann. The team covered more than 512 miles in less than 8 days despite three injuries and the wrong sized shoe. Leslie Reuter suffered from tendinitis, Shaun Bain had a severely bruised upper thigh from hitting a rock while river boarding, and Nathan Winkelmann had Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrom, a painful knee injury that was aggravated by the motion of pedaling. All have blisters, cuts and bruises. Despite this MOAT finished 5th against some of the best teams in the world. Congratulations!


Dave Boyd is interviewed just after crossing the finish line.
Nathan Winkelmann looks on with Don Mann and friends reflected in his sunglasses. The team recounted stories from the trail to Don and the press.
MOAT poses for a team picture with JP and Sydney, the two most important members of the support crew. Leslie's children where present for the duration of the race, and I have to say were the most helpful, best behaved kids anyone could hope for. They deserve special honors, as well as the rest of the support crew: Rick Sanders, Noel Reuter and Larry Winkelmann. It took everyone to make this the success that it was.

Footnote:
I will be conducting interviews with the team over the next few days and the trip home. I'm hoping to put together an audio slide show with some of the best images from the race. Look for it in the very near future. Thanks.
-Glennon

Primal Quest day 5: The Bridger Range

06.27.08

On day 5, I intended to set out with the team to follow Team MOAT on the traverse of the Bridger Range. I'll just say that I'm an experienced backpacker with MANY miles of back country travel logged in both the US and Canada. I was as prepared as any human being could be, and this is what I came to Montana to shoot. I spent considerable time prepping my gear. I would only carry one camera, the Canon 5D, and two lenses, a 16-35mm and a 70-200mm. The rest of my pack was loaded with provisions and safety gear for a night in the wilderness, including a 15 degree bag and bivy, headlamp, food and water, etc. I did not expect to be able to keep up with the team for the duration of the trek, but rather just enough to get the photos. I was ready. There was some controversy about how I would hook back up with the RV and the support crew. I basically said don't worry about it. I'll get a ride into Boseman and rent a car for myself.

At the moment of truth, when my boots were about to hit the trail, the team vetoed my tagging along. I was not only disappointed, but heartbroken. As for the reasons, Dave explained that I could be perceived as assisting the team, which would result in a disqualification. This was a risk he could not take. I suspected that this was an excuse to not have to take responsibility if something went wrong, or to protect me from myself. Who knows? I had no choice but to honor his request.

Needlesstosay, my moral was at a low.

Primal Quest Day 4

06.26.08

The team had dropped their bikes at another unassisted TA for an extended trek through the Crazy Mountains, or the Crazy Woman Mountains, or 'The Crazies' if you are a local. Apparently it is named after a woman who went insane and lived somewhere in the mountains after her family was killed in the western settlement movement. The Crazy Woman Mountains is the English version of a Crow Indian name. It is unclear to me from the Wiki article whether the woman was a Crow Indian or a settler.

I hung around the RV most of the day. I had no way of knowing exactly where the team was going to pop out of the woods, and I was getting a little distressed at all of the waiting around. Around sunset the team rolls in with grins on their faces. Dave Boyd has a hole in his shoe. Dave's own size 14 and Nathan's size 11.5 had been placed in his pack for pickup at the unassisted TA, and he had no choice but to make it work for the extended trek through The Crazies. He had to cut a hole in tip and remove the insole so that his foot fit, and luckily it did. The shoes themselves were identical in every way, expect for the size. Looking at the shoes on Dave's feet there was an obvious difference, but when they were placed in the pack it was not so clear. It is also unclear who was responsible - it could have been any one of the three of us. Because I had been providing assistance, generally handing things to people when asked or microwaving things - all seemingly trivial tasks - I did not feel that my actions had significant consequences. This was clearly not the case. MOAT and all the other teams racing Primal Quest teams are only as good as their support. Support crews are critical, rate limiting, equally important as the racers themselves.

Dave did not seem bothered by the incident. He even said, seriously or sarcastically, that the smaller shoe was lighter and it felt good - the only harm done was ruining the shoe. Obviously this could have been a disaster. From this moment forward I did not provide any direct support and focused solely on photography. However, because of my lack of autonomy, opportunities were far and few between....frustration levels were starting to build.

........

Footnote:

Yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, while riding with Rick to the next TA I saw a little bird attacking a hawk. I watched it for a while out of window of the SUV. I turned to him and described what I saw. Without saying a word he reached over and flipped down my visor so that I was looking at myself in the mirror. This pretty much sums up our relationship. I can blame this friction on lack of sleep, but most likely even in the best of circumstances our personality types are not terribly compatible. To make matters worse there was a conflict of interest between me and the support crew. My goal was to get images of the team, especially action photos, where the crew was entirely focused on providing support. This included transporting critical gear, feeding and providing a comfortable place for the team to sleep and helping with strategy decisions. Obviously there was a hierarchy of priorities. However, I was supposed to have had access to a vehicle in order to be able to work independently and to prevent any conflicts of interest - this was not made available to me. The second vehicle instead was solely an additional support vehicle. To make a long story short without going into too much detail, I felt very limited in my abilities to follow the team.

Primal Quest Day 4: Dealing with pain.

Just before midnight the team rolled into the TA. This would have been the end of the kayak on the Yellowstone but it was canceled due to high waters full of debris. Huge trees were drifting by at surprising speed in the current. It was dangerous for anyone to be on the water. The big joke is that the race is turning into a duathlon. At this point it is pretty much just biking and trekking. But biking is good for MOAT. It plays to their strengths.

The medics at Primal Quest are top notch. AJ Johnson, an active military doctor with tour in Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt, took a look at Nathan's knee and diagnosed his injury. Wink suffered ITB Syndrome, or Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrom, for all you medical professionals out there. Any other doctor would have probably said, stop doing what is injuring you. Stop paddling, riding, trekking - racing. But this is Primal Quest and dealing with pain is definitely part of game. Almost all of the teams that I have seen have at least one member with an injury. Most are limping around.

Johnson injected the site of inflammation on Nathan's knee with lidocaine and sent him on his way. This was to relieve the pain for about three hours, enough to get him through the next twenty or so miles of biking to the trek. The repetitive motion of pedaling was particularly painful, and it is the kind of motion that can't be adjusted to relieve the pain. At least on the trek he could change his gate to relieve the stress on the IT Band. Nathan was a trooper and was the first one ready to leave the TA. Despite this injury, MOAT's biking edge did not seem to be noticeably dulled.

Primal Quest Day 3

06.25.08
We waited at the transition area on the banks of the Yellowstone River wondering how MOAT survived through a night of lighting storms and rain. Bikes and food were dropped at an unassisted TA. In the morning Rick Sanders and I drove back toward the bike drop to find MOAT so that I could get some bike photos. We were also worried about Shaun's condition because he had injured his right leg during the river boarding the day before and no one was truly aware of how serious it was. The all night trekking could have pushed their limits too far with an injured team-mate.

We made it all the way back to the bike drop and waited for a bit. We got excited when we saw who we thought was MOAT in the distance. At that point one of the TA officials said that the team would be DQ'ed if we were there when the team arrived. Why? Because we were giving them moral support. What BS! We didn't argue and left immediately.

We cruised down the road and I had Rick drop me off to snap a few photos as they made their way down the dirt road. As it turns out the team was not MOAT.


Rick got a call from Noel Reuter, Leslie's husband, letting him know that MOAT had reached the bike drop. We were somewhere near the town of Emigrant eating hamburgers. Rick wasn't comfortable with going back after the TA official's reaction, so I got no shots of MOAT on the bike until they were at the TA next to the Yellowstone.


The paddle on the Yellowstone was canceled due to high waters and it was replaced with additional mountain biking. This was good for MOAT, who are very strong on the bike.

Shaun was hurting, as we expected. But he was able to tough it out.


Noel had picked up some buffalo burgers and the team got some well deserved hot food before heading out on another long bike leg.