But for now, let’s look back in photos from the first four months of The Random Way Home. New York to San Francisco. These photos are more of a personal account from my adventure and more of a behind the scenes look at how I crossed America. AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It all started on a ridiculously cold cloudy day at Coney Island, New York. The starting point for this monumental trip across the world.

Heading south, I reached Washington D.C in 6 days. And my first 200 miles cycled. Feeling rather proud with myself I took the week off to catch up with friends and have a look around the nations capital.

One of the many great meals I had. A table of devoured blue crab from Baltimore, smothered in Old Bay Seasoning. Delicious.

A great find, thanks to my friend Todd. This is the Great Allegheny Passage/Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. This 300+ mile bicycle path connects Washington D.C with Pittsburgh. One of the many surprising highlights that I found along the way.

Trying my hand at a competitive eating competition. Here, I try and eat the worlds largest grilled cheese sandwich at Melt Bar, Cleveland. 5lb of cheese!!! I failed.

For me, the most exciting part about travelling are the new faces you meet and friends that you come away with.
L – R: Tiffany, Mike, Christine, Matt. The Minneapolis crew.

A world Community of Cyclists. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who thought it was a good idea to cross America by bicycle.

It wasn’t always an easy ride. I had a few low points to deal with. Some of the worst floods in North Dakota history had to happen as I was crossing it. This is the town of Minot, The whole downtown section was underwater when the banks of the Souris River broke.

Escaping North Dakota. Doing battle with 30 (gusts up to 45) miles an hour head winds. In 9 hours I only managed 33 miles before I called it quits. “I’ve done 150 miles already” said a beaming cyclist who was sailing the tailwind in the other direction.

It was hard work taking photos and video on route, just the thought of stopping, getting the camera out, getting off the bicycle and taking the shot seemed like such hard work. All I wanted to do was peddle and get on with the day. Still, rest stops were a must and every 10 miles or so was break time. Here, fellow cyclist Graeme and I watch a storm front roll in from the South West of Montana, approximately 10 miles out of the town of Glasgow.

Lucky Shot. I nearly shat my pants when I was awoken by a monumental thunder storm that rolled into the small farming town of Chester, Montana.

Montana had the most incredible panoramic views. In some places you could watch gloomy clouds and threatening storms drift by up to 20 miles away.

One of my favorite days on the road. I will never forget magnificent views as I climbed the Going-to-the-Sun-Road in Glacier National Park. The 3 hour ascent up to the continental divide was hard work when your carrying 25kg of gear on a bike. But still, smiles all round as I approach the summit.

Reaching the top of the continental divide was one of the biggest tests for me. I didn’t know if my body was up to the challenge. Not realising that my legs had become incredibly strong after the past 2 months I surprised myself that is only took 3 hours to ascend it.

Another day, another mountain pass. In a week I cycled over 4 mountain passes in the State of Washington.

Washington Pass. Conquering the highest point on the Northern Tier bicycle route. It’s now downhill all the way to the pacific ocean.

3 months of not shaving can produce some quite interesting facial hair.  Other than it’s nearly impossible to eat a burger without getting the BBQ sauce all over it. No, the worst part about owning such a monstrosity are the flies that get tangled up in it when you cycle into a swarm of them. Mmmm lunch.

I have a love/hate relationship with the trains of the US. They would never fail to make you smile or punch the sky when they gave you a blast from their deafening air horn as they slowly crawled by, hauling freight on their mile long wagons. But on the flip side, getting woken up in the middle of the night as these monsters thunder pass my tent. Ground shaking, screeching of wheels and the explosive bangs & crashes as the carriages get shunted around, this made a very restless nights sleep on many occasions.

Ahhh. The simple things in life. Setting up camp next to a river and watching the sun set over the North Cascade Mountains. Solitude at it’s most pleasant.

It was harder to find places to wild camp in America. But when you did, you could find some truly wonderful spots you could call home for the night.

I had done it, New York City to Anacortes, Washington. Atlantic to the Pacific coast. 2 months 29 days, 4000 miles done by bicycle.
My first shave in 3 months.

Heading down Highway 1 in California is a great thrill and is a must for any cyclist. The crashing surf, the splendid campsite an abundance of good seafood and micro breweries to keep you entertained.

I thought once I peddled all the way to California I would be greeted by warm & sun drenched days. With miles upon miles of golden sandy beaches where bikini clad babes lay tanning themselves to a crisp. But no, none of that, each morning in Northern California I was greeted by a thick bank of fog until I reached my final destination of San Francisco.

Still, without the fog bank there would be no Avenue of the Giants.

Disaster struck in San Francisco. My nearly bullet proof/built like a tank Rolhoff hub wasn’t Random Sam proof. After 5000miles on the road the hub developed 3 cracks on the flange. But luckily the only place that can fix them in the whole of America just so happens to be in San Francisco. In two weeks time I’d be back on the road heading to the boarder of Mexico. Or would I?

Nope, this is where the cycling ends, for now. As San Francisco would be my last stop for the foreseeable future. Why? because Julie came out from NYC to join me on a two week road trip. In those two weeks we took in the Lost Coast, Yosemite, Area 51. Oh, and she asked me to marry her. I said yes :)

Yosemite Valley.

Married in Vegas  by Elvis on 30/09/2011.

And now, 9 months on from leaving the West Coast I find myself preparing to get the train back out there, pick up my bicycle and cycle home. to New York, with my wife. x

Stay tuned :)

I’ve decided to photograph it this way to show what our eyes would rather forget, that the mundane and forgettable views also have a beauty in them.

I have been lucky enough to ‘join in’ on a fair few in my photographing life, whether I stumbled upon them accidentally as I wonder the streets or making a point of being there to capture the days events as they unfold.

The Occupation Of Palestine – 2009

C.N.D Protest – 2006

Mayday 2010

Click for detail.

Jena’s Blurb
I’m a retro fine art photographer who was born in the wrong decade.

Twitter – @jenaardell
Website – jenaardell.com
Blog – jenaardell.blogspot.com
Flickr – flickr.com/photos/jenaardell/
Shop – Etsy

If you want to be next weeks #Fridayfeature, you know what to do….. if not, you can click here.

The Red Cross contacted me and advised me to stop the raffle because the all the fraudulent websites around.

What’s funny, as soon I announced what had happened on Facebook & Twitter the donations came flooding in. HAHA. It just shows that negative publicity works, but we all knew that anyway, didn’t we Kate Moss.

So in the true random spirit, I’m pulling the plug on raffle but still going to do the draw. So, if you have entered, you have a much better chance of winning something. Now that’s exciting isn’t it?

Again, thanks to everyone who helped, i’m not sure how much we raised, but it’s not bad for about 8 hours of spamming fund raising on Twitter & Facebook.

A big thank you to James, Elaine and Becky who were going to donate some of their amazing art and textiles for the raffle. You lot are ace :-)

All the best, and thanks again.
Random Sam
xx

Expect the results in the next couple of days… Fingers Crossed :-)

And lastly and most importantly, go and donate on the British Red Cross website. Haiti needs your help.

Good luck!

Hello my Random friends,

Well over a week has passed since the earthquake has hit Haiti and things really don’t seem to be getting better for them with large aftershocks happening this week, making life even more unbearable than it already is. If the photos and videos coming out of Haiti have affected you as much as they have affected me, then please, just for a second… carry on reading…

British Red Cross photostream from Flickr

I propose a raffle in aid of the people of Haiti.
I’m going to try and raise £1000 for the British Red Cross in 4 weeks (Or shorter if we can)…. I know it’s going to be tough, but I’m sure we can pull together and do this. I know that i’m no Bono or a member of Coldplay (Thank fuck for that), but I feel it’s my duty as a traveller/human to do something for the people of Haiti, who are in dire need of our support at this time. PLEASE HELP!

How’s it going to work.
I have 1000 raffle tickets priced a £1 each.
You can buy 1 ticket or all the way up to 50 tickets, it’s totally up to you how much you spend, but the more you buy the better chance you have winning. So let me clarify it for you:
1 ticket is £1
50 tickets are £50

What you do you win?
Having just bought 3 A3 size frames the other day to decorate my wall with my photos. I thought, instead of decorating my walls, how about I decorate someone else.
I shall print 3 photos from my Far From Home project, frame them and give them away to the lucky winners.

This way, you have 3 chances of winning something. Now that’s exciting, don’t you agree?
I’ll even pay for the postage to ship the photos out to you, even if you live in Timbuktu.
And for the kind soul who donates the most, they win a  Toy Camera T-Shirt.

Prize 1.

Prize 2.

Prize 3.

How/When will the winner be announced?
Once the last ticket has been sold, I shall put all the names into a hat (Probably not a hat, more like a cooking pot) and pull 3 names out under the watchful eye of my house mate ‘A Guy called Guy’. We shall make a video of it and stick it up on YouTube, so you can see that it was done fairly. The winners will be contacted by the email they used to buy the tickets with.

Raffle is now closed

As the week goes by, the snow falls, freezing the roads that morph in to one continuous ice ring. I amuse myself by watching commuters sliding ever which way, trying their best to get to work unscathed. My evil side comes out as I secretly hope I catch someone wiping out, how that would make me laugh, except if it was me, landing on my fat arse.

I can’t even enjoy my daily bike ride because of the weather. I must find another release to stop me going insane and to break up the daily grind of work, sleep, work, sleep.
For the next seven days I had an idea to take one photo every morning on the walk home. At the same time I would log the song I was listening too.
London feels like a very different place this time in the morning,  quiet, subdued & lonely. With the music jamming in my ear, the following photos were captured during those seven sleepy walks home.

To play the track, click play on the media player under each of the photos.
All photo’s were taken on the iPhone 3GS and using the wonderful Camerabag app.

Saturday

Tricky: Abbaon Fat Track

Sunday

Fever Ray: Triangle Walks

Monday

Broken Social Scene: Cause = Time

Tuesday

The Beloved: Sweet Harmony

Wednesday

Booka Shade: Charlotte

Thursday

Yelle: Tristesse/Joie

Friday

LCD Soundsystem: All My Friends

One year, ten countries and some mighty hangovers along the way.

Below are two slide shows from my Flickr photostream. If you are interested in buying any prints please drop me an email. sam[at]randomphotographer.co.uk

Prices
Choice of paper: Gloss or Pearl printed on a professional pigment ink printer.
A4 prints £20
A3 prints £35
Plus shipping fee.

Click here if you can’t see the slide shows

So here it goes, this set was from last September’s road trip around the north of England with my friend James. It’s taken me so long to finish these as I been busy with the Far From Home Project.

The rest of the photos can be viewed on my Flickr.