A guy can excuse himself from writing in his blog, right? Because that’s what I’m doing.

A lot has happened since April. Professionally, I left my job at the ad agency for a position as the marketing manager at a menswear company in Minneapolis. It’s my dream job. I went from managing social media strategy at an agency to leading marketing for a brand. I still manage social strategy, of course, but I also handle SEO and SEM, PR, website admin, brand strategy, design, and I just set up a photo studio to keep our ecommerce up to speed. Pretty fucking rad.

I’ve also traveled a big. Between jobs, I drove to Colorado for some mile-high trout. It was some of the most fun fishing I’ve ever had. Lots of browns and rainbows on water I’d never seen. It was 70 degrees when I left Minneapolis and 35F and snowing when I arrived in Colorado. I thought I was over winter, but it was good for the soul to see snow-covered conifers in the Rockies. Colorado has great tacos, too.

A trip to Los Angeles is also in the books. I flew down to meet Zach, who biked to LA from Minneapolis. We rented some road bikes and pedaled around Southern California. In retrospect, I should have thought about how hot it would be in LA during the hottest time of the year. On the first riding day, it was 103F when we climbed Angeles Crest on Highway 2. Later that day, one of the worst wildfires in California history started 20 miles north of where we were staying. Now I can say I lived through an End of Days-esque setting. We spent the next day riding the bike-only roads of Griffith Park and crushing ceviche and Coors Light on the beach, then the third day hiking Topanga State Park.

Plenty has been happening around Minnesota, too. I rode the Hungry Bear 100K on dirt–sand–forest roads in northern Wisconsin, took a solo fly fishing trip on the North Shore, and paddled the BWCA, some of purest water in the world. I’ve been spending plenty o’time on local rivers, as well–even landed my biggest local brown.

I plan on writing more often now that things have settled down a bit.

Anyways, here are a few photos.