First week of the Photo Tour
Two weeks total on the road and emotional dissonance
I’m currently sitting in a Sheetz convenience store in Easton, PA. It’s well after 3am. And I gotta say, I’m impressed.
They’ve got an almost café-like atmosphere here in the seating area. Way more conducive to working than any other gas station I can ever remember being in. They’ve got outlets at every table and free wifi. An abundance of snacks and drinks if I get peckish. Clean restrooms. In fact, this is better than many of the coffee shops in which I’ve spent hundreds of hours editing and doing work over the years.
Earlier, there were about a dozen high school kids gathering like my friends and I did when we would caravan to the local Denny’s in high school. They were wearing matching red t-shirts and catching each other up on the latest social wins and losses of themselves and their peers.
It’s revealing that I couldn’t find a diner or coffee shop or other spot where I could sit down and work around these parts, and this ended up being my best option for an after-hours work session. In the Iowa towns, I found a few Perkins that were open 24 hours, and those were great for my late-night working tendencies.1 I also did a ton of work at one of the hotel bars in Omaha, even after I stopped staying there as a guest, since the lobby bar had abundant seating and work-welcoming areas. I realized that never once in all my years of post-tournament, 3am edit sessions, had anyone ever asked me if I had a room while I was click-clacking away on my laptop in the hotel bar/lobby area. Turns out they don’t ask even days after you’ve checked out. So that was useful.
So now I’m almost back to where I started. This trip has been a trip, you know? One of those far-out kinds of journeys that make you sort of step back and chuckle at the impracticality and swiftness of the goings-on.
A summarized timeline:
Tue 9/10: Decide to go to Omaha. Decide to drive instead of fly.
Wed 9/11: Bring in car for a new muffler. I drive a 2008 Toyota Prius with about 160,000 miles.
Thu-Fri 9/12-13: Pick up said car. Drive 1,300 miles from NYC to Omaha, NE.
Sat-Sun 9/14-15: Photograph USA Wrestling World Team Trials for non-Olympic weight classes.
Mon-Thu 9/16-19: Film and edit announcement video.
Fri 9/20: Sort through 50-something responses and inquiries that showed promise for work and try to make sense of what a potential timeline and map would look like, knowing all along that I’d have to be here, in Bethlehem, on the PA-NJ border, by tonight because I got asked to photograph a baby shower on Tuesday, while I was in the process of making the announcement video. Drive to Ames.
Sat 9/21: Iowa State football game tailgate and outdoor wrestling practice. Visit to Myriad MMA and first Fire Inside mini-session.
Sun 9/22: Drive to Cedar Falls to meet up with Northern Iowa folks.
Mon 9/23: Drive back to Ames. Learn that Alan Vera passed away.
Tue 9/24: Full Fire Inside session and photographing workout at Myriad MMA. Drive to Des Moines.
Wed 9/25: Meeting in Des Moines and then drive to Iowa City to deliver some gear for Titan Mercury Wrestling Club. Meet with Iowa women’s team coaches and tour their new facility. Drive to Columbus, OH.
Thu 9/26: Visit Rudis HQ and warehouse. Start drive to Bethlehem, PA.
Fri 9/27: Finish drive to Bethlehem, PA.
Plan for Sat 9/28: Photograph baby shower. Drive back home to NYC.
All along the way, I was setting up in coffee shops, public libraries, restaurants, and friends’ homes to try and stay current on editing what I was photographing, field additional inquiries and follow-up on the first wave, and continue to try and make a schedule that made sense time- and location-wise. I learned a lot about how to make a tour like this function. I definitely think I’m going to do this again and I’m looking forward to applying those lessons to future iterations.
There’s been one particular struggle that I didn’t anticipate, though. It looks like it might be an afterthought in that list above, but it’s been, at times, debilitating.
Alan.
I knew that he had had a heart attack at the end of July, but I didn’t know it was as severe as it was and that he was still hospitalized. I had reached out to him several weeks ago, but didn’t hear back. I had asked around to people who were closer to him than I was, and didn’t learn much. Still, I wasn’t thinking anything other than that he would soon be in touch.
Then I saw an Instagram story and a post from Frank Chamizo.
The stages of grief, according to the classic framework created by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They don’t have to follow a specific order, and they’re neither universal nor absolute. But as shorthand, they’re useful as a simple way of looking at the emotional processing of death and dying.
The denial was immediate - wait, what? No way. Not just a surface disbelief that let me stay inhabited in my body, but a snapping out of place where I was watching myself try to make sense of the news.
I bargained just as quickly - this has to be a mistake, something lost in translation, perhaps. No one else has posted anything, so there’s gotta be a different explanation.
The one that lingered though? The depression.
The news froze me in a way that I haven’t felt in a while. I was close enough to Alan to have played tennis with him during the early days of the covid lockdowns, but not close enough to see him regularly outside of tournaments, even though he lived less than 10 miles away.
I couldn’t (and still can’t fully) square the urge to mourn and show my respects with the urgency of this tour and what I have been trying to do. What was the right reaction, anyway? What kind of response would feel adequate? Should I shelve the tour altogether? Just go home? Is compartmentalizing ok?
I still don’t know what the “right” way is to go about living. I keep reminding myself that it’s ok to have multiple, conflicting feelings, and really, it’s to be expected. A huge part of life is dealing with its ending. And I remind myself that continuing to live is not an insult to the dead.
The show must go on, in a sense.
I’ve been in touch with Elena Pirozhkova, Alan’s wife, and I’ll be helping her get the funeral services online for Alan’s friends and family that can’t attend the services next week, and also taking photos. I shared a bunch of images I had taken of Alan over the years with her as well, for display during the services.
So that’s the plan. There is work to do.
But I’m really sad. I will miss Alan.
Not to mention heavy on nostalgia. Perkins was a popular after-church spot for my family on Sundays growing up. Maybe more than any other restaurant/business/hang out, I associate Perkins with my Wyoming upbringing.