HI everyone-

Did you ever think that you needed a vacation from vacation?? Well I am about there. Over the last few days I have been suffering from issue after issue after the crash of my main external hard drive.

On the night it happened I got about 2 hours of sleep (July 3). I spent every free second on the 4th trying to retrieve the data. And most of the 5th trying to make heads or tale of the salvaged data and trying to put it back into some semblance of order.

Well that has continued through today. I really started to make progress. I bought a new external hard drive. Started backing everything up to it. And even though the recovered files were a total mess and completely renamed I was happy to have them back.

Then tonight while i was editing and importing images in Lightroom, the power went out. Only enough to go completely off and then turn right back on. It was just enough time to shut off the power supply to the external hard drive. It was also enough to break the connection between Lightroom and that drive.

Well that was enough to completely screw up the catalog, to the point were I have deleted it and started a new one.

In both instances I lost data. What a huge pain in the butt. And we are talking thousands of images here. So you can understand the considerable amount of stress that this has created. Thus the vacation from the vacation thought.

Hopefully if I just hang on tight, use my head and think about where I am going and what is coming next I can work through this and move ahead. Much like the bull rider in the image.

I am picking up my friend and amazing photographer Bryan Allen tomorrow in Great Falls. Then we will spend the next few days in Glacier National Park and at the North American Indian Days in Browning, MT.

It should be a great time. Hope you enjoy today's photograph.

Have a great day!