Australian For Beer

Back in the waning days of August, I was contacted by Ross Gales from Pollen Digital in Sydney, Australia. He was interestd in commissioning a series of illustrations for a redesign of Cascade Brewery's website. Cascade is the oldest brewer in Australia, so he was looking for artwork with a retro feel.

I created icons for the homepage that led to sections of the website highlighting Cascade's products, brewing process, brewery tour and homebrew options.

After completing those, I was asked to create art for a few banners that would promoted the company's iPhone app. Those can be seen below:

The new website, which debuted last week, can be seen here.

This was a fun project to work on, despite the late nights and early mornings necessitated by working with a client in a timezone 14 hours away. Now I need to find a place in Brooklyn that sells or serves any of Cascades beers so I can taste them. Unfortunately, I didn't get a free sample. I think that should be a requirement for alcohol- and/or food-related projects.

The Marathon

That's me in the center, in Central Park with about a mile and a half to go, and out of gas.

Yesterday, I ran my second marathon.

The first was four years ago. At the time, I knew I'd run another. I didn't think it would take four years to do it. Things didn't turn out the way I planned.

In 2007, I was training to run New York and injured my foot a month before the race and couldn't run.

In 2008, history repeated itself. I was planning on running the Providence Marathon with my friend (and eventual winner) Blaine. I re-injured my foot three weeks before the race.

I took some time off after the second injury. When I started running again, I felt really out of shape. The more I tried to run the worse I felt. Only after I started having vision problems did I go to the doctor. It turned out the lack of energy and vision problems were related. As it turned out, I had leukemia. Running was out of the question for the immediate future.

In March, I woke up one morning, felt good wanted to run. I hadn't felt that way in almost two years. I kept running. After a few weeks, I decided I wanted to run the marathon again. I signed up with Team In Training, which given my condition seemed appropriate.

This time, I made it back to the starting line. 2 hours, 57 minutes and 34 seconds later I reached the finish. 705th out of 44,829 finishers. Not too bad.

None of this would have been possible without the support of terrific friends and family, as well as the kindness of some strangers. Together we raised over $6,500 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Thank you!