Flynnjr.com

Author: flynnjr

  • That’s a good one.

  • Wallpaper 9/24/2026

    A long-standing feature here (well, there) has been Mike’s Phone Wallpaper. I like to keep a rotation.

    Here we’re featuring a crop from Paul Kirchner’s Dope Rider, published by Banzai Editions. I haven’t gotten mine yet, but it’s on the list.

  • 2026 National Parks

    We’ve seen a handful this year. It’s been pretty great.

    I posted a set of photos I took with the Big Boy camera over at Glass.

    I didn’t post this one over there, though. This is just for you all.

  • Big Weekend

    I know. It’s Tuesday, and all of the weekend talk should have been done with yesterday. It was a really big weekend, though, and I needed a day to recover.

    Started on Friday morning with the first matches of the Club Challenge, a tournament of the bigger tennis clubs here in town.

    It’s a 3-day affair and it’s pretty competitive. We haven’t won it in over 5 years, but we’ve been close the last couple.

    The format for the tournament is: 12 clubs split across two sites play a random draw. Top three combined Fri/Sat scores at each site go into a new draw on Sunday to determine the winner.

    I’ve been playing well this year. I’m not a highly-rated player, but I’m good for my level. “Best of the worst” as someone said. I was also the captain at my level, so even though I didn’t play on Friday, I was there to cheer the guys. We showed well.

    Friday night was Automatic, an LA band that I have enjoyed for a while now. I couldn’t believe they were going to be here, and in a small club? The Camel is a good place to see a band. It was hot, but worth it.

    I was a playing captain on Saturday morning for more Club Challenge. We’ve never missed out on Sunday, apparently, but we almost missed it this year. The final scoring was still in question when I had to leave because we had tickets to Iron Blossom.

    Iron Blossom is a 2-day music festival here in Richmond that has, inexplicably, drawn bigger and bigger names on the few years it has run. The two headliners this year were LCD Soundsystem and Jack White. Other bands I was excited to see were La Luz, Phantogram, and Die Spitz. It all paid off.

    La Luz!
    Phantogram!
    Die Spitz!
    LCD Soundsystem!

    I was there and I saw it and I still only half-believe that LCD Soundsystem played here. They were terrific. Played a bunch of songs we wanted to hear and had incredible energy.

    We hustled home after because I had to be back at the tennis courts for 7am.

    I know.

    Neatly groomed in the early morning light.

    We drew the toughest matchup at our level, but , as previously mentioned, I’ve been playing well and I have a great partner. Respect to my guy. This is what winners look like:

    The lowest level players play first thing in the morning, and over the day the quality of the tennis improves. Our win was important because it set a positive tone for the rest of Sunday.

    Action shot!

    As the day progressed, our club was stacking wins and the favorite dropped a couple of lines that they should have held. The math was suggesting that we had a clear chance to pull it off.

    Which we did.

    Winners.

    There was much celebration, including a troubling amount of beer drunk from the trophy.

    These celebrations went on long enough that I missed the 2nd night of Iron Blossom. Please extend my regrets to Jack White. I heard he was great.

    As a grown-up playing recreational sports, I’ve found I don’t get a lot of chances to win trophies. Medals? Sure, but a trophy that has 20+ years of winners on plaques around the base? Not often enough.

    It was a big weekend.

  • Park Pouch!

    I sprung for the National Park Pass while we were out west. NPS could use the bucks and it’s a good deal, besides.

    What I didn’t know is that the face of the pass featured an image that I found unacceptable. Luckily, I got hipped to Park Pouches, which let you upload an image of your choosing to a sleeve that covers the less desirable bits.

    That’s a photo of the Grand Prismatic that I took while we were in Yellowstone.

  • Louisville Sunrise

    Made it home from our trip on Tuesday. On the way, I caught a rough cold and have been laid up.

    I snapped this on the way to our car as we were leaving Louisville. We were just passing through, but I bet it’s a fun town to spend a weekend in.

  • Beehive Geyser

    There’s a whole mess of geysers at Old Faithful. We lucked into catching a Beehive eruption, which apparently only happens once a day.

    Pretty impressive.

    So many photos and no signal in the park means updates will be sparse. I’ll do my best to keep you up.

  • Ground Boarding

    We are off to Montana to grab the youngest. She’s been working in Yellowstone this summer and we’re flying to Bozeman and driving back to Richmond over 4 days. There will be plenty of photos to come.

    The jetway wasn’t working at RIC, so we got to walk out on the tarmac. It’s been years since I did that.

  • Goodies from the North

    I had occasion to visit Maine for work a few weeks back (more photos of that to come), and the colleague I was there to visit came back to town with a selection of Maine-focused delights.

    My pancake game is going to be substantially elevated.

  • Proof of Life, again.

    It’s been a tough year-and-a-half on the blog front.

    I’ve been doing stuff, but the old site is pretty broken. I’ll be here while I get that mess sorted out.

    I missed you guys.