I sent Keith Romanowski an IM the other day asking if he could send me 10 or so photos from all the trips we’ve done together since I started The Come Up… Keith has been a good friend of mine since just about the time I started The Come Up and . He ended up sending through 36 that include riding shots, portraits and some straight up hilarious ones. I wrote up some long-winded captions and I’m going to post them in 2 parts since there are so many. Check them out after the jump. And thanks to Keith for all the photos!

When The Come Up first started really popping, Harrison asked me to do an interview for Defgrip. I was honored as a long time fan of the site. I had a wallride photo I wanted to shoot but it ended up having a weird anti-hop to the runway. So I made Keith ride around with me and we found a couple other things to shoot. This barspin is obviously scrap as fuck but I love the photo, there are so many colors, my tongue is out and the hand placement is perfect. This was my first time ever shooting photos with Keith and it was a really good time.

Soon after, I got invited to go on a 3 day trip with Nation BMX. It was my first time seeing Garrett Reynolds ride and I was blown away. It was also my first time riding with Ben Hittle and Chase Dehart who have become pretty good friends since. This is how the apartment we stayed in looked with everyone’s bikes in it, I can’t even remember whose apartment it was but I do remember I didn’t bring a pillow or anything so I slept with a rolled up sweatshirt under my head every night.

On the Nation trip we were riding in Baltimore and this woman was really excited to look at my tattoos. She said I looked like a rock star or something. I asked her if she’d pose for a photo with me and she was really excited. She plopped down on my lap, took the photo, then said “MY MAN GON’ KILL ME” and left. The best part is how you can see her kid in the shot. Also check out how good my pedals and cranks match.

Jake Seeley is the man. I had known him for a while before I started The Come Up but I’ve gotten to know him a lot better since. He is one of the most naturally talented and creative people I know. Most people think of him as a rail boss primarily, which is true, but when I brought him to these steep pyramids in Queens he found a very Ruben-esque line immediately. This photo ran in Ride and was one of Jake’s first few photos in a magazine.

The DOTC trip was the first trip we did for The Come Up DVD. It was awesome for the most part, I got to meet and ride with Hoang Tran who is one of the nicest people and best riders I’ve ever met plus get to know dudes like Jake Seeley and Skinny a lot better. It was also my introduction to the Muffinman show. When Muffin is on, he is one of the funniest human beings alive so I pretty much spent this whole trip laughing until I almost peed my pants.

While on the DOTC trip we pulled over on the side of the road and went for a dip in this lake. I struck a few poses for Keith and for some reason this shot came out awesome. I look like I’m about 50 years old but I was probably in the best shape of my life when it was taken since I was coming straight off of a winter of hardcore dieting and weight lifting. Since then I have slacked hard on lifting but I’ve been back at it hard lately. Tunney almost used it for an interview with me in Dig – or was that a joke?

One more DOTC photo… This one of Jake Seeley got used for an interview I had in Ride UK about The Come Up DVD. I wish I got to write the caption because I would have pointed out that both the rider and filmer are named Jake. Oh well.

In retrospect, thinking we could fly 2 pro’s I’d never met out to Philly and film a full video part in a week was a pretty bold assumption. It could have easily gone terribly wrong due to weather, not getting enough clips or the fact that Philly is so blown out riding wise. Luckily Karl and Seth ended up being incredibly professional and fun to ride with, and they did an awesome job all things considered. We pretty much rode every second of every day we weren’t sleeping while on this trip and I had a great time.

This photo was from an article I wrote for Freedom about the Shadow trip to Philly. It was my first ever published article, so even though it was in French, I couldn’t read it, I never saw the issue in person and didn’t get paid for it, I was pretty stoked.

This photo is from the article “Preconceived Notions” that Keith shot and I wrote for Ride. It featured photos from the Nation trip, the DOTC trip and the Yeah Savage trip plus a couple random photos. I had the idea to write about riders that I knew about from videos and magazines and how they compared when I met them in person. Some of the riders I wanted to write about ( Chase and Andrew Mick ) didn’t have usable photos so I had to stretch the concept a little to make it work. But Ben Hittle was one of the main dudes that I wanted to write about and he had this photo in the article. Despite getting some hate online, Ben is one of the nicest guys and best riders I know.

The last trip before we finished up The Come Up DVD was the “Yeah Savage” trip. It wasn’t much of a trip since we pretty much just rode NYC for 2 days then drove to Boston and stayed with Chris Long and got fucked up every night then rode during the day. Joof got more wasted than anyone else ( besides Alex Platt probably which is a whole different story ) but still did some dope shit like this crooked grind on a rail that is made of plastic at Umass Amherst.

Rory Ellis and Bill Politis are two of the best people I’ve met since I started the site. One weekend they came down to try and film a few more clips for The Come Up DVD right before we released it. Keith came through to shoot photos and if I recall correctly we got exactly 1 clip due to Bill not even bringing a camera battery. Regardless Keith got some decent photos including this one of Bill bunnyhopping a ledge at 5 AM.

Keith and I have taken many weekend trips to Philly, almost always staying with Larry Rhodes and rarely getting much done. This trip was memorable because Muffinman told Larry he was only bringing 4 people but we ended up showing up like 12 deep. Larry was pissed and we didn’t get shit done but it was still fun.

Another photo from Larry’s house… he has a crazy ass dog named Kaiden. One day I showed up at his apartment with a 12″ cheese-steak from Wawa. I sat down on the couch to eat it and immediately the dog walked up and scarfed down half of the sandwich in one big bite. Keith took this photo because I kept resting the dog’s penis on my foot and the dog didn’t care, we thought it was pretty much the funniest thing ever.

Check out Part 2 of The Come Up photo retrospective dropping later this week!

Previously: New TCU Shirts and Snapbacks Available Now!| Who Was Capone Rider Anyway?| Gutstains: “We Are An Industry Of Thieves”.