I never fancied myself as a car guy. My first car was a Toyota Corolla, impulsively purchased one night in 2018 when my then-girlfriend moved to LA and needed a car; I had been Ubering everywhere in LA for the 1.5 years prior. It was the cheapest, most barebones Corolla that still required a manual key to lock / unlock, but it got the job done: get me from one place to another.

Over the next year, we took that Corolla on many of our hiking adventures. As a photographer, and especially one who liked to pack his days, I was constantly rushing from trailhead to trailhead, from viewpoint to viewpoint, in a perpetual race against time to capture the fleeting moments: the sunrises and the sunsets. Many times I would step out of the car and be greeted by the smell of burning rubber after the spirited drive up the mountain. The Corolla had become a liability (and a slight safety hazard) for this part of my life.

When we decided we needed a second car in 2019, I decided to get something better. Again, I was and am still not a car guy, defined as someone who love cars as objects to be admired. But I love to drive. I was introduced to the Cayman GTS by a co-worker who recently purchased one as well. I definitely did not fully appreciate what I had purchased when I first pulled the trigger.

Since then (as of 2025), I have come to love the car - even viewing it as the greatest purchase I have ever made in my life. The car drives beautifully and takes corners with confidence, if you know what you are doing. It has enabled us to get many extra precious minutes of sleep after being out late the prior night photographing the sunset - beating the Google Maps ETA has become a fun pre-dawn activity on the empty mountain roads. And its relative comfort and fuel economy make it bearable to take on a 10,000 mile road trip in the summer of 2022! I have even started to appreciate the aesthetics of the vehicle, those curves.

This photo was the first nice photo I took of the car. We woke up early that day to do a peaceful sunrise drive on the main road through Joshua Tree. The photo was taken at the start, against the soft glow of the not-yet-risen sun, before we continued down the road while watching the sun rise in front of us.

The purpose of this album is to catalogue all the great places we have been with the car, both through photos as well as 360 videos. As soon as you depart on a road trip, you really just started a journey that will eventually take you back to where you started. Our goal for every trip then is to do more and to see more - and take the long way home.