Sgt. Marcus Kuboy, an Army National Guard medic, was on patrol near Fallujah, Iraq, when the Humvee he was in struck a roadside IED. The driver, Kuboy’s best friend, was killed instantly. The force of the blast left Kuboy himself with an almost incomprehensible list of injuries – broken back, traumatic brain injury, broken arm, broken jaw, and severely damaged legs. After many surgeries, and seemingly endless rehabilitation and physical therapy, Kuboy can walk with the aid of a cane for short periods. He may always need a wheelchair for longer distances. Yet when he learned that he had been chosen to receive a custom-built home, free of charge, courtesy of the nonpartisan Homes For Our Troops organization, Kuboy was stunned. It was as though he couldn’t imagine that his injuries and his service warranted such generosity.

I photographed several volunteer days, when anyone who was interested — skilled or not — could help frame out the house, carry supplies, plant trees and flowers, and perform many other tasks. Over the course of these days, I heard Kuboy relate the story of his injury and slow recovery many times. Though some are eager to call him a hero, Kuboy is uncomfortable with that label. He wasn’t trying to be heroic, he said, he was just trying to get through the day. So when he balanced on his crutches to shake hands with a long line of volunteers and thank them for their efforts, Kuboy seemed a little frustrated that they invariably turned the praise and thanks back on him for his service and sacrifice. I think Kuboy had made peace with his injuries and their effects on the rest of his life, and wanted nothing more than for the scores of volunteers who were happily building his home to see things from his point of view – that he was just one man who, because of forces beyond his control, had been injured doing his job. By contrast, the mass of volunteers represented hundreds of businesses and individuals who had donated their unpaid time and energy. In essence, neither Kuboy nor the volunteers seemed comfortable accepting praise for their actions, for fear of obscuring what each thought was the more significant sacrifice of the other. In an age when celebrities are famous only for being famous, and the phrase “no such thing as bad publicity” has become unassailable wisdom, this gentle standoff had more than enough recognition to go around.

Matthew Sanford is an affable and voluble guy. As an author and experienced yoga teacher and practitioner, he is happy to answer a stranger’s naive questions about yoga, even though he’s clearly done so many times before. But he really comes to life when talking about the mind-body connection, a central tenet of all forms of yoga. He is articulate and passionate in his belief that a deeper appreciation of the interaction between the mental and the corporeal could help just about everybody, from the mildly stressed out to the seriously injured and even the permanently disabled. Some might doubt such a claim, but if you are talking to Sanford in person, it’s tough to be skeptical. That’s because Sanford relies on a wheelchair to get around, ever since a devastating car accident when he was 13 left him paralyzed from the chest down.

I was asked to photograph Sanford for a magazine cover story earlier this year. I spent time with him at his home, at his professional yoga studio, and at Courage Center, where Sanford teaches adapted yoga to people with all sorts of disabilities. It took me a few moments to get over the initial surprise of seeing a paraplegic yoga instructor rolling his wheelchair among students, offering them advice and encouragement. But I was in for an even bigger surprise when we spent several hours doing a portrait session. Sanford adeptly slid from his chair onto a yoga mat and proceeded to hold a large variety of sitting yoga poses for me while I fired away. He held his legs tight against his chest while balancing on his butt so that he resembled a closed pocketknife. He used his hands to pick up and fold his legs into the traditional lotus position. He stretched, balanced, and extended for as long as I wanted. There seemed little he couldn’t do, and I left that shoot greatly impressed. I was struck not only by how Sanford has physically adapted to his disability and what he can’t do, but how he has chosen to focus on the many things he can do. His attitude reminded me of a friend’s joke. Three baseball umpires with varying experience are chatting over coffee. The first and most junior says, “I call ‘em as I see ‘em.” The next umpire, who has several years of experience, says, “I call ‘em as they are.” The last and most experienced says, “They ain’t nothin’ till I call ‘em.” In a way, Sanford has chosen to be the umpire of his own life.

     “There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.”
                - Cicero

     “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.”
                - Brooke Shields

A taste for the absurd doesn’t seem like a useful quality in a freelance photojournalist, or at least I didn’t use to think so. It’s hard to imagine my high-school guidance counselor handing me a brochure titled “So You Want To Be A Photojournalist” with helpful explanation like, “One day you might be a paparazzo in the remote north woods, and the next, photographing a gang of wannabe zombies roaming downtown streets with extremely realistic-looking snacks.” Upon hearing my career plans, it’s far more likely that my guidance counselor would have coughed in a polite, Jeeves-like way and asked if I had considered joining a foreign army.

But I’ve learned that the absurdity my job offers up is real–and it’s here to stay, so I can either fight it or embrace it. Consider a recent day-long magazine profile shoot. We’d been working for several hours when the subject asked for a break to take a call from his girlfriend. I was trying to be a polite Minnesotan and not eavesdrop when he inexplicably handed the phone to me, and I found myself chatting very long distance with a former Miss Iceland. I’ve spent some time in Iceland, and even managed to pick up a few Icelandic phrases. Alas, all I could remember was, “the strong horse” and, “could I please have two hot dogs with everything” (if you’ve ever been to Iceland, you understand the importance of the latter), neither of which impressed her. So that I’m better prepared in the future, I’ve since gained a more suitable repertoire of phrases in the world’s lesser-known languages.

Sometimes, the absurdity could be straight out of a Monty Python sketch. I was on assignment following a national politician for a few days. On one occasion, the traveling staff and I were left to kill time in a hallway outside a conference room where their boss was leading a meeting. While I reviewed images, changed batteries, and generally tried to stay busy, the staffers whipped out their Blackberries and began firing off emails, mostly to one another. “Hey, I got your email about the meeting on Friday and just replied,” one staffer announced without looking up. “Yep, just got it and replied that I forgot I have a conflict,” said another. “OK, I just acknowledged that,” said the first. This continued for a while, and I began to understand how a Blackberry outage really could bring the government to a grinding halt. I’m still not sure if I witnessed a new form of multi-modal human communication, or just compulsive audit-trailing and bureaucratic cover-your-assing taken to extremes.

Other times, even when there seems to be nothing remotely absurd in the offing, the fates still manage to pull a surreal rabbit out of their hat. I was doing interior shots in the sanctuary of a Catholic church and enjoying the peaceful solitude of the place. I’d set up my tripod and camera in a certain spot, carefully frame the shot, make the exposure and move on. Eventually, I reached the floor-to-ceiling cross at the center of the sanctuary, and noticed a warm wetness on my left hand. Looking down, I saw a stream of blood pouring out from under the bandage that covered a cut on my finger, a cut that I thought had healed. I stared woozily at the gusher for a moment before stumbling off in search of something to stanch the bleeding. I later realized that constantly working the knurled rings of the tripod legs had reopened my wound. As a result, my tripod looked as though I had used it to bludgeon hemophiliac pigs. More worrying though was the blood I’d liberally distributed across the pebble-dash textured floor. Cleaning it up was impossible. I imagined a priest walking solemnly through the sanctuary that evening in quiet contemplation. Upon reaching the large cross, he notices the blood on the floor, and in growing astonishment, follows the trail out of the sanctuary, across the hall, and . . . into the men’s room?

Though it took me a little time to adapt to this occupational hazard, I now look forward to the next outburst of on-assignment absurdity. Whether it’s photographing a guy who doused a tree stump with lighter fluid and set it ablaze in his own front yard, trying to accommodate an assistant who insisted I not use his real name in front of the client and subjects, or getting drawn into a discussion on the significance of abortion in “The Cider House Rules” with a Benedictine nun, it’s a weird world out there, and I’m confident there’s plenty more where all of that came from. If you don’t believe me, just ask the talking giraffe.

On a recent Wednesday, my friend David got up early to go for a bike ride. After dressing for the still-chilly April morning, he left his St. Paul house and pedaled down to a local coffee shop to chat with friends. Next, he cycled over to the junior high school where his wife teaches and answered student questions about his odd-looking bike. Finally, he crossed the Mississippi River into Minneapolis and headed south toward the open road. He expects to get back home in October. Of 2011. David, you see, is cycling around the world. Again.

Now I like a good bike ride as much as the next person. But where I measure my rides in miles, David measures his in continents. And while accomplishing such a feat once would furnish most people with the moral superiority to spend the rest of their life on the couch, David simply enjoys the experience (as is evident from his bike blog) and is hungry for more. Since his first journey was essentially a “ride east until you get back home” affair, this trip will cover new ground and unfold in a mostly north and south orientation, bouncing between the poles (or as close as is practical.)

In David’s case, getting there is all of the fun, which is a good thing, since his destination is his origin. His enthusiasm for the journey itself, and especially for doing it again, reminds me of a high school English teacher’s advice to read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn three times. By following Jim and Huck down the river as a boy, again in middle age, and finally as an old man, you can experience the surprise and joy of an unchanging text meaning something very different on each reading. In a similar way, I imagine David will find the world at bike-level to be a different place than it was in the late ‘70s.

Before leaving, David asked me to do some photography for his website. Aware that much of his journey would traverse tropical zones, he wanted a banner image for his FAQ page that instantly communicated the northern climate of his home. Which partially explains how I found myself at dawn, near the end of March, lying on the worryingly thin ice that only partially covered Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. Nothing says “cold climate” like biking on water, David reasoned. I was there to help make that statement–and, I hoped, avoid earning a Darwin Award nomination in the process. To be honest, there’s no way I would have even considered such a thing had not David been so reassuringly confident that we’d be fine. While I was still casting a skeptical eye over the small gap of open water between the shore and the ice, David was hopping onto the ice with his bike. He was so sanguine and unafraid, it seemed impossible the ice would prove him wrong, so out I went.

His overall confidence and faith in his own well-being are among the more important things David takes with him on his journey. More than one of his friends wanted to know how he planned to pass through some of the world’s dicier spots with nothing but a bike for protection. David would smile and reply that sure, there were risks, but he wasn’t worried. When pressed, he’d simply state that, in general, he believed that people were good and wanted to help. Were it not for his previous circumnavigation, I’d be a little more concerned for his safety. But just as he seemingly willed the ice on Lake Harriet to hold us, I’m confident his very nature encourages those he meets to follow their nobler instincts.

Safe and happy travels, David. And save a little energy, because after finishing this trip, you still have one to go.