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adventures / cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
9
May 17

Keeping up

Tonight I had the chance to enjoy my first group ride of the year. The group has been going out probably for a month or two now, but I’m hanging out with the students on Tuesdays and Thursdays while the cyclists are out riding around. But with the summer upon us, my Tuesday and Thursday evenings are free and I can ride. So there I was, sitting in the office considering with dread a route I’ve been on before, thinking of how poorly I’ve ridden it the last two times out and wondering how today could be any different.

We got to the parking lot of the giant church where the group meets and there are 17 or 18 people and we all set off on this little 25-mile course. I think I was the third wheel at the beginning, which basically just means I pushed off from the parking lot early. So there was Kyle, who is in IT at the university, and then The Yankee and then me and behind us a bunch of other interesting and talented people. And after a bit The Yankee passed Kyle and I went with her and some people latch on to my wheel and we just go. She’s crushing rollers in the 20s and I’m not even using any of my gears. I’d put my chain on one of the harder gears and it stayed there for the first eight miles, until we got to a real hill. My legs, which had felt tired all day, came alive and I’m sitting just off to The Yankee’s side and she’s leading the whole group. My heart rate is up a little and the breathing is up a tiny bit and I’m singing. I’m singing while I’m riding and just trying to hang on to the leader of the pack.

And she was so strong on her bike today that if you slowed up to take one picture — or to get a swig of water, or to glance at your gears — you’d spend the next two miles working hard just to catch her again. So this was the one photo I took:

There were never more than two or three people ahead of us, the real climbers of the bunch put us in our place on the hills, which we are still learning how to deal with. But we were bombing the downhill runs into the low 40s with ease, and then riding that momentum until we’d get to the next uphill.

It was my first “fast” ride of the year. The sort where you are a bit silly with the speed and delirious about how your legs are moving up and down. It was positively average, really, but I’m taking it.

adventures / cycling / friends / Monday / photo — Comments Off
8
May 17

From our long(ish) weekend ride

It was hard and slow, like all of my rides have been so far this year, but the weather was nice and the company was pleasant and the scenery was pretty. So you don’t complain. You do, but no one wants to hear about how slow you’re going. They just want you to keep up with them.

Anyway, it was a 45-mile ride and here are some of the pictures I took chasing The Yankee and our cycling club buddy Stephen around. Here’s one of the few flat spots, with wildflowers growing in the fields just off the roadways:

Two people riding better than me at the moment:

We went over a causeway on the lake. Still chilly, I’d bet, but awfully pretty:

Looking up through the trees as I went uphill one more time:

Where would you like to go next? They’re deciding, I’m catching my breath, probably:

Seriously, almost all day, just like this:

This picture doesn’t do it justice, but we topped off on a hill and the trees opened up and you could look down and out on what felt like just about everything. It is silly, no higher than we’d climbed, but it was a real top-of-the-world sensation:

And one more slight incline to enjoy.

They teach you, in a photography class, all about using lines in a composition to frame action and attract the eye. I often think about that when I’m shooting, of course. But not when I’m riding and huffing and puffing. It just worked out this time. That’s the great thing about a bike ride. It can be hard. You can be slow. It just works out.

Friday / photo — Comments Off
5
May 17

Say cheese

So this is today and tomorrow:

I've had the good fortune to work with some great seniors who are graduating this weekend. Good luck, thanks, and break a leg! pic.twitter.com/lY0X2t0BAm

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) May 5, 2017

This evening I, finally, started cleaning up my home office. It has just been sitting there, as offices do. The problem has been the amount of stuff that has been sitting inside of it. It should be a useable space, which is why the straightening up is taking place.

Really, of course, this just means moving things from here, to there. So the adjoining closet, which was full but not obnoxious, is now trending that way again. But a few things will be moved out of that room and to … somewhere else besides.

I’ve found, as a lifelong expert in organizing things from messy piles to slightly less offensive stacks, that doing one corner at a time is a great way to spend your efforts. When you get two corners cleared you are ready to make some progress on the wall in between. And if your room is laid out in a seemingly static style, then there isn’t much to do along that wall. Because there are bookshelves and furniture and whatnot.

On top of one of the bookshelves is this camera, which The Yankee picked up for me last year.

Isn’t that lovely? This is a Yashica twin lens reflex camera, a Mat-124 G.

Now, this is a bookshelf camera, but all of the buttons and knobs and cranks work, as you’d expect on an entirely mechanical camera. It stands to reason, then, that if I got some 6×6 film and cleaned the glass it would still take decent medium prints. Except for that front piece, on the top, it is in terrific condition.

And those quick cellphone photos remind me I need to build a new lightbox. Perhaps another weekend project!

Anyway, Yashica first started making the ancestor of this camera in 1957. It was a 75 mm variety. This one is 80. And here’s the view through the viewfinder, which you look down into from above:

This camera would shoot at 1/500th of a second, and the aperture dial allows for f3.5 to f32. This might be one of the first times I’ve looked through the viewfinder and … the focal ring works! So does the sports finder, which is basically a magnifier:

Now, the Yashica Mat 124-G was made between 1970 and 1986, so it isn’t old as these things go. But it has probably sat on a shelf or in a closet for all of the time since. I know it has at least since last spring, when it was given to me. And I’m standing in my office, pointing it through a window, through the window screen and then taking a photo of what I see in the viewfinder through my phone. So the representation isn’t bad, but the glass inside this thing is good for an entry-level medium format camera. And the image capture, at some settings, is terrific. Through the sports finder once more:

memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
4
May 17

Mors Ab Alto

I remember the 1970s. Not in realtime, because I was too young and my memory is too sketchy. But I remember the 1970s much better after the fact, because the 1970s did not end on December 31st, no. And they didn’t end, entirely, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. No. The 1970s were a decade that wanted to hold on —
because the Boomers couldn’t acknowledge the idea that the Sixties were even farther away, I suppose — and that’s how I have most of my memories of the 1970s.

Take the game of death from above. Yes, we had a lawn dart set. The Regent Jarts, as I recall. The packaging looked like this. We had those things long after every other neighbor was concerned for their kids safety. I don’t remember them being played much really, probably for safety reasons, but I do remember them being in the basement.

They’d been banned before, but that was somehow overturned in court. And then the lawn dart manufacturing special interests lucked out and found a huge hit on their hands in the 1980s. But there were injuries, too many injuries, thousands of them when people started looking at the data, and at least one death. A grieving father worked tirelessly to get the things banned and, just before the issue was to be considered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, another child was put into a coma following a lawn dart accident.

So in 1988, just before Christmas, the things were banned in the United States. Soon after, Canada followed. Today, you can buy replacement parts, new metal points or the plastic fletching. But you can’t purchase the finished product.

You can, however, pick this up at Kroger:

I remember the 1970s. Back then, outdoor toys didn’t always use the word “fitness” as a marketing toy. That started in the 1990s.

IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
3
May 17

I don’t yet know where this is going

I rode my bike to work this morning, thinking I would pedal slow, so I wouldn’t get my heart rate up. Didn’t want to break a sweat before a day in the office. I walked outside with my bike and it was a bit chilly. More than a bit, really. So I figured I would pedal a bit, just to get warm. Then, of course, I was in the breeze and getting chilly.

So I broke a little tiny sweat. And then spent the rest of the morning trying to convince myself I didn’t have a chill. By lunch I was better, but it was lunch time, which of course meant going outside. But the sky! It was blue! Of course it was. We’re into May. It is supposed to be nice weather. It is supposed to be routine and shouldn’t be a novelty. That’s the point. If you are saying “But look! The sky! She’s blue!” That’s pointing out the novelty. In May.

But at lunch someone complained about the pollen. And later, in an evening meeting, someone else complained about the pollen. It has been bad. It has been horrible. I haven’t noticed, thankfully. No big piles of yellow powder, no sinus difficulties. So there are trade offs, I suppose.

My meeting this evening, by the way, was with new student media leaders. Think of that. This is finals week. They’re in a long planning meeting for next year. They could be cramming. They were in a conference room. I love that about people who work in student media. They could be most anywhere, but there they are, giving you good work and devotion to their product.

When I rode my bike home it wasn’t cold. And I could ride my bike home. I think of that a lot on the four miles in. Didn’t notice any pollen, either.

I mentioned yesterday the bull fighting frame I got at the Surplus Store. I got one other thing there, too:

This is a giant poster. A re-creation of a 19th century map, complete with period advertisements on the side. Even the water stains are a reproduction.

Now, normally, I don’t go in for reproductions. I’m snobby like that, but this cost me $.50, and it represents the work of an 1856 cartographer:

Plus, it’ll be fun figuring out the stories about the advertisers on the borders. Whatever became of them and their businesses and dreams? Do they have descendants still here? Whatever I find will wind up here, too, and that’s worth the half dollar I spent on it.

Just like a good map, to tell you where you’re going.