RIDE LONG AND SMILE

We got a nice taste of winter on Wednesday, and luckily I had a 1/2 day of vacation I had to use.  So I took the fatbike out for a stroll in some fresh powder.  I love laying fresh tracks. The fattie was right at home in the snow and it was great to ride with nobody out on the trails.  I love the smooth silence that riding on fresh snow brings.  It's so peaceful. It was bitter cold by the end of the ride.  I rode into the darkness and the temps quickly dropped to the low teens with the windchill around zero.  It reminded me of Minnesota, but with a different view.

The Big Dipper just over the horizon. 

I recently acquired a pair of old film SLR's with a nice selection of lenses.  One of the cameras is older than me and both are fully manual Nikons.  There are batteries for the light meter that illuminates symbols inside the viewfinder to tell you if you are over or underexposed.  With that you then adjust the shutter speed or aperture accordingly to capture the image.  The focus is also manual.  Very simple and bombproof!  And the method for ensuring a crisp manual focus is ingenious! Be sure to click on the pictures to view them larger. I loaded one of the cameras up with some expired black and white film I had laying around and the other with expired color and went on a road trip.  The expired color still worked okay, but nothing to really write home about. It was a little faded and lacked some of the contrast and vibrancy, but not bad. I think new color film will be much better! The black and white film pr...

Last night I got out after work to experiment with light on a sweet (borrowed) titanium Budnitz.  That bike is quite an urban ripper.  I set out to see if I could get some shots that would possibly be used in some way for upcoming marketing stuff for work. When I arrived at my first location the light was almost perfect, but fading fast - too fast as it turned out.  This was the scene of where I would spend a bunch of time playing around with light: As you can see the sky had already started to turn by the time I got the flash set up and positioned.  Oh well, still an interesting shot: After a few other methods of lighting I decided to start practicing "painting with light".  All three of these similar photos were taken with a 30 second exposure, plenty of time for some light painting.  So, I grabbed a bright light, triggered the shutter, and began painting the light where I wanted it and trying to minimize shadows by shining the light at...

After a delicious breakfast in Crested Butte I hit the road and made my way towards Cottonwood Pass (12,126 ft).  While riding up by Taylor Park Reservoir there were still signs of the U.S. Pro Challenge from a few weeks prior.  It provided a little extra incentive to push on. After a several hours of climbing I made it to the top of the pass.  The gravel road was in great shape and there was a surprising amount of traffic.    There were a few people that had something to say, but amazingly they were all positive. The paved road down the back of Cottonwood Pass to Beuna Vista was very inviting.  It was all downhill from here.  I covered the 19 miles to Buena Vista in just under 40 minutes (just shy of a 30 mph average)  Considering how long I was climbing I was hoping for a longer descent, but I'll take it. As I approached Buena Vista I came across this road that T'ed into the road I was on.  I wasn't sure where it...

After loading up on a grocery store dinner of a chimichanga, banana, bagel with ham, bag of Cheetos, and bottle of Gatorade I figured I'd better get to camp.  I had 10 more miles of mostly climbing and the temp was dropping as fast as the sun. Overnight the temps dropped into the high 20's and I was a bit cold.  Once again a mouse came to visit in the middle of the night.  They must like bikes almost as much as I do! I woke in the morning to another beautiful day and was looking forward to enjoying the colorful ride back to Crested Butte for a warm breakfast.  The road back to CB followed nice little stream.  The morning light lit the aspens on fire! Stay tuned for my final segment of the trip.

 As I was climbing up towards Tin Cup Pass from St. Elmo the colors and mountains became more and more spectacular.  I kept wanting to stop and take pictures, but I also knew I had a long ways to go. After a few hours of climbing I reached the top of Tin Cup Pass at 12,154 ft.  Not bad considering I started the day at under 8,000 ft.  Overall it was a good climb and I only had to walk a couple of short sections due to the steepness and looseness of the road.  Even with my full load I was still able to out-climb a jeep!  The weather was perfect.  The top of the pass was like a wasteland.  It was a good thing I climbed Tin Cup from the south, because the north side was much more treacherous.  I had to walk down more than I had to walk up just to make sure I didn't toss myself into some sharp rocks.  It was very loose and rocky from all of the Jeep and four-wheeler traffic.  This picture was b...

The goal: Ride from Buena Vista 85 miles up and over these mountains to Crested Butte. The Chalk Cliffs were almost blinding to look at in the morning light.  The miles on the paved roads ticked by pretty quickly with beautiful scenery. The closer I got to St. Elmo, the more color there was in the trees.   St. Elmo is a cool little historical ghost town.  Stay tuned for the continuation of the ride!

I had a great ride a while back out on the planes of Colorado.  The weather was perfect.  The sunflowers were blooming.   The roads were long.  The fields were endless. Gotta love it!

 With all the heat lately, I thought I would share some "cool" pictures.

 We had a great hike up in the mountains last week.  Even though the clouds were low and stormy we stayed dry and had a wonderful time.  It is so beautiful in the mountains it's sometimes hard to take it all in, so we definitely need to go back soon.  Note the small white speck at the shoreline in the very center of the above picture...  ... That speck is this very cool little waterfall. We decided it was time to get back down when we heard the rumble of thunder.