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...