A Busy Week

 

Last weekend I went for a ride with my other bike club mainly because the ride started close to home and I errands I need to run in the afternoon. It didn't hurt that the club was buying ice cream for everyone at the rest stop. The JSTS club has some unique traditions through out the year and the ice cream ride is my favorite. We stopped at a place in Englishtown and all the different paces stop at the same place so it's sort of like a big ice cream party. The place we stopped at is called Four Brothers. They usually don't open until 11am but the club called ahead and got them to open a half hour early since 50 or more bikers were heading their way. I usually don't like to eat something as heavy as ice cream during a ride but on certain occasions it just feels right.

This past Wednesday I went to the Atlantic City airshow since I hadn't been at one in while and a person in our community asked me to go. It's a long day since the air show starts at 11am and runs until 4pm. It's very crowded on the beach so you have to get their early and stake out a spot. We had no problem with finding a parking lot or getting a good spot on the beach. It was a mostly sunny day but not too hot. We had an umbrella to keep the sun off us so I was relatively comfortable on the beach. The airshow was good and had a couple of good acts. My favorite was the dual mustangs.There is just nothing that sounds and look as good as those airplanes. 

There was also a Harrier jet that hovered over the beach that was cool. This is a shot taken by other person with me who is an avid photographer. He changed the picture to high contrast B&W to show more detail.

After the airshow since it was on the way home we stopped by the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge to try to get some picture of the birds there. Since I had my good camera with me with the telephoto lens I wanted to see if I could some better bird pics than I did two weeks ago. There were a lot of herrings there along with an assortment of seagulls and other water fowl. I got a good pic of a egret landing

And some kind of bird that skims the water with its beak.

And a heron eating a fish. I'm not sure of the bird type so need to add an app on my phone to better identify them.

Wildlife photography is challenging as you have to take pictures in bursts hoping you will get the bird in focus and at the perfect moment. You also have to hope for good light which we didn't have. I definitely learned a lot and got enough good shots but I know I can do better so will probably try some more wild life photography in the future. 

This past weekend I lead one of my standard rides out of Allentown as I felt like something close and flat. The route goes down to Columbus then through New Egypt and out to some pastures past some longhorn cattle. 

Normally the cattle our on the INSIDE of the fence however this one got out and most of the people on the ride did not want to get too close... Except for Luis and Jim who stood in front of the cow for a picture I wanted to send to Laura.

Cattle are very docile animals so I don't think it would have charged us as long as we didn't stop it from eating the grass it was so interested in. 

We stopped at Charleston Coffee for our break and maintained a good pace into a slight headwind. It was a good ride on a sunny and low humidity day. As August turns into September we should have more weather like this.

The bike ride on Saturday was not my only event for the day. The photography club here had an outing to Jenkinson's in Point Pleasant to learn about a type of photography called street photography where you try to walk down the street and get candid shots of people or objects you encounter as you walk past them. I'm not very good at taking pictures of people or have a lot experience so decided to give it a try. 

There were about 10 of from the club on the boardwalk with our cameras. We started about a half hour before sunset. It felt strange just talking picture of people on the boardwalk. I felt like I was invading their privacy but it was really crowded and no body seemed to mind or really care. There are a few people in the club that are very good at going up to someone and asking them to pose for a picture. As you can image there were quite a few strange characters on the boardwalk that would make a good picture. 

It was fun walking around with some of the other people from the photography club. They are each a little different and have different styles so I picked up some tips from them. After I got into it I relaxed and took a few good shots. The best one was of a girl on a swing giving her mother a high five as she went around.

 

I converted it to black and white because the low light made the colors look dim so converting it to black and white brought out more detail. I also took picture of some of the rides and got creative and did a long exposure to blur the motion of the swing. That is the picture at the top of the post. 

I left the boardwalk around 9pm and was tired from a long day and a busy week but did a lot of different things and had a lot of fun.