Who'll Stop the Rain?

It's always disappointing to look at the weather and see rain in the forecast on the weekend. Weekends and especially Saturdays are when I do my big ride of the week. I don't mind missing a few days of riding because of rain but it seems like we have had a lot of weekends with rain even though the rain totals are low this year. 

Saturday was the predicted total wash out as there were on and off heavy rain all day. This is why this past Wednesday I did a hilly ride with some of the retired folks which was longer than my usual Wednesday rides. 

I spent Saturday taking care of a few chores and taking a few experimental rain pictures. I found out that you can get some cool mirror affects if you focus closely on rain drops on a window.

If you click on the above picture to enlarge it you will see the chair and some flowers being reflected in the raindrops. I think with a little more practice I can make this even better.

In between the rain I took a picture of a few flowers in bloom on the patio to see how the rain looked on them. Cloudy light is the best light to get pictures of flowers. I got a decent shot of a red dahlia.

Luckily on Sunday there was a few hours of sunshine in the morning. As soon as I saw the sun as I woke up I got on my bike cloths and headed out. I was on the road by 7:30am and did a quick 30 mile ride. I was back home by 9:30am. This had to be the earliest I have gotten out for a ride in a long time. It was weird to be back so early but the forecast called for popup showers later in the morning and by 11:15am some light rain started followed by some large thunderstorm. 

The forecast for the next week doesn't look great. I expect there will be clouds of mystery pourin' confusion on the ground as the song suggests. I just hope there will be some moments of clearing so I can get some riding in.

Air Quality

I always check the weather before I ride. I like to know if I have a chance of getting rained on. Even when it is clear I like to know which way and how strong the wind will be blowing so I can adjust my route accordingly. This pass week I had to add another weather check in to my pre ride routine. That is to check the airnow.gov site for air quality. That is because the smoke from the Canadian fires got funneled down to NJ and most of the mid east states by a low sitting up in New England.  Most of the time when smoke from wild fire drifts over us it is usually higher in the atmosphere and doesn't affect air quality that much. This time it made it unhealthy. It gave the sky that post apocalypse feel. 

Not only did you smell the smoke but the sky was gray and you couldn't even see the clouds above. The sun barely shown through the smoke. I took a picture of the sun with my camera and didn't get the usual glare because of all the smoke in the atmosphere. In fact the picture looked like a picture that I take when I have use my solar filter which blocks 99.9% of the suns light. You can easily see the sunspots. This just shows you how much crap was in the air blocking the light. 

I had initially planned to do a ride on Wednesday but after Jim alerted me to the smoke forecast I checked the air quality and canceled the ride. I did actually have to spend a couple of hours outside on Wednesday. My wife volunteers at a rescue farm and feeds the animals once a week. She needed my help Wednesday afternoon for someone who had canceled. The smoke was really heavy in the afternoon we went so I wore a mask while we fed the animals. The farm has a cow 

a few horses

some pigs, a bunch of goats.

and some cats in the barn.

Feeding the animals is a lot of fun especially the goats. These pictures are from Monday morning when we went to fill in for another person who couldn't do their schedule feeding. On Wednesday we didn't spend as much time with them as Monday as we wanted to minimize our time outside. I felt bad for the animals who had to deal with the smokey air for a couple of days.

Luckily by Saturday the smoke had cleared and I was able to get out and lead a ride. We haven't had a lot of rain this year so the risk of fire is high. We had a fire near where I live earlier in the week which took a couple of days to burn out. There are also a couple of fires burning down in the pinelands so until we get some major drenching rain we will have to keep an eye on the air quality before deciding if it is safe to ride.

My Artistic Side

Those of you that know me know that I am a very analytical person. As a software developer I have to have a good knowledge of the technology I use and be able to make logical decisions on how best to solve any problem or create any type of software. There are rules and patterns that I have to understand and apply so I have to stay within certain guidelines. This doesn't mean there isn't some creativity to what I do for a living as there are multiple ways to solve a particular problem or manage the team to get the required results.

Even in what I do in my photography is more technical than art as it is more about capturing some astronomical event than creating something artistic.  However as part of the last lunar eclipse that I took photographs of I managed a few good sunrise pictures. They were good but did not represent what I really saw or even felt. That lead me to join the photography club in our community to help me become better. Most of the people in the club are really good photographers and a few are even good enough to be professionals. I have learned a lot from them and picked up a few techniques I can use to take a better pictures.

However the main thing I learned about photography from the people in the club it that photography is more than taking at good picture. It is about telling a story, exposing some interesting feature of nature or life. The composition of the shot and making sure it has a clear subject that inspires some reaction is more important than any technical aspect of a photo. There is a lot more creativity and art require to take a good photograph so that is something I have to work on.

In March I decided to upgrade my camera to a DSLR. It's a entry level mirrorless camera from Canon. It's the EOS R10. The main different from my old Canon Powershot 740 is a real sensor and an interchangeable lens. Even though my Powershot 740 had a couple of different manual modes it still had some limitations especially for depth of field and focus. With the R10 I have a lot more control and flexibility on how to frame and capture what I see. For example I can finally do some macro photography and capture the details of a flower and blur the background.

Here is another example. 

I still have a lot to learn both technically and artistically but the more pictures I take and the more I talk with the people in the photo club the more confidence that I get that I can get a lot better and produce some spectacular photos like they do.

Once a year in the community I live in there is a photography and art show. There are some really good artists here. I mean painters, sculptors, and photographers. 

There is even a guy who does some amazing carvings. Theses are shoes carved and painted from a single block of wood. Only the shoe laces are real.

It definitely takes a lot of patiences. 

There were over 60 photos submitted by people in the photography club. There was a good range of landscape, portrait and macro shots.

 

I originally wasn't going to add any of my photos to the show as I didn't think any of my were good enough but the president of the club had seen some of my photos and encouraged me to submit a couple.

The first one was a picture of a Flamingo that I took on my phone and through some photo shop work it turned in a pretty good picture.

 

The other was a sunrise picture I took in Manasquan in November. 

When these were printed out and framed they actually looked better than expected. I got a lot of good comments at the show even from some of the other photographers. These are good photos but I know I can do a lot better. It was good talking to the other photographers and artists at the show and I now how some ideas of how I can improve my photography. I don't know how good I can get but I am enjoying it and gives me an excuse to explore something more artistic.

 

Teamwork

One of the most important questions I need to answer every week is where am I going to ride and do I want to lead. I usually have a couple of ideas of where I wanted to go. This week I wanted to do a hilly ride but wasn't sure where. Laura emailed me to say she wanted to go to the Fuel Factory in Flemington. I had route from Rocky Hill that would have worked but Laura also wanted to visit Lower Creek Rd which had been fixed an repaved after the flood took out the road a couple of years ago. I didn't want to go over the Sourlands to Flemington then down to Lower Creek and back over a couple of hills to get back to Rocky Hill. It would have been too many miles and too much climbing for this early in the season. So the solution is to start from Prallsville Mill. 

 I told Laura that I would work on a route but was busy at work and had to spend a day at my fathers so by the time I started to come up with a route Laura already had sent me one. It would go straight up to the top of Federal Twist. If it was later in the season maybe but I don't have the legs to do that so I said a definite NO!

Here next try had us going up Warsaw which is one of the easier ways up the hill from the Delaware so I took that route and made a few changes to my preferred roads and listed the ride. 

On the day of the ride Jim got to Prallsville Mill first because he is always a lot early. He found that the parking lot was closed for a private event. He called me and I decided to move the start to Bulls Island which is just up the road. He stayed at Prallsville Mill until I got there and directed people to Bulls Island. When I got there a few minutes later Jim and I made a few phone calls to let people know of the new starting point. With out much trouble we were able to get all of the people on my ride to Bulls Island and only started the ride a few minutes late. 

We did this route which was hilly but about as easy as I could make it in the area we were riding. Even though I haven't done a lot of hills I didn't have a problem going up the hills. I was just a little slower than the rest of the people. The weather was almost perfect with bright sun and 60 degrees and for once there was not a lot of wind. 

Fuel Factory was busy and made a good stop. I used to the roads Laura suggested to get into and out of Flemington and it was we didn't run into the normal traffic we usually do so I will use these road again if we go back that way. 

On the way out of Flemington we went through a couple of neighborhood roads that were a little steep but quiet. For once on one of my rides there were no road closed or bridge out adventures. When we got to Lower Creek the road was nicely paved. I think they moved part of it farther away from the creek so that the next flood won't take it out. 

So although I led this ride I had some help from Laura and Jim to make sure we had a good ride.

Connections

Riding a bike is best done in the company of others. Half the time I ride it is usually with a group, mostly the Insane Bike Posse. Riding is safer and more fun with others. Yes the people I ride with may be a little odd but that is probably true of most serious bikers. 

I am amazed at all the connections that I have made through biking. Besides the Princeton Freewheelers I'm also a member of the Jersey Shore Touring Society(JSTS) and Philadelphia Bike Club(PBC). I joined JSTS when I moved so I had a club closer to where I live. I probably ride with them once a month during the warmer seasons. It's been a year since I joined the club and am starting to get to know some of them. 

Last Saturday I went on a club with JSTS. It was a 40 mile ride at a B pace. There were 8 people on the ride and I recognized a couple of them. At the rest stop, which was at Roy's, I ran into Statler and Waldorf who were on their own ride since they didn't think they could do Laura's longer 60 mile ride. So I was on a JSTS ride talking to people from PFW who know most of the Posse. It was a meeting of my many connections.

Saturday night we went to a party at a friends house in our community. There were about 20 people there most of them I knew but I also met a few new people. The community I live in is a true community in the sense that most people here respects each other and work to make the community a good place to live. There are a lot of active clubs and events and a lot of chances for social interactions. 

We don't attend a most of the parties or events but are a member of some of the clubs. This past Wednesday the veterans club ran a trip to the Battleship NJ. I had always wanted to take a tour of the ship so I went along. It was a well organized trip. The club rented a bus that drove us to and from Camden and arranged for a complete tour of the ship. We got to see everything from the main bridge all the way down to the boilers in the lower decks of the engine room. The engineer in me really loved seeing the mechanical workings of this complicated ship. It was also fun taking the tour with some veterans who shared some interesting stories from their time in the service. You can see some pictures of the ship here.

Although I only knew a couple people in the veterans club they ended up being a very fun an welcoming bunch of people so I now have a couple new connections to people in the community.

For a person who shy's away from social interactions I'm amazed by all the connections that I have made and continue to make. I'm glad I have made these connections as I know they help my mental well being and hope my interaction with people help them as well.

Is It Wednesday or Saturday

 

I am still adjusting to having Wednesday's off. One of the good things about having an extra day off a week is that I can take advantage of good weather. This past Wednesday was a perfect spring day so I organized a ride with the posse down to Pemberton. This was a longer ride than the usual Wednesday ride to take advantage of the weather. It felt like a Saturday ride as we almost had the full crew since Laura took a day off and joined us. 

It was a perfect day for a flat ride and even though we had a strong head wind on the way back we ended up with a good average. I was actually hot at the end of the ride and which has me looking forward to the warmer weather. 

This Saturday threaten rain that never came so I ended up doing a short solo ride. If I knew it wasn't going to rain I might of done a longer ride but since I did a long ride on Wednesday it didn't really matter. 

So this week was flipped flopped when I did my long ride and short ride so Wednesday felt like Saturday and Saturday felt like Wednesday. It doesn't really matter but I can now see how people that are retired lose track of what day it is because their routine has changed and what day of the week it is no longer matters.

When is a Porta John an ATM and other Musings from our Wednesday Rides

 

So I'm not a retired person but I play one when I'm off on Wednesdays since I only work 4 days a week now. On Wednesday I usually try to get a ride in if the weather is good enough. As the weather has gotten a little warmer some of the retired members of the posse are leading rides on Wednesday so I join then when I can. Last week I led a ride out of Allentown and had all the the retired members plus Laura who had the day off. 

This week Ricky decided to lead which I think is the first time he led. It was a good route from Thompson Park. 

The Wednesday rides tend to be in the 35 mile range but may get longer in the summer. About 5 miles into the ride somebody needed a bathroom so we pulled into a park with a porta john. As we rode up the driveway somebody working under the covered picnic area was yelling at us. We didn't understand him but it sounded like he was saying ATM. As we pulled up to the Porta John with the door open we saw that it was empty. Apparently someone took the porta john house and removed the JOHN part so it could serve as a cover for an ATM. Never saw that before but no problem we found a usable one down the road. 

It was cloudy 50 degree day with some mist so it wasn't the best weather for a ride but I felt strong and we moved along at a good pace even into an unusual east head wind. 

These ride may not be as adventurest as our weekend rides but it is a nice way to break up the week. I may not post about many of them but since our most prolific blogger is on hiatus I figured I'd try to post more often.