My Mountain Trail

Starting From Scratch

Friday, October 10, 2008

Huh? You talkin' to me?

This afternoon I was practicing lighting ideas. Then a political impersonation slipped out.

You talkin' to me?

In general, I'm not one to make a big deal about my political views, or to make general political commentary. (That's your warning.) Though if you have talked politics with me, you know that I've been very disappointed with the direction our country's leadership has taken us in the last 5+ years. Well, I say leadership, but I think what I'm really saying is leadership in the wrong direction and then lack of leadership to adjust our course. Anyway, the cost for going to war has been terrible in the lives lost or destroyed, and in the economic impact of spending billions weekly to feed our unilateral war machine -- ahh, there's more but I'll stop now while I can!

Hey, so anyway, I was playing around with lighting. I was trying to figure out how to light the hat all the way around and not make myself look too crazy in the process. Chimping the pictures on the camera, I realized that I was dressed just right to impersonate our Commander in Chief. So, I started with his characteristic point, and ended with this classic shrug:


Ya got me!

Something weird happened to the color space when I uploaded this, and it got a bit washed out. That seemed to fit the political statement perfectly.

Well, I know that some of you that read this will disagree with me. If you know me well, you know you will have a hard time convincing me I am wrong. I'm a bit stubborn. It's my mountain trail after all. Anyway, if we all agreed on everything, life would be much less interesting.

I hope your weekend has started out well because the week was a doozy!

Bye, bye 'til next time!

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Ride the Mountain

Healing with time.

During our trip to Colorado this summer my Intense Spider mountain bike fell off the bike rack on the back of the camper while driving on a very rough Forest Service road. It was a total loss. After much effort, my insurance company covered most of the loss, so that was good. I ended up buying the bike that I had before the Spider back from the person who bought it from me. He was injured, and figured he wouldn't be able to ride for quite a while. Besides, he wanted to upgrade. Anyway, he had taken good care of the bike and I was happy to have it back.

Today I went for a ride after work. I schlepped along the Instamatic (aka Canon 5D) and took a couple of photos. The one above is of an oak tree healing over from a long ago trimming. And the one below is of Railroad trail looking back towards the city.


Railroad

You can see it was a beautiful day. And, it was fun to be back on a mountain bike...

C U l8tr!