These books have been sitting by my bed for a while now. “Where Men Win Glory” I received for Christmas and have at least started, “Open” and “Opening Up” have been sitting there un-opened (hahaha I made a funny) since I bought them in February.
I really should stop having sex damn-near every night and do some reading instead. Unfortunately, I read this post out loud to Veronica and she agreed. WTF?
I brought my bike with me to Long Island this past weekend, knowing that I would have some time Sunday morning to get in a ride. I decided to drive to Newbridge Road Park then ride along a bike path to Jones Beach State Park from there, a nice 15 mile round trip. Newbridge Road Park played a HUGE part in my youth- I was a BMX racer and that’s where the local track was located. Every single Sunday morning, April thru October, from 1983-1988, that’s where you would find me, unless I was traveling to a regional- or national-level event, so I figured it would be nice to check out my old stomping grounds.
Here is a picture of the track from atop the starting hill, circa 1985 (yes, I’m one of the riders in the picture….)
And here is a picture from outside the fence, taken yesterday morning.
The starting hill that my dad was standing on when he took that photo of me would have been just on the other side of this fence. To imagine his perspective, climb over that fence, walk about 30 feet then turn right and you’d have the same view he had.
I knew that the track had shut down in the early-90s and I also had heard that Mr West, the track operator (he leased the property from the Town of Hempstead), leveled the track before he turned the property back over to the town.
Still, it was a really sad sight to see.
When I got my DSLR for Christmas, I committed to using nothing but the kits lens, a very capable 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens, for the next year. I figured that since this is my first SLR, digital or otherwise, that I should work on getting the most out of the camera without buying any new gear- I didn’t want to end up buying gear in an attempt to mask a lack of technical skill.
A website that I LOVE is The Digital Photography School- tips and tricks, software tutorials, equipment reviews, forums, I HIGHLY recommend this site for any photographer. A little while back there was a post Three Lenses Every Photographer Should Own and the author suggested a general purpose zoom (like my kit lens), a macro, and a telephoto zoom. A large portion of the 200+ comments decried the lack of a fast prime lens in that list. A prime lens is simply a lens with one focal length- there is no zoom. A fast lens has a larger aperture, that is it can let in more light, which is a big advantage for low-light photography.
As I read more, I really started to covet a good prime lens, so for the hell of it I looked on Craigslist the other day. And wouldn’t you know it, a woman who just upgraded to a full-format camera was selling all of her DX format lenses, including this beauty:
So I lied, I’m not using anything except for the kit lens for the first year- I met the seller and bought this after I dropped off Veronica at the airport Thursday morning. Hey, it’s a great lens, it’s less than 6 months old, she never registered it (so I can!) and I saved 25% off the list price. Could you blame me?
The maximum aperture is f/1.8, which means that it can let in twice as much light as my other lens, perfect for certain situations, such as in the bedroom. Now all I need is for Veronica to return from her little trip and we can properly test it 
This is what happens when I give Veronica my DSLR, leave it set in a manual mode, and forget to change the white balance setting first
Veronica is doing a really poor job of trying to cover up this week, but don’t take my word for it, go see for yourself!
Happy HNT!
The little bugger is forever finding things to jump off of. The latest is this stack of wood in the driveway that I’ll be cutting and splitting this weekend.
One of these days, I’ll get a picture of her kamikaze routine down the driveway on her tricycle…
No, this isn’t a post about Twitter!
Monday evening the kids and I were out in the yard when we spied a bird sitting on the grass. I thought it was odd that the bird didn’t fly away, even when PP walked to within 8-10 feet of it. She got a little closer and it flew to the fence, but it was immediately obvious that it was somehow injured.
Of course, my first thought was “oh cool, my first chance at some wildlife photography!” so I ran inside for my camera. The bird let me get to within about 6 ft for this shot, then it flew further up into a tree. I wonder if it’ll be okay….
For the first time since I started my Project365, I don’t have pictures ready, but I think I have a pretty good excuse. Here’s a rundown of what my Sunday looked like:
- Awake at 4:45am, throw on biking clothes, ride 1 mile to Long Island Rail Road station to catch 5:15 train to Penn Station in NY City
- Ride from Penn Station to Battery Park, wait in staging area for about an hour and a half
- 8:00am, begin 5 Boro Bike Tour
- 1:15pm, finish 5 Boro Bike Tour in Staten Island (yes, it took that long to cover ~40 miles. No, I didn’t ride that slow, there was a ton of congestion- I rode the first 10 miles in about the same time as it took me to ride the next 30 miles!!)
- Ferry from Staten Island back to Battery Park, ride bike back to Penn Station, train back to Long Island, shower and relax at my sisters for an hour or so.
- 4 hours drive home to Boston suburbs
Yeah, I’m pretty fuckin’ tired this evening.
If you really want to see some pics from my ride, go to my tweetphoto page for some pics I posted along the way from my phone. I also had my DSLR with me and will post some more pics sometime Monday.
And it was time to do something about it!
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Sunday morning I’m riding in the New York 5 Boro Bike Tour, which as the name implies will take me (and 30,000+ other riders!) along a 42 mile route through parts of Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.
I completed this ride last year and blogged about it (with pictures!) here. Last year the weather was cold and rainy all day and frankly I was really miserable for damn near the entire ride. But the forecast for Sunday in New York City is for high temps in the 80′s and while there is a chance of a thunderstorm, that’s not until later in the day, when I’ll already be done with the ride. Cross your fingers and hope the weather forecast is accurate for me!
I’ll have my iPhone with me, so if you’re interested in seeing pictures of the ride throughout the day, you can visit my Twitter page, or come back here and look at my updates on the sidebar over there on the left side of the screen (and if I remember, I’ll enable geotagging for my tweets). I’ll also have my SLR in my backpack and hope to get some good shots with that, so expect to see more pictures from the ride on Monday.
It’s not very often that I get out after work with friends for a drink or two (or three…) but Friday afternoon I did just that! It was good to sit around and socialize with friends and get to know some co-workers that I didn’t really know all that well before, including one really cute database programmer. Or something like that, I was too busy checking her out
*click-click*
The previous owners of our home were quite the horticulturists and the yard reflects their passion for it, which really shows at this time of year.
Each of these pictures was taken on Thursday afternoon in my front yard (and opens full-sized in a new window).
