 recon my new camera showed up.
They say that you don't know what you got till it's gone, and boy howdy! Did I ever figure that out Wednesday! That Nikon point and shoot I used probably does okay for the family reunion and the odd image of the National Park one might be visiting, but for quick, on the fly shooting, it sucked!
I missed quite a few shots just because the start up speed was so slow. Then the auto focus was bad as well. That caused a lot of unusable shots and the ones I kept were blurred, but I guess I have to take what I have. Had I been shooting with the TG-5, it would have all been cake. I would have nailed every shot.
But the main thing is- I have the TG-5! I am pretty stoked. And it came to me in black, so it looks great as well. Personally I liked the red, but hey! For what I paid I cannot be choosy. So, black it is. It looks classy and more like a "serious camera guy's" camera, I suppose. I plan on having a bit of a review up after I've used it some here.
Since Christmas falls on Monday this year many of you will be gone and not checking in here, so I wanted to say, "Merry Christmas!" before you all flew out for wherever it is that you may be headed to this weekend.
I'll be around here posting, so you can always check in whenever you get a chance, but here is a challenge: "Tune out from social media this weekend!" Try it and tune in to your friends and family instead. You can always catch up on things next week.
That includes this blog, so if you are off to see friends and family, well, be intentional and spend some good, attentive time with them. If you are just doing the "regular ol' things", well, I'll be around. Oh, and thanks for reading my scribin'.
So, with that, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!
Well, we did it. We drove the entire course, plus a bit of a reroute. We finished after dark, We started in Waterloo at 6:00am and I got dropped off by Tony at 6:32pm. We drove a total of just under 500 miles to, doing the route, and back home again. I actually woke up for this adventure at 4:30am, so as I write this, I am a bit discombobulated.
Okay, so with a totally new route, new first checkpoint location, 14 or 15 sections of Level B roads, and some rad historical and cultural things to see along the way, I was excited to check out the route. Tony and I were all business. We just didn't have time to dink around anywhere. We did our stops like we were in the event. Get 'er duuun! In and out in a flash.
The route was going swimmingly with Level B's checking out and all the mileage being spot on until we saw it. "Road Closed To Through Traffic". Uggh! Okay, let's go see what is up here! Well, as it turns out, the road was great right up to the closed bridge, which has a perfectly good deck but is woefully under-engineered for today's Ag equipment. So, we're going to allow the riders passage as long as everything checks out next Spring.
We got started before the Sun rose, so this is from the course.
We saw lots of "fixer-uppers" yesterday!
The weather was gorgeous and we were able to drive every Level B Road with ease. Some Tony was calling "50 mile an hour Level B's" and he really did go that fast on them!
The Level B's were dry and super fast yesterday. Will they be that way in April? Maybe. It has happened!
This is why we do recon. On every map you can find this road is shown as being open.
Once again, we were rewarded for doing recon in the field by finding an "open road" which clearly was not and had not been that way for quite a while.
GPS from three different sources, (including the guy who puts out that gravel route map), and paper maps including the State DOT maps all show this road being clear. Yep.......you can only trust your eyes. Putting your trust in analogue or digital technology is a fools errand. Trust in that stuff at your own risk. I do not trust that stuff. For me, it is merely suggestions and maybe they will be true. I would have been floored had we not found something like this. In fact, I expected more. Glad we found an easy reroute for this and that there were not more issues.
So, my take on the route is that it is mostly good. There are about twenty or so miles I was disappointed in. I likely will reroute that section as well, but it is in an area I think will not prove to have any weird issues. But.......you never know! Of course, it is at a point about as far away from me as you can get. Why wouldn't it be? Ha!
So, I'll have more details in a follow-up post at a later date. We identified a checkpoint #2, but the mileage may change if I reroute the aforementioned section I don't like. I will have a solid amount of miles of dirt to share with you later as well, since that all checked out. Oh! By the way, I think that there was one "bonus" section of Level B. So maybe 15 sections of dirt? I'll have the final tally for you all later.
That's it for now though. I am tired!
Carbon fiber: Ultimate frame material or environmental disaster?
Bicycling in the 21st Century is a much different affair than it has been anytime previous to this era. While much of the past in bicycling was accomplished in and on metal, today it is increasingly being done on bike frames, forks, and parts made from carbon fiber.
Most of us never think twice about this. Carbon fiber usage maybe will raise a few concerns about strength and failures, but we almost never consider the origins of our lightest, most sexy bits for cycling. When you start to dig in to this, and how the end cycle of these carbon bicycles looks, you begin to realize it isn't as sexy and cool as the industry makes it out to be.
The situation is somewhat tragically ironic. Many think of cycling as the most green and efficient means of human transportation. The impact of cycling on our world is all too often focused on the end activity and how that compares to other activities. However; we really need to take into account the origins of the bits and baubles we pedal. When one sits down to do this, it becomes apparent that carbon fiber has an ugly, black side to it.
Just the making of carbon fiber fabric is intensely unfriendly to the environment. Fabric is heated in several stages, but not burned since this process lacks oxygen. It is done in a controlled way in order to render the fabric into carbon fiber. It is an energy intensive process and it creates several gasses, including CO2, as a byproduct. Hmm....not looking so green already. But then you have the resin which binds the fabric together, more pressure and heat, and the hand labor, don't forget that part. In one resource I found, it was stated that carbon takes about 14 times more energy to produce than steel.
One of the byproducts of making carbon parts, besides the greenhouse gasses, is........left over carbon fiber bits. Sheets are cut, carbon parts are sanded and ground down, and the resulting waste, about a third of each sheet ends up so, cannot be recycled easily. In fact, according to one account, the waste is dumped into the sea!
As I stated, carbon fiber can now be recycled, but the process is expensive, energy intensive, and it isn't widespread. Waste carbon is typically dumped into landfills where it can stay in its original state indefinitely.
Of course, alternatives to carbon for cycling are not without their own environmental issues. The making of steel, aluminum, and especially titanium, is pretty "un-green". That said, most of these bits and frames are recycled and repaired more easily than carbon fiber frames and parts are. While carbon fiber can have a long lifespan, it does fail, wear out, and when it does, it becomes a liability. Not to mention how where this stuff is made is being polluted by the processes necessary to make it. If you are a cyclist that cares about the environment, that might be a concern.
It's hard not to fall for the lightweight charms of carbon fiber, that's for sure. However; I'm not so sure most of us have considered, or even know about, carbon fiber's creation processes and end of life cycle concerns. It is definitely something to take seriously, in my opinion.
Hold the presses! It's 1992 again!
No- it isn't an e-bike.
Nope- it is the ubiquitous slack, long, and short rear ended steel hard tail that everybody and their brother is making now. Welcome to the sheep show, All City. Get to know the dozen or so like minded designers and their bikes out there.
I will say that the fade paint with splatter is dead on early 90's though. All City nailed that one. Nicely done chaps!
Salsas does kids bikes.....again.
Back in the day, (as they say), Ross Shafer of Salsa Cycles, who started the brand, made a serious