Well, I retraced my ride, then went a little more, and I HAVE PICS!!! Here it comes! Goofus' Grand mini Adventure!! It started out as my morning grocery run, to get bananas, milk, and frozen vegetables, but my wanderlust ran high. Google Maps declared my total outbound route at 7.1 miles. Interestingly, half this distance is just in getting TO the bike trail. Here is the start of my "not just for errand running" ride, hooking up to the Great Confluence Trail, from the Enviro Way intersection with the Great River Road. You can see the Power Plant in the background. My first trail marker! I R Here! -- Where? HERE!! Here we come across my bike-ride nemesis! The SCARY BRIDGE! There is just something unsettling about riding across a bridge who's railing is below the level of your waistline. *shudder* Second pic is straight out of the Hitchcock thriller "Vertigo". This bridge crosses the Wood River (of Lewis & Clark fame) which exits into the mighty Mississippi. Now I'm at the Power Plant. It is incredibly noisy here, with the sound of the plant on the right echoing off the trees to the left. The trail goes right under the conveyor belt that transports coal from the barges on the Mississippi to the Power Plant. There is also a nice wooden covered bridge (not scary). We're getting close to the museum now. Here is the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center. This bacon brought home by Congresscritter Jerry Costello, who's name is the unreadable part of the sign in the second pic. And here it is, the destination of my Summer Solstice ride! It's a pity that I'm too early for the museum to be open or for the first tour of the day for the Melvin Price Lock and Dam. Also, I clearly need a new smaller belt. Set the self timer, run to my bike, and wonder why the camera used the FLASH in broad daylight... Also, here's a barge on the Mississippi, having recently exited the lock. I'm still feeling energetic, so ONWARD! To the Alton end of the Confluence Trail! My target is in sight! The Clark Bridge in Allton, IL, and a better pic of the bridge itself. And here I are! At the apogee of my pedal-quest! The birds under the Clark Bridge seem to think the bridge was made just for them. Look at those mud nests. Now it's time to turn around, go get the groceries, and head back home, to fiddle with the Gimp, and post these up! Hmmm. Cut/paste didn't work. The pic thumbnails just turned into text links. What did I do wrong? Phooie. I'll just redo them then... wherever the pictures are stored, there are going to be some duplications now...
Oh man, looks like it was a perfect day for a ride. Hopefully you didn't carry the milk around the whole time!
That would be... seriously stinky. No, I stopped at the Shop-n-Save on the way back home. Amazingly, my legs still had plenty of "go" left in them. If I had free time, I think I would have seen just how far I could go. Today and tomorrow are the last of the good days here, temperature-wise. From Thursday to Friday, we are going to have projected high temp of 102 degrees! Combine that with the fact that Florida is hogging all our rainfall, and I am expecting some seriously brown lawns here. Just to the south of us, they are already in drought conditions.
I put a little extra love into the Clark Bridge panorama. Goodbye digital camera! *waaaaah!* Photo adventure essays are unexpectedly fun! At least for once in a while! If ever I get another chance at hauling a digital camera with me, next time will be a panorama FROM the bike lane of the Clark Bridge, as I pedal to West Alton.
You know, there are shops that sell these so called 'digital cameras' and you could own your very own! In fact, you can get one for as little as $20! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA15A0AZ6340
How about one of these? They're all used, but that's a price I could probably go into debt for... Otherwise, it's a Canon Powershot of some sort, for $59 or higher, which I am loath to do. But I really like the idea of a VIEWFINDER! Looking at those screens in daylight is an exercise in frustration and blind zen photography... Sigh. Only reviews I could find are on Best Buy, and it don't sound good. I think I'll blow dough on a Powershot 8 mpixel, and make payments to the credit card company for the rest of my life... I ended up making a 1280x1024 desktop wallpaper out of that clark bridge picture. It turned out pretty well, after I got done with the resize, wavelet denoise (chroma), select-sky-and-wavelet-denoise (luminance), wavelet sharpen, and use of the "duplicate layer -> value-invert ->gaussian blur -> overlay" trick.
Do you not have a smartphone? I honestly know of one person who still has a point and shoot and that's only because she got it stolen in Europe.
Strangely enough, the wind was coming in almost directly from the side, so it was a pretty even match in both directions! I only had to tuck in for occasional gusts here and there. Really it was just about as perfect a day for cycling as one could possibly ask for. I have a $20 dumb phone for emergencies, on the cheapest pay-as-you-go prepaid plan I could find. It's not even a flip phone. And I'd spent all my disposable income on the bike already! That said, I think I'm going to just put myself in debt, and spring for the slow-but-good Powershot A1200. It has a viewfinder, and takes good pics. It's only failing is that it is very slow, but then so am I... GYARGHHHH!!! I've gone and done it now! I went ahead and went into debt for this: 1 "Canon PowerShot A590 IS 8.0MP Digital Camera" Electronics; $57.41 (used - Good) 1 "Kingston 8 GB Class 4 SDHC Flash Memory Card SD4/8GBET" Personal Computers; $6.10 1 "CANON POWERSHOT ELPH SD550 SD600 SD630 SD700 USB CABLE" Electronics; $3.07 Order Total: $66.58 All on Super Saver Shipping. Camera takes AA batteries, so eventually I'll get some good HiMH rechargeables too. The camera supposedly has "optical zoom stabilization"
Addendum. It appears there's a "utility" called CHDK that will allow my powershot to save pics in RAW format. I've been pre-emptively reading the user manual for this, and it is one seriously amazing piece of hardware. with my luck it will arrive broken...
GEH!!!! My order for the camera was just cancelled by Amazon for "product unavailability", leaving me with an order for two things I no longer have the remotest need for, and the order cancellation feature of amazon has been feeding me error messages telling me to try again in a few minutes. For an hour and a half. I am officially cured of ever trying to enter the digital era. Or buying anything more from Amazon. Yes, I am feeling quite passive-aggressive at the moment!
Get down to your walmart and check things out where you can actually put your hands on a real thing. I give Amazon a 5/10 at best.
Well, they already shipped the rest of my order beyond cancelling, so I looked up the remaining (and new) listings for it, and picked another supersaver/amazon-shipping used A590 camera deal, for $10 less than the one I originally purchased. If this one falls through, I wonder if they'll have listings that are $10 cheaper than now? I'll count this as good fortune disguised as poor fortune. I warn you, I'm picky about my old digicam! More than 6 gpxls, and a viewfinder rather than screen only, with optical image stabilization.
I just gave my Mom our old 6 megapixel Pentax. And Liz and I photo-bombed her too. I flipped the camera over and took two pictures of Liz's elbow - the first zoomed in so it looks just like a man's bare ass! The funny bit is I know Mom will take the memory card to the local grocery store and ask the guy there to help upload her first batch of pictures!
Mini Adventure Part II: The heat wave has broken here (Yay!) so today, I got back on the trail at the same place as before, but this time I went south, toward Hartford, IL The trail in this direction is under much poorer repair. Though the geese don't seem to mind... I'm almost to the tower now. Refineries stink, by the way... Well, I'm here. Second pic is of the plaza on the bike trail side of the tower. Third is the back lit silhouette of the tower from it's base. Total trip distance, according to Google Maps, is 7.0 miles. On to the other side of the tower. First pic is the walkway between the two pillars of the tower. My mosaic skills are weak, I know. Second pic is the tower, bathed in sunlight on this side. Then it was on back home. As I think I've mentioned, I prefer using side roads to the main streets. Because they are not only more lightly traveled, but they are also just purttier than the main thoroughfares. The bad news is, my bike has all it's original 1992 parts, and they're all showing their age. The chain has stretched, the chain-ring shows signs of wear, and the rear derailleur has too much side to side play, and it's pulley cage is bent as well. It's now showing signs of skipping in the lowest gear. So for now, I'm going to have to get a new chain and rear derailleur right now, and put a new crankset (triple ring 48-28-28T with bash guard and 170 mm crank arms) in my wishlist for the future. I may as well splurge on another $5 to get a new front derailleur as well. I think my 7 speed cassette is still okay.
Yeah, that's sorta why I ended up buying a whole new bike. Mine was slightly newer, 1995 or so, but everything was worn out. Buying a cheap cruiser I knew I might be upgrading a part or two, but I wouldn't be throwing money at a wore out bike. How about something new?
The derailleur and chain will only set me back by 20 to 30 dollars, and I can install those myself without any problem. I'd have to get tools to do any of the heavy stuff like changing the cassette or the crankset, like crank extractors or that freehub locknut remover (and a chain whip wrench). So that stuff will go to the LBS, and will result in actual money... Even at that, thanks to the bike forums, there are some fellow old fogeys from the 50+ section who live nearby and have tools and advice ready. I even have an invitation, if I want to cart my bike to St. Peters, MO. All in all though, it's still a better value to upgrade this bike, than to buy a used one on craigslist, especially for those parts that I can do myself. Installing and adjusting a rear derailleur is dead simple, so that even an all-thumbs all-star like myself can do it! The sealed cassette in the bottom bracket and my threaded headset and my chrome-moly welded frame, should last just about forever with a minimum of loving care.
So when you adjust your derailleurs, do you have a bike stand? I'm still tweaking mine and it's a pain in the ass because I don't have one.
Nah. I just lift the seat tube with one hand, and spin the pedal with the other. It is, indeed, a pain. I could just hang it from a ceiling joist with some bungie cords or rope and a bike hook. Come to think of it, that would also make a decent winter storage option... If it weren't for the mirror, I'd just turn it upside down and rest it on it's seat and handlebars. Edit: My typical grocery run, and why I should never use flash with those tires.
Whee! This post is a worthy update to my mini-adventure status! I've accomplished several firsts on this morning's ride down the Confluence Trail. I crossed the mighty Mississippi over the Clark Bridge via bicycle, I've crossed State lines by bicycle, I've ridden my bicycle not two feet away from the flowing waters of the Mississippi, and I've had an up close and personal encounter with a Vulture at the West Alton Bird Sanctuary! Missouri welcomes me! A look back from whence I came... WHAT!?! Lincoln was in a DUEL?!? with SWORDS!?!?! Maybe he WAS a vampire slayer... A view of the Mighty Mississippi from the observation Tower at the Migratory Bird Sanctuary in West Alton, MO. Not two seconds after I took this picture, a honking huge VULTURE flew in and perched on the guardrail just three feet to the left of what you see in the pic. I could make out the details of the skin on his/her bald head. I wish I had taken a picture instead of saying "Hello", since he took off when he heard my voice. That was the high point of my day, I can tell you! Edit: One more. This one is a composite of two photos, and stitching them together was a pain in the patootie.
Goofus, I saw something on Saturday that might have been right up your alley - an antique bicycle museum. We were up near Cleveland Ohio, in Amish country, and stumbled across this little place in the basement of an antique shop. 30 or so of the most pristine, beautiful bikes dating back to the 1930s. Wish I had taken some pics.
