Ride 2010-59: Courtesy Cycling

Sporadic updating to the website has been accompanied by sporadic riding on the bike. Life has gotten in the way lately for quality, steady rides, so I take what I can get and try to get a few miles into the legs when the opportunity presents itself.

Saturday offered such a chance and I took advantage of some mild temperatures and limited wind to get a longer ride at around 33 miles. There was nothing too adventurous for the ride as the route covered the usual set of roads through the West Metro countryside.

Nice smooth roads for the ride today and the local municipalities are busy getting roads back into shape

Here are the stats, should you care to review them:

As it has been sometime since I covered this route, I was surprised to encounter a whole bunch of fresh tarmac on the many of the roads around Loretto. I had complained earlier of how crappy the roads were getting – with the patch work in-place nothing more than a lousy approach to mending roads. Little did I know that the sloppy patchwork was part of a bigger scheme to re-surface the whole road. Thus, I now have many miles of smooth pavement – where the bike seems to just propel itself along. It’s sad to think that a single, harsh Minnesota winter will wreak havoc on the smooth surface, rendering the standard bumps/cracks that characterize Minnesota roads. But I will do my best to enjoy it while it is still smooth.

I’ve also made points in the past to indicate that I do a pretty good job obeying traffic laws – especially when it comes to stopping at stop signs and signaling turns. For Saturday’s ride, I was approaching a four-way stop intersection and noticed a car behind me. As usual, I slowed to a standing stop, looked for any on-coming traffic and pulled through to continue the journey. The car behind was going the same direction and soon pulled up next to me with his window down. He actually “thanked me” for stopping at the stop sign and indicated that it was rare to see a cyclist actually obey the law. I agreed with him that most cyclists abuse their legal obligations as a vehicle operating on public roads and generally ignore more traffic controls. We wished each other a “good day”, each with a little sense of surprise.

My encounter with this motorist actually illustrates a sad state with cyclists today. When a car driver goes out of his way to acknowledge that a cyclist actually OBEYED THE LAW – it doesn’t speak well of cyclists. Although I’m not a vocal advocate for cycling rights, I do like to speak with my actions and am glad they were noticed.

As cycling is still a big part of my life, that other facet that I truly enjoy involves photography. With the last few months, I have stepped up my game and bought into some equipment to make the capturing/process that much easier. Plus, the newer equipment enables me to capture the types of images that I have not been able to get in the past – expanding my hobby into new areas.

If you think that getting into photography is only about the camera – you might be surprised at how much extraneous stuff needs to go along with it. Several weeks ago, I bought a Mac Mini with the sole purpose of supporting the photos and doing some basic editing using Apple’s Aperture software. The other aspect that the Mac Mini serves well is a “media pc” where it connects directly to a HDTV. Thus, I found that I would rather have that computer permanently connected to the TV and would prefer something more portable to support the camera work.

Which led me to the Apple store on Friday afternoon to pick up a 15 inch MacBook Pro. Although I am now significantly poorer, it is an awesome machine and I have already migrated most of photo-related activities to the new computer. (I’m writing this post on it while sitting next to the pool on Saturday night – you can’t ask for more.) I look forward to how this new hardware will support my photography habits and may result in some significant refreshes to this website.