Miss Suzanne told us about the
We had a full October. Eric had a field trip to Bushy Beach October 4. When he saw all the monarch butterflies on the blooming seaside goldenrod along the beach, he wanted to bring us to see them. During the monarchs’ migration that seems to be a preferred pit stop. When we went on the following Saturday, we missed seeing the hundreds of butterflies that Eric saw, but we still spotted a few stragglers and had a fabulous time walking the 5 mile round trip to the beach. Johann had his nature notebook with him and drew pictures as we went. Before we got to Bluff Point State Park, we stopped at Avery Point for Eric to take some pictures of the birds and Johann to make some drawings.
Panning
Originally uploaded by eclectic echoes.
Finally, the chance to check out Aperture and Lightrooom (oops that’s “Photoshop Lightroom” now…whatever…), head to head so to speak on the same machine with the same photo sets.
I really am impressed with lightroom from a workflow standpoint. Almost everything in on app, and set up fairly logically, though I do have my nits to pick with Adobe about the workflow organization of some items. However… if you have a large library say over 5000 photos… Lightroom becomes slower than a snail. And I mean very slow. Unusably slow. Painful.
Of course that is one of the places that Aperture is supposed to be good at. Should be interesting!
Somehow I managed to find my way to FreeSpirit Wear who have some really cool cycling jerseys. I especially love their Oregon and Washington jerseys, but by far my favorite is the upcomming Denali jersey. Their wind jacket looked really nice with a solid front removable sleeves and mesh back. The design on it was really nice as well, designed and named for an ultra cycling race in Alaska. I used to love doing the centuries, especially in Arizona, and this really looks like something I would love to tackle as a challenge…maybe do the 400 before I’m 44? That’s Anchorage to Valdez and back!
Oddly enough Google Maps reports the distance of the course to be 256 miles. Granted a mouse click is not terribly accurate, so there are a couple of miles…but not 56. I wonder if Google fully takes into account that 1°λ = 111km × cos φ. Either that, or the Fireweed 400 is more like the Fireweed 500! Hm…maybe I’ll see about getting a run at the 200 by the time I’m 40 and verify the distance for myself.
Edit Aug 9th 2006: After watching the DVD from the Fireweed 400, which George Stransky kindly sent to me, I realized that the start line was not in any town setting. The start for all of the Fireweed races is located outside of Sheep Mountain Lodge. Unfortunately, on Google Maps it is located by their PO Box address in Palmer, Alaska but they are actually located some 50 odd miles further east at mile marker 113 on Glenn Highway. So that explains the 56 mile error I got from plotting the route on Google Maps. The DVD by the way was a great introduction to the ride/race. If you are seriously interested in this ride (in any of it’s lengths from 50 to 400 miles, tandem, relay or solo) I suggest contacting George throught the Fireweed 400 site (The announcement of the DVD is on their news page).
I stumbled across an amazing photo from the 2003 Tour de France at Chain Reaction Bicycles that in many ways and on many levels touched me deeply…and made me think about Johann and the beginning of a love of cycling in him.
Last year we got Johann his first bike. This year both Tammy and I have taken to riding our bikes more, and now we picked up a used “insta-tandem” so we can go for longer rides as a family this summer and fall. It feels real good too (both cycling as a family and leaving the car behind). The past couple times we have been to the cycling shop was for Johann. First we went to get him his own Camelback Mini-Mule (He kept snagging my CamelBak wearing it all day and drinking it dry), then the insta-tandem.
Two of the young ladies who work there are quite taken with him as he discusses the Tour and his favorite riders with them as well as riding. He declared the other day to one of them that he wanted to grow up to be a scientist and cyclist. Typically they recognize me primarily as his father. When we showed up Saturday morning to pick up some new tubes for my bike (horrible flat Friday on the way home from work). They asked where he was. When I indicated he was in the car (with Tammy) they wanted to say “Hi” to him, so I had to bring him in before I could go. They are conspiring to set him up with a Trek KDR 1000 (or it’s then equivilent) as soon as his legs are long enough.
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