Take a ride, take a picture – Photo of the Day #33

January 14th, 2010 • photography
Tags: d90, motorcycle, nikin d90, nikon, photo of the day, photography, project 365, project365

I took this earlier today while riding down the road on my motorcycle. It wasn’t easy to do and, according to my girlfriend, certainly not safe. I agree with one of those. It was fun taking these pictures but definitely not the easiest thing to do. Trying to take pictures with your left-hand using a right-handed camera, pretty weird to do.

This is now my 4,000th upload to my Flickr account . And to believe it all started with some pictures here and there then a deluge of Hurricane Wilma pictures and I really haven’t slowed down much since then.

What a fantastic weekend!

March 24th, 2009 • 1 comment chatter
Tags: breast cancer, motorcycle, poker run

Aside from raining all last week and all day Saturday, the weekend turned out great. We go to go on our first poker run! It was the first annual Boca Raton American Cancer Society Ride For Strides poker run and it was a blast. Except the sore butts and sunburned skin, that is. The run was almost ruined by the weather except it was sunny and in the 70s all day Sunday with isolated showers. Those isolated showers came about an hour after we got home from the run and went all night. I don’t think that 8 hours of rain is “isolated” by any means.

There were not as many riders as expected but that was because of the rain. The turnout was still fairly good for a first year poker run that happened to coincide with a terrible week of weather. I believe around 100 bikes registered although, not all of them finished at the end. I know that some of the firefighters we rode with did not make it to the final stop. Hopefully they have it again next year and more people show up! Since it was a poker run, we played 6 hands of poker and had absolutely nothing. In fact, there was one good hand I believe, a four-of-a-kind. However, Jess did win the 50/50 raffle and won $70! That helped pay for groceries tonight, which was super awesome.

The ride itself was very nice, most of the travel was up and down A1A for some gorgeous scenery. We didn’t take many pictures because Jess did not feel so comfortable but there will be some up soon from the some of the stops. I did get to wear my new Fieldsheer mesh jacket and it worked WONDERFULLY. With a name like “High Temp Mesh Jacket”, you figure that a video review of the jacket would at least mention the fact that it’s extremely well ventilated but the one at Motorcycle Superstore leaves that little tidbit out. Despite the name, not all mesh jackets flow air properly. However, mine definitely does! Even tonight as I was riding home from school with my backpack on, I was very cool with my back a little warm because of the lack of air under the pack.

But tonight was a special night for me. It’s the first time I ever ran out of gas while on a ride. It was also the first time my battery died. Both on the side of I-95, not the safest place I want to wait for my girlfriend to bring me gas. Or have to jump my bike off. Running out of gas while on the way to get gas is ironic enough but then having my battery die because of keeping the lights on for safety is just sucky. At the point I realized that the battery was dead, I was ready for someone to just run into the bike and total it, I was so frustrated. Then the insurance I bought last week would have already paid itself off and I would have had a bigger bike! It was embarrassing but at least I know now when I need to get gas when running on the reserve and to never leave the running lights on for more than 20 minutes. I should probably get a new battery and fuel filter now that I’ve run the bike into the ground, essentially. I can’t believe it took me almost 90 minutes to get back home after leaving school tonight. I’ll know better next time!

Right now, I need to get to bed. Another fun day of work and school tomorrow.

Why does it have to be cold?!

February 6th, 2009 • chatter
Tags: cold, motorcycle

It’s been cold all week, comparatively. Sunday was nice, sunny, and in the 80s. On Monday, it plunged down to the mid 40s. Very annoying when I have to ride home from class at 10PM and the wind blow straight through my gloves. Needless to say, it hasn’t been a fun week to ride the motorcycle. I wanted to go down to Keys this weekend for some camping and fishing but that’s going to be a terrible idea. The one time I could really use the sleeping bag I bought for my birthday and returned because I got too hot in it. Now if we went, I’d freeze. This probably means no fishing this weekend as well. I moved down here to avoid the cold and now it’s the coldest winter I can remember since I moved down almost six years ago.

Fishing was probably out of the question anyway as I have a 5 page paper to write and I’ve been majorly procrastinating on it. The essay question is pretty ambitious from Professor Keshodkar given that it’s more fitting for a final paper rather than a first paper. It’s not that big of a deal but I have a feeling that many people won’t be getting the grades they’re expecting, based on how they were sweating bibliographies and citations. I’m surprised that he used such a general yet deep question for this paper. It should be interesting how I’m going to pull resources for “Is there a universal religion?”.

Overall, school’s going fine but my Music Appreciation class is a huge waste of time so far. The professor tries to make the class very interesting and interactive but since most of the students are freshmen, they’re more interested in looking cool and talking amongst themselves or screwing off on Facebook. When I was a freshman, I don’t remember doing that at all, even though it was nearly 10 years ago. If this was high school, I could understand this level of disrespect but these kids are paying a good bit of money to come to class and ultimately do nothing. Kind of like the kid who comes in, plugs in his laptop, pops on his iPod, and plays on his laptop the entire time. For all I know, he’s playing an MMO or something. I know he’s never heard anything Professor Joella has said so I don’t know what he expects to get from the class. It’s going to be hilarious when these kids get to 4000 level classes and much of their grade is based on participation and they fail. Or they have to cram for everything because they never listened or came to class and end up on academic probation. Ah well, their loss, not mine.

It’s about 2AM and I need to get to bed. Thankfully, it’s FRIDAY.