too narrow of a wide angle!

bokeh bike

Z

0)\--(0

one slalom gate

the trees are apart enough, right? i mean, there is a trail running between them...they couldn't have made a trail run between way too narrowly spaced trees, right ?!? f#$*!!!

scarred by passed biker's assumptions upon an inspection by distance, i believe i will have a bike series here that i must link together: ->

tireprint

postbiking bonanza

sunday bike ride in pennypack park

against the wind

there were biking adventures. the spring wind in the kittitas valley seemed brutal to my causal bike ridding intentions. the resentment was the strongest on open stretches on the outskirts of e-burg. on some rides i would plug my ears with headphones but the whistling of the wind would suppress the tunes in gusts. there was no headwind. it would blow from all the directions, mostly into my face. i was already tired when i reached this farm so i got off the bike and rested a little. it was a bad idea to strap the camera over the shoulder - my ribcage didn't like the subtle camera swings while riding. it was demoralizing to jump back on the bike just to approach one of my steepest climbs of the day on umptanum rd. but the canyon surrounding the road reduced the wind significantly. i was thinking how outlaws would consider this stretch of the road as a good place to ambush a carriage hosting a rugged character and a pretty lady. the carriage would also be hosting a few railroad gold bricks. the coachman would curse at the horses and spit angrily the last mouthful of well-chewed tobacco. my heart was beating loudly. the climb must be ending around this corner! when the upslope leveled off i took a side dirt road and continued to suffer hopping over gravel. in about 15 min, tossed around by larger gravel, i made another photo stop. the descent back was, i am sure, the fastest i ever experienced on a bike. the fast felt good.

washington anniversaries

i entered the state of washington in april 2009 and took the shuttle out in may 2011. now, i want to revisit some of the earliest glory days of the two-year stay in one of the most beautiful states i have ever been to. i won't repeat all of the blog with just the outtakes; a good portion of the blog is washington. beefing up the nostalgic undertones is easy; i don't have almost any photos* from my washington early days here. this blog was born in april, just in-between the aforementioned anniversaries. the blog hasn't been timely lately and i've been driven to post photos that have a very strong chronological/diary theme, something i hadn't anticipate originally. to make a short paragraph shorter i will continue with the chronology heavy blog, future adventures permitting. as you were. while i am still harping in the key of the opening paragraph i will add that, while in croatia in the summer and early fall of 2011, i started a new photo blog - lito u kroejši 2011. what was missing from those pages were pictures from the adriatic. i regretted not going there. it was not too serious of regret because the croatian mainland summer had already been great, and in hindsight, greatly needed. this coming may i will have made a brief trip to croatia and visit the adriatic coast. so there's that too to blog about in may. i am anticipating a good deal of work already cut out for me. i am looking forward to procrastinating it. back to the post of the day: there are two scenes i remember well from my cross country trip last leg that started in salt lake city**. the long-winded and compacted snow banks off the highway separating it from the trees of the pine variety, starting somewhere in the northwestern idaho outside boise and ending before the columbia river gorge in northeast oregon. the other scene is the seemingly endless yakima, and finally the kittitas valleys; the end of a long drive. i am opening the suite with a sequence of two photos that seem naive today. i started roaming washington with film loaded in tennessee***. i mounted my bike on top of my bike rack and drove out of e-burg to bike somewhere for a day. i was sure there would be bike trails somewhere out there. there most probably were some but i was struck in awe by the nature of the nature on the brink of entering spring. i spent the whole day by just pulling over and taking pictures. the only time i got my bike**** off the rack was for a brief ride to starbucks in some town before continuing to lake chelan. with the bike suspended on the trunk of my car i am winding the film through the camera. that's all the action the bike experienced that day. a washington orchard. where the apple magic happens. somewhere along a road to leavenworth --- *there were some at some point on a different server that my brother stopped paying for **i had spent the third day of the trip in salt lake city with my good and dear friends and continued rested on the fourth day ***yet to be treated properly on these pages ****during the cross-country trip i spent much time checking the rearview mirror if the bike was still on the rack and that the rack was still attached to the car, particularly while anticipating the next wind gust on the gently sloping planes of nebraska.

24h around the clock

another race for the team machine/team pbr. we (4 of us) attempted to race (relay) form noon to noon, non-stop. it went well until we stopped.i so wish i had taken photos during the night leg. it was spectacular to ride in the woods with LED lights on. it (riding in the dark through the woods) is too silly to do when you are not racing unless you know how to enjoy life. this is one of the reasons why competing is good. the winning number (once the clocked-in times are subtracted from an arbitrarily large number) of the team machine. had i only spent north of $3000 for a better bike. shish, i would have nuked that trail! this way i was unfortunately limited by my own skill. so unfair. throwing money at the problem is how things get done in my book. that is why i don't own many books. so deep. deep-space-9 deep. the awesomeness of this picture lies in the tasteful division down the vertical by the front runner trying to hop on his bike in the first lap. the loser divides himself from the people who would eventually win and the awaiting bikes/looking away audience. of course, i was unaware i'd like this photo and that it would turn out this way. i am celebrating a chance. this is because i hadn't thrown north of $7000 for a nikon. then i would have been celebrating the justification for wastefulness. ah, i'd be a super-awesome amateur! yeah, two wheels are for losers. i passed this guy twice, on two (2) separate occasions (laps). i also passed bikers who went to pee in the woods and who had a flat or cramped out. i bet you this wheel costs more than my bike. i should throw money...on a bike...camera...lens. i would be so popular. with retailers. you see those laughing guys in the audience. well, they wanna ride that wheel. oh right, they don't have the skill. did i say how much i enjoyed the race? i did (enjoy). this ain't no loser. this dude kicked ass and his teammates kicked some more of it. only did that child on top of his/her dad realize the might of those quads. the losers are looking for someone behind this dude to identify with. no, the audience, they are not losers. and i am not funny. auto-portrait. taken on our camp ground. it's a good photo on a second look. when you look in it for things that aren't there. that's how you get good art. you heard it here first, folks!