Of Bronx, Bikes, Commutes and Cameras

Just Another Bikeless Saturday

STILL haven't been riding, to speak of. If only I had a place to stash the bike on class nights.

Raining today so the SIG got postponed; supposed to be lovely and sunny tomorrow, just right for a class that emphasizes hills. I wonder if I can lose 10 pounds by tomorrow?

The assignments for Visual Storytelling this week is silhouettes; two examples below. The above isn't a silhouette (obviously) but I'm rather fond of it anyway. It's kind of an anti-silhouette. Maybe I'll stick it into my project, for kicks.

I have to say it was weird being by the river (below) without running or riding on it! The water towers shot came in my before-work foray to the UWS. I shot at intersections (that is, when there was a break between buildings) during the 15-minute window of sunrise.

But why won't it upload full-sized??

Loving Lensbabies

 

Hard to blog about bike commuting when I'm not bike commuting, and for that matter not riding my bike much at all. A variety of extenuating circumstances (how lame is that).

I have, however, been spending a lot of time on my various multimedia projects. Here is one of the latest. For fun, I got a Lensbaby Composer to make artsy pictures with. Lensbabies do selective focus, purposely blurring the non-selected parts. And you have to manually focus, and with a D40 you also have to do all the metering manually. All of which adds up to a rather silly endeavor for someone who doesn't know what she's doing -- and who desperately needs new glasses or contacts and simply can't see well enough to manually focus.

Anyway. The B&H Event Space did an "urban safari" in Times Square, using Lensbabies. Here are a few of the results. Which, again, has nothing to do with bikes or commuting. But I ran out of time to maintain two blogs, so I think I'll condense everything into one again.

When I told my favorite photo editor about my Lensbaby adventure, he said: "We're not allowed to use Lensbabies."  To which I said: "But I'm not a `we' _ I'm a `me' and I get to do whatever I want."

There are certain benefits to not doing this professionally ....

 

About That Spring Cycling Slideshow ...

Probably I should explain the rather fast-paced slideshow below. I posted it in a hurry just to get it up, after I finished it and was eager to move on to my next challenge, or at least a nap, or dessert, or something other than writing prose.

The below started as an assignment for my Visual Storytelling class: a 30-second, fast-paced "commercial" for an activity, event, thing, etc. Using 30 or more images (or less, but the idea was to cram a lot into 30 seconds.) We got to choose the topic. Not hard to figure out what I might choose.

Among other things, I was pleased that this gave me a use for a lot of the random cycling shots I've done in the past year. Who'd have guessed that a picture of a bike under a flower planter would come in so handy?! Or that the sequence of my friend Gerald doing gymnastics on a rusty old bike would be perfect?

And then I also went out and shot some new ones. I appreciate Toga Bikes for having the perfect store window display welcoming spring. I couldn't have asked for better. And I went to the park for some non-blurry cycling shots to add to the previously planned blurred set -- though the going was a bit rough since it was a chilly weekday and there weren't many cyclists in sight. Also I took the opportunity to photograph LOTS AND LOTS of robins, trying for the quintessential robin pose. And daffodils.

Most of that then got crammed into my 30-second piece for class. But 30 seconds was awfully rushed, so I added four more shots, stretched everything out a bit and made it 55.

Welcome, spring.

Today I sat on a very cold small boat for an hour and a half, in a down jacket and hat and gloves, taking pictures of high school rowers who were wearing shorts, no gloves, mostly hatless, and somewhat wet.

And I thought cycling was bad in these temps!!  (38 degrees, not counting a fairly significant windchill.)

In other news, a 50-mile SIG to Hartsdale on Saturday ... annoying roads, not a very fun ride. And 40-ish in a tour of Staten Island on Sunday. Much the same as Saturday. But on Staten Island.

Welcome, Spring Cycling!

Welcome, Spring Cycling! from Paula Froke on Vimeo

Can I Please Get Rid of This Cold

Bike-commuted one day (Monday) but was in the process of getting another chest cold, so it was a bad idea. Been sick and dragging the rest of the week.

Went up to the park last night to try to get some material for a Visual Storytelling class. Got there later than I'd planned and forgot the tripod (hey, I was sick) so things didn't turn out as hoped. So, here's a mediocre sunset shot of a jogger on the reservoir -- which for some reason won't upload at the proper size.

Plus a couple of experimental bike shots that may or may not make it into my project, depending on what I get in the limited time I have left.

For now, I'll just whine about being sick and exhausted.

Bike "Art" In A Dull Moment

Thought I'd run today, but figured I'd be better off to take a break after yesterday's unaccustomed burst of activity.

Instead, I hung out a bit at Riverside Drive while waiting to meet a friend lunch. Played with the camera on the few cyclists who came by at that not-cycling-heavy hour of noon on Sunday. Zooming in, zooming out while shooting at 1/5th of a second. I think there's potential to have a great deal more fun with this, once I refine it a bit (and figure out more of what I'm doing!)

In the meantime, I think these images are at least more interesting than standard shots on a boring gray day would have been ...

Also today, dusting off and lubing up Surly in preparation for tomorrow's bike commute.

NYCC SIG Season Begins!

Today I got on a bike for the first time in four months or so -- and on a road bike for the first time in six months or so -- and rode 55 miles and survived. Life is good!

It's the start of the New York Cycle Club's "SIG" season, which means cycling with a group every Saturday for 10 weeks and trying to teach some group riding, riding-in-traffic and general bike handling skills. Generally it's a good idea for a co-leader to have been on a bike recently. But these are less than ideal times.

Residual fitness is a godsend. And -- the fact that I haven't ridden any bike for four months notwithstanding -- the muscle memory of riding a heavy steel bike with fat tires, loaded panniers and rack trunk plus a DSLR and second lens in a waist pack makes riding a lighter steel bike with none of those extra things feel like a breeze.

Well. Maybe not a breeze exactly. But awfully nice in comparison.

We went a slightly different way to Westwood than in my previous experience, and the result was my discovery of a great abandoned-building site. I'm going to have to go back there with my camera to check it out. Very promising, I think.

In the meantime, a few more from my series of being fascinated with the abandoned structure on the upper Greenway. The shadows were nice on the way home. In the above one, I liked the juxtapositioning of the two patterny street signs vs. all the patterns in the main view. In the second, I liked that the guy was off kilter in the midst of all this patterning.

Picture from our roof while at work on a Saturday

A gorgeous 68-degree day and I had to spend most of it working.

Then, after people came in exclaiming about how nice it was outside, I decided to make a break for it and go for a quick "run." Without stretching. After not running for a week and a half. And after being injured before that.

Not the best idea. Will I ever learn.

Got about a quarter mile and the kneecap hurt. Stopped and stretched a little. Got another three-quarters of a mile and stopped on purpose to stretch the calf. Got another .82 miles and the right calf was about to cramp drastically. Stopped, stretched a little (not too much) ... but the cramp was still there. Gave up and walked back.

At least I wasn't stupid enough to keep running. And at least I DID get my butt out the door to do something and begin getting reacclimated after an extended period of too much work, too much NYU classwork, too many late-night commutes, too much travel and yes, too much adult beverage intake in
State College.

But there is hope in sight.

If only I didn't have to work tomorrow, too.

Still Lagging ...

The physical fitness efforts continue to languish, partly because of continued injury and partly because I've been so busy with work and other stuff as detailed in my other blog.

Did run 2.5 miles a week ago without major incident, though the calf was feeling a little dodgey at the end. Then the next day it cramped up on its own, so I took a rest. And then went to DC for a few days and didn't run there. Had planned to run this weekend, but ended up working. (Excuses excuses. But also true.)

Will do the stationary bike tomorrow and then running class Tuesday night, at which point I hope everything starts to click again. Among other things, running class and Shelly are great for inspiration (aka a kick in the butt).  If only the legs hold up and don't come up with any more annoying and bizarre injuries.

And, the NYCC SIG starts in two weekends, not that I'm remotely in shape for that. But I can't wait!

Fun With Flash; Hurt Again

This weekend I took a two-day Flash for Journalists seminar sponsored by MediaBistro and I will discourse upon that at great length in  my other blog, where it belongs.

The relevant points here are 1) I had to get up at 5a today to get in a run before the class (and promptly got hurt; details below) and 2) apparently embedding a Flash file into a WordPress blog (where my other one is) requires contortions; in Typepad at least I can upload it, even sloppily. So, below is an absolutely random thing I did as my first Flash lesson. Things got better after that, but weren't uploadable.

As for running: I went and got hurt again. This time it was the right lower calf -- which had never been a problem before. And there really hadn't been any inkling that something was about to go horribly wrong with it. My lower back was a little tight throughout the run; that may or may not have been a factor. Then about 2 minutes before it gave out, the leg felt a tiny bit tight. But nothing, then, to be alarmed about. Then it seized up all at once. And I couldn't walk on it AT ALL.

It's improved a bit today, but not a whole lot. So again, no running for a period of time.

I believe I will try to ride Surly to work tomorrow, however. First time I'll be on a bike in ... I don't even remember how long.

Flash fun:

Download Lesson1