very simple

I’m going to try to upload individual or small sets of photos on a more frequent basis. I’ve been carrying the new camera almost everywhere, and if I wait until I get around to editing large batches, I’ll never catch up. So while this isn’t approaching anything like a 365 project, there will (at least until I inevitably get bored) be more posts with fewer pictures.

Taken down on Houston Street. I cycle in the city, but generally avoid traffic nightmares like this because I have a well-developed sense of self-preservation.

missed a few days, but trying to catch up. a lot going on in real life.

Got my key fob for citibike today. It starts Monday for areas theoretically south of central park (just far enough away to make this not yet a viable commuting option), but I signed up anyway because it was really cheap ($95/year) and there are some advantages to having a yearly membership, like the ability to keep bikes out for 45 minutes at a time instead of 30, and, well, the key fob (which lets you release a bike directly from its station instead of having to go to the screen at the end). I say it’s for areas theoretically south of central park, because the official citibike rack map on my iPhone still only shows racks in lower manhattan. Let’s see how much more they get done in a week!

Back in the dark days before blogging was a widespread “thing”, and well before there were smartphones and tablets and other machines with the type of portability that allowed for being brought along on bicycle trips through europe, there was a thing called “writing” in “journals”.

Cleaning out all of my shelves yesterday, I found my travel journal from my bike trip through France and Switzerland back in 1999. There was one guy on the trip who would periodically check his email – by tracking down an internet cafe and paying for 20 minutes of use once every couple of days.

I think this is the 3rd or 4th year that the city is running summer streets, which consists of shutting down Park Ave. from 72nd Street to the Brooklyn Bridge until 1pm for 3 Saturdays in August. Truth be told, at this point I kind of which they’d vary it up a bit and pick a different street to go down, but I understand why they like Park, given that it’s the only true two way Avenue in the city, and has natural barriers between the north and south-bound lanes. All that being said, I did make it out there yesterday, with my camera and everything, and biked down to Soho. I was attempting to meet up with some folks at the Bicycle Habitat booth, but we missed each other. I did manage to find them later at the lunch meeting spot, so it all ended up fun. Thankfully, yesterday was a brilliantly gorgeous day to boot, given that today the current weather consists of massive thunderstorms that are predicted to go on all day.

Some pics from the ride (as always, click on the thumbnail to see the whole image):

I wish profound amounts of luck to the person who owns this bicycle. At least this lowers the chance that it will get stolen.

Now that I’ve gotten the issues with my site permissions fixed, it’s time to upload my pics from the 5 Boro Bike Tour on Sunday.

As far as the tour itself, it was WAY too hot and humid, and I ended up having to take the SAG bus when I was about 5 miles from the end, because I was starting to feel the effects, for the second time that day, of heat stroke (there’s nothing quite like getting chills when it’s 87 degrees outside). One of these years the weather is actually going to cooperate. As always though, it was ridiculously crowded. I took these pics from my phone during some of the sections when we were not so much with the moving and tweeted them, but here they are all in one place.

I know I’ve posted pics of this before outside of the 365 project, but I still love it. And, since I decided that a bike ride was going to prevail for today in my biking vs. photography hobby war, this is the only pic I took. Haven’t actually been up this way in a while (my habit is to bike south to battery park instead), and it was nice to see that the park has actually been finished. I highly recommend a visit. If you’re really adventurous, you can climb up a really big hill and take a walk over the George Washington Bridge, which has unbelievable views.

yesterday was gorgeous out, so I took my first bike ride of the season after a five-month break. took it easy, rode 10 miles on the hudson river greenway, which just keeps getting better. Took a little pit stop at the 5-mile turnaround point to enjoy the sunshine, and took these with my iphone. It got into the 70s yesterday.

First, let me just say that I know I have completely fallen down on the 365 project. I don’t know what it is, but at some point I kind of hit a wall. With the weather turning, I hope that changes, but for now, I’m changing the way that I format the titles of these posts to reflect the date they were taken rather than the number in the series, largely because I’ve lost track of what number these should be. So…

I ordered CO2 cartridges in bulk, because I use them to fill up my bike tires in a pinch, and they’re a lot cheaper this way…