A Glorious Morning

The ride to work -
fifteen minutes of
morning mist, 
warming sun, 
cool air,
filling my lungs
before the day begins.

Waiting for it to Heat Up

It was a 6° morning, so I waited for an hour or so until the sun warmed it up to double digits.  The goal was to enjoy some curves on the last weekend before it's back to work.


I pushed north to Grand Valley and got a quick coffee at Brewed Awakenings before pushing on up past Shelburne and onto River Road out of Horning's Mills.  Finally, here were the twisty roads I'd been looking for.  South Western Ontario is a patchwork of tediously straight roads.  The exception is the Niagara Escarpment and this is one of the closest pieces of it.

Playing with vanishing point electrical lines

South out of Terra Nova Public House after a quick (and fantastic) bowl of hand made fish soup, I pushed south down the spine of the escarpment into Mono Cliffs and Hockley Valley.

By this point it was early afternoon and a warm, 22° late summer day.  Leaving the escarpment I pushed back across the barren desert of straight roads.

Foggy Ride In

T'was a foggy morning out in the wilds of Southern Ontario, Canada.  I took some photos with the big camera before leaving, then grabbed the Theta360 for some foggy road photos...

A Little Natural Sunlight

With snow and cold all week it's been a garage door closed situation, but the sun came out on the last day of the break and that full spectrum light likes to point out details for the camera.  And so here is a little industrial art courtesy of Triumph and Kawasaki:

Old bikes tell stories...

Things You Want To Do In Your 40s

Work for myself so I don't have to work for some myopic middle manager more interested in climbing than doing the right thing?  Yeah, that'd be nice.  Work on something as hard as I can knowing that no one else can walk in on a whim and derail it?  That'd be nice too.  Challenge my technical skills and develop my diverse talents to new levels of excellence?  That'd be awesome.  Have the means to fearlessly explore technology and the world around us?  Brilliant!

$1.3 million doesn't sound like a lot of money but it would mean a thousand bucks a week until I'm 75 years old.  Somebody better at math and competent with investments could probably figure out a more accurate, lower amount that would do the same thing.  It's comfortably middle-class, but I don't really dream of being rich, I dream of being free from work to pursue my passions.  If I could pull that off what would I do with my time?  It's kind of like retirement, but I want to do it now while I'm still able to do something useful with it.  I don't think I ever want to retire.

Mechanical Sympathy would expand and become an
income stream of its own. It would be the centre of
an online media onslaught!

Here's what I'd aim at if I weren't busy pulling the plough:

MEDIA MAKER

Writer:  I'd exercise the English degree and write, but not in a specific genre.  I'd pursue motorcycle and travel writing more aggressively.  I'd be happiest freelancing and working once or twice a month on assignment with the occasional larger travel project which would lead to a book.  Lois Pryce is a role model.  While that wasn't happening I'd be writing fictional novels.  It would be nice to work for established publications, but developing my own brand online would allow for more control over what I'm creating.  I've been working in large bureaucracies for too long.

If it's new and technically challenging I'm into it. 
Having access to that kind of kit is exciting.
I like to be surprised by what new tech can do.

Photographer:  The goal would be to have the work pay for the gear, and the gear I'm looking for is pretty technical.  I'd like to have professional quality photo and video gear on hand, as well as technically challenging tools like aerial drones, full spectrum and 360° virtual reality cameras to test limits and produce original, even experimental work.  If it's new and technically challenging I'm into it, especially if it probably won't work the first time.

Digital Media:  Exploring digital media has long been an interest (I teach it now).  Having access to the latest tech, not to consume but to experiment and explore, would be fantastic.  Projects would include VR environment building in CAD and simulation, as well as immersive media creation.  I'm working on a VR research project in school at the moment.  I feel like major breakthroughs are currently happening there.  What we have in ten years will make our screen use today look archaic.

TECHNOLOGIST

I got into 3d scanning last year.  The resolution isn't
spectacular, but it's amazing what you can do with
a simple 3d scanner on an ipad.

Mechanic:  I've dusted off old mechanical skills with motorcycling, along with some long unused artistic urges.  Customizing motorbikes is an elegant way to combine left brained aesthetic creativity with right brained mechanical expertise; it's a whole brain hobby!  Having enough time, space and money on hand to chase down old bikes and see customizations through to completion would be grist for the writing and photography mill.

Digital Engineering:  I'm especially interested in micro-manufacturing using digital tools.  Multi-axis milling machines using CAD models offer new avenues into high-tech customization.  3d printers are making advances every day.  Being able to print my own fairing designs would be brilliant.  Being able to print my own designs with dragon scales would be even better.

An opportunity to borrow new technology and see what it is capable of would also be grist for writing and media creation.  If in the process I happened to get very good at producing customized parts, I'd lease the gear and get to it.  As prices fall on what was once expensive industrial grade equipment and digital management makes high tolerance production available to everyone, a new post-industrial age of customization will emerge.

Kawasaki's H2 supercharger impeller is a thing of beauty.

The technology that built it is becoming more accessible every day.

With table top laser cutters and various other digital tools becoming commonplace, the chance to explore these technologies without safety nannies hand wringing from above would be delightful.  The home garage of the future is going to be a magical place of customized, personal manufacturing.  It would be a blast to have the time and means to explore it.

I really do enjoy teaching, but the vampiric bureaucracies that manage it make working in education feel like giving blood; you're doing a good thing but you always come out feeling drained.  I'd happily take in apprentices on my own terms and genuinely enjoy helping them discover and develop their talents, I just wouldn't want to do it in an institution of learning.

One of the things I want to do in my forties is stop others from diluting my focus and wasting my time with their own mediocre expectations.

Bike Bucket List: Ironbutt Glory & MotoGP photography redux

almost 1600 miles diagonally across North America.

My motorcycle bucket list includes earning the Ironbutt basics.  The first two rides are the Saddlesore (1000 miles in 24 hours) and the Bunburner (1500 miles in 36 hours).  The Austin MotoGP race happens to be just over fifteen hundred miles away, making it an ideal target for these badges of long distance endurance riding.

I'm not sure that I'd ever do an Ironbutt again, but it'd be nice to have done it once.

The MotoGP race in Austin is on April 10th this year.  Leaving on a Tuesday night would get me there for the event.  Even with a (more) relaxed ride back, I'd still only be on the road for seven days - 3 of them at the GP.

I roughed out hotel stops based on ideal distances, but it would probably be significantly cheaper to pick a hotel chain and stay with them throughout.  My hotel of choice would be Hampton Inn, so a revision based on where I can stop at those might be in order.

After Indy got cancelled, this is the only other race on my continent, so my only chance to ride to a race event.  It'd be nice to see the circus in action again this year, and Austin, while much further away, offers a chance at Ironbutt glory!

Video of MotoGP practice through the esses at Indianapolis.

I'd be nice to go down there with some good camera kit and see what I can capture.  I did pretty well with my little Olympus last summer, but another go with more effect gear would net even better results.

Many of the images I took had to be photoshopped a bit to hid the poor resolution and light intake of my camera (creating a simplified painted look in Photoshop hides these weaknesses).

 
 

I'm also getting frustrated with the lack of lens availability with the Olympus I've got.  I'm thinking of going back to a superzoom on my next camera.  The Nikon P610 has enormous reach (4x what the Olympus telephoto can manage with similar light loss).  What would be even better would be a full 1" sensor superzoom like the Pentax FZ1000, then I'd have a multipurpose camera with excellent low light ability - though they are three times the price of the smaller sensor superzooms.

I had a fixed lens superzoom a few years back and loved the flexibility, though it was one of the first electronic view finder cameras and lagged annoyingly.  It's light intake wasn't great either.  The new ones will benefit from much faster electronics and dramatically larger sensors letting more light in.

The Olympus PEN is an entry level mini-SLR.  I've enjoyed the size and convenience but the lenses are expensive and hard to find, and the kit lens has broken.  The body itself also broke under warranty when I first got it.  A second failure in three years has me thinking about moving on.  I'm looking for the simplicity and flexibility of a fixed lens superzoom again.  This would be especially handy when travelling on a bike where all the SLR clobber takes up too much space.

As a photographer I've always enjoyed being able to do more with less.  I've often seen people with suitcases of gear worth ten times mine take worse pictures.  As long as it can keep up with my eye and offer the control I need, a quality fixed lens superzoom will let me do that in spades.


Rough Planning Maps:

• Elora to Super 8 Airport North Austin: (20 mins from Circuit of the Americas)
• Elora to Best Western outside of Little Rock: 1045 miles 
• Little Rock Hotel to Austin Hotel:  535 miles
• CotA to Hampton Inn Marion (outside of Memphis) 654 miles
• Memphis to Fort Wayne:  584 miles
• Fort Wayne to home:  354 miles