Series #4 really couldn’t have gone any worse.  Heavy rain the previous night left the 6 mile course in shambles.  Literally there were parts I deemed to be unrideable.  In the tightly knit group that is mountain biking, we refer to these conditions as “hike a bike.”  After enduring the horrors of NCAA Division 3 cross country at Salem State College, I swore I’d never run competitively again.  Yet there I was, sprinting up hills, a perfectly good bike slung over my shoulder, my heart rate pegged near 200 bpm. 

Three laps into the race, after riding through a river, I heard the unmistakable sound of my rear tire exploding.  The damage was too severe to fix, and I hadn’t brought an extra tube anyway.  Nearby I found a paved road and began the trek back up to the start line.  While walking back, I met Erin, who was freshly awoken from her recent nap in the car.  (The wife’s been working an ER night shift).  She snapped this picture of me, capturing my race day frustration in program mode while using the fill flash.  Nice work Erin.

I was fishing through a folder of old negatives yesterday when I came across a reel of color 120 film from my Holga.  I only tried color film once with that camera, and it was three years ago in Argentina.  I had the film developed in Buenos Aires, but I only made two prints.  I remember Blosser’s in Warsaw charged me $7.00 to make poorly cropped, rectangular prints from the square negatives.  I was appalled, never went back, and never printed the rest. 

At school we have a film scanner, so I spent yesterday afternoon making digital copies right from the negatives.  I had a blast.  You get way better quality than you would ever get scanning a print. 

These three are from camp in Córdoba.

Light leaks in the camera leave those red ghosts.

This is an example of a double exposure.  Unintentional, but kind of cool. 

There are a few more I'd like to scan, but that's all I have for now.

On Saturday I had a race at Frank Park in Fort Wayne.  It may have been the worst race of my career.  On the way to the race, 15 miles from home, I realized that I had forgotten my cycling shoes.  We drove back to Indy, picked up the shoes, and headed north again.  Just outside of Fort Wayne it became shockingly clear that I had also forgotten my water bottles.  I had even pre-filled them with Gatorade the night before, but I left them in the kitchen.  I was already running late, so Erin dropped me off, I registered, changed in a porta-potty, and jumped on my bike to warm up.  Luckily, Erin found some water bottles at a nearby bike shop. 

The race went tragically bad, but I finished.  My back seized up shortly after the 2^nd of 5 laps.  I’m hoping that the back pain was caused by the long morning car ride, coupled with my short warmup, rather than a condition that will repeat itself this season.  It’s amazing how a weak back can sap the pushing power from your legs.  I rode like an elderly woman.

Yesterday evening we had a tremendous thunderstorm roll through parts of Indianapolis.  We were taking a break during our three hour Imaging class when we noticed this Armageddon-like cloud passing by the parking lot.  The 3^rd story stairwell of the tech building has a west-facing window, so we crowded around to witness the meteorological spectacle.  I’d never seen a cloud system like this before.  I had two thoughts:

1. Is this the end of the world?
2. Is this a tornado?

It turned out to be neither.

Our Photoshop professor, apparently overcome by his urge to get a closer look, grabbed his enormous, highly metallic, extremely conductive tripod, and ran outside to take pictures.  I stayed indoors and made a panorama with my phone.  Excuse the window reflections.

This past weekend I had a bike race at Brown County State Park.  I was gambling that my previous week of vacation would help my legs rest up, in turn, making me faster.  Indeed it did, I beat last year’s time by almost 11 minutes, on a very hilly course.  Like always, the race was brutal, but I was excited with my results.