(a "toy camera" filter inside the Fuji)
The weekend is up, and open, and ours. There will be lots of time spent around the pool, sparkling water and fresh fruit, taking afternoon naps, cooking something I've never tried before. There is a pound of sushi grade ahi in the refrigerator. I have committed to doing almost nothing for at least a day. How difficult can searing tuna be.
We slept in the tent last night, the boy and I.
Tomorrow, there will be a photo-shoot. No idea where yet, but my plan is to get the boy and his friend dressed up in their various outfits somewhere scenic, then just take pics of them being kids. I might experiment with off camera flash, though it might be far too bright to try. I still have much to learn and the sun is always taunting me, making my art difficult, if not impossible. I bought some lighting gear but never really got around to using it, to gaining a sense of how it is best used.
I think I became a problematic shopper recently. I had a little amazon indulgence.
Ah well, it's mostly over now. Though I will need a new bike. That much has become clear. Since deciding that I would like one, my old bike has suddenly become difficult to pedal up mountains. It feels sluggish, even when coasting down hills. I am convinced that something is wrong with it. It does not match my interest in the sport that it pretends to be concerned with.
One of us must go.
It's an old bike, rescued from a Florida beach home where it had been rusting for some time. It had a touch of the salt water cancer. The components were still okay for the most part, but all the cables had to be replaced. It was a nice bike in its day, but it will need to be put down now, melted for parts that will be used in our war with Mexico.
The new bikes that I have been looking at are really something - better components, better brakes, better everything. One would not think that it would be possible to make even nicer bikes than what were available in the recent years, but I'm told that bicycle technology is making perennial leaps and bounds, growing faster than the personal technology device market.
Well no, nobody actually claimed that. I just made that up, but it is the sense one gets when shopping for a bike, that last year's model has been marked down for an obvious reason: this year's model is better. It has been improved. Anybody with last year's model must not take biking seriously.
The cheapest bikes that would make me happy are about $1500 and up, though I have seen a Trek that was just over a thousand that was acceptable. I like Shimano components, but SRAM is an American company, so there is much to think about now that I am in California. I've always used Shimano components, and I've always ridden Marin or Kona bikes, always a hard tail. I've never understood rear suspension, at least for the type riding that I do. It feels like I'm humping a marshmallow up the side of a hill. There is a less direct relationship between force applied and distance, or altitude, gained.
There are hundreds of choices, and I have yet to set an upper limit to how much I will spend. Everybody tells me that carbon frames are a must now, and they are not cheap. I know that anything over $3000 is silly and not really needed, but there are few choices below that price point that have the right combination of what I want.
I have not yet announced any ambitions to go pro. Now, post-divorce, there are all these new cyclical freedoms to explore. I can buy any type bike that I want.
Take that, ex-wife.
I should delete that. It makes no sense. She's happy that I have embraced something that might kill me differently. No, I joke. She likes it when I am healthy. It's a funny thing that some women have for a man that has blessed their cervix and ovaries with life producing man-seed. The miracle of conception, without all of the natural filthiness of birth. Women are a mess. Have you ever seen what happens? I probably don't have time to go into all of that right now, but I'll simply offer that the result sometimes justifies the crime-scene means of it all.
The boy just woke up from having slept the night in the tent that we had set up in the living room, his legs had fallen out the side, but his body was still on the air mattress, a feat that would have rendered me paralyzed until noon.
He woke up, sat on the couch and told me that I'm the best dad in the world. I asked him how he could possibly know such a thing, and then told him not to worry, there's still plenty of time.
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