Here's another shot of the bike from the San Diego trip.
I was there in early October, 2004, and the weather was not as nice as I had
hoped it would be. Most of the days were overcast, like this one, and a
couple days had fog around the bay most of the time. I didn't really get
rained on, but it also wasn't as nice as it usually is during early October.
This particular shot is of a small inlet off the harbor.
In the background you can see a guy kite-surfing, a sport I'd never really
watched before. While I was taking a couple shots the guy with the kit
rode over and came up to see the bike. No matter where I go I get great
compliments and lots of lookers for the bike.
Another trip I took during the summer of 2004 was to
Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons. I rode in August and the
weather was pretty cooperative. It got a little warm on the road to
northern Utah (low 90s) and then cooled off as I got farther into Idaho.
The above shot is along one of the beautiful rivers in Yellowstone park.
As you can see I have the bike loaded with my
T-Bag and a few extra items.
This
is me on the first part of that same trip to Yellowstone. I've ridden
about 20 minutes east of Cedar City, UT -- my home base -- and got this shot
at about 8500 feet.
As you can probably tell from my photos, I'm not a
professional photographer. I use a small HP digital camera that my dad
bought for me. It's a great little camera, and does a terrific job for
what I need. It's only about 2.3 megapixel, so the quality is about what
you'd get from a disposable camera.
The great thing about the little camera is that it uses CF
cards, and with a 128 Meg CF card I can take around 600 photos like this.
Most of my shots, like this one, are taken by me after I
arrange the camera on something nearby to steady it. In this case I used
a boulder on the side of the highway, and in the picture at the top I used the
guardrail on the curve I was on. Of course the funny thing is that you
can't control the blowing wind or the grass that might poke its way into the
picture, so I get a lot "nature" shots of me while I'm on the road.
Speaking of nature shots, here's a nice one at 75 mph as I'm
heading down the east side of the Teton range. To get a great shot like
this just hold the camera at arms length, hope nothing runs into the road in
front of you, and take a quick shot. Now if I can just work on the
facial expression to show just how much fun I was really having.
On this particular trip I went from Cedar City to US 14 about
30 miles east of town. I had gone from about 6500 feet to just over
11000 and then back to around 7000. I then headed north on 14 to I-70,
which cuts east-west across Utah. From there I headed north to Salt
Lake, up the west side of the Tetons in Idaho, into Yellowstone on the west
side, then south through Wyoming on the trip home.
Of course it's hard to go someplace like Yellowstone and not
find all kinds of wild life. In the picture below I found some Elk by
simply watching for the idiot tourist to be stopped along side the road.
It's amazing how many cars will stop so that dad can get a picture of the kids
near the wild animals. In this particular shot I found this bull about a
quarter mile up the road from a heard of tourists taking snapshots of another
herd.
Funny
thing about this shot is that some doofus came up to me right after I took
this photo and tried to convince me that this is a moose. Now I'm not a
real outdoorsman in the sense of being a big hunter. But after riding
over 600 miles on my bike to see this baby I knew it was not a Moose.
I left the bike parked in the lot here and wondered a couple
hundred yards up the trail. You can see behind me the burned out areas
from the fires a few years ago. I was really amazed at how much land was
still not recovered from the fires, and it sure puts things in perspective.
After I got up the trail a little ways I came across a
beautiful stream that ran parallel to the road. Had I not bothered to
get off the bike and walk a little I would have missed it. There were
some great trout in the stream and a few minutes after taking this photo I
watched a big brown eagle swoop down to grab one of the fish.
