Scattered Thoughts . . .

F or the week or so that we were in Dayton back at the very beginning of this past summer, we visited a lot of different and historical places but we stayed on the campus of the University of Dayton during our entire time there.  I definitely wanted Kenzie and Lukey to visit a campus like this one and I'd like them to continue visiting as many campuses as possible.  Before we even made plans for this trip, I knew that if we were going to spend some time in Dayton, a UD campus tour would be something to do especially if we had the two of them in tow. I wrote above that I definitely wanted Kenzie and Lukey to visit this particular campus because it is a stunningly beautiful campus, it is an outstanding school and the people are unbelievably friendly both on the campus and off the campus.  This school is truly special.  There is a vibe, a feeling, like it has a life of its own.  You don't find that in a lot of places. I have very positive memories of UD and a fair...

I 've been out on my new bike more than a few times over the past couple of weeks since the bike arrived.  Some of these times, I mounted my Sony X3000 action camera on the handlebars.  This is a pretty nice little action camera.   Actually, I captured some underwater video of Kenzie and Lukey in the pool in Dayton earlier this summer that I haven't done anything with yet.  I need to revisit all those photos and video from that trip and share some of that here.   Anyway, back to my recent bike rides this autumn and having cameras with me during the rides... I didn't keep this little action camera running continuously but I did get some decent footage ten to twenty minutes at a time.  My plan was to eventually cut the long videos into four or five second clips of interest and then put together a video of those short clips.  I really didn't spent a whole lot of time on this but I managed to get a video put together this morning. ...

I was feeling relatively well this morning and the weather was very nice so I wandered out on my bike this morning for some exercise and photography.  I quickly took my morning dose of medications, had an English muffin and some iced tea then packed up a backpack with emergency medications and a little bit of photography gear.  Then I grabbed my helmet and backpack and headed out the door to my bike.   A small issue arose with my bike on this ride.  The gears were a little wonky today.  I need to adjust my rear derailleur because, on its own without any input from me, my bike kept changing gears on me when in the range of around gears three to five.  In the big scheme of things this really is a small issue.  It is just a matter of finding the time and energy to fine tune that rear derailleur again.  Actually, I need to spend some time refreshing my memory on how to make this adjustment first which adds some time to the whole task. Unlike my ...

I went on a longer bike ride this morning and it's only the evening but I am already feeling the consequences!   The ride this morning had a lot more hills to climb and, clearly, I was not yet ready for that.  After a week of rain, however, it was nice to get back out on the new bike.  I'm really liking this bicycle after all the upgrades I have added since it arrived. This time, I loaded up my photography backpack with three different cameras for this ride.  Unfortunately, I ran into some problems. The first problem is that the primary location where I wanted to photograph is now mostly obscured by trees that have grown significantly over the past few years.  This wasn't the end of the world but it was disappointing. The next problem is there were people everywhere and I was hoping to capture landscape photos devoid of people.  Oh yeah...  the traffic on this Sunday morning was insane too!  They were all Vermont license plates so I can't ev...