family and fireworks on the fourth at central park

yeah, fireworks

roseville's central park

shadows on the commute to work

shucks, this was sitting in my queue as a draft. i did not go to work today! i am still on vacation. :-)

in minnesota, we call these rock gardens...

here (hall's ranch) they have another term for them, they just call it "trail."

estes park riverwalk

hey, look, an elk

we, truly, stumbled across this guy on our walk to the restaurant.

visitor in the lab

our QA was missing his former manager, today.

the UHC train at the front of the pack

went to the nature valley grand prix final stage in stillwater on sunday. i got significantly fewer good photos than i had hoped. :-(  the best of the rest will be posted later, but i decided to do a little processing with this pic of the UHC team pulling back in the break to get rory sutherland positioned for his eventual stage win.

and here it is after a little work in gimp (the gnu image processor, which is free... and really good, and... did i say free?)

kind of fun. it did help that i was desaturating the background and much of that was the street, which was already gray!

june snow in minnesota?

i don't have a studded tire mounted!

oh, nevermind, it's just the freakin' cottonwood trees.

b's new bike

b grew out of her little 24" wheeled bike over the winter so we put a road bike together for her this year. the frame is a dumpster find from quite a few years back and the parts are a mix of new stuff combined wit parts i had lying around and some parts off her old bike. i had to do a whole lot of crazy things to get it all to fit together. it's only a 7speed (no front derailleur), but that should be good enough to get her around town.

eeeeerie plants!

mmmmwwwaaaahahahaha

got any marshmallows?

time for smores! the backyard fire's ready.

gonna leave these two together...

gonna leave these two "kids" together, tonight. hopefully when i get up in the morning, there'll be a new member of the family. anyone know what the estimated gestation period is for bicycles?

the smart bunny rabbits in my yard

ok... look at the photo, can you see what's happening? there are a couple of bunnies toward the right who are staying just out of reach of the rottweiler. he has an invisible fence, and i'm convinced they know it.

here, i'll fill in some of the details for you. the bunnies are just across my property line, but sitting in plain view of the dog.

the bunnies were so nonchalant that they allowed me to get within 15 feet of them to snap this photo (yes, the camera is crappy, it's on my phone). i'm sure they know the dog can't get them from this spot.

funny stuff...

my new bamboo bottle

i ordered a bamboo bottle from (http://www.bamboobottleco.com) around christmas but forgot about it because they were backordered. i got my shipping notice the other day and, bam, it arrived today. here it is in all its glory! sweet!

shadows of the morning commute

you cannot check out right now, sir

i'm rebooting

storm over the nuclear plant

creative fixed gear conversion

yes, that's duct tape holding the bottle cage on!

stocking cap yesterday, summer hat today

what a difference a day makes.

what a difference a lensecleaning makes

these are both taken with my htc aria. i've been noticing that picture quality sucks, well... it has at least a little to do with pocket lint. unfortunately, the aria has a recessed lense and it's actually kind of tricky to clean.

what a day to get around by bicycle!

had to soak in the sun today as it sounds as if i may need raingear for the next few days

back in the shadow, again

wow, warm enough to slip off the gloves and snap a couple of photos on the ride to work, today.

plumbing, meh...

well, we seem to have pushed the hose season a little too far last fall and we had us a nice little surprise when we turned on one of the hoses today. good thing our basement is still unfinished! hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to the hardware store i go.

fred is super-pumped

super-pumped that we're having deck weather, again.

boston sunset

looking west in the evening can be pretty interesting sometimes.

first bare calf ride of 2011

it was warm enough to skip the legwarmers on yesterday's ride home.

my new endura jacket

here's my new endura jacket about to take its maiden voyage. i now know it works well in the cold, let's hope it works well in the wet. thanks to the guys at one on one (http://oneononebike.com) for carrying such great gear!

mourning dove infestation

there were 9 of them at one point, but i couldn't convince them to line up for a group photo.

sunshiny commutes mean...

shadow pics!

new studz

replaced my mangled nokian with a schwalbe marathon winter tire. now i've got german up front and finnish on the back.

sure, with all the melting i won't really be needing studded tires tomorrow, but winter will be back. this is minnesota, after all.

it'snotfunny

snot

the flat tire

finally getting around to fixing last thursday's flat on the commuter bike. it turns out i picked up abouy a dime-sized shard of glass. cuh-razy. it's hard to see the glass through the snow.

blogger android app

well, not the most exciting post, but i've installed the blogger app and i'm going to give it a try instead of the post-by-e-mail method i've been using from my phone.

nice, this is really sweet, it lets you start an entry, take a photo, and return to editing the post.

hoo-yeah it's staying light later

it seems like just last week, my rides home were in complete darkness.