hard to believe

but we had to go indoors to iceskate on a december day in minnesota. it's 38f and raining, so even a chilled outdoor rink wouldn't be fun.

hoary morning

it was foggy here last night and, when we woke up, the sky was falling. i grabbed the camera to see if i could capture the shimmery atmosphere, but it really just looks like it's snowing. this is an attempt at shooting on manual with my fstop and iso pushed around to capture the light.

this, however, is what the camera did on its own when i set it to "intelligent auto." it did a better job of capturing the light, whereas my attempts to play with the manual settings weren't quite quick enough and overemphasized the movement of the sparkles.

here, though, i played a little with depth of field on a light fixture just outside our back door. kind of fun getting a tight focus up close, moving the lens slightly, and taking the shot before it refocuses.

my favorite stretch of st paul road

where is it? irvine ave just south of summit and western. i like this one going up or down.

riding the bus isn't sooo bad if...

this is what you're greeted by at your destination. surprising and nice to see rice park lit up in the morning.

the dirty little secret of the winter bicycle commute

some days, the commute is only made possible through sheer flexibility. that flexibility usually describes the other people in your life: the boss who lets you leave the office early or the family who doesn't mind you staying at the office late, all in the name of keeping your snowy ass out of traffic.

then, there's another kind of flexibility, multiple routes. you can't live in some bottlenecked exurb and always expect your one route to everything to be good enough to ride. you have to be able to change things up when a route isn't safe for whatever reason.

ultimately, you're going to need a backup plan. if you're lucky enough to be able to work from home periodically, your broadband connection will earn its keep. some of us technical folks still need to hit the office in bad weather, which is why my backup is a bus pass and a good pair of boots.

really, though, year-round cyclecommuting is an awesome lifestyle choice, but it requires more than just a bike and some fancy clothes.

salt

that's the kind of mark a hard-core winter commuting bike leaves.

hated by the drivetrain

if my chain were a person, it wouldn't want to be my friend after what i put it through, today.

a bright spot on a grim commute

huff and puff

take my breath away...
and smear it all over my chest
i guess

huff and puff

take my breath away...
and smear it all over my chest
i guess

at 5f you might need 1 of these to drink champagne

ohhhh. champagne is the color, not the function. here i was thinking it was like a grapefruit spoon ;-)

le mask

capturing wind

wind is a powerful thing. extremely low air temps let you know how a small amount of wind can have a profound effect on you and your surroundings. this first picture shows what appears to be the wind winning a battle with light. see how the blowing snow softens the edges of the shadows.

here's a classic example of the wind's sculpting power. as i dug through the snowdrifts (like this), today, i found that the wind had blown away all of the powdery snow and what was left were compact layers. it's interesting that this is formed not in large sculpting scoops but by the wind brushing away a few granules at a time.

how come property improvements always...

guarantee nobody ever freakin lands on my properties?

snotcicles

the traffic report from today's commute

hardly any traffic. well... hardly any here. i rode a little extra distance on the road with plenty of traffic so i could experience this serene path through the woods (worth every pedalstroke).