I’ve been experimenting with camera techniques — and decided to start using Photoshop again. I used to use it quite a bit, but I’ve gotten out of the habit. Some of this was inspired by my photography class. Interestingly enough, I’m not really learning any new technical information in that class. BUT, I am getting lots of inspiration from looking at, and discussing, photos by others. Inspiration to create something new, rather than capturing scenes exactly as I find them.

Looking at the shots I chose to work on first, these experiments were actually tangential to my main purpose for shooting that day. I’ll get to those shots when I get a chance. Right now, I’m going with my gut, and working on whatever image or style I feel like at any given moment.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I have a lot of non-bike-related things I’ve been thinking about writing about. I’m trying to decide whether to post everything here, or create a secondary, “everything-but-biking” blog. Sometimes I hesitate to post things here that aren’t “on-topic,” but of course the topic can be whatever I want it to be.

So, I ask you … what would YOU prefer? Would you be interested in posts on other topics? They could range from photography to GIS to movies, music, beer, school projects … basically anything. I can obviously post things on this blog very easily. I could also provide a cycling RSS feed, if you wanted to just read about cycling. It would also be easy for me to setup a secondary blog would allow this blog to remain cycling-focused, and still give me an outlet to write about other topics.

What do you think?

Saturday was the 200km brevet, which Tim and I had decided not to ride. Instead, I rode in the Seymour, IN area with River City Cycling Society. In addition to Tim and David, we had a couple of other riders show up from the Louisville area, Kirk and Cathy. We rode 47 miles of mixed terrain, starting in Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge, and working our way over to Crosley State Fish and Wildlife Area. Here’s a map of our route.

Starting at Muscatatuck NWR gave us great scenery, and gravel, from the very start. Even just on the drive there, we all saw an entire field full of sandhill cranes. Beautiful!

We headed out under blue skies, with temperatures probably in the 40s. This was also my birthday ride, of sorts, and I rarely get to ride in these kind of pleasant conditions around my birthday.

We stopped off to visit the beautiful Stanfield Lake. We rode out onto a small, floating pier to get a better view.

Before we left, we saw an otter running along shore. I didn’t get any photos of the otter, sadly.

Soon we were rolling again, reveling in the warm sun and the beauty surrounding us

Here are Kirk and Cathy, a couple, both strong riders. This was their first RCCS ride. They were both on mountain bikes. I very much enjoyed riding with them — they both had positive, adventurous attitudes and seemed to be up for anything.

After a bit, we came across another beautiful, small lake.

Here’s where the riding started to get a little more interesting. The “road” we were on reached this gate.

We took a brief break and then went around the gate. On the other side was grassy doubletrack. Cathy said, “Oh, we’re going offroad?” I think that at this point she started to get a better idea of what an RCCS ride is like. She seemed to enjoy it.

This next shot is blurry from shooting while riding on a bumpy surface, but gives some idea of the experience.

After a bit the trail reached a paved road. We headed south, then east. We were mostly headed into the wind for a while. The wind wasn’t overly strong, but it was noticeable.

The terrain was a lot of fun — moderately rolling hills, enough to make things fun, but no grueling climbs.

We saw a lot of dogs on this ride.  If you enlarge the photo below, you can see several of them chasing us. Fortunately it was all in good fun, none actually seemed to be aggressive.

The hills got  a bit bigger as we headed east.

The road surface alternated between paved and dirt. This particular narrow dirt road was especially lovely.

Soon, the scenery would change from wide open field space …

… to enclosed, and heavily wooded forests, as we entered Crosley State Fish and Wildlife Area. Crosley was bigger than I expected, and offered many miles of wonderful flowing dirt roads. We also noticed a number of side roads, fire roads and trails branching off from the roads we were on. This area definitely warrants further exploration, probably with mountain bikes.

Another narrow dirt road took us down to Crosley Lake.

Smiles abounded.

The lake portion was an out and back. After we headed back we found more absolutely stunning, flowing, narrow dirt roads through the forest.

Including a creek crossing, and some rock formations.

And an incredibly narrow iron bridge over the Muscatatuck River. This is probably the narrowest large iron bridge I’ve seen that was intended for motor vehicle traffic. Definitely a one-lane affair.

By way of more gravel and paved roads …

… we made our way into the small town of Vernon, Indiana. The liquor store was the most convenient place for us to stop and get water and snacks, so that’s what we did. We were all quite amused by this sign.

The courthouse, right across the street, was beautiful.

Here is Kirk’s bike. It seems like a practical rig for a ride like this — a rigid, steel mountain bike with slick tires.

Cathy’s bike was a hardtail. Again, fitting for a ride like this.

Here are the other three bikes — David’s LHT, my LHT, and Tim’s Bleriot.

We turned around to head back.

At this point, I filled up my SD card, so I don’t have any more photos.

The ride back was wonderful. It was similar in some ways but we had the wind at our backs at least part of the time, and the return trip was mostly paved, rolling terrain, which allowed us to cover ground more quickly, and the flow of the roads was just phenomenal. Great riding all around.

Tim and I noticed several excellent-looking gravel side roads along the way. We’ll have to return and explore this area more fully.

This ride was an absolute blast. During the ride, Tim and I mentioned a couple of times the 200k that we had planned on riding, but we both felt we had made the right decision not to do it. We enjoyed ourselves fully the whole time on this ride, instead of what we can only imagine would have been all-day suffering in the 200k.

This ride had it all: beautiful scenery, wildlife, flowing paved roads, wild dirt roads and trails, a small town stop, and great company.