Category: Slice of Life

Enjoying the Warm Weather With a Bicycle Ride

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Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4.5, 1/2900 sec, ISO200
 “Kites” Cedar Park, 2021

This afternoon I took advantage of the warm weather to go for a long bicycle ride along Brushy Creek Regional Trail. When I ride on this busy path, I wear my mask 95% of the time. Of course I want to be safe during this COVID-19 pandemic, but also, it helps with allergies (as my brother reminded me). Besides wearing my mask, I also held my breath most of the times I passed by people. By riding on the relatively busy trail, I’m taking a risk, but I think wearing a mask, wearing glasses (yes, there’s a study that says this helps with safety), keeping socially distant when possible, and also holding my breath when passing people, I think the chance of catching COVID-19 is very small.

That being said, it was nice to see a lot of bicycles on the trail, from little kids to older folks. I even saw some teens cosplaying and wearing elf ears! The weather was very nice: low 70s, cloudy, with a gentle breeze. It was really cool to see kites flying above the park! By the way, it wasn’t as ominous as the photo above looks – but it’s just too fun to play with the post-processing in Adobe Lightroom. 😄

I’m happy that I live close enough to this trail that I can bicycle from my house and be there in 10 minutes or so. But even if I didn’t live close, it’s easy to access the trail by car at many points along the route.

At the eastern terminus of the trail I took a photo with my bike. Several years ago, I took a photo at the same place, so I thought it might be nice to do so again.

Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4.5, 1/100 sec, ISO320
 “End of Trail” Cedar Park, 2021

I recorded this ride on my GoPro, so please join me (virtually) on the trail if you have time:

I hope you had a great day!

Minari / 미나리 (2020) – Movie Mini-Review

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Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO2000
 “Watching Minari” Cedar Park, 2021

Last night we watched the film Minari / 미나리. I was really looking forward to this movie because of all the glowing reviews, and although I enjoyed it, I didn’t connect with it on the level that many others did, mainly because my childhood experience was much different than any of the characters in the movie. It also makes sense because there are probably many nuances in the film that only people of Korean descent would identify with (Korea is not part of my multi-ethnic background).

I thought the family dynamic was interesting and realistic – not over-the-top, but typical of a slice-of-life story, which I enjoy. My favorite character was grandma, and I would have liked to learn more about her story. The rest of the family seemed one-dimensional compared to her. It felt like her age and history shaped her character to a greater extent and there was a lot of mystery to her motivations, whereas the others’ motivations seemed straightforward.

In short, I thought Minari was a good, but unremarkable, movie. As always, YMMV.

My rating of Minari / 미나리 is 7.5 out of 10.

Shout out to the JACL for making tickets to Minari available to members!

Driving TimeWarp

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“Misty Drive” Cedar Park, 2021

This evening I went to pick up dinner from Halal Bros and decided to make a TimeWarp video using my GoPro Hero9 Black camera.

Halfway through the drive there, I hit the button with the intention to activate the screen and check on the position, but I didn’t realize that doing this drops the camera out of TimeWarp mode and back to regular recording. This meant that I had to manually speed up the video at that point using Adobe Premiere Pro. It’s easy enough to do, except I didn’t know how much to accelerate the normal video to match the TimeWarp part. After some trial and error, I decided that speeding it up 1800% worked well, so there you go!

By the way, the food from Halal Bros was great!

The New Old Bike

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Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/150 sec, ISO200
 “Decals and Racks” Cedar Park, 2021

Yesterday I put the new decals on my old bike, and today I went for a ride in the 84°F sunshine. Of course I had to stop and take a few photos to post here and on the Kona Bikes group. 😀 I like how the decals look, although if I had to do it again, I’d place the large logo about a centimeter farther toward the bottom of the tube. The front badge is the logo Kona used until about 2016, so I guess you could say my bike is a 2000 model, branded as a 2016 model. The current badges have the K inside a little shield, but I couldn’t find that version for purchase anywhere. If one turns up, I’ll consider replacing.

Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/110 sec, ISO200
 “Front Badge” Cedar Park, 2021

I also installed some front racks on the forks. These are Axiom Journey DLX Low Rider racks, and allow you to put panniers on the front. I don’t have any yet, and they aren’t necessary at the moment since I have my rear panniers, but the racks were cheap and look really cool, don’t they? Someday I’d like to do a multi-day bicycle tour, and when that day comes around, I’ll be all set. In the meantime, I’ll just keep enjoying my neighborhood bicycle rides, like the one I took today. For some reason, I had more fun riding my bike today that I usually do. Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe the decals and racks make me a little proud of how Mango looks? 😄

Please take a look if you have a few minutes to spare:

I hope you had a good day!