daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
As I started today’s bicycle ride, I looked up and saw this ring around the sun. It’s called a Halo, and is caused by light reflecting and refracting off of ice crystals high up in the atmosphere, according to Wikipedia.
Very cool sight to see!
Lots of wonderful clouds today! I had the time-lapse going so I had to use Mariko’s camera for today’s photo, but you can see the final video I made with my X100T below. I hope you had a great day!
Tonight the International Space Station (ISS) was very bright as it passed over Texas, and I had my camera and tripod set up to capture it. I didn’t really know what kind of settings to use, so I just went with a typical exposure that I normally do. Unfortunately there were a lot of clouds obscuring the view, but I think the photo turned out okay.
I made a series of 10-second exposures, then stacked them in Photoshop to create the composite image above. You might notice that there appear to be double stars. This is because I hid a few layers in the Photoshop stack when the ISS was passing behind the clouds so the overall cloud coverage would be reduced, and this resulted in the star trails having a gap in them.
FYI, this website is a fantastic resource to see when satellites will be flying overhead. It uses Google Street View to show you exactly where to look from your viewpoint! Just make sure that your watch is synchronized to the atomic clock so you know when to look up.
This is one of the longer hills near our house but the school bus gave me an extra bit of motivation to power up it today.
When facing a big hill, I usually think of a saying: “Just keep your legs moving and let the top of the hill come to you.” It’s worked every time! 😊
Have a great day!
Wow, what an active day that I had! The weather was fantastic in the morning, so I headed out for a short 2.5 mile run. I often run (and bicycle) to the elementary school that Bay and Koa attended, and it is always a mental pick-me-up as I remember the good times watching them grow up. It seems like just yesterday they were attending Cox Elementary!
As I ran by the front, I took a photo of this sign, which shows the first phase of the re-opening during the pandemic. I hope this the the only time they will have a sign like this on display.
In the evening, I had to go for a bicycle ride around the neighborhood, and that included both Cox Elementary again and the other elementary school on the other side of the neighborhood and the football stadium that is used by the district’s high schools. At that time I was treated to a nice sunset:
On my way home, I received a text message from Koa asking if I wanted to throw the baseball over at the school, so I headed over to Cox for the third time today! We threw the ball until it got dark (and my arm was tired) and then came home to my second shower of the day.
It was a lot of physical activity (running, cycling, baseball) but I feel great! Thankful for my relatively good health as I approach age 52. Whee!
My new bicycle rim arrived and I got to work replacing the old one, which entailed transferring the spokes over to the new rim and then truing the wheel to make sure it’s straight. I followed this video’s instructions, which proved invaluable.
I also followed the advice in this video to true the wheel, and got it in good shape. Next, I adjusted the rear brake and it was ready to try it out on the road!
I only intended to ride around the neighborhood to test it, but I wound up hitting the hike and bike trail and riding several miles. It was just so fun! It seemed like I was able to ride faster, accelerate quicker, and cruise at a higher speed with the new wheel. It might just be that I am getting in better shape, but I have heard that the bicycle upgrade that will make the biggest difference it to replace the wheels. Well, I’m not sure if my new $33 Sun Ringle rim is an upgrade or not, but the stock Mavic rims are generally regarded poorly. So I’m leaning towards the opinion that the new rim helps out a lot. 😀
Later in the evening, Mariko mentioned that the sunset was probably pretty nice so I hopped on my Kona again and headed down to the place where I like to take sunset photos. Turned out pretty good:
I’m so happy to have my bicycle back, and working better than ever!
またね～
This afternoon I went to the supermarket to pick up a few things. I think I am the person who always picks the slowest check-out line. In my defense, it’s a little more difficult to choose a good line because of the pandemic.
I try not to get too close to people, which means lots of traffic jams at the check-out area. Therefore, you kind of have to get in the line that is convenient and close by. I thought I got lucky in that my line had one person waiting in front of me. However, I didn’t notice the amount of items in the lady’s cart… it turns out her family just moved into a new house this morning so they were stocking up on food. Her total (yes, I eavesdropped) was about $450!!! So you can imagine how long it took to ring up and bag.
Besides standing there silently cursing myself as I watched the shoppers in the adjacent lines being checked out quickly, I did notice some “Japanese-Style Peanuts”. I thought it was interesting to see the mixing of cultures here. Japanese style, packaged under the Mi Tienda brand of a Texas supermarket. Kind of cool!
But I was an idiot and didn’t buy any. Oh well, it’s just not my day.
I did spot this amazing cloud formation in the parking lot as I left, so that lifted my spirits a bit. 🙂
I hope you had a nice day!
