Fall Colors

I've managed to fit in a little riding since getting back home from the trip to California and Oregon. Yesterday was pretty damp with rain in the morning but by the evening it was scattered showers. I took the scenic route home through the Goldstream Vally and Fox and managed to miss most of the showers and get in a nice fifty mile ride. It sure felt nice to be out riding again after a thousand miles in a van. Today was a wonderfully sunny day and if I hadn't just gotten back from a short vacation, I would've wanted to take the day off and just wander around. This morning was clear blue skies from horizon to horizon. Fall is here and the leaves are changing. Hopefully, it will be a while until snow arrives. Yesterday, I did a lot of running around campus on the bike. I prefer to walk but there were meetings at both ends of campus and the bike was a lot more convenient than the shuttle bus. I hadn't looked for other motorcycle parking spaces around campus but there are darn few. The ones near my building were only valid until September 1st. I guess the parking group feels that you shouldn't be riding anymore.

Today, I took a circuitous route in (1 signal light, 1 stop sign in 21 miles for those counting) and there was a light fog in the next valley north. I thought about taking a picture about 5 minutes too late, as usual, and the fog was gone. Once I get going, I don't usually like to stop to take pictures. Especially during my commute. I took a longish walk at noon through the ski trails and tried out a new Nike+ app. Instead of using an accelerometer and transmitter on your shoe, it uses the gps built into the phone. Besides being more accurate, you get a nice map of where you went. Since it burns through the battery like you wouldn't believe, I just had it turned on for the walk from College Road back to my building on West Ridge. It seems to work pretty well showing the lowest and highest elevations as well as your slowest and fastest points. Kind of cool if the battery lasted longer. At 3:00 pm, my battery was already down to under 20% and I hadn't made a single phone call...

I turned the Google Latitude public badge back to "City Level" and changed the phone app to only update every 12 hours. It only turns on the gps for short periods to get your location. I'm tempted to take the scenic route home again since my riding days this year seem numbered. They are predicting a long, cold winter (whatever happened to global warming?) this year so the riding season may be ending soon.


This is a turnout in the Goldstream Valley taken this evening on my way home (scenic route again). The bike felt squirrelly on the rough parts of the road especially when there were frost heaves. Maybe the tire pressure is low.