12 GIRLS BICYCLE

So for this trip I took my BB 9550, the Nikon N80 and D70 with the Tamron 28-300VC and the Tokina 19-35. I had just sold the Nikon Coolpix S9100 which really would have been nice up here, but I thought it best to sell it while the iron was hot, so to speak, and I got almost what I paid for it on eBay. I also sold the VC lens and got taken to the cleaners, even on a 5-day auction with a free Promaster multicoated UV lens thrown in. That lens is nice but just too much weight for a day lens, really, so I'm going to stick with the non-VC lens on my 500si and see about the A850.

I absolutely LOVED shooting the Tokina 19-35 on the 35mm N80, up there. It was just *great* to walk right up to the edge of the road and take shots that were pretty-much what I was seeing. Much better than struggling with the 28-300 especially on a subframe. The one problem is that I had an old roll of ISO1600 film in the N80 so those shots should come out "interesting" to say the least...but I'm sure that I will go through here a few more times LOL and definitely the Blue Ridge Parkway is worth another drive. It's a faster, more wide-open version of Skyline Drive, like driving through Rock Creek Park in downtown DC, if it were high in the Adirondacks, Appalachians or whatever...though many of the overlooks are grown-over with tree-cover so you can hardly see anything at all...but a lot of them are very nice. Plus it's free. And really all the Skyline Drive is much the same, it's like someone took a stencil drawings of some curves and straights and laid them at random end to end over 180 miles. After about 60 miles the road is completely repetitive. Still a good warmup for the Blue Ridge Parkway which is somewhat faster and much more dangerous to ride at real speed. At least on a bike.

...Rt 56 coming west down off the BRP was just ridiculous.
If the Dragon and/or Mulholland are supposed to be tough...you ain't seen nothing yet.

Anyway the one problem I had was that I could hardly get the straps adjusted on the SLRs so that I wouldn't bang the lenses against the tank while I had the camera around my neck while riding, and it was a true pain in the ass to stop and pull them out of the bag, take shots then stow them and get back on the bike to ride. I ended up using the Blackberry most of the time and trusting that the fixed exposure would be adequate. Clearly it limits the utility of the camera in the phone but still obviously I got a lot of decent shots out of it. Plenty good for Flickr and combined with WiFi I'm sold on the whole WiFi cameraphone thing. Yet to get the GPS & Google Maps to work on it, and not quite sold on the small display, it could be an inch wider clearly. At least the width of the BB8200. But the overall functionality is easily worth the $175 I paid for it which is what I paid for my V3i. A major technological advance and it can't even use iPod or Android apps. So yes I did take some film & DSLR shots anyway, but I found that I used the BB9550 for quick & dirty shots of scenes that weren't all that great but still interesting enough to shoot but not so much to make me want to pull my gear off and out and put it all back on and away, and I left the SLRs in the bag for the times when I felt like pulling off my helmnt and taking a break. The BB9550 goes in a side pocket on my jeans so I don't have to worry about it swinging on a cord and banging into anything but I can get it out of my pocket, set it up and shoot it & stow it without taking off my riding-gloves, and it still takes decent shots most of the time, and that's just huge. The S9100 is slightly more difficult to shoot out of a side-pouch, the big advantage is the ability to adjust the exposure combined with the 25-420mm effective lens. The big minus is the price, a somewhat-lesser minus is the fact that all it can do is take pictures. But except for HDR scenes and except when I need a 12MP image vs a 3MP image (which is, really, never since I never print) and except when I need zoom (which is rare) the BB9550 is just as effective.

So if I had the BB9550, the S9100 and a good DSLR and lens, and I'm on my bike, I would shoot from the cellphone through the S9100 to the DSLR...especially considering the issue of changing lenses on the DSLR, not to mention unpacking & packing it. If I"m walking around and free to sling a camera on my neck, I'd shoot the other way, probably starting with the 19-35 on a film-camera and saving the DSLR & 28-300 for very special shots. If I have *any* trouble slinging a camera then even the S9100 is too much to work with. And of course I couldn't shoot raw with it, and I did look into this and it's going to be quite a bit of work to get raw out of it if I ever can. So it just fell into a middle-ground. Good but not great, easy to use but not the easiest...and short of the 28-300VC, the most expensive piece of camera gear that I had, Neither one of them were really giving me my moneys' wort

I need to be able to track my weak efforts of riding.. but nothing I own that is suitable for riding has pockets... I don't want to use the basket if I am just going for a ride and have no need to carry anything and lets face it, I tried riding with my phone in my hand; my coordination just isn't going to meet the standards for that trick.

I have ordered a mount from ebay, but that is coming from hong kong and when I only paid $3 for it, I'm not expecting anything too flash! So today while cleaning I came across my arm band when I went through my 'I AM GOING TO RUN EVERYWHERE AND GET FIT' stage and had the BEST idea ever. Put my iPhone in, was a tight squeeze (twss) and wrapped it and secured it around the mount for the basket and HEY! I can now view how super fast I am going (not really, cause it doesnt update) but I can read SMS's without riding into the bush like last time (to be fair, it was mostly the action of getting my phone out of my pocket and attempting to turn a corner which I fail at already).

PS. because it is super duper important, I named my bike Betelgeuse... BEST name ever.