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Enjoying your stories......

Day 352 : Sunday April 26, 2015 : Miles 25689

I rode Oklahoma on Saturday. I visited all 7 Tour of Honor memorial sites in Oklahoma as well as 5 location with 7 EMV Doughboy statues. It was a fun ride, but eastern Oklahoma is a lot better then western Oklahoma.


>>>> SpotWallaMap of Oklahoma ride. https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id ... fe44868098

When I changed out the chain and sprockets on my DL650A, I replaced the 15t front sprocket with a 16t sprocket. With the 15t, my speedometer was quite inaccurate with the indicated speed being somewhat higher then the speed indicated on my GPS. With the 16t sprocket, my speedo is almost perfect, a very nice improvement, but the odometer was also impacted. Before, the odometer ran a bit fast, and now it is a bit slow, that is I now show fewer miles than indicated by the GPS. I think this was a good trade-off.

I am not going to post pictures of every place I visited. I am just going to post a sampling with the photos I liked the most.


>>>> EMV Doughboy in Henryetta OK early in the morning


>>>> EMV Doughboy in Muskogee OK


>>>> Riding west into an Oklahoma sunset.

Safe Travels,
Richard

Day 357 : Friday May 1, 2015 : Miles 25782

I took my bike to the dealership today for its first annual inspections. I have been riding for almost a year, just a few days to go, but I am not all that happy about how much I got to ride this first year. Some months ago, I took a 12% pay cut, and today everyone in our company is home. About 1/3 of the people at work have been let go and the company is making everyone take 1 day per pay period, 2 days per month, of unpaid time off. This is a loss of a bit over 9% of my income and our family budget is going to get rather strained. When I took the 12% cut, I had canceled a number of rides I had planned to take and I also cut out a lot of weekend riding. Now, I will do almost no weekend riding at all, and instead save all of my miles for longer rides of which I still have a few planned for the rest of 2015.

My best guess is that this next year of riding will be limited to only about 15 thousand miles and that has me rather down.

This is the first work day for which I will not get paid in almost 25 years and that has me rather down.

Safe Travels,
Richard

Dang! That's bad news. Any chance of finding a different job?

Day 358 : Saturday May 2, 2015 : Miles 25782

Blues,

I write software for a geophysics firm and I love my job. Nor am I angry with the firm. With the rapid decline in the price of oil the entire industry is getting hammered and our company has no choice but to make rather dramatic changes in our labour costs as this is our biggest expense. I work in a cyclical industry and I will wait it out and things will improve again. I am not happy about the change in my income and the impact that will have on my family and my riding. If I actually get RIFd, that will be very hard as it will be almost impossible to find the same job working for another company when everyone is cutting back at the same time. I would need to change industries. The next year is going to be hard, but this will too shall pass.

Safe Travels,
Richard

Day 362 : Wednesday May 6, 2015 : Miles 25830



I love this photograph. It is my favorite from this entire year, but it has a glaring flaw and that got me thinking more about photographic editing software. Do you see it? I do every time I look at this picture. Let me help you out.

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OK ... not that bad, but I do look at it every time I view this photo, it is an annoyance, a distraction, and I like this photo because it brings back to mind the emotions I experience when I am out on a long solo ride. Motivated by contrail angst, and the certain knowledge that there are software packages that can permanently remove this irritant that are so widespread that one of the names of the programs has become a verb; Photoshop, I got on the internet and started to do a bit of research about my options. I was in the market.

Gimp!

Instead of buying anything, I found a free, opensource package called Gimp. This would allow me to edit out my contrail distraction, it would allow me to gain some practical experience, and, as I could just download the software, it would provide instant gratification.


>>>> No more contrail - Gimp magic!!!

This is fun. What else can I do?



I also like this photo but I don't like the traffic pole on the right edge, or the street light, or the traffic pole behind the EMV Doughboy statue, or the power line. It is only time and electrons, so I got aggressive with Gimp and worked hard on this photograph with a range of tools to address these issues. In the end, I did this three times as I would start over after learning something new, or a better way of not getting everything messed up.

I am pleased with the results.


>>>> Fun with Gimp

What about ethics? Clearly, I am not a generalist and I am not trying to change the image to deceive anyone. This was rather aggressive work on this photo, a distortion of reality, and I feel that it is not a compleatly true reflection on the environment in which the photo was taken. I am not sure where the line is between art, and a lie, but I don't think I have crossed that line with this photo.

The Tour of Honor has people riding all over the place, taking pictures of various monuments and memorials with each riders "flag". We send these photographs to an email address where a great pair of volunteers, lets call them Steve and JoAnne, look at your photo and try to decide if you where actually there. Think of hundreds of photos come over in from week to week. What to do with all these photos? The Tour of Honor now has a monthly photo contest and I submitted this Doughboy photo for April. At the end of the month, the judges pick 4 finalists and put them up on the Tour of Honor Facebook page and the community gets to pick their favorite out of the four finalists. So.... after about 20 minutes of trying to figure out my Facebook password, I have exactly one friend and to be frank I am rather tiered of my spousal Facebook spam, I got logged into Facebook and I went to the Tour Of Honor Facebook page. My photo was one of the 4 finalists, I think the best of the four, but to be honest none of the photos are all that great.

If you are interceded, and are on Facebook, please go have a look at the Tour of Honor and pick your favorite picture. If mine, fine, if not mine, that is just great as well. I find myself stupidly pleased that my photo was selected as one of the four finalists, and that is more then enough for me.

Now for a personal question. If I unfriend my wife on Facebook.... how long will I be forced to sleep on the couch? I am a physical coward else I would already know the answer to this question.

Safe Travels,
Richard

Ethics? It's called art. Most of us use photo editing software to make out pictures better. There is nothing wrong with it.....expect for when marketers are trying to tell us something is real....when clearly it is not.

This website has so much information about photography. Sign up and it will send you regular emails with photography tips.


http://digital-photography-school.com/

Day 364 : Friday May 8, 2015 : Miles 25856

Thanks B2C. That looks like a great resource for digital photography and I am their newest subscriber.

Safe Travels,
Richard

Day 365 : Saturday May 9, 2015 : Miles 25869

This is my last day of my first year of riding, at least since I was a kid over 30 years ago. The time has ridden past much faster than I expected. A big difference is that at the start I was out the door at every opportunity, but now I am saving my gas money to pay for the longer rides that I truly enjoy. I no longer do a lot of those short 200 mile weekend rides. I would, if I had the money, but I would rather skip five of those to have one 1000 mile day. I am still commuting on the bike every day, but my next true ride will be in June. I plan to ride up to the Comanche Drive In in Buena Vista Colorado for a photo opportunity. My wife and I saw a movie there so long ago, I think it was Independence Day, but I spent more time kissing Mrs. Hanson than watching the movie. I think it would be great to go back and get some photos just for the memories. In the early fall, perhaps September, I want to ride out to North Caroline to visit family in the Highlands area. There is a lot of great riding around Highlands, so this is my fantasy ride for 2015 and I mite make a midweek appearance at the Dragon, but crowds are not my thing.

Looking back, one of my goals was to do a lot of riding in Texas, my own back yard is rather huge, and there are a lot of places that I wanted to visit. I have made a good start at doing this, and in the future I will plan a ride or two just in Texas each year. I also had a nice loop ride out through New Mexico and a nice ride up in Oklahoma, but the ride I enjoyed the most was last fall down to Big Bend NP.


>>>> First Year of Riding

Safe Travels,
Richard