n_maher

Love you guys. Put in some decently hard work this week. 46 mile gravel loop Sunday around the seacoast, a few runs, and the back/forth commute today add up to over a 100 mile week and it's only Thursday. I'm a little over half way to my fund raising goal. Onward. Upward.

Thanks guys!

I don't know why it took me so long to realize this but it occurred to me as I started to write this that I've been fundraising through rides like this every year that Andrew's been alive. That makes me both proud and feel rather old. So without further adieu it's that time of year once again where I call upon the incredible generosity and support of this community to help me raise money for the Kelly Brush Foundation. Nate's Donation Page This year is no different than years past, well other than the fact that I'm even later starting fundraising than normal and the ride is earlier than usual. So in just under three weeks I'll head north west into the great wilderness, I mean Middlebury, VT, to join 800 or so riders for the event along with the usual crew of 8 friends. My friend Paul is finally returning from a three-year absence spent overseas so we'll finally get the whole group back together that started participating in events nearly 20 years ago and we've added some over the last few. For me this is the 14th year of active participation after a few early years of serving as an event photographer. Anyway, this year KBF is hoping to raise $1.3M to support individuals with spinal chord injuries to regain an active lifestyle which means I need to get my ass in gear and do my part. This organization and cause remains something near and dear to me as someone who takes the simple ability to get outdoors and do whatever I like, when I like, somewhat for granted. But each year, participating in this event helps refocus and recenter my appreciation for those that chose to not be limited by life-altering injuries, illness, etc. The foundation helps people discover adaptive sports and recreation, hosts camps to immerse people in sports and community, and most importantly, provides hundreds of grants per year to people that just want to return to the activities they love. So as you are able I'd very much appreciate your support. I know I owe a lot of you promised trinkets and favors from year's gone by and I'm going to make good on that this year. So if you would, when you donate, shoot me a PM with your mailing address and I'll get something headed your way that's long overdue. Oh and in somewhat entertaining news (to me anyway) I raised the first ~$400 or so by putting the laser to good use. I made a batch of custom stem caps for a cycling group that I belong to and had folks donate to the fundraiser instead of paying me anything. So my communist roots continue to run deep. That'll probably get me deported one of these days. Thanks in advance, Nate

Thanks Knucks, great shots.

Thanks Knucks. Let me know when you launch roverhub or whatever you're going to call it.

Happy Birthday, Todd!

Happy Birthday!

@Knuckledragger - not kidding, I look forward to this post from you every year. I'll likely never own an LR again due to price/performance/practicality reasons but a guy can dream, right?

Still haven’t tinkered with downsampling or much else but nature is putting on a show this week.

Congrat, Todd. You’re a heck of a dad for doing this for your kid.

Looks gorgeous to me, Al.

I’ll have to tinker a bit more and see. For now I’m just shooting native to see what comes straight out of the camera. I’d love to have enough time to tinker with raw files but reality is that I don’t, so I try not to kid myself into taking them and then having to deal with the massive file bloat. Honestly, if they’d followed through with the A7IV this year like originally planned that probably would have been the camera of choice. The A7IV has been game-changing for me. It’s got all the resolution that I need, exceptional low-light capabilities, and was not hard to adapt to coming from Nikon. This stuff is still mind-numbingly expensive but life has moved on to the point where it was not an impossible reach to pick one up.

As the official patron saint of painters tape I appreciate the graphics but still feel like there’s room to grow there and that we should employ a kid with a Cricut to do you better. 😁

Work has been continuing to use photos that I’ve been shooting for publicity and Congressional communication so I decided that rather than keep shooting with my personal camera that it was high time to request a replacement. They asked what I wanted so I spec’d the following: 1. Body - Sony A7R5 - I’ve gotten used to the Sony ecosystem through my A7IV and figured what the heck, might as well have all the megapixels. I don’t need 120FPS so the A9 series was not compelling and while it would have been fun to shoot with an A1II budget was somewhat of a consideration. 2. Lenses - I’ll continue to shoot my A7IV with it’s 24-240mm so figured I should cover an expanded range with this rig and be able to shoot high(er) quality. So a 24-70mm F2.8 GMII and a 100-4000mm F4.5/5.6 coupled with a 2x teleconverter round out the bag. I’ve got the whole shebang with me on vacation to get used to the platform and find its limits (me) but sheesh, 60MP is a lot to work with. Initial impression is that it’s all very similar to the A7 but doesn’t shoot low light as well. That won’t be much of a concern at work and if/when night time becomes the right time I’ll switch back to my A7 for those situations. The 100-400 has as lot of pull and with the 2x, it’s pretty absurd. That was lightly touched in LR and just a quick handheld at sunset. I’ll have to contribute more to the HC coffers if I start pushing up 40MB drink photos. And 12,800 starts to get a bit noisy so I’ve reduced the max ISO to 3200 for now to see what I can still grab. And [EDIT] seems like the forum software intelligently down-sampled that image to a more manageable 5MB. It is wild what you can do for fun crops with this much real estate.

Turrboo has been given turboot.

Sending a hug your way @skullguise.

Ribs, pulled pork, and sausage also on the menu.

Having friends over tomorrow, needed dessert.

It's a 1030 Plus, so not exactly vintage. It's actually hugely helpful to have both a gravel and road computer. And the Garmin radar system is actually really cool. I'll probably add a second taillight to the mix for the pure road bike.

In the sprit of getting dirty I decided to list the Tarmac for sale and jump on this deal: It's a 2022 Cervelo Aspero 5 and the top of the line model at that. MSRP $10,500, I paid about 40c on the $ for it and the owner admitted that he bought it and essentially never rode it - condition backs that up. It also came with a like new Garmin head unit and tail light/radar setup which is pretty sweet. When I recently learned that they completed a ~9mi section of rail trail that can become ~50% of my morning commute I decided it was time to dive into the deep end. The color is something like "purple sunset" (cheers to you, Dusty) and is straight up wild. We'll see how the new modified commute goes tomorrow.

I mean seriously, what else could go wrong? Also, it's strawberry season so shortcake is on the menu for dessert.

Happy Birthday!

Proper cooking this time, fried chicken breasts to make sandwiches for dinner.

Technically baking but I'm too lazy to go find that thread. Toasted coconut chocolate chip scones.

Happy Birthday!