“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
‘digital paintbrush’ converted in Photoshop CS5.
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…or perhaps back to the dark side?
Last week I made a bit of an impulse buy on a cheap mountain bike on sale. I have been riding fixed gear solely for about three years now, and single speed for about another three…so I’m a bit uncertain about my purchase…Gears!What it came down to is my desire to do some more cycling to work once the weather clears up, and also to open up the opportunity to cycle a little more off road (I do a bit on the fixie, but its not ideal). Our new home is in a fairly hilly area, my fixed gear cycle is not really geared for big hills- and if I gear it to get up the hills, I’ll be peddling too fast on the flat…
I don’t think I’m quite ready to sell the fixie yet, but I guess time will tell. The beautiful elegance of a single speed is the simplicity of them – things almost never go wrong, and when they do its only one or two possible things. In saying this, there is nothing overly complicated about the 18 speed either. Whatever way you look at it, bikes are great simple machines where we can use our own engine to get from A to B.
Can I adapt back to riding gears? will I keep my fixie as a second?…time will tell 🙂
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With cold wind and bouts of heavy rain, it felt like a good day to dig into the photo archives, taking me back to a warmer climate. Shot early one morning during our stay in Fiji, I recall waking up just on sunrise. The resort area was dead quiet, with only a few staff busily walking around getting ready for when holiday stayers woke up for breakfast. One man, silhouetted in the foreground, was busy raking up the piles of weed that wash up daily into tidy little piles waiting for the crew on the tractor to pick up again later in the day. In the background we see the mountains, if memory serves, of the sleeping giant (I think his belly is just to the left of the closer pine trees). Temperature already warm compared to New Zealand…back to my cosy winter fire.
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During a work stop in Auckland West, I made a quick stop in at one of the unique little communities, Herald Island. A small little community, Herald Island was joined to Auckland’s West with a causeway built in 1958.With a small number of streets you could likely count with your fingers, it has a real sense of a small community. At the opposite end of the island from the causeway, we see the main wharf/boat jetty area. Greeted by a friendly ‘sea cat’ (just a normal cat that wandered the wharf), I took todays shot of the boats and across to Greenhithe on the North Shore.
In post using Gimp, I switched to B&W and adjusted levels a little as well as cropping the aspect.
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Sony Nex 5n, Sigma 30mm.
MikeHawkey.com 