On one of those perfect days of fall, the 4th of Oct. 2011 I rode my bicycle from Pikes Peak State park in Iowa to Gutenberg Iowa.

Me ready to ride at Pikes Peak State Park Iowa

Pikes Peak is a state park overlooking the Mississippi River by McGregor Iowa. It is 700 ft. above the river and as you can tell from the photo this time of year it is a riot of Autumn color. Notice Cool colors, blue shirt, on a warm photo, the yellow in the trees. Old photographer trick.

This ride is importtent to me as I tried it last year and a steep hill gave me a lot of trouble. This year it was easy. Just a way to test myself.

http://www.mississippirivertrail.org/

Some day I want to do a whole state on the MRT (Mississippi River Trail) today was just a taste of the larger trail. Someday...

Can you take photos at night with just a flashlight?

Lisa ready for Dinner

Do you know this old trick? If you want some dramatic light in a night photograph all you need is a good bright flashlight. I like to use a 2million candle power light I bought from Farm Fleet for 15 dollars. A bright light like this one lets you use a small aperture in this case f/14. The, Canon 5D, is on a Bogen Tripod and set for a 30 second exposure. After the shutter is pressed you use the Flash to light your subject. Just one quick, less then one second, sweep for the main light and then move around and add the hair light and all other lights you wish. As long as you don't light yourself you can stand right beside your subject and it will not show on the photo.

If you try this you will discover it takes a few attempts but when you get it you will have a unique  photograph. Let me see what you get.

Epic Rice Steamer Fail

 

Epic Rice Steamer Fail

One other item on my bucket list is to learn to cook healthy wholesome foods. A friend suggested I try a microwave rice steamer and steam brown rice. So I went to Wally World and got a cheap microwave rice steamer.
I read the instructions. Simply 2 cups of water 2 cups of brown rice and and cook on high for 30 min.
Crap the whole rice steamer melted. As I deconstruct what happened it seems the water all boiled away and with 5 min to go the Steamer itself started to melt. Next time less rice more water and less time. The instructions did say brown rice cooking times would very wildly. I did not notice that until after the conflagration.

Bucket List

It has occurred to me that most of the items on my bucket list are big ticket items. It has just come to me that this does not have to be so. In that vain the first new item on my bucket list is to read a new book every week for one year. I like to read and do hope this pushes me to read more than I have in the past. I am going to update this with a list of books read as I go though the year. So here is to reading 52 books by Sept. 23, 2012.