A Bloy and his Blog

read the rest of: Bike parking

The City of Madison held an event today called Ride the Drive. They closed almost six miles of downtown streets to all vehicular traffic, and let the bicyclists have free reign for six hours.

read the rest of: Riding the drive

I’ve been living in my house for over two months, and my list of things to do here is still pretty long. But it was a picture perfect day in Madison, and I would have been a fool to spend such a beautiful day working in the house. So I put a snack in my bike’s saddle bag, filled up the water bottle, and headed out for a long ride.

When I was house shopping, one of the reasons I chose the neighborhood I did was the close access to the many bike trails in the area. Where I used to live, there were just too many very busy streets between decent bike trails and my condo. I would often throw my bicycle in the back of the truck and drive a ways to get to some decent bike riding. No longer. My house is just blocks away from a great trail (which can also take me to other trails).

Today I biked my longest ride of the season so far. Around Lake Monona, a side trip along the Capital City State Trail for a while, and then through the side streets of Monona, back toward home. I took no camera, no ipod — I wanted to concentrate on biking and experience the world around me on such a nice day. Even though there were a lot of other bikers on the trails, it was great to be out there, just biking.

I took so many photographs while biking the Monterey Peninsula, it was hard to pare them down to fit in a single post, so this is part two. Take a look at the first part if you haven’t already done so.

read the rest of: More biking photos from Monterey

While I was in Monterey, California for the conference, I took a few vacation days to see the sights.

My favorite day off was when I rented a bicycle, and rode all day long on the Monterey Bay Coastal Bike Trail.

read the rest of: Biking the Monterey Peninsula

No pictures on this post, just a story about an encounter with a bald eagle and the photo that didn’t get taken.

While on vacation last week, I was biking the trail along Trout Lake, hoping to get some photos of loons. That portion of the trail runs along the lake shore, with a buffer of trees of about 10 feet. The trees make for a decent blind, so the birds don’t get scared away. I had seen loons (fairly close by) along that section of trail in the past and I was hoping for a good shot. I had my camera setup with its telephoto zoom lens, ready to go in my bike’s saddle bag. At one point I did see some loons off in the distance a bit. I took a few photos, but they were a little too far away. Back on the bike I went, continuing to scan the nearby shore. Suddenly, a shadow overhead caused me to look up. There was a bald eagle swooping by, about 20 feet above me.

read the rest of: The one that got away

I came upon these gorgeous tiger lilies while biking Madison’s southwest bike trail yesterday.

read the rest of: Tiger lilies