I took a nice country ramble today on my bike. It really is spring now, and it was beautiful on the back roads south and east of Lindsborg. I took a few photos along the way and my favorites are shown below. Larger versions are available on Flickr. The panoramic view of the Smoky Valley is well worth a view at the larger size.

One of my favorite roads when I’m out rambling. East of Lindsborg, looking south.

Here’s a view from last year: Cloudy April Ride.
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Panoramic view of the beautiful Smoky Valley, looking north to northwest.
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Lindsborg, framed by a barbwire fence. Note the mix of traditional and modern fence posts.
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Just another pretty country road.
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We do have some excellent country lanes for rambling.
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Cockpit shot!
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To the north is Lindsborg, a magical and enchanted community nestled at the base of the Heights of Coronado and perched on the edge of a vast emerald sea.
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I’m also doing a personal #365photo challenge, mentioned previously, and so this month am trying to take my daily photo while I’m out riding my bike!

I finished the challenge by riding every single day, 30 out of 30 days, in the month of April.

I also ended up taking photos on 12 of the last 16 rides!

They’re presented below, with descriptive captions, and larger versions will hopefully soon be available on Flickr.

The middle of the month continued the trend of April being more of a winter than spring month. It was so wet, slick and messy out that I rode my mountain bike, feeling safer with the bigger wheels and knobby tread.
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The wheels go round and round. Day 19 of #30daysofbiking.
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I’ve made it 20 for 20 as of 4/20.
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30 days of clouds … I mean 30 days of biking continues. 22 days down, 8 to go!
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Freezing temperatures, snow, rain, sleet, gusty winds and more, nothing has stopped me from pursuing #30daysofbiking. Day 23 is on the books!
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What a difference a day makes! 24th day of #30daysofbiking. First trip here in 40 days and also first 20+ mile ride in 40 days!
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It’s the 25th day of #30daysofbiking, why not ride 25 miles? No reason not to, so I did. 30 actually. First time I’ve ridden that distance since November, so that was cool. Fast too; 20.5 mph for the entire ride. Took this picture about 10 seconds too early, but it’s my favorite, so there you go.
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Day 26 of #30daysofbiking. A rainy day, good for hiding the tears.

Today’s ride and photo are dedicated to the memory of our nephew Jordan Parsons. He died 2 years ago from a motorcycle accident on the 4th of July. Today would have been his 25th birthday.
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Lindsborg hosted a new celebration today, along with a long-running event.

For many years the Artists Studio Open house has been held in Lindsborg in April. Local artists open their studios to the public this one day a year, and it’s a fun event.

This year the town added Lindsborg in Bloom, a celebration both of spring as well as the flower power days of the 60s.

My 27th day of #30daysofbiking contribution is a photo of some local flowers, taken while out for my ride, and then processed using Topaz Simplify, which creates a painterly look.
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Over hills and far away. Nice warm day for a ride today on the 28th day of #30daysofbiking. Went out to Kanopolis, rode across the dam and then around the roads surrounding the lake.
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It was so windy on the 29th day of #30daysofbiking that these poor tulips could hardly hold themselves upright!
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On the 30th day of #30daysofbiking, it was finally spring.

Met a retired mill worker from near Chicago, checking out the mill. He was sad that he will miss the mill being operated during MillFest in May.
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I’m also doing a personal #365photo challenge, mentioned previously, and so this month am trying to take my daily photo while I’m out riding my bike!

So far, I’ve ridden 14 of 14 days this month, and my photo of the day came from 9 of those rides.

They’re presented below, with descriptive captions, and larger versions are available on Flickr.

First day of the challenge was cloudy and gray. Here’s a shot of the Smoky Hill River in Lindsborg, looking west towards the old dam. Slight bit of HDR processing.
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Next day was also pretty cloudy. Same location, zoomed in to show more detail of the old dam. Processed with Topaz Simplify.
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The 3rd photo was taken along the Valkommen Trail in Lindsborg. I HDR’d the farm equipment to add some color to yet another cloudy April Day.
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The photo on the right has been Photoshopped to demonstrate how the Lindsborg watertower would look if it were painted with a Swedish motif.
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Rode my bike to McPherson and met Sheryl and Sparkle at Lakeside Park.
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Very cool old (1940s?) car parked in front of the Sandzen Gallery. Fractalized and blended with the original.
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Beautiful tulips on yet another gray day. Fractalized to give it that special look.
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Sense a theme for April? Well, I got a nice, dramatic picture out of it in any case. South end of town, watching a storm blow in.
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More tulips. Just slightly fractalized, which really enhanced the texture of the leaves.
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Swensson Memorial Band Shell, North Park, Lindsborg.
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Sunset on North 2nd Street.
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Lovely Medinilla flower.
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The old Lindsborg train depot.
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Blue spruce and icicles after a recent snow storm.
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The lovely (historical) home of renowned Lindsborg artist Anton Pearson.
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Spruce bough and snow, looks painting-like.
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Well I know that blood pressure control starts with diet and exercise.

I’ve been exercising, to the tune of 2400+ miles ridden on my bike in the past 12 months!

Plus, we’ve always eaten reasonably well, not too much in the way of fast foods or fried foods. We did eat more fresh veggies in California, it’s true, but overall we eat what is generally considered a reasonably healthy diet.

But my BP has taken a hike, and I’m not happy about it.

I’ve investigated the wide variety of medications used to treat high blood pressure, and also the many possible side-effects.

At this point I accept that diet and exercise, alone, aren’t enough.

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Ha! Who am I kidding? I’ve always said I’ll take medication to treat high blood pressure (back when it was a future thing) only if diet and exercise aren’t sufficient.

So I took a look at what I eat, and have come to the sad conclusion that my twice daily use of soy sauce is two times too many. 920 freaking milligrams of sodium per tablespoon pf soy sauce. And I probably used at least one per meal!

My poor heart!

I’ll have to find something new for lunch. Ramen noodles, flavored with soy and sambal have been instrumental in  driving my weight loss these past 18 months. And as for flavoring my rice with soy and sambal, I’ve been doing that since my friend Jeff turned me onto the idea back in 1996. I’m sure I can have soy/sambal noodles and rice once a week, but 3-5 times like I did until today? No more!

And that’s how I measure getting older or some might even say growing up. Figuring out the problem and accepting the solution and then doing it, no whining, no complaining. I’m not happy, but some things you don’t mess with.

Here’s an unrelated image just to brighten the post a bit. It’s a composite of a time-lapse set of photos I took of the birds feeding outside my office window.

As a photographic, creative and self-discipline challenge I’m taking a photo a day and posting it on a Tumblr blog called Mike’s 365.

Now, I’ve done something similar in the past. A few years ago I  posted an image a day for a year, at a blog I called ::luminosity::.

The difference this time is that I’m both taking and posting a photo a day. Last time the goal was simply to post a photo a day, no matter when taken.

With an image collection numbering in the thousands, it’s not hard to find an image that is both  reasonably good and previously unpublished, so meeting the daily publication goal wasn’t too terribly hard, though I won’t trivialize the effort. There’s a reason I stopped after a year.

Meeting the requirement of taking and posting the photo the same day is much more of a challenge. Of course, with a phone that can take a photo and post it all within seconds, the challenge isn’t technical. And there may be days when I post a picture of my pinky just to meet the challenge, but as I told Sheryl, we’ve accumulated a lot of knick-knacks over the years, and I have a small studio …

But so far I’m having fun, trying to be creative in both what I shoot and how I shoot it, and then extending that into using a wider variety of post-processing filters and tools to enhance the images.

Here’s a shot showing thumbnails of the first 41 photos posted on Mike’s 365; be sure to visit the site to see the large versions!

Larger versions of these and related photos are available on Flickr:

Lindsborg Sunset Winter 2013

Early 2013

Now, on to the pictures!

The first two come from the same day. Near sunset, wearing a backpack holding my camera and tripod, I rode my bike down to the river. I setup on the bridge, took a few shots, and then headed to the north park where I took a few more shots.
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This sunset is a riot of color! I just stepped out my front door and snapped away! (taken with a Canon Powershot S100)
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These star trails are a composite of 200 images taken over an hour period, with each photo exposed for 16 seconds.
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A very nice female cardinal. (5DII and Canon 100-400 lens at 400)
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A pretty, fractalized Medinilla flower.
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Sunset at the Smoky Hill Cemetery, northwest of Lindsborg.
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Naturally, I like my version better, and it’s even more special because I bake mine in a mini bundt pan unit which creates 6 potato pancake cups, perfect for an over easy or poached egg.

Ingredients

2 large baking potatoes, peeled
1/2 medium onion
1 egg
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1 tablespoon olive or canola oil
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 Teaspoon salt
Red pepper flakes for color and ground black pepper to taste

Preparation

Saute the onion slowly, until it turns a nice rich caramel brown color.

Grate the potatoes and cheese into a bowl.

Mix in the egg, oil, flour and the herbs and spices.

Stir together, and then drain through a colander, using a bowl to press out most of the liquid.

Assemble into muffin tins and bake in a 350 degree oven for 40 to 45 minutes.

Let stand 5-10 minutes before serving.

Serve with your favorite potato pancake dipping sauce, or as I prefer, use the “cups” to hold an over-easy egg.

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Fresh out of the oven.
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Ready for eating!
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The first set is here: Favorite Photos from 2012.

The full set, featuring much larger versions of most photos, is also available on Flickr: 2012 Best Photos.

Faded love
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Sunset from the Keeper of the Plains in Wichita. More photos: Keeper of the Plains at Sunset.
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My first successful shot of the Milky Way, taken from Coronado Heights. Additional shots: Milky Way.
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Photo looking southwest from the London Tower Bridge, prominently featuring the new building known as the Shard. More London HDR photos are available: London 2012 HDR.
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A subdued HDR image of the Long Water at Kensington Gardens, London. More London HDR photos are available: London 2012 HDR.
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Sunset through the trees at the Smoky Hill Cemetery. HDR processing plus a drop in the color temperature that really brings out the blue in the tree shadows. Related shots in the Fall Color 2012 set.

If I were to choose a picture of the year, it would be this one. The view is from Sunset Hill in Kansas City. It’s part of a set I took with my new full-frame DSLR: First Canon 5D Mk II Shots.
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Now available: The Rest of My Favorite Photos from 2012.

Also available: the full set, featuring much larger versions of most photos, on Flickr: 2012 Best Photos.

Proof that I have seen an occasional sunrise, this beauty is from Albuquerque. Additional photos from March: Misc March 2012 and March archives.
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These fractalius tulips were taken in March of 2012, at the Elizabeth Gamble Garden in Palo Alto. There are many more of these colorful beauties in this Flickr set: March Flowers 2012.
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This sunset photo of my bike was taken at the base of Coronado Heights in April. Additional photos are posted on my blog: April Sunset Bike Ride.
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In May, Sheryl took me to see this very cute, very photogenic, family of foxes. You can see more of these playful young foxes in this Flickr set: Baby Foxes at Play.
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My brother hosts a family of owls in his yard, and this June I was fortunate enough to get a few good photos. You can see photos of the father and the other baby owls in this post: Screech Owl and Chick.
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I really enjoyed my spring rides, rambling through the country and finding the most remote roads imaginable. Read more: Country Roads From a Bike in June.
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