It's a wonderful day...

And I mean that.

I just got back from a 2-mile bicycle ride, and I feel pretty good. Galina took the bike with her from Pagosa, and I found an opportunity yesterday to ride it to the Hollywood Video store and pick up a couple of DVDs. It didn't take me very long, and it didn't tire me out, either. What's even better, the traffic in our neck of the woods wasn't against me.

The bad news about riding a bicycle around here is that there are no long, dramatic, sweeping downhill runs during which you can coast and feel the wind in your face. The good news, however, is that there are no long, dramatic, sweeping uphill runs around here, either, requiring unholy amounts of effort and sweat to climb.

The idea of biking to The Office flitted -- yes, flitted -- across my mind. It's about 11-12 miles from here to there, but if it took me 15 minutes to bike two miles, you can be sure it'll take a lot longer than 90 minutes for me to go 12 miles. I'm just not in shape.

Well, gotta go get ready for a day (half-day, if I have anything to say about it) at The Office.

Cheers...

Ballunar Liftoff '04!

As I was coming in to The Office, I saw a number of hot-air balloons in the sky, which can only mean one thing: Ballunar Liftoff '04!

Here are a couple of shots taken with the new Samsung. From along NASA Road One:



And in the empty lot across from The Office:



Now, down to work.

Cheers...

UPDATE: Oof! Maybe it's this monitor, but these images look terrible, and I'm not talking about the artifacts that apparently were introduced in the reduction from 640x480 to 400x300! It looks as if the default "out of the box" settings on the camera are less than optimal (the sun was off to my side in the first shot), or the camera just plain outright is poor. I shall have to revisit the subject tonight, maybe, after all my translation work is done. Maybe something can be salvaged, if not now, then for the future?