Bumblebee's Adventure Ride 08-02-2009

[Bumblebee]

Boring Picture.





For the record, any photo's I post here or anywhere else is always copyright Bumblebee / TGL Photography / Me! 

[fishmeister]

 I can smell that mountian air from here......were there any unusual adventures beside the great parts of our country you enjoy riding in? I guess that would be adventure enough for me......ride on 1000 day+ Beeman.

[Bumblebee]

Well, I took a completely mystery road between here and the road that leads to the summit road. I didn't know if it would actually go where I wanted to go or not. The switchbacks to the road I wanted was pretty steep and all dirt and rock. I guess it did go where I though it did.

Don't need no steenking trees...trees are for flatlanders.
Just a meager 12000-13200 MSL give or take a few hundred feet either direction. No real altitudes..yet:
1. Ho-hum scenery
2. Just puttering toward the summit (I turned around to get this picture so up is behind the motorcycle however you can see the halfway point in the distance)
3. Summit lake...which is for some reason way below the actual summit. (yes, boys and girls, that white stuff on the rodks is snow...and it's August - A friend of mine is working at Crested Butte this weekend and she said it was cold enough that snow was a real possibility)
4. TWISTIES!!!

A note of warning to anyone planning on riding this road: When you get to around mile marker 9 near Summit Lake, slow way the heck down. The tundra there has mangled the road surface. It's fairly smooth and mostly unbroken however it has a LOT of ups and downs and off camber shapes oscillating randomly over about a mile between MM9 and MM10. It's enough to completely unload the suspension even at fairly low speeds. I kinda deliberately went over a few at 15mph and got both wheels off the ground at the same time at one point. The road was this way last year so don't expect them to be doing much about it in the future because the tundra will trash anything they fix.

[Hangster]

Sweet Ride Report BB...The photographer in you showes through (i love it) ......(Man one of these days i'll be able to do what you do and i can't wait , maybe we'll cross paths some day ) Keep that camera clicking BB 

[highwayjamin]

Awesome pictures :thumb:I live in Indiana,I have nothing like that to look at around here,I am so jealous :DirtDOG:Keep up the great work

[Bumblebee]

Sweet Ride Report BB...The photographer in you showes through (i love it)

Thank you very much for the compliment. I will say that I'm just posting the generic fun ride report pictures up. I'm not going to be putting the real artsy stuff online. If you want to see those, you'll just have to come to one of my art festivals starting next year..and buy one..or two..or just clean out my entire stock if you want to.

Now, where were we? Oh yea, low altitudes. Forget that panzy nonsense. No wimps, no clowns beyond this point. How about some respectable altitudes, like say, nothing below 13,000 MSL from now on:

1. Switchbacks + tundra + dropoffs + altitude = Precarious Parking.
2. Kind of adventure feel good artsy thing going here. (BTW, I think I gave some poor cager passenger a trip to the ER for heart failure when I rode up to the stop point. Directly in front of the bike is a bit of a dropoff.
3. A small pond around 13,500 MSL. (That's the Continental Divide some 100 miles way off in the background)

BTW, the roads up there are not your typical low land fanatical lawsuit paranoia safety designed type roads. The roads here are about getting to the top and not a lot more. No signs. No guard rails. No center stripe. Narrow two direction road. The edge of the road goes something like this: Road surface, 3-6 inches of tundra/gravel mix (except for the places where the non paved surface has eroded away) then either (a) a dropoff or (b) steep slope in excess of 50 degrees. If you drive like an idiot on this road, Darwin will take care of you after he beats the snot out of you for a while.

[fishmeister]

     Always a refreshing pleasure to see such talent Bee.                    I'd buy out your entire exhibition.

[Bumblebee]

Ok. Enough playing around with the mid altitudes and safe places. It's time to get serious.

Nothing below 14,000 MSL in this batch:
1. Rocks and scenery.
2. Rocks, scenery and empty air. (See the tripod? That's where picture #1 was taken from. Less than a foot toward this camera position and to the left of where the tripod is standing is ALL empty air. Below is a 600ish foot drop before bumping into anything then it's a steep slope for a ways. I could not get any closer to the edge at that location without climbing gear. On a side note, while I was working from the tripod, some 8ish year old tourist kid walked to the biggish rock that's out of the picture to the right, looked over and saw me there. All I heard was "oh s#$& cr#$ damn you're crazy." The kids parent started to reprimand him then basically said the same thing so the kid got away with having pottymouth and bad manners )
3. How's your head for heights? You want precarious? Here ya go! The good stuff! This is another photographer doing her thing right where I took picture #2 above from maybe two minutes before. That's how close I was to the edge.

[fishmeister]

I'm speachless....does the appreciation for such beauty last or fade with time?

[Bumblebee]

does the appreciation for such beauty last or fade with time?

It doesn't last or fade for those of us who truly appreciate the world we live on. It's continous.


With that, let's conduct an experiment and see if it fades with time for others. It's too late tonight for more so I'll just leave you sitting there on the very edge of the very edge with me and the other mystery photographer until tomorrow.

Night all.

Peace out,
Bumblebee.

[Bumblebee]

Ok, so now we're sitting on the edge of a dropoff which is all fine and hunky dory but doesn't solve the main problem. The problem being that there is still rocks above.

So onward and upward we go..to the top.
Up here there is very little other than rock, lichen, big views, tundra, bigger views, dropoffs, hypoxic tourists, clean air, unbelievably huge wrap around sky, empty air, silence, peace, and the entire world put into proper perspective.

1. USGS marker. 14258 MSL
2. The view fom the top. The lake in the picture is Summit Lake. Like I said, it's no where near the summit. It's about 1500 feet below.
3. The obligatory Tibetan Prayer Flags.
4. Another picture for the height chickens. Watch your step. Darwin ups the ante with a moderate case of hypoxia for most people just on general principle.
5. This is taken absolutely straight down from next to the Tibetan flags. It was one of those right at the edge like the mystery photographer pictures in the last post. There's no point in being afraid of heights here. There's literally nothing to bump into for 1000 feet..probably further.

[Bumblebee]

A few extra random pictures just because.

1. Critters! I was laying in the grass and rock for about 10 minutes trying to get a up close and personal picture. Then the crazy tourists decided to walk around too fast and hearded them the wrong direction. I would have repositioned again however the tourists were taking over and there was a big storm coming so I had to get off the mountain pretty quick.
2. Just an interesting picture of the motorcycle around 13500 MSL while on a short photo walk.
3. The big picture and I mean literally the big picture. Just below the high summit near the parking area is the University of Denver's observatory. There is no electricity up here. The observatory is totally solar powered.
4. The small picture. These plants are about 4-6 inches in diameter. The flowers ring the center of the plant.
5. The really small picture. Each of these little individual flowers are about 1/4" across.

And with that, we're done with the ride to the summit of Mt Evans Colorado just West of Denver.

Ride safe, always keep learning, explore the unknown, appreciate the beauty of real world that we live on, enjoy the big stuff and the little stuff at the same time.

Peace Out,
Bumblebee.

[Hondo]

Looks like Colorado -

[Hangster]

OK that's it BB , now you done it ...(i'm jealous ) this coming up weekend i'm going on a trip and will add a ride report too , i can't wait any longer , screw the license and MSF  (Don't care much for rules anyway)
 

[Vermontster]

Oh, YES!! Gotta love that big western sky, big western drops, and horizons to forever. Been there. Miss it. And... there's beauty everywhere. Thanks very much, Bee, for sharing your talent. Great stuff!!!   

[Vermontster]

Especially like the tripod and prayer flag shots!

[hockeyhawk]

Awsome pics there Bumble, they rock. 

Ride Safe, 

[fishmeister]

Any more adventures Bee?.............Can't get enough of that photography!

[Bumblebee]

Any more adventures Bee?.............Can't get enough of that photography!

Just routine theatre photography (gotta pay for food and fuel somehow) and an interesting photographic walk through history for now.
Nothing involving motorcycles...for the moment.

[fishmeister]

All genre is welcomed! If you can find a way to relate it. I'd like to buy one of those prints of a bike in the mountains....really nice. Like an out of focus foreground bike with the detailed background. Especially if you could crop mine in, slightly recognizable. Similar to this great shot, maybe with filtered color...

[Bumblebee]

All genre is welcomed! If you can find a way to relate it. I'd like to buy one of those prints of a bike in the mountains....really nice. Like an out of focus foreground bike with the detailed background. Especially if you could crop mine in, slightly recognizable. Similar to this great shot, maybe with filtered color...

Actually I'm going to do a series on motorcycles so you might want to wait for the good stuff. I know a few excellent locations, some like that one, some far better. (I'm definitely up for suggestions on concepts that people like including private photo sessions of their own bikes as well as other stuff)

DOF is very interesting depending on the effect you're going for. Just changing what is in focus changes how the entire image is seen. A couple very very crude motorcycle samples while experimenting:
1. bike in focus, background out of focus = beautiful scenery then your eye is pulled to the motorcycle which is the actual subject that was overlooked at first.
2. bike out of focus, background in focus = bike is an afterthought and just how one gets to that location.

[Vermontster]

Excellent!! I like how those two images relate to the scene in different ways. You obviously have a well trained eye and imagination, and the wisdom of how to combine the two. Keep 'em coming! 

[hockeyhawk]

Well done Bumble, Keep them comming. 

Ride Safe 

[ROJ]

Amazing Ride report and pictures. You've got a great artistic tough with that camera.

[fishmeister]

Seems like time for some more. I'm getting the lack of great photography jitters.