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Well, you know you're living in a great place if you don't mind being stuck in traffic to enjoy the scenery... While driving home across the SR-520 bridge from another 18 mile bike ride (exactly like last week) I savored the view of the sun setting behind me on an extraordinarily, uncommonly sunny day. Lake Washington was a light turquoise-blue and it was ultra-reflective with the lack of wind. I could see all the mountains encircling me... the cascades to the north and east and Rainier to the south, jutting into the cloudless sky. My gosh, I love it here.

The bike ride was easier this week, but I fear it was only because I figured out that my seat needed to be raised about six inches to make it easier on my knees. Gosh! My knees were the only things that suffered from the last ride! I was surprised I wasn't all sore... I still have no idea. Maybe it was me being uncommonly faithful to go to Jazzercise since the new year (knock on wood). Friday was difficult to get myself in gear.

I'm still lagging behind everyone on the bike ride. We had six riders this week, as opposed to last week's four. Jeremy and Brian think I ought to get a real street bike - the one I have is a hybrid, with a skinny traction tire (mountain bike's have wide traction tires and street bikes, of course, have skinny bare tires.) - and they think that's what's mainly slowing me down.

Unfortunately, my digital camera (panasonic lumix) only shoots in JPEG, which is not very good for printing high quality pictures (because it throws out data from the image when it gets saved every time - don't ask me! I'm still confused about that! I just learned this in Tuesday's class.) So, my teacher recommends getting a Canon G-10 (point and shoot), since I'm not really interested in getting into SLR's yet ($,$$$+ time in learning the blasted thing). However, the G10 is top of the line point and shoot, so it's around 400 smackers online. ($500 retail!) Ouch!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to do the camera, but I'm not sure about when/if I can do a bike.

Gosh! I'm loving my class! We watched a movie called "The True Meaning of Pictures - Shelby Lee Adams". It raised very interesting questions about what photographers are doing when they claim to be photojournalists or doing documentary work about a people (the Appalachians, in Adams's case) and make buckets of money off of the pictures as he did. Several distinguished people in the field were offended by his methods... although they sounded very legit to me. It generated lots of fun discussion.

Friday I saw my long, lost friend again! And we went to the zoo for a couple hours.

I'm tired of talking on here now. Now to talk/type more to my WENN friends... never tired of that! :) It's just extremely hard to blog and chat at the same time.

Until later,

Jp