New bicycle, experiments with camera mount, and 4th Ave.

Over the weekend I traded in my 3-wheel recumbent for a new touring bicycle. I'm planning to ride across Iowa in July with a friend and decided this was a good upgrade for such a trip. I haven't ever had a real touring bike and do enjoy long bicycle trips when I get in shape and have a chance to participate in one. The ride across Iowa is an organized ride called the "Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa" or RAGBRAI.

I decided I'd try to document this event since I enjoy photography so much. Instead of having to stop my bicycle to get my camera out of the bag, I thought it would be best to mount the camera on the bicycle so it would always be at the ready. Another thing that can be done with a bicycle mounted camera is take short video clips while riding. I've come up with a handlebar mount that works fairly well although I'll be working on improvements as I go along. The mount looks like this:



I've posted a video I took yesterday while riding: movie (34 mbytes)

Also yesterday, I went down to 4th Avenue to take a few photographs. They are having the street fair and, since I don't like crowds, I went down at 7 AM to see what might be of interest. I found some of the advertising interesting as well as some of the shop windows with the sun shining into them. I've talked to some of the neighborhood folks in that area and they make quite a bit of money selling beer to visitors. Here is a photograph of one of the beer booths:



Many of the shop widows along the street have security screens or grates across their windows when they are closed. I photographed this dragon behind one of the grates, he looks angry at being imprisoned!