Weekend at the Chesapeak Bay

Last weekend we decided to take the family down to the house on the Chesapeake Bay for the extended weekend for some R&R. The kids had afternoon soccer games on Saturday - this was the start of their indoor soccer season - their first. Off the topic, but I have a bone to pick with the Hockessin Soccer Club. We signed the girls up to play GIRLS INDOOR SOCCER and NOT Co-Ed Soccer Played Indoors!!! Big difference. One of the main reasons we joined the Hockessing Soccer Club was that they offered girls soccer and not Co-ed. My two daughters had a great time playing fall soccer and wanted to try their hand at indoor soccer to get some additional ball control experience. Signed them up and the sign up specifically stated Girls Indoor. A few days prior to the first game we get the team list and it's co-ed. Not a big deal for my younger daughter - she doesn't care, but my older daughter hates playing with boys and absolutely refused to play. We talked it over and came to an agreement that she would play one game and if she wanted to quit - she could...and then I would contact the club and request a refund. Well after the first game she decided to try a few more games (it helped that she scored the first 2goals for her team)...and Ella scored the first goal for her team as well. My second complain is that INDOOR soccer is played agains walls, backboards, etc - there are no out of bounds - these games are not indoor soccer at all - no boards to play off of - behind the goal is out of bounds and becomes a goal kick - just soccer being played indoors - quite a difference. I think next year we may look into another club for indoor soccer.

Get down to the Bay Saturday evening - kids play in the hot tub most of the evening, watched a few movies - all in all a relaxing weekend. Took the time to play around with the camera, try out some colored Gels on my flash. Sunday the temperatures took a plumit and the Bay started to freeze over, wind was howling....pretty much you were unable to venture outside for longer than 15 minutes. I spent a short amount of time outside trying to just grap a few photos, but my hands ended up freezing...so I kept inside. Sunday was also my wifes 39th birthday so we had a nice dinner and apple cake.

Back home on Monday and Tuesday all forms of sickness broke out - everyone in the family ended up sick in bed ALL week - high temperature winner goes to Mave at 104.7. I was fortunate enough to have it the least and no feaver, but most of the time I was completely drained of any energy....but I was looking forward to finally getting on the mountain bike on Saturday - ended up that I was still feeling pretty sick and decided the smarter thing would be to skip the ride. Sunday I thought I could try to get in a nice and easy 1 hour road ride. My friend John called just as I was heading out the door and I decided to ride down to his house for a ride.....stupid move as no rides with John are ever considered easy....show back up home almost 3 hours later and felt like crap. Man I need to get back into shape!

A few photos from the past weekends trip:

Photos of a Solo ride...

Most of my riding ends up being Solo - with three kids it just ends up being more time efficient to leave from my house for a road ride...and a lot of them just at the spur of the moment. Sunday, I was lucky enough to get out for such a ride and suprisingly I was able to ride two days in a row!

Just wanted to post a quick slide show of some of the scenes I often see on these solo rides. Today I was lucky enough to bump into an old friend that I have not seen in many years. It was nice to have a old friend tag along for a portion of the ride.

Some Weekend Group Riding - finally!

Haven't been writing much, busy with odds and ends and just haven't been updating the Blog much.

Well finally after being off the bike completely for 2 months (longest off a bike pretty much my entire life) I have been able to get back and start some riding again. Last week was the Donut ride - a few guys on fixed gears and a few of us on geared bikes.....headed out to NorthBrook Orchards for some famous bakery treats only to find out they are closed for the season????? Especially since their main sign says they are OPEN ALL YEAR!! Kind of a let down, but I lived.

Trying to get back into the swing of doing some routine excersizing a few days a week this week we had two beautiful days of close to 60 degree weather so I did a lunch time road ride on both days - Wednesday was my 1st ever Spinning class at the YMCA - going to try this one day a week for a while just to keep it mixed up a bit.

Today we had a nice group ride out of Marc V's house for a 2 1/2 hour road ride. Perfect weather and as always good and safe company!

As far a photography....had a lot of "upgrades" the past month or so and justbeen trying to learn some new software and get in place a new workflow for 2008 with the goal to speed up some large number pricessing. Switch to using Lightroom (which I love) and CS3, added a few plugins for sharpening (Photokit Sharpener) and Noise Reduction(Noise Ninja) - still learning my way around the new software with the hopes of getting the basics dialed in soon.
Picked up a new camera as well - D300 and lens 105 f/2.8vr Micro. My D200 with be my 2nd body now.