I’m Going To Stop To Take A Picture (Part 1)

The left ear speaker in my bike to bike helmet intercom crackled with a monotone voice I thought I’d already heard fifty times today.  “I’m going to stop to take a picture.”  Arggghhh!!!!!  No, not again, please, not again.  We were just making some decent time and now we have to stop again?  But you know what?  That voice in my left ear was my riding buddy, Kim’s Dad Dick.  He was the smart one that day and he taught me something as well.  Riding, especially adventure riding is a special experience and if you can capture it so you can re-live it later, you’ve done yourself and others a great service.  Because remember, your adventure isn’t all about you, it’s about the others that you meet and what we exchange when we interact.

When you capture that experience particularly in pictures or video, you share the experiences not only that you had, but potentially the impact that you had on others.  So take the time to not only experience your journey, but also record it for you and others to share later.  The sharing of these experiences on film or video can be almost as good as experiencing it first hand and if you can convince someone else to take an adventure ride, you will have made the planet a smaller and more sharing place.  Congratulations.

Now you may be asking how do these picture and recordings let me enjoy my adventure over and over or make the world a better place?  Well let’s take a couple of moments and figure this out together.  You can generally remember that the trip you went on was a lot of fun and that you had a good time, but will you remember all the individual scenes during your adventure, perhaps with someone you love, or care about, the gorgeous landscapes, the people you met, the weather you experienced and dealt with, or that you saw something that effected you.  How about all the action scenes, riding through water crossings, over logs, through sand, mud and… snow.  When you have pictures or video, these things are brought back to life.

So let’s break these down a bit and see what we can see, eh?  We’ll do this in several parts so for the first part, let’s look at personal one on one photos.  Ones that capturing the essence of the riding experience, fun or the adventure itself.  How do we do that?  Well it can be different for different people, but when you are really, really having fun or if there is a difficult situation, if you just take a picture right then and there, you will likely have captured the essence and spirit of the ride.  What do I mean by that; and who wants to stop and take a picture just when you are having fun or really ticked off?   I mean literally just take the picture.  Here are some of my favorites in this regard…

Capturing the person…

Here capturing some of the fun…

Perhaps the not so fun times…

And finally some reflections on riding…

With each of these pictures, a memory is renewed or an experience potentially forgotten forever shared.  Don’t let them get away, keep them forever.  Next time, in Part 2 we’ll take a look at scenery.