Sunrise 4: Ault Park (Caught in the storm)
I got out of bed this morning, bruised and aching. This was one of the toughest mornings yet, physically. Yesterday morning I went on a ride with a friend, Andy, through the rolling hills in the Kentucky countryside. It was absolutely beautiful, quiet, and scenic. Along the way I noticed that my left pedal was starting to act up again. Last fall I had put a lubricant on the bearings, thinking it would be helpful, but somehow the lubricant managed to break the seal on the pedal. I had forgot all about this until yesterday morning, because the problem doesn’t typically show up unless I start moving at a fast pace (all my sunrise rides have been typically in first gear only because of the steep incline). About 45 minutes into the ride I noticed that the pedal had seized up and was starting to unscrew itself from the bike. I stopped twice to screw it back in and free the bearing. I kept eye on the pedal as we cranked up and down through the farmland, trying to plant a firm mental reminder to get it fixed.
About an hour and a half into the ride we’re cruising along on a flat stretch of road. Then it happens (at this point I’m really not surprised). I suddenly hear a loud crack as the threads on the pedal that hold it in place strip and send the hunk of metal skittering across the road. My balance is thrown off to the left, I overcompensate and lock the handlebars to the right. I remember a clear and lucid moment right before impact, looking down at the aphault, thinking to myself “well, this was inevitable I suppose”. Let’s just say that if I was trying to throw myself at the ground and miss, well… I didn’t miss. I haven’t had such an intimate encounter with the pavement since I was 10 years old and learning to rollerblade. At any rate, because we weren’t going too fast and my bike turned into a sled, I didn’t end up getting too hurt. My elbow took most of the impact on the 40-foot skid, and my tailbone hurts a bit. Nothing broken, just bruises and cuts. Another lesson learned: Don’t ignore your hardware when it is diligently trying to tell you that it needs fixed.
This lead to an interesting dilemma this morning. My bike is now pedal-less (bike shop was closed on Sunday), so I borrowed the wife’s bike for the trip up to Ault Park. She did just fine, although because it isn’t a road bike, going up the hill was slow. I’d say it was painful, but that might just be because of the bruises! In the end, I am definitely glad I was able to muster up the motivation to see the sunrise. Although I never actually saw sun due to the cloud cover, the view was beautiful. This was the warmest morning yet, it was downright pleasant out.
I also ended up meeting some of the local forest inhabitants just before the sun came up.
“Offical Sunrise Picture for Sunrise #4”.
(More pictures after the jump)
Sunrise 3 (Columbia Tusculum, Rookie Mistake, and Flying Pigs)
This morning turned out to be waaay better than I first imagined. I hadn’t planned on getting up early this morning, thinking I’d take the weekends off so I could sleep in. Amanda already had plans to get up early and go to her running club meeting (they’re all training for the flying pig half and full marathon) so I decided to take advantage of this and get up as well. Since I had the entire morning open (uhh the weekend is awesome!), I thought I’d try and go to Lunken Airfield and find an advantageous spot to see the sun rise, after all the airfield is in the valley and generally points east. Saturday Morning Exploring, if you will. The airfield is in the river valley that Ault Park’s Heekin Overlook looks down into. As I started on my way, however, I started to feel a bit rushed because I didn’t know exactly where the best spot would be and I was kind of afraid of missing the sun rise. One thing I didn’t really expect before starting this was exactly how pink the sky gets about 15 minutes before the sun rises. It really opens up in beautiful colors. Even if you’re staring at your watch, knowing you’ve got 15 minutes to get to Lunken Airfield, the sky’s colors can make you think your watch is slow! I ended up exploring the culs-de-sacs along the eastern hills to get a feel for where the eastern facing ledges were, afraid of missing it if I made the entire trip to Lunken. Most of the pockets are actually west-facing, so they have absolutely breath taking views down the Ohio River, with the city skyline on the horizon, and of the sunset. Views of the sun rise were surprisingly difficult to find. It really made me appreciate how awesome Heekin Overlook is.
I found myself looking down a heavily wooded winding, quiet, and steep road. I go to grab my trusty camera to document this sight, and what do I find? I find that my camera’s battery is dead. I left it plugged into my computer and forgot that cameras are the one thing that still hold onto their ancient roots by not charging over usb (they remain a “camera” primarily with a stand-alone battery, and it just so happens that they allow usb access. No charging over usb allowed!). Frustrated by my rookie mistake, I at least felt relieved that I could still document the sun rise with my camera phone on my 4-year old LG 9900. Quality isn’t that great (especially in low light), but it does the trick. In the top picture and the one below, it may look like the sun is up but thats just the atmosphere playing tricks with my head.
(More after the jump; be sure to check out mr. snail at the end) (more…)
Sunrise 2: Ault Park (in the mist)
This morning was interesting. After almost missing the sunrise yesterday, I made sure to be up at the overlook 10 minutes early. In contrast to the clear skies yesterday morning, however, the sky this morning was overcast and gray. Last night we must have had a light shower; the roads were wet and slick, the sky was dark and gray, and the ambient light seemed to be lagging behind by about 25 minutes. I honestly couldn’t tell when the sun came up. I took the opportunity to relax and drink my coffee, and think about the direction I want this project to go. Without the distraction of a beautiful sunrise, planning the day is much less stressful! Lunken airport had some light traffic, including a small commuter jet that took off in a hurry right after the supposed sunrise time.
One of the things I’m figuring out is coming up with a list of locations that I’d like to consistently take a picture from. The point of this will be to document the seasonal change of the park. I’ve decided that this spot fits nicely because it captures the Heekin Overlook and the valley below as well as several pieces of local fauna. The trees that don’t blossom and aren’t conifers haven’t started putting on their green show yet, so this spot should change over time. (Why do flowering trees blossom so early and always before full leafy non-flowering trees? Hmm.) I also have to remember that everything I see today I take for granted. During the summer you can’t see through the trees at all, and the overlook seems snug and crowded, in contrast to the panoramic view we get to experience today. More pictures after the jump.
Sunrise 1: Ault Park
Welcome!
Well, here we go! I’m going to try and hammer out the format of all of this as I go along. This is going to be a wordy post, but most of the later posts will be substantially smaller. Welcome to my project! The purpose of this blog, at least right now, is to document my ongoing attempt to wake up with the sun every day for the next few months (starting today), brew a thermos of coffee, grab my notebook (the analog kind), hop on my bike, and make the thigh-burning, wheeze-inducing, 12 minute trip up to the top of Ault Park (did I mention I’m miserably out of shape?). This will of course involve me getting up 2 minutes earlier every day until the middle week of June, at which point the sun rise time will hold steady for a few days (at 6:11am EST) before starting its retreat back to more sane times. One of the hardest things for me to do is get up early. I realized something recently, and that is that I never regret when I actually do get up and active before 8:00am. So thats what I’m going to try and do. Start off every day with an accomplishment of great magnitude. It is all down hill from there!
If you’re more curious about why on earth I’d do this (even I think it is crazy), I’ve got some ideas written out in the manifesto (which will probably be changing daily). I’ll also be exploring various other areas around eastern Cincinnati (at least as far as I can get on my bike), including Ault and Alms park, Armletter Park, the Cincinnati Observatory, Lunken Airfield, East End and down by the Ohio River, the marina / boat club, and who knows where else. I’ll probably take a break on the weekends, but I’ve also found that early Saturday mornings offer some of the best time to explore on a bike without having to worry about traffic. Along the way I hope to find myself becoming more proficient at writing, having more productive and inspired days, and discover more amazing things about the history of the area I live in. There are so many markers, plaques, cornerstones, and ruins hidden away in the local forest from the late 1800s and early 1900s that I’m sure I can only remember a small percentage of them off the top of my head. I also have a lot of pictures from the last two years of exploring the area (and finding those hidden ruins, markers, etc), so I’ll throw those up on here in time. I’m definitely going to be making a post for every sunrise I see (daily if I keep up the motivation), and hopefully I’ll find a few other pictures along the way that I’d like to share. This project doesn’t just represent a new way of looking at my life for the next two months, or as a way to savor every detail out of the early hours of the day, but it also serves as a way for me to create a historical log, with pictures, that I can look back on for the rest of my life and say “Hell yeah, I’m really glad I did that”.
So now it is official; I decided to make today the official start of the project! I got in late last night (I was at the reds game, we won!) and grudgingly decided to get my butt out of bed at 6:30am this morning. It was pleasantly warm out, probably a good 15 degrees (F) warmer than a few days ago when I did my second morning “test run” to Ault Park. The most surprising thing to me was clear the sky was, and how that affected the lighting around me. There were very few clouds in the sky which meant that I could see the sun crest over the ridge line. Earlier in the week it was cloudy after a storm, which meant that I had to wait about 10 minutes to really see the sunrise (and I couldn’t exactly tell where the sun was). I’m hoping to see another sunrise like that in the coming weeks, it was absolutely beautiful and didn’t really peak until the sun found a break in the clouds at about 15 minutes after sunrise.
Here is a picture of the Heekin Overlook, where I will be spending a majority of my mornings waiting on the sun. I don’t want to talk too much about it yet, I have to save some information for future posts! 🙂
More pictures after the jump.
Ault Park Sunrise 