Photo

Snowboarding, 7th day (Taken with Instagram at Alpe Lusia).

I swear it was unintentional. Second post straight after [this one where I blurbed about my next camera]((/2010-08-19-my-next-camera.html), and here it is, the GF-1 in my hands.

So how did it happen: I spent last weekend in Livigno for some mountain biking. On Sunday afternoon, half an hour before end of business, I went into a shop and asked for the Panasonic GF-1. They had only the body, as they sold separately the 20mm lens which was part of the kit. So I asked, maybe you have a spare lens like the 17mm from some Olympus body?

I’ve stopped using my old Nikon D70s after it gave up once again during my last vacation (random failures in recording the photos on the flash card). For now I’m stuck with another remain of the past (Canon Ixus 60, small point-n-shoot with a 6Mp sensor) and my iPhone 3Gs. My plan is to get the Panasonic GF-1, which looks like the perfect solution for me: image quality on par with SLRs yet portable (almost) like a compact camera. However, I’m still waiting for the perfect deal (i.e., someone that goes to the US and gets it from amazon.com or B&H), so I can’t help but wondering when Nikon or Canon or Panasonic starts putting these features in a complete package:

I am wondering about the next iPad. What is available now is certainly enticing and must be a joy for light computing / intense internet reading. I do have limited budget, however, and think that probably the iPhone 4 is a better way to spend my money. But I look at the iPad and keep thinking that it could be a photographer’s ideal machine; if only it had a straight usb port to connect a camera (if I travel light, I certainly do care about bringing yet another little piece of plastic).

Beatiful photos here: http://nsmb.com/3326-dorado-tested/.

They convey an intense idea of action with those blurred backgrounds and the rider not quite in focus above the panned trails; I also like the tight shots and the washed-out colour palette.

And speaking about the ’look’ of these images, I couldn’t help but noticing what the rider was wearing: mean-looking full-face helmet and menacing dark goggles, a simple t-shirt, shorts and the diminuitive 661 knee-pads. And I remember similar photos of a british competitor to the Mega-avalanche (Dirt #79, September 2008): old shirt, shorts and a pair of mud-encrusted skate shoes.

There’s a place in Italy where you can still eat for 5 euros.

Training with my fixie at the Idroscalo. In the foreground, my red San Marco Concor; back there, the mountains that you rarely see from this very polluted and hazy city – the Grigne. Training was: 15 series of friggin’ fast spins (around 100 rpm), 15" each, followed by 45" of slower pedaling. Well the idea was this but since I had no speedometer, nothing to measure the number of pedaling strokes per minute, and just one fuckin gear, I did what I could. I hope it’s effective (my legs were certainly feeling it).

Sunday evening: I buy myself a return ticket to Finale Ligure.

Monday morning: I wake up at 5:30, pack kneepads gloves helmet and take the early morning train to the place where summer never ends.

To be honest, today finale was a bit cold but I still ended up in (baggy) shorts.

The idea was to do maybe a couple of runs on the “DH Donne” (a beatiful trail that hangs over Varigotti) but at the end I did 75% of the Enduro race course.

Today a very good thing happened to me, but it was followed by a very bad thing. Anyway I won’t talk about good or bad things here because they’re personal.

For now all I want is to point the casual reader to a blog (travelogue, climbing diary, don’t know how’s gonna be shaped) which was just started by a good friend of mine, somebody that sooner or later will appear as special guest star in a (true) tale that I will post here.

Speedweek_1986.jpg
Originally uploaded by aadm.

I’ve (finally) subscribed to flickr, so now I’m a ‘pro’ user. Following the same ligthroom workflow that I’m describing in this blog, I have uploaded a few pictures taken in the last few months.

This shot is from the recent Ducati Speedweek, a racing event which was held in Hungary at the end of July.

I joined a group of friends from the Multistrada forum and raced in the class B (two-cylinder engines, 2 valves per cylinder; in other words all the bikes with the usual air-cooled desmodue engine such as Supersport 900 and 1000, Monster 1000, Monster S2R, plus anything fitted with this engine, i.e. the brand new Bimota Delirio).