Favorite Cycling Pictures...

After 17 years of cycling, I have tried to train myself to concentrate more on the journey and less on the destination. The rides I do are not races, but it's sometimes hard for me to quell my competitive nature and relax. Not that being competitive in this case would do me any good; I'm faster than some but slower than many.

Occasionally when I'm riding along I'll see a cool scene and think, "That would be a pretty good picture." It might be a guy riding along in a Popeye t-shirt (hubby and I have an inside joke about Popeye) or it might be the mist floating over a meadow in the cool of the early morning. Or a swamp. I have a thing for swamps.

But it's hard for me to make myself stop and actually take the picture. Especially now that I ride a tandem with my sister. First of all, starting and stopping that thing isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. Sort of like stopping off at a convenience store in an 18-wheeler. Secondly, I feel somewhat GUILTY. Because I'm the captain, therefore controlling the gears, the brakes, and the steering, and if I stop.........well, she has to stop too. And she may not want to stop. On some days if I stop I'm afraid she might not get back on. If SHE were the captain, I could sit in the back and just snap pictures to my heart's content. But so far I haven't been able to talk her into that.


Therefore I am proud of myself when I do take the time to stop my bicycle, take off my gloves, take off my sunglasses, dig around in my bag for my camera, and take a picture. I try to ignore the fact that while I am stopped, many people zoom past me, and they'll be the first ones to get to the shower, the food, and possibly the beer.

This picture begged to be taken, and I stopped although we had just left a rest stop not long before. It's a prison cemetery in South Georgia, and on the crosses are only numbers, not names. Prison officials were afraid that the families of victims might desecrate the graves of the prisoners interred there, so they designated them by number only. I found that very moving.


This is one of my favorite pictures, one that also begged to be taken, but for a completely different reason. I had no choice but to stop and snap a photo of this sign in a pasture we rode by on one weekend ride. Whoever put it up obviously put a great deal of time and money into it. I laugh every time I see it.