I rode my bike today. I took my cyclocross bike out to Cane Ridge park where SORBA is constructing a new trail. It’s nice. The ride isn’t important though, just that I rode. I tend to compose these posts while I ride, so the lack of riding has meant several weeks with no writing.
Five weeks to be exact. You see, five weeks ago Allison and I welcomed our baby girl into the world and since then my focus has understandably shifted away from cycling and similar pursuits. We’ve spent as much time as possible watching her grow (sometimes visibly it seems) sleep, eat. She just learned to smile.
Every time I walk into the garage and see my row of bikes hanging up I get anxious to ride, but partly out of a sense of duty, not desire. I did ride today though, and it was great. A few miles of back roads, a nice little singletrack loop, and a few miles back home.
Near the end of the trail loop I stopped for a moment and took a picture with my cell phone camera. The picture came out grainy and lacking focus, partly because the tiny lens didn’t let in enough light to keep the image sharp. Some cameras have a setting called an F-Stop and the smaller the F-Stop number, the more light the lens lets in, like the iris in your eye. F1.8, lots of light. F5.6, not as much light. Here’s the thing though, when you open a camera’s aperture all the way it becomes impossible to focus on everything at the same time. Instead of having everything in sharp focus, the depth of field narrows dramatically and you have to choose what to look at in full detail. Everything else kind of fades into the background. Becomes a little less important.
Soon enough I may decide to wind down the aperture a bit (higher f-stop, remember), widen my depth of field, and focus on what’s in the background. For now, though, I’m happy to be focusing on what’s right in front of me.