Highmoon's Ponderings

(Note: This information also appears as a page on Slow Bike Miami Beach.)

Over the years we both have owned a number of bikes, but these are the ones that we have right now, the ones we use to slow-bike our way around Miami Beach.

This is my bike, a Schwinn Legacy Cruiser from Target. I purposely decided to get a cheap cruiser bike in order to find out if I was going to like biking everywhere, and while I gauged how much biking I would be doing. This bike is cheap but awesome, quite sturdy (it can support me just fine, and as you can see, I’m no twig) and rides pretty smooth. While a cruiser suited for paved surfaces, it actually has a little bit of off-road capabilities, not enough to tread where mountain bikes zip by, but enough to handle the ocassional dirt/grass/rock-strewn patch found so ubiquitously in Miami’s streets and sidewalks. I’ll be looking to upgrade soon, but for now, this is a great bike to have.

This is Yvette’s bike, an Electra Amsterdam Classic 3 Yellow Tulip from City Bikes in Aventura, FL. Yvette had been riding around with her old mountain bike but what she really wanted was a Dutch-style city bike, like the ones we had seen in Holland and used in Belgium, so after extensive research, she found Electra Bikes, who produce a Dutch-style series of bikes aptly named Amsterdam meant to be city commuter bikes. This bike rides like a dream. It is made of steel so it is very sturdy, yet pretty light considering. It comes with a front-wheel generator headlight, and solid back rack, not to mention the skirt guard, something you just don’t find in American bikes. The only drawback it has is that it doesn’t do off-road, however light, that well. It’s understandable, considering what it is patterned after, but as I mentioned above, the streets and sidewalks of Miami (Beach or otherwise) are not necessarily bike-friendly, so it leads to careful maneuvering. Still, a small price to pay for an amazing bike.

We also still have a Mongoose mountain bike around for whenever we may want to do some off-roading at one of the local parks.

One of the advantages of living in Miami Beach (especially over the suburb of Kendall where I used to live) is that you get to see a lot of local wildlife, especially of the marine kind. Since I walk every week to go to Synagogue, I get to see animals other people pay good money to see at an aquarium right in their native habitat. I’ve been fortunate enough to see dolphins, manatees (once even a mom and her baby calf), tons of fishes, hundreds of jellyfish of many sizes and colors, and stingrays. The only problem is that, since I see these animals on days when I cannot use a camera, like Shabbat or Holy Days, I am left only with the memory of my encounter.

This morning, while biking to synagogue, as I was starting the climb up the intracoastal bridge, I happened to look over. The water was completely still, like a mirror between the islands, and that’s a perfect time to spot dolphins, as well as to check out the shallows since visibility is near perfect. I peeked over the railing and bingo, a spotted stingray!

This one was about three feet from wingtip to wingtip, not the largest I have seen (this past Saturday I saw one twice as big as this one) but certainly of a respectable size.

I love these fleeting encounters. Especially because not all the wildlife in the area is very glamorous.

Ugly turkey vultures…

I have decided to move all my cycling activity to its own blog, Slow Bike Miami Beach. 

I will continue to syndicate those posts to this site, but having it as a separate entity will also allow me to target local blogrolls and groups, providing a site that Miami readers can tune into without the extra content about games, podcasts, etc. that is very much a part of my general blog.

I have more such organizational news to share later, once things are in place.

Tonight my wife and I went out to the supermarket on our bikes. It is the first time she’s been on it since the accident and all went well. Awesome sauce for her, and brownie points to the folks at City Bikes in Aventura, FL, for fixing her bike like new.

Me heading out this morning at 6:30 am.

Last year, one of the users on the Fear the Boot forums posted some photos from Russian photographer Evgeniy Shaman. One of them in particular called my attention because I immediately saw in it a poster for Changeling: The Lost. A few clicks in Photoshop later, I had this:

I really like this photographer’s work. There are a lot of very evocative photos, both for Changeling (his work will now forever be tied to Changeling in my mind) and for other games/stories.

The poster still has the same effect it did back then: I look at it, and I really want to play Changeling.