Saturday, August 16, 2008

Where's Liz?

I apologize. I'm way behind on updating this blog. There's been so much going on and I've been so busy riding (among other things) that I've neglected it.

But I'm grounded this weekend and hope to start catching up.

It's been a busy riding season. After starting the season off by meeting hundreds of fellow bikers at the Spring Bling, I have:

1) Been to Elephant Lake three times with some old and new riding buddies
2) Discovered really cool roads in and north of Orangeville
3) Been introduced to Herald Road by Equus, a new intrepid riding buddy who's teaching me a lot of good stuff
4) Finally ridden the Forks of the Credit (three times now, the last time in the rain)
5) Been on several rides with my chapter of the Southern Cruisers (despite a month's worth of conflicting events and a weather system that seemed fated to rain on our ride every Wednesday), and enjoyed the hospitality of some of our members who were kind enough to host a barbecue for us all.
6) Been to half a dozen bike nights in both the north and southern parts of town
7) Helped host a number of bike nights at the Shopsy's downtown on Front Street with the Chic Riders
8) Had Baby washed by comely women in short kilts who did a marvelous job of protecting their assets while doing so to raise money for the Ride for Sight
9) Been on a ride to Collingwood with some really nice fellas from GTAMotorcycle.com
10) Been to a Yamaha demo day, a Harley Davidson demo day (blogged that -- see Buell, Schmuel below) and a BMW Ladies Motorrad Day
11) Visited The Gut, an unfortunately named but beautiful waterfall that is one of Ontario's best-kept secrets

I've also:

12) Completed Level 1 of the FAST course at Shannonville race track
13) Participated in Vicki Gray's Motoress track day and saw Nina Wee perform poetry in motion there doing stunts on her fidy
14) Raised money for charity by getting sponsors for my participation in the Women Ride Out Against Rape ride and
15) Been named Street Team Leader for the GTA section of the Ontario chapter of the Chic Riders


And I've survived being hit by an idiot in a Pathfinder. The damage to Baby was relatively easy (albeit expensive) to fix.


The external bruising took a month to heal and internal contusions are still tender and can be felt as palpable lumps six weeks later. I took photos of the healing process and am including one small sample (see my hip, below). The attending in the ER said I must have great bones and was lucky my pelvis didn't crack. My hip armor didn't hurt, either. But haven't decided yet if I'm going to share the rest of the photos. Some of the most serious injury occurred on parts of my body I don't ordinarily share pictures of with strangers. But from the sample provided, you can imagine the rest.






I'm still not fully recovered. I'm still getting acupuncture and Shiatsu massage therapy for my neck and shoulder, which suffered soft tissue damage, although I'm mostly functional.

This was the first time in almost 20 years of riding that I've been hit by a car and I have lots to write about both the physical and psychological impact of that.

All of the links in the post above are to Facebook photo albums where I uploaded pictures of all those events.

Which brings me to a topic that cross-pollinates with my Media Gleaner blog, which has also been neglected for some time now.

I've chronicled almost all those events with photographs on Facebook instead of here. Not because Facebook is a better site for blogging, because it isn't. As part of the booming growth of social networking on the Web, it *IS*, however, an excellent way of sharing photos and quick information updates with people you're already connected to in some way.

Facebook has become the largest photo-sharing site in Canada, and possibly the world. Which is ironic, because the photo resolution on Facebook sucks. Unlike here on Blogger, where you can click through to a full-resolution version of a photograph, Facebook allows you to load only small versions of your photos and the resolution is pathetic.

BUT ... with only a few clicks, you can load up to 60 photographs at a time and walk away until it says it's done. Which is usually less than five minutes later.

Here on Blogger, you have to load one photograph at a time, wait for it to tell you it's ready to upload that one photo (which takes forever), click DONE when it tells you it's finished, and repeat that process for every photo. It takes about 45 seconds per photo. To upload 60 photos would take about 45 minutes, if you're lucky, instead of the (approximately) five minutes it takes on Facebook.

It's a painful, laborious process and way overdue for an updated interface that makes posting photographs simpler and faster.

Hello, Google. Anybody listening?

More on the rest coming. Promise.