Ramble on the Rillito

February 14, 2023

New camera day

The rehab report is good this morning. I'm walking like a normal person again and excited for a nice long ramble on the Loop trail along the Rillito River.

Even at a good half hour+ from camp, St. Phillips Plaza is one of my favorite jumping off points. It has direct access to the Loop, a fun outdoor market on the weekends and good places for lunch and dinner. We'll need calorie replacement after the ride and it is Valentines Day, after all.

Before getting started, we hang out on the steps at Union Public House while Barry fixes the first flat of the year, actually the first one on this bike since June.

The steps at the Union Public House, a fancy spot for a flat fix

I'm excited to try out my new camera, a little Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot with 30X Zoom. At Monument Camera I found a great basic neoprene pouch for $5 and attached it to a neck strap so I can grab it and take pictures on the fly.

I first used this strap as a sling for a cast a couple years ago. It has the tiny beads inside that swell up when wet and cool your neck. Useful item.

From the Public House we wind our way around the rear parking to the Loop trail entrance and start pedaling east up the north bank of the Rillito River. A little over a mile later we can see the new mural that Scott and Rachael Anderson saw last month while it was still being painted. Designed by Tucson muralists Jessica Gonzales and Rock Martinez, it looks finished, or nearly so. It's so bright and wonderful!

The lane dividers are still lined up in front of the mural. I wonder if there will be some kind of opening soon.

Such fun vibrant colors on all the desert creatures

On the far right of the mural, pink saguaros!

Later I looked around for updates on the project. The best information I can find is the Tucson Arts Foundation story from February last year - https://artsfoundtucson.org/artist-team-jessica-gonzales-and-rock-martinez-awarded-4000-square-foot-pima-county-mural-project/. Will have to keep digging for news on its completion, seems like a celebration is in order.

We'll catch a wider view of the mural on the way back, but first, we'll forge on up the Rillito for another 5 miles toward Pantano Wash, settling in and enjoying the colors of the desert. This is such an awesome place to ride a bike.

The art on the Alvernon Way underpass reminds me of a Daddy Long-Legs.

First time in my limited experience on the Loop seeing riders on horseback

The city reappears before us as we turn back west on the Rillito from Pantano Wash

Just before getting back to the mural, we stop to see this cool piece at the end of a bridge. I did not know Woodstock was written by Joni Mitchell.

Crossing to the south bank we get a wider look at the mural. Here are a couple views, on the left side and then right. Hopefully we'll get back here for more after I get to know this camera better.

You can see the snake better from back here

The wind picks up and the temperature cools as we pedal west past St. Phillips Plaza. By the time we turn around where the Rillito meets the Santa Cruz River, the wind is gusting at 25 mph. It's bracing but good to be back on the bike laying down some base miles.

Nature of Movement by Joshua Wiener, at Rillito Park

By the time we get back to the car we're just over 35 miles, averaging 12 mph- a little faster than the 11 pace I was at a couple weeks ago. I'll take it.

I've had some fun with the Lumix today, and some frustration. I like a lot of these pictures but haven't invested much time learning how to use it. Neither of us has been successful getting the camera to connect with my phone on Wifi or Bluetooth. Barry connected them with a USB cable so I was able to see and edit the camera images using Google Photos on the phone. Then I posted the photos here, disconnected the phone from the camera and ... Poof! The photos are gone from both of them, and apparently now exist only on Cycle Blaze. So file transfer is the main thing I need to figure out at the moment.

Also it turns out hanging my camera bag from a strap isn't great in the wind. When empty, it blows around so it's hard to put the camera back in the bag. Maybe I'll look for a shoulder harness I can rig up to keep it in place.

After all the loitering at Union Public House this morning we figured we should patronize them for dinner and were not disappointed. No waiting, great meal, and a big screen playing the Duke-Notre Dame basketball game. Pretty good Valentine's Day with my guy.

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Bill ShaneyfeltCheck your google i cloud for possible automatic downloading there. Sometimes these "smart" devices outsmart us. My electronics seem to do stuff I do not want and not do what I want. I can't even figure out how to send photos with my iphone I got the beginning of the year. I need to enroll in a semester of iphone basics.
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1 year ago

Today's ride: 35 miles (56 km)
Total: 279 miles (449 km)

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Rachael AndersonWhat a great day! I sure wish I was there instead of Portland. It’s cold here and is supposed to start raining in a couple of days. I’m glad I found a gym where I can workout.
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1 year ago

Keith AdamsI think you need to install an app on your phone before you can use the WiFi / Bluetooth connection feature from the camera. Once that's done, though, you can actually use your phone to control many of the camera's features including tripping the shutter.

Depending on the communication range that might enable, for example, roadside selfies as you ride past the camera.
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1 year ago

Keith AdamsOh yeah one other point: if Google is involved, and if you have the automatic backup feature enabled, it's possible you'll find copies of the photos on your Google Photos account.

That feature saved a summer's worth of photos for me when my home network storage device failed last fall. I had all but resigned myself to having only the photos I published to CycleBlaze when I found the entire collection on Google Photos.

My modus operandi had been to pull the card from the camera each day and use a card reader adapter to access them from my phone while I was writing each day's post. Unbeknownst to me, Google was busily backing the pictures up while it could see them, so I ended up not losing any pictures after all even though I had cleared the storage card earlier in the fall.

Perhaps you'll be as lucky?
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1 year ago

Janice BranhamI have the app installed and thought it connected to the camera for a fleeting moment but couildn't reproduce it. I like the card reader method, and a Google backup would be ideal. This config stuff is on the same list as a twisty wash on the trail that I always chicken out on and walk. Eventually I'll figure them both out. Thanks for all these leads.
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1 year ago