RGS0065

RGS0065
Originally uploaded by RonGreer.Com.

My, then, fiancé, now wife, Anke, in front of our apartment in Dresden; 1994. That's our Trabby there. I bought that in 1992 for 200dm, or about $110. Ran great, took me/us to Paris twice and to Kassel several dozen times.
Photo: Dresden, Germany
Camera: Nikon F3

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Back from a week long road trip to the beautiful city of Los Angeles. L.A. takes a lot of flak but it's really quite an amazing city. Sure there's a lot of traffic but it is the 2nd largest city in the USA; what do you expect! I avoided most of that traffic by taking my bike with me and doing all my L.A. journeys pedaling. Amazingly, for a city that is quite flat, and has perfect weather, there are almost NO bicycles on the road! In my four days in L.A. I didn't see more than 100 bikes. I see that many on my daily 14 mile commute here in Seattle!

I had pretty good luck with photos but I really thought I would find more things of interests: more old signage, more old buildings, more weird stuff in general. Of course in 4 days it is difficult to see much of a city as large as L.A.!

I'm just finishing up a 4 night stay in Los Angeles where I have been riding all over central L.A., about 30 miles per day, and have been shooting only color. I have my Mamiya 6 along, and used it quite a bit on the drive down, but for around L.A., on a bike, I packed very light; just took my D200, and a 24-85 and 12-24 zooms. I focused on color for the most part, and also architectural details. It's been great but it has also taken a lot of looking (and pedaling) to find what I got. I passed up on many images because I didn't feel comfortable bringing my camera out.

Riding in L.A. hasn't been that tough although one must have pretty good nerves as people aren't use to bicycles. The worse part is having a parked car door open just as you pass by. This seemed to happened to me about once per mile, and of course at the same time some big jeep-car passes me within inches on the left. The big cracks and pot holes were also a problem. Yeah, one needs to be comfortable with city bike riding but still very doable and not much slower than a car. I've ridden bikes in many big cities: London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, S.F, and of course Seattle (doesn't really count though as there are so many bike riders here the cars pretty much accept us) and L.A. is certainly easier than London or Paris, not as nice as Berlin (also a big bike city).