neglected hobbies
Today was a fun filled day. I suppose what made it really fun was the variety of activities. I guess I have a wide variety of hobbies, and lately they’ve been somewhat neglected. Lately I’ve been pretty lazy, preferring to lie on my couch and watch stuff on Amazon Prime or lie in bed reading on my Kindle. (Stupid Amazon– making it too easy to be lazy.) So it was good to get back out and enjoy some of those neglected hobbies.
The day actually started a couple of weeks ago with this email. I forwarded it to a few friends, some of the people that I’ve ridden mountain bikes with before.
Before the demo day I went to a camera swap meet. The swap meet was just sort of a bonus, I had just randomly found about it the night before, and it happened to be close to the demo day. There was a wide variety of stuff, from vintage collectible stuff to pretty high end current equipment like full frame digital SLRs. I didn’t buy anything (I wasn’t expecting to), but it was fun to walk around and see all the stuff for sale. I’m actually kind of looking to buy a new SLR, but I recently looked at the number of shots I took with my current SLR and figured I should hold off a couple more years. I only took about twelve thousand pictures over four years, and since an SLR is typically rated to over 100,000 shutter actuations my camera still has a lot of life left.
At the demo day I told the Giant Rep that I wanted to try their cross country 29er. They set me up with a Giant Trance X 29er 0. I got to the demo day before everyone else so I was able to get some time on my own to test out the bike. It was a pretty sweet ride.
George ended up inviting a whole bunch of people to the demo day. I think in total we had ten people. With a group that large you tend to spend a lot of time sitting around regrouping. Here’s half the group waiting for the other half of the group. I was really glad that I got to spend some alone time with my demo bike beforehand.
I really liked the bike I demo’d. Originally I was told it was under $3k, which I thought was a really good deal, considering how well it rode, and considering the components it was spec’d with. I later found out that it was actually $4,250– which put it well out of my price range.
I’ve actually kind of been looking at getting a new mountain bike for a while. A few months ago I kind of decided that if I could hit the trails twice a month I could justify buying a nice mountain bike. I actually haven’t ridden that much though, so I guess I should hold off on buying one. My trusty old Bianchi still gets me through all the trails that I would ride.
I brought my trusty Bianchi thinking that after the demo day I would ride the trails on my own. Parking is expensive at Granite Bay and I wanted to get my money’s worth. That ended up not happening, but I guess I still got my money’s worth. At the beach at Granite Bay we saw kayaks and paddleboards for rent. I asked the shop owner if he could get us a discount since we had a pretty large group. He ended up letting us rent kayaks for $7 per person and paddleboards for $9 per person for two hours, which seemed like an awesome deal. So we ended up kayaking and paddleboarding across Folsom Lake.
It was pretty fun- It’s been a while since I’ve gone kayaking or paddleboarding. I used to own a kayak, which didn’t really get used, so I ended up returning it. I think if I ever get the itch to kayak I’ll go back and rent from this guy again.
So anyways, yea, it was a fun filled day. I think it was a good reminder too, to make use of the stuff that I already have. My camera is still decent and my mountain bike works fine for the trails that I ride, I should make better use of both of them before I consider upgrading.
Things I’m thankful for:
- Friends to share hobbies with
- Being able to afford toys like mountain bikes and cameras
