Thursday was a beautiful day, with clear blue skies and warm weather. I suppose winter will come at some point, but this day showed little sign of its progress.

We got out in the afternoon and headed to the Poncey-Highlands playground, a fairly new playground located on the Freedom Park bike path at its intersection with North Ave. Its about as far as I can get my daughter to ride in a day, and a trip there makes a nice goal for her to put a couple of miles on.

A snack and water for her, and a book and a camera for me, and we were ready to go.

She had a good time playing at the playground, and I spent my time sitting on the bench, reading The Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally. Its a great read, where he talks about his equipment and methods for shooting a bunch of photos with speedlights, gels, and reflectors. I’m trying to learn better how to shoot a decent photo, to understand how the parts work together. When I wasn’t reading, I was chasing my daughter around on the playground with my Canon S95, trying to balance a fill flash against the direct light of the setting sun. Very fun.

On the ride back home, my daughter took a turn too fast and down she went, skinning her knee a bit. That added to the drama, but wasn’t a major crisis, fortunately.

All in all, a lovely afternoon on the bike.