I have a new bike. I wasn’t going to buy anything as expensive, but it just felt so right. The only reason I needed a new bike anyway was because the old bike is too big, I mean the frame. I’ve had the old bike something like 10 years and I’ve always thought it was too big… it just hurts to do any long trips (long being, anything over 10 km). But this new bike, it’s the perfect size and surprisingly, it’s not a mountainbike. I came to a conclusion that as much as I like to brag about cycling bad trails in the forest, in all honesty I only do it so little that if I have to give it up, it’s not a major loss. The new bike is a hybrid which means it has a front shock (which can be locked) but bigger, narrower and smoother tires than my old bike, so it rolls really nicely on a proper road but is a little bit more shaky on rough gravel.
With this new cycling experience, I did a 30 km trip yesterday after work. As the water level in Ljusnan is so low, I wanted to check out a spot I’ve visited earlier in the summer but it turned out that the water is actually too low now, there are almost no pools left in the shoreline which I could use for compositions. Now it’s just a big rock field but it has some benefits. I have a new habit this summer to pick up a small rock every time I visit Ljusnan, so I keep an eye out for those smooth round rocks. This time I found a lot of oval pebbles and after a while, my pocket was heavy with them… I brought home as many rocks as pictures. That works, too.