Little Buddy

"The best camera is the one you have on you." - Photographer Dave.

The big problem with having the pocketcam die on me, I realize, is that the number of days on which my bike bag is light enough for me to add the Nikon to its load is relatively small. Especially during a summer as rainy as this one. Raingear isn't light.

Nor are locks. Tools. Hand pump. Laptop. Change of socks. Small stash of underwear, toothbrush, and condoms (hey, I'm a modern girl; it's best to be prepared). Contact lens solution and case. Little tin of various painkillers and other needful meds. Little tin of Cinnamon-flavored Altoids. Lip balm.

The pocketcam was obviously not the finest camera in terms of lens quality, but I find myself really missing it.

Because without it, I miss a lot of other things. I miss taking pics of random street flowers. I miss taking blurry barroom shots that give you that magical sense of movement and energy. I miss being able to show you what I see from the bike. I looked down through the bridge structure today and thought, "This is weird. That's water down there. Those are waves. That is a tugboat. I'm riding over a tugboat."

I miss giving you those small doses of my reality that make a blog worth reading. At least I imagine they do.

I look at other people's blogs, ones with interiors photographed in beautiful light, ones with evocative pics of something as simple as brightly colored yarn.

And I think, well....But my interiors never look like magazine spreads.

There's too much dust, for one. I'm not much of a vacuumer.

And for another, I'm a wee bit protective of my private space. I mean, if I want to let the dust-bunnies accumulate and fail to unpack my books for another month, I feel like that's my business.

What it means, though, is that unless I want to subject you to months of Kitwich pictures, I need to start shopping around for a new pocketcam, or perhaps a less-expensive higher-quality used replacement.

Can't really afford it, but I begin to think I can't afford not to, either.