Lunch Before Dawn: Feeding Mosquitos at Griffith Observatory
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Three reasons why I get up at what vessel-agent/poet HectorOchoa used to call "oh-dark-30": A) Blue mountain bike. B) Twisty hill-climb to Griffith Park Observatory. C) 10 pounds of ugly fat.
New reason not to add A, B and C: Mosquitos lurking near (B). Hungry, tiny monsters that have grown accustomed to the taste of construction-worker flesh.
At least they're the reason not to climb Vermont Ave. so hard that you stand panting on a hillside long enough in sight of the observatory to shoot a Quicktime VR and be eaten alive by a vicious cloud of the little f*$#ers ...
Every couple weeks since moving to this side of town, I've done the pre-dawn Griffith hill climb.
I can't cram a tougher workout into my 45-minute morning exercise window. Sunrise near the top is worth every spin of my grit-worn granny gears (yeah, I know, if I were a real he-man Silver Lake hipster, I'd be pumping a fixie).
And sweet, early breeze through the chaparral and sage washes off the worst of the sweat.
So I set out this morning to shoot the view at the top, trap the moment, pickle the ride in pixels to share a small serving of L.A. nirvana.
I hop off at the top, panting hard, and park my wheels just so, then step out on the hill and begin snapping. I manage to make most of the Quicktime VR at the right when I notice the first little nip. I brush it off.
As I finish shooting the QTVR (all 17 painstaking shots of it) they really start in, biting all over as I tried to hold the camera steady in low light.
I swear I could hear a minuscule choir whining, f-f-f-r-r-r-e-e-s-s-s-s-h m-e-e-e-e-e-a-t-!!! . But I figured if I shot fast enough and didn't even take time to adjust the exposure between the blazing sunrise and the darker hill behind me, they wouldn't get too much of me.
Man, I figured wrong. I'm scratching myself all over as i write this.
The stretch image below has notes on the experience. I wonder if there's a bug spray you can mount on your bottle cage ...
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Posted by: Mack_Reed on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 - 04:22 PM
