Author Archive: Jake Breinholt

Write a ‘Good’ Essay and Win This Bike

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Trixie on Howard St. Circa 2012

The alternate title to this post could be “Please Help Me Feel Okay About Parting Ways With an Old Friend.” Even looking at the photo above makes me feel all kinds of ways about this bike. She was an integral part of my life for the better part of a decade. The bike originally belonged to one of my best friends (yes, an actual human) who left her in my care prior to decamping to Italy for work, shortly after the onset of the great recession. We met as colleagues in the early aughts and quickly learned that we enjoyed many of the same hobbies, including cycling. When the bottom fell out of the economy he shipped over seas to work and I was charged with the custody of ‘Trixie’ (the fixie), an SE Draft that he had purchased on a whim from one of those bike shops on Grand St. that has been around since before they started construction on Sty-town.Continue reading→

New Rig

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Author’s Newish R5 MkII with EF Mount Adapter and 50mm f/1.2L

I love SLR cameras. I was a slow convert when film gave way to digital. Similarly, when mirrorless cameras became the standard, I resisted for several years. Earlier this year, I finally pulled the trigger on an R5. There were a series of preceding events that catalyzed the shift. First, the dial that controls shutter speed on my 5d Mk IV started glitching. My guess is that too many instances of shooting in heavyish rain caused the contacts to oxidize or something. At any rate, I would have to scroll it 5 or 6 clicks to adjust 1 or 2 positions. Not ideal. Around the the same time, my knock around rig just generally shat the bed. If I had it’s power switched on and popped the battery in and out, it would work. But… not something I really had time to mess with.Continue reading→

Illing When We Should Be Chilling

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Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s I played some early-gen video games from time to time. In that era’s version of video games, the objective was usually to steer a pixelated object through various ‘levels’ of other pixelated nonsense. A frog through traffic, an Italian plumber through mushroom and lava filled dreamscapes; those were the scenarios. As you, the player, piloted your little pixelated cartoon through each ‘level’, the degree of difficulty would increase. Life can be kind of like a 90’s video game at times.Continue reading→