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When the destination for my ride requires me to be on a tight schedule the Interstate Highway System is my only choice. While I prefer to use the older US Highway system to travel across the country, the pace is different and I don’t mind slowing down as I pass through small towns, I sometimes need to cover a lot of distance in a day.
I often hear from people that the Interstate Highways are boring roads but I don’t always find them that boring. For one thing these highways often pass through beautiful country and since the right of way is so wide there are sections where the only sign of man’s hand is the highway itself.
This is a photo of one such stretch of interstate. I don’t recall where I was when I took this photo but I do remember vividly how quickly the rain moved in my direction! I saw this storm on the horizon and pulled to the side of the road to put on my rain gear. Before donning my rain gear I grabbed my camera from my saddlebag and took a few shots of the approaching rain storm. I love seeing the rain falling as a storm moves in the distance and the way the rain makes patterns uniting the clouds and the earth. In a matter of minutes the storm was on top of me and I stashed my camera back in the saddlebag.
I grabbed my rain gear and was just getting it unrolled when the wind and rain were upon me; the wind was blowing full force and the rain drops were as big as grapes. I was standing there in the middle of nowhere trying to put on my rain jacket as the wind was doing it’s best to tun it into a sail! I had only managed to get one arm in the jacket when the storm got to me. As I stood there in the pouring rain, battling the wind and trying to get the rain pants and jacket fastened I was drenched with rain. Once I finished I was almost as wet as I would have been had I simply left the rain gear in the saddlebag.
I climbed back on the bike and headed into the storm fully expecting to ride the rest of the afternoon in rain but less that five miles down the road the storm was gone and the sky was clear again. I was still wet and cold but I had another great experience to remember and savor for years to come. These types of things are among the reasons I love motorcycling and exploring America by motorcycle; if I had been in a car that afternoon I wouldn’t have tasted and felt the the forces of nature that form our world.
As for the composition, once again the highway leads the viewer’s eye into the scene, dominates the foreground and reinforces the rule of thirds as it moves into the frame. The colors and textures of the clouds add interest to the upper part of the image while the horizon gives a sense of depth. I used Topaz Adjust on this image which accounts for the enhanced contrast of the road surface and the saturation of the colors.