illustration friday- broken

like my internet
5 days without it
argh
and from thursday night too.
I was thinking of trying to draw something fresh but couldn't find out what the topic was.
anyhow here's my late again illustration friday entry



illustration friday

smiley face

nothing really,
it's mine
or soon will be

oh orbea so fine oh bea


a little post for a change hey

on sleep and dreams

I awoke this morning feeling quite pleased to have remembered about the cheque for 27 million euros that we had received the other day, and stuck in a drawer or something.
ah I thought, it would be a good day to take the cheque to the bank and perhaps grab a bit of cash as well.
then I started wondering why I hadn't already done this, as I know we received the cheque some days ago, from the lotteria.
then I started wondering what a check from the lottery was doing coming to us anyway, when I haven't put an entry in in quite a while.



anyhow as you may suspect it was about this point when my concious brain started to kick in and groan and I realised that it could take quite a good search of the house to find the drawer in which we had stuck the unusual cheque
(even though we have no drawers, and the whole house measures less than 30 square metres)


what a disapointment to start my day
It was a very calm sort of dream, there was nothing to give it away, (except the 27 million euros not being part of my life), and I was quite looking foward to going to the bank, for once.



like all good dreams about winning the lottery that I have ever had it seemed perfectly reasonable there for quite a while and even after I woke up, I wasn't perfectly sure if the 27 million euros was in the picture or not.

but somehow I decided that it wasn't going to be the day to take a 27 million euro cheque to the bank and go buy my new pushbike.
you know I would still buy the same one.
maybe I would then buy more stuff, but I would still go and buy the 1000 euro bike that I have my heart set on.
(that figure includes the tip that I would give miguel at the bike shop)
I sure wouldn't buy one of those dread beasts that would represent freedom and dreams to many people


maybe most people wouldn't think of a mini there.
oh well another day without 27 million, I'm not complaining really, what good would it do.


I guess the sun will provide

illustration friday- remote

hello to any illustration friday viewers that come along.
this is my first illustration friday
I'm sort of sorry that it's a reworked photo, but it is a photo of a work on paper.
it somehow seemed more remote the chance of me actually getting round to doing my first illustration friday if I didn't start somehow.
and since I take so many more photos than I do drawings now..
I feel like apologising that it is a side of the theme word that is about the most obvious as well, but the first thing that occured to me was actually control
you know, like, remote control
I nearly did a 911 one
little blogging joke there
anyway, heres my first illustration friday illustration.
glad to come on board
(little watery doom pun)


I will try to keep it up now
illustration friday that is

duh!! (slaps head homer simpson style)

for deciding not to take the camera this morning on my ride.
I mean not like I normally take it with me. I go for doing some serious cycling, and the camera weighs some various hundreds of grams! as well as worrying for the security of the camera itself, one of my most prized possesions. the (low) risk of a crash is not really the thing, it's the rain type risks that normally weigh on my mind, or even to clarify further, the sweat factor. it's a pretty vulnerable device one would assume and it must get pretty steamy in my back pockets.
...but... I find that I ..,um, miss (I was searching for an english version of the spanish frase echar en falta and since it still hasn't come to me I can only offer a sort of translation, which would be to find that you are in need of something which is not there) the camera in almost every occasion that I don't have it with me.
and this morning was the most visually spectacular ride that I have experienced for a while.
here at home before taking off (late I should add, adding to my reputation, ((not for being late I should also add)) ) :)
I will come back to that cryptic comment later.
but to get back to the first strand, here at home, it was a spectacular morning. The clearest sky you can imagine


although only yesterday afternoon these were the clouds


but by the time I got to the meeting point, (on time, although I left at 9:18 for a 9:30 start, and it's 10 kms away where we meet), the sky had dissapeared, although not with rain clouds, but instead, because of thick fog.
that persisted for twenty or more kilometres. and is the first thing that I wanted desperately to be photographing. I love those white walls on every side, but I had to remove my glasses as they covered with a dense layer of tiny water droplets and I couldn't see too well. so I suppose the camera wouldn't have liked that so much.
but then later the fog dissapeared, as rapidly as the sky earlier and we were in one of those spectacular autumn mornings with crisp air and perfect visibility.
and perfect conditions for plenty of photos.
but as you know..
duh!!
and then to top it all off, I went and climbed this mountain for the first time, and the views are simply spectacular, and it's autumn, need I say more. and then I went down the other side and turned around and climbed it
truely super beautiful. and plenty hard in places to boot.
the other side has a series of switchbacks, 9% the last kilometre.
but not so hard as the morcuera from last week.
I was going to go down the other side of canencia and around the valley and climb the back of the morcuera but chickened out when I found I couldn't be sure how to get there and how far it would be. I knew they could be connected but I just couldn't remember very well the route.
and the back of el puerto de canencia seemed so spectacular going down that it was too tempting to ignore.
any how plenty of fun and hard work.
five and a half hours although 3 stops for punctures, one of them mine when there was no group to wait for me.
anyway thems the breaks, as it were.
To get back to the other thing, about being late but not being late and so on.
I don't have a reputation for being late, but instead quite the opposite.
I am always arriving at the time I said I would, which catches people completely off-guard.
It's not really the done thing here to arrive at the stated hour.
it's almost considered rude to be puntual, or that's not it exactly, but I am rambling.
the point being that the comment didn't refer to any reputation for being late, and in fact I was the second to arrive, finding manolo with his back wheel in his hand, changing the tube (first puncture stop, before we even started) and nobody else there yet.
The reputation remark above has the following explanation.
It's that I never take it easy out there on the bike. I just don't know how.
and I was late, so I had to gun it.
It's ten k according to my computer from here to the meeting point and I had only 12 minutes, although I also know that nobody will leave there right on the hour, but I like to be on time. (and I like to gun it right off the bat as well, not warming up properly or anything). anyway, going through the plaza de castilla I passed some old guy on his bike, like he was standing still. ( he was almost standing still, having waited for the traffic lights, not like me.) I was on the big chainring and really powering so as to go straight on to the highway with the cars as it is the shortest route but you got to go hard to feel safe.
anyhow as I had never seen the guy before you can imagine my surprise ten minutes later (we were still there, still waiting for monolo to finish putting his bike back together) when he arrived at the meeting point and was warmly greeted by all and sundry.
anyhow he then saw me and told the others how I had zoomed past with 55 by 11, although I actually have 53 X 12, and how I had headed for the tunnel.
I like that they are starting to show a bit of respect for my irreverent manner.

anyhow although I didn't have the camera with me on the ride, I do have a couple of thousand new photos since we last spoke, 48 hours ago or so.
for example


my little chiquitin
he's so cute ain't he
even when he's completely sick of being photographed


or thinks he is being hard done by


and his friend the lovely sheila


I know the doggy photos normally go over in eni's blog
but I couldn't resist showing a few here as well.
after all he had some photo's of grass last time, (come to think of it grass is one of his interests), but the grass photo's seem to belong here.


anyhow, thats enough for now, well, just to mention that one of my oldest friends, Dr. Mandy, sent me the blog of her little brother, now living in Lithuania.
check it out and I'll speak to you all again soon, whoever is there reading.

a neat little paragraph

to sum up some of our prospects
and to change the subject a little
from the good folks at www.fromthewilderness.com
which I check every day,
as well as reading the clusterfuck nation blog or really the comments. he gets 3 or 4 hundred comments every week
incredible
anyway the stuff
David Roberts, Gristmill

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/10/18/16151/159

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

In the midst of a long post on Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer's coal-to-liquid-fuel plans, Oil Drummer Stuart Staniford provides a handy one-paragraph-long roundup of evidence on global warming. The next time someone you know asks about it, just cut and paste this paragraph and send it to them. Warming cliff notes!

[W]e are reaching the point where we can see that we are starting to make massive, probably irreversible, changes to our climate. The glaciers are in full retreat almost everywhere, the Arctic is melting (with total melting of the summer sea ice possible, though not certain, as early as 2020), the permafrost is melting, and releasing large amounts of methane, which is a very powerful global warming gas, while in the last thirty years, droughts have doubled due to warming, hurricanes are much more intense all over the globe, and are showing up in places they never did before in recorded history. Scientists have been projecting changes in ocean circulation, and lo-and-behold, they are starting to show up, including changes to the North Atlantic Circulation, although major change here was previously thought unlikely this century. There is some possibility of changes in deepwater circulation destabilizing methane hydrates in the ocean, particularly in South East Asian deeps. Oh, and the Greenland ice sheet is now melting much faster than climatologists expected, and the West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse, though again, this was previously thought unlikely. Also paleoclimatological studies have made it clear that in the past the climate abruptly flipped between modes, sometimes with dramatic change in as little as three years. And we are making rapid changes in carbon dioxide, known to be critically important in regulating the temperature of this sensitive climatic system for a century now.

As he says, "maybe there's some scientific doubt still on any individual piece of the picture, but the gestalt is starting to look extremely alarming." Yes.

I wonder when we'll catch on
to finish up an image from my archive, sort of a dark planet thingy



somehow seems sort of appropriate
more later

the rain has returned

although it's not raining now, but it did rain on me yesterday when I was getting in some kms.
not that I mind, it's a bit of a pain having to clean the bike but rain is good.
apparently it rains too much in too many places now but it's not raining too much here
just raining sometimes is good


like it's been doing, it seems to be a bit of a change
and according to this it will be around for a few more days yet.



It's not really raining much volume though
I'm sure it hasn't made a hell of a lot of difference to the dams yet
eni takes a while to get going on days like this


but then gets a load on


and on


and he's not alone


go quequita


but, as I tell eni, all good things must come to a close,



walks and talks,
dog's and blogs'


so I better do some studying,
hasta luego

ben sick painting

sounds a bit like ben laden's brother,
¿doesn't it?


I'm a bit sick of not painting


It's just me and eni, eni and I


I don't know what you're laughing about
this is serious mum


well, ok, not that serious,
not serioussix


but I got to get something else happening
better get on and study


so I'll see you all later
all none of you
since I cut off the spambots I haven't had any comments
I spose to get comments you gotta go and comment on others

some day
whatever this is doing here?

DYC

for anybody who didn't believe me

 
 

hodgepodge

as the title suggests, a bit of a hodge podge of images today
I have been meaning to make some posts with a bit of social commentary,
but this is not one.
still maybe some interest there for those in other lands
as you can see the differences between the consumer society here and on the other side of the globe are disapearing fast. same brands are dominating the scene here as have already dominated elsewhere, and of course thats the idea of capitalism and globalism. I mean take these two..


might seem pretty harmless to see johnny and ballantines, after all scotch comes from scotland after all. It's not like there are only these two, on the market but the others that you see advertised, J&B, passport, etc are the same ones that you would see advertised any time you walk down any street in the western world.
seems like a shame to me.

spain has it's own brands of nearly everything you can think of, (in some cases of course it is the brand, think chupa chups, for example.)
the main contender for the whisky market is the unfortunately named DYC, (pronounced dick, with no sense of the obvious), which is the source of great amusement among english speaking drinkers.
and I won't even start on Mc Burger King, Marlboro, etc.
Anyhow, I didn't really take that photo with that commentary in mind. I took it as eni had spooked the pidgeons from there feeding frenzy on the ground and they were there waiting paciently for our departure.
I missed a great photo opportunity recently when eni did his rush the birdies routine and one unfortunate pidgeon was doing a bit of heavy grooming and had his (or her) head so far under his (or her) wing that he (or she) didn't see eni coming, flat out. Eni of course assumed that this pidgeon would do as the previous two million pidgeons had done when faced with the eni onslaught and kept up full pace.
what a collision.
eni is just the right hight for the contact to be made at his chest level and the poor bird was thrown 5 metres by the impact.
they were both stunned.
and I was not taking photos, had the camera, just wasn't taking photos at the time


anyhow we moved on
hey check out this graffiti


I know it's not original, as I have seen the image before, but someone went to a lot of trouble to paint it there.


well I better think about getting my little doggy friend down to the street as it's no longer last night


but indeed a new day and there are things to do, and, for eni, poos to meet.
and they won't be winny
until soon

that time of the year

again.




must be why it was so fricking cold on the mountain.
I was even cold climbing, and that means it was bloody cold, believe you me.
we won't talk about descending, with a maximum of 71 km/hr while changing gloves.
lucky I put my jacket on before turning around, or..
obviously I put my jacket on before turning around, but I didn't think to change gloves..

these photos however are not from the ride up the mountain, because, to put it simply I didn't have the camera with me, much to my disapointment when I saw how spectacular were the weather conditions yesterday, with cloud cover from about halfway up. (a lot like the foto in the previous post, which is not mine, as I didn't point out yesterday, but comes from the altimetrias.com site)

the photos in this post are mine, from a walk in el pardo this afternoon, and indeed I have some fotos from when I climbed la morcuera last time, the day that la vuelta a españa passed by there. I'll post some of them soon.


but to stay on track. This afternoon eni and I went, with several of our park regulars to the kings stomping grounds, apparently, el pardo as I mentioned before.
It was looking good.


the kids with four legs had a fine old time

lua



lucca



lua and lucca



tina



and of course everybody's favourite, or at least mine
eni
seen here shamelessly begging


lua and lucca were big on water action


while tina went halfway and eni was happier in the clover





now I must go to bed
tired
tired

tired

230 kms this weekend

including what a brilliant site (that has detailed descriptions of what seems like all of the climbs in france and spain), calls one of the hardest climbs in the central mountain ranges.
la morcuera



if you go to that page www.altimetrias.com and put morcuera in the search box and then choose morcuera por miraflores, you can see the graphics and all (description in spanish with machine translation to english using the link at the top)

no time, or, timeless?

another cryptic post..
da da da duh


 
my solar course has arrived
and I've got to clean my bike (having rained yesterday when I was out on it, it's covered in fine grit, about 500) and inside my computer (having finally bought oil for my compressor)
and go to the correos (post office) and mail off my tax return, and visit a closing down sale that my mate told me about and get a bigger card (memory) for the camera so I can take 2000 photos a day instead of 1, (thousand that is)
and all before lourdes gets home,
stress
nahh
not me
dinkum fair as my canadian mate used to say

you can't miss the torre picasso from my window

as in this from the 23 of feb this year, bonito ¿no?

 
best snow day this year, best in ten years according to the locals.

or this one from right now as it starts to rain again

light makes right

or destroys the night

 
the so called torre picasso, and it's beacon effect.
this is the same building that I can see from my window, but this shot is from the madman's keep, to translate literally.
It's part of the big park that I have mentioned once or twice, say it's very nice and then you ruuun, hey little sister don't you do what your big sister done..
pues later dude

had to go see her

I mean, literally, I had to go and pick up my wheel
I couldn't help it that she was there
enticing me from the street
teasing me with her carbon fibre forks and seatstays
funny how the newest high tech stuff is made out of the same stuff as us, carbon that is.
like the cookie monster jersey too


turns out that it wasn't the model I was showing you from the orbea site, as I said it's a leftover from last year, model asphalt criterium, (or maybe thats not the name of the model, I think it's a replica 3) that doesn't seem to be on the orbea website now, so maybe they have changed models
here's a test of pretty close to the same bike from some american site.(I googled)
this looks close to the mark but with different wheels and carbon seat stays as an option.


but the rest more or less like I said


ultegra 10 speed
that's a fancy way of saying twenty speed


change those cranks for 175 mm ones


and fly
only 9.5 kgs too
if I was willing to spend 4-5 times more I get it down to 7.5 kgs
but I would rather eat less

¿ down to earth ?

perhaps it would be more appropriate


a photo of a tempestuous sky
after all it's a topsy-turvy world we live in
especially from inside this head.
but instead a nice high clouds shot from the bicycle seat on Sunday.

I'm trying at this moment to decide whether to join the downtrodden masses and get a job.
doesn't sound too much like a problem, does it. I don't really have the choice in the long term, (not that I actually believe there will be the sort of long term where my choice matters).
I think it's easy to see we can't keep doing what we've been doing.
but I for one am still doing it (what I've been doing not what we've been doing)
anyhow this post is not about that really either, because the timetable of the next few years is pretty debatable, and although it could all collapse tomorrow, it could also keep on like this for a decade.
It's been months since I was able to paint or draw for any extended period anyway. I have started numerous works but finished very few indeed since my exhibition.
I mean the damn exhibition was just a chance to show my new Spanish friends what I do, but I haven't been able to cope with the fact that it was such a success but still made it obvious that I would have to do something else for a living.
I've been living off the money I saved by being in the cold room at Paul's every day for a year and a bit. But although Lourdes works and all, the money is more than half gone and we have quite a lot of fights over any spending that I want to do.
and the trouble is that I have started to want to do quite a bit.
I mean we live pretty damn frugally, I would challenge most people to do as well.
but cycling is expensive. The maintenance to keep an old bike in good shape is horrendous and the truth is, as mentioned in another post I really need to get a new one.
this one for example.


although this is the new model, the actual specimen I want to bring home is roughly the same but is last years model.
I would like to point out here that we are not talking about anything too extravagant here, aluminium frame with carbon rear end and forks with a mixture of ultegra and 105 components.
it's a 1200 euro bike, (about 2000 aussie dollars) but my bike shop has offered it to me for 950. Thats pretty hard to pass up.
especially when my frame is cracking up. (see previous post)



or some other one, I mean it's just got to be good enough for what I do, which is a lot for a pretender
and I want to do more next year too.


pretty nice hey, although mine will be orange, the basque colour. After all it's a basque bike.
so that's the problem I face this morning
the realisation that I can only be so frugal, when theres things I want to do that aren't walk the dog, (I like doing that still, and it's very well priced.)
and I am waiting for my distance course in solar energy to arrive. (after all it's already paid for)
but income from that is still months off
so here I am writing a CV to take to DIA and try get some income for discretional spending.
(well I'll get back to that now)

that is rain, or was anyway

it's stopped now, and couldn't say weather (sic) it'll start again


probably doesn't seem too amazing but each of these storms is very unexpected, as it just never rains any more.
madrid is in severe restrictions, and someday I'll have to write my post condemning the practises of the council as the worst wasters of water imaginable, even as they close off all the public taps where a cyclist can refill his water bottle.
this planet needs a good kick in the arse 

cycling goober again

me that is, or I to speak properly, or my sort of properly.
still that's subject for another blog.
for now I was going to talk about the glorious achievements of your host in the field of hammering myself senseless.


that's a big thumbs-up from my new good mate Juan Miguel.
a nicer man you couldn't hope to meet.
more about him along a bit
I have started to be able to put in pretty big efforts on the bike although it cost me a bit to get to this point, this time round.
And, like every time, even though I try to do it on the cheap, it's not.
Cheap that is.
especially now that my basic equipment is so old and so hammered to death that it's breaking up, quite literally


that's the latest part of the frame to start giving way
in the recent past I have broken the frame, where the chainstays meet, and thank dog I was able to actually, carefully, ride it home and after a few days of deliberation got it welded up by a welder bloke that I hunted down
3 euros (about five bucks)
I had to excuse myself when he approached my bike with the angle grinder
but it hasn't broken there again yet.
what did break next was the rim of my rear wheel
The roads here are in the sort of condition of brisbane roads, (or worse) and the bike is really taking a pounding
any how I digress
this is picture of me that a kid took while riding along beside me up the road that climbs through the park here. I was photographing him and he offered to take one of me.


this is the road that featured in the world championships and the last stage of the tour of spain la vuelta a españa
In the elite mens road race in the world championships they did this hill as part of a 21 km circuit and they did that circuit 13 times, for a total of 273 kms.
It is the same park that I visit at least once a day with eni, so he can get down, being the nearest big park.
even if it wasn't the nearest park I would walk a fair way to visit it, it's a beaut.


this was part of the circuit that I visited the sat afternoon, after the under twenty-threes and climbed the hill 18 times. (it's not very long, about 1500 metres, and climbs 65 metres, so about 4%. not much of a mountain.
but also I have climbed a real mountain here, the type of object so scarce in queensland. la morcuera
it climbs 750 metres or a bit more in 8 kilometres, and thats after you climb to the base of the climb, about 300 metres in another 8 kms.
and all 50 kms away from home.
twice I have done that one and with 39 X 21 as my low gear.
the second time was enough for me to put a new cluster, when I had to have the wheel rebuilt, as mentioned above.
I took advantage of the situation to change the cluster and chain and also the bottom bracket.
another 156 euros (about 260 dollars)
anyway I have my eye on a pretty young bike and I'll sure post photos if I can woo her.
back to todays shenanigans.



above the twin towers of madrid,(or one of them to be more precise).
they are on my way to the meeting point.
I was first to arrive as is pretty much customary.
but punctually arrived juan miguel, here on juanmi. (don't forget that the J in spanish is pronounced much as the australian H so it's more huanme)


there are plenty of nice bikes around that's for sure
check out this specialised.


I still got my old faithful 1984 olimpic model, 21 years old and covered in loads of scott's spraypainting.


I'm really waffleing on now so I'll go with a couple more photo's, like this one of the group, not very big as you can no doubt see.


we got in a good bit of caning doing about 110 kms today, and about 40 or so at very high, for me anyway, speed, of forty km/hr in a continual rotation of only four riders, so about 5 secs of rest every 35 secs, for an hour.
good stuff.
all good things must come to an end and thats juanmi heading towards his home at the point where we split up


and there was a couple of very happy creatures waiting for me at home when I arrived.


at which, I'm glad to say, I arrived with no more damage than a broken spoke in my new wheel (turns out the nipple had undone itself)

premios angel de pintura

I'm going now to hand deliver, (as I always do, ¿have you ever priced messenger services?) my entry in the premios angel de pintura, a painting prize.
well straight after I eat my two-day-old salad on toast that I just made.


looks pretty damn good, doesn't it?
I should stop doing this so I can get on with eating it
I'm trying to do both things at once, sorry keyboard
anyway it's a pretty rich prize,
first prize is 75 thousand euros and 25000 the second and only other prize.
thats about one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars the first and 40 thousand the second (australian dollars, and they are conversions off the top of my head) so not tooo shabby
As you know (those who know) I haven't been painting much for a few months so I'm going to put one from last year, the ten thousand eight hundred and twenty blue balls one.
It has been exhibited before but there is nothing in the rules of the compitition that say that it cannot have been. also they only specify a maximum size, not a minimum


this is the one
it's very small (20 X 27 cms) so there has to be an attentive judge
I mean, let me clarify.
I am not thinking they are going to give away so much money for a little painting, but as always I can hope to get in the exhibition and catalog
I have got into three out of the four competitions I have entered this time round in spain, so it has to be a possibility


a couple of details


and


watercolour on geso
2-3 months work
hope there is someone there who will apreciate it
anyhow

I got to go and shave and shower so I will leave this now
thanks for reading
I thought I would throw in my identity card foto as well
you would not have seen it


until next time,
I luv youse all

titanic optimism

if you can't tell what's going on in this image it's a foto taken in the window of a toy shop in calle bravo morillo (a big retail street not too far from my place). it's a model of the titanic, with the by-line, in multiple languages, live your adventure

I mean, is it just me, am I just mean spirited.
wasn't the titanic a big fuck up
not really the place to live one's adventure.

I suppose the movie's to blame

I've never seen it. 

I forgot about this yesterday

After Lourdes went back home, being pretty cold in the park with half the sun still covered up, Eni and I took off to walk a bit in our park.
la dehessa de la villa
I swear that when we were on a treed hillside, (it's a big park), we found this


I'm kicking myself that we didnt take some photos of it where it was in the park. It was just lying on the dead grass (there is a severe drought on) something like you see above


as you can see it has a picture of an anular eclipse or at least thats what it looks like to me


it would seem to be a perfume package/box, but not new either


and the side of the box


it would have to just go down as a bizarre coincidence
unless somebody can come up with a logical explanation of why an old perfume box that just happens to have a picture of an anular eclipse on it ends up in my forest park for me to find the morning of a rare anular eclipse that I just saw ten minutes earlier.
I have tried to come up with one but I am stumped.

Scott finally gets to see an eclipse of the sun

Well as the title says, I finally got to see an eclipse of the sun this morning. From the best (or one of the best) places on the planet to see it from as well.
Madrid was the only capital city in the path of the eclipse so what a lot of luck for me as well . The image you can see above this writing was taken with my little digital camera at the midpoint of the eclipse. I aimed the camera through a pair of eclipse glasses and it all worked out rather well.
To give you the idea without the eclipse glasses


It was like that to see as well.
If you didn't have the eclipse glasses you wouldn't be able to tell what was going on.
I mean you could tell there was something not right with the light and the temperature seemed to drop a lot, but if you were living in another age that was not the information age, apart from not reading this, you also would not be knowing that you were in the middle of an eclipse, and you would not have eclipse glasses either.
the only way you could tell was by noticing the shadows. the small gaps between leaves act as lots of pinhole cameras, casting lots of crude images of the sun on the ground


Eni was a bit freaked out
I think it was just that he doesn't like being stopped in the park when he can't work out why. - i.e. when it is not because of him.

Anyway it was an amazing experience although there was a bit of a sense of dissapointment that the totality wasn't. I must admit I suffered from it too. I had thought that the ring of sun that was left would have more like a twilight effect, when it was not easy , or in fact impossible to tell when the moon was completely in front of sun, and when it started to move off again.
Only by looking at it through the eclipse glasses.
Just after the point that the moon started it's long slow journey off the face of the sun, (it took an hour or so), I realised that the group of old men nearby in the park didn't have a pair of eclipse glasses between them and in fact had not seen the eclipse at all.

I offered them a go at my pair and reluctantly they took them and had a look.
I mean that they were reticent to take me up on my offer and I had to talk them into it. A genuine once in a lifetime experience and they were like, oh no, it doesn't matter.
I think they were all surprised how much they liked it when they each took a turn to have a gander. It was only a few minutes late so they were looking at something like this.

Still well worth it.
Even with the tradeoff of having to talk to the wild haired unshaven, small dog walking, gidi (foreigner) who was making the offer. I think.