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)