Recent Sights

April 27, 2019

Some photos from recent adventures . . . minor comments attached.

This rail bridge outside of Trani is a ‘surprise’ when you see it (crossing a bridge nearer to the water), but the image is quite satisfying.   I took this photo while speeding across the bridge at 30kph (release phone, switch to photo mode, turn phone, snap . . . don’t drop phone and don’t get hit by car, now put phone back.   You have 8-10 seconds.  Go!).

When I went to the Grand Canyon in 2017 and tried to take photos, it really didn’t work well because you can’t capture the immensity with a camera.   Many of these vistas suffer the same setback.  I am not a great photographer, the iPhone is a limited platform and the vistas are spectacular. (And I was fighting a headwind on the bike at about 25kph)

I stopped for a phone call in Giovinazzo and this was the backdrop, so I snapped a photo.

To repeat, I am not a great photographer, but these vistas are awesome (and not in the modern abuse of the word, they make you appreciate the merger between our ability to see and our ability to feel things.  Awesome!)

This week the Globe and Mail published an article covering Marie Inkster from Lundin and she made the point (which I wish more would consider) that nothing we do or have today happens without mining.   See that mine?   It’s really, really close to those vineyards and the poppy field (photos above).  It’s really just a rock quarry and I didn’t stop for close ups (I rode right past the cavernous hole in the ground), but the blocks coming out of that mine are the size of small cars up to small busses (think 5-8 feet thick and 5-20′ long/wide).   They are huge and it looks like they have been doing this for a long time.   Take a close look again at the beautiful buildings in prior photos.  Same stones.    All the beautiful stone, metals and sand has been dug from areas just like this for millennia.   It’s all about the behaviour of the miners.

And finally, thank you to Klara (Brigitte) who sent a photo from my day sailing on Antea, the 65 foot sloop I was on last weekend.   Awesome boat and people.   Next, convincing Bernhard (right side of photo) to crew for me when I cross the Atlantic.   He is an orthopaedic surgeon, so we would have the medical stuff covered, and he has crossed the ocean a couple of times already.  He may be bored on Home Free as he is used to doing those crossings on a sailboat.