Part-time prevaricator
I hopped on my bike and went over 33km today—further than I meant to go, but the weather was lovely and I was feeling good. I wish I’d brought along a proper camera, but at least I had my phone[1]The best camera, as they say, is the one you have with you.
Read more: Canada Day ride
Footnotes
| ↑1 | The best camera, as they say, is the one you have with you |
|---|
I came around a corner on my bike and saw a doe and her fawn on the trail. They watched me as I fished my phone out of my pocket. By the time I was snapping photos, she had disappeared into the tall grass, and little Bambi here followed shortly after.
Taken at Brandon’s Riverbank Discovery Centre.
I went about 22km and took a bunch of photos.
The trees were all starting to flower. Even the lilacs had blossoms on them.
You can talk all you want about robins redbreast, but for me the truest sign of spring is when the yellow heads of dandelions[1]Or, as the French would have it, «pissenlits». appear.
I’m glad to see the Ukrainian flag is still hangin’ in there at the public gardens, too. I imagine that I’ll be photographing sunflowers there later this summer.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Or, as the French would have it, «pissenlits». |
|---|
Thursday morning I went for a ride and took my camera along. I went up the hill on 16A, and then raced back down it and noodled around town for a bit, mostly along the river (they’ve opened or re-opened a few pedestrian bridges, which I liked).
As I was processing the photos, I tried one of GNU IMP’s automatic features, and it was a little, uh, dramatic.
It was a fun 10km ride.
Today’s bike ride took me past the Community Gardens, where someone’s proudly flying a Ukrainian flag.
You’ve probably read a portal fantasy. It’s just a story where the characters are transported from our world to some other world, usually by magical means, often through a door of some kind. L. Frank Baum’sThe Wizard of Oz is a portal fantasy; so are Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I’m currently reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, which is a literal portal fantasy: travel to the secondary world is through actual doors, mostly painted by a character named Mirabel.
For well over 20 years I read Stephen King’s Dark Tower saga, which is a portal fantasy, with characters moving between Keystone Earth (ie, our world) and Mid-World via doors that stand on beaches, in forests, in darkened basements and haunted houses.
So when I saw the blue door leaning against a Bell MTS building, I had to stop and take a photo. If it wasn’t behind chainlink fence, I might just have tried turning the doorknob, in case there was a world behind it.
You never know.
I may not be ready but I guess it’s here. At least it’s pretty.
A little over 5km from my house. The above photo is a panorama of 18 photos, each 24mm, f/2.8; the resulting photo (if the online calculator is correct) is effectively 15mm, f/1.8.
Also: I like fence posts.
I went for a 25km bike ride this morning, before it got too hot outside. I ended up going a bit east of ACC’s North Hill campus, which once upon a time was the Brandon Mental Health Centre, or BMHC.
I found the BMHC cemetery, and took a few photos.
There were a lot of names on that cairn. All four sides had a plaque, and each plaque was about that full.
I even found a Johanneson on the cairn (though I doubt we’re related).
I went for a bike ride last night. I left the house about 8, got in around 9, and along the way I saw some deer grazing alongside the trail.
…and some flowers, too. Including, finally, some lilacs.
