Road Biking

I think the first time in this lifetime I really went for a premium item was in the early eighties, a hand-built London Claud Butler bicycle. I was amazed and delighted at the difference from the classic bike I'd had: it felt like all distances had been halved.

In the past couple decades I have not had a really good bike, but I am slimming down now and I want to get in good shape again, and I missed the thrill of riding a really high-quality light-weight road bike. It is so much fun that it will be an incentive.

The great news is that the technology has raced forward (no pun) since then, and both the gear and the frames are tons better. I held a carbon-frame bike in the shop today, and it felt like not much more than half the weight of the bike I had back then, astonishingly.

So I splurged, and I have ordered the top of the line Claud Butler Torino road bike, carbon frame and top-notch gear. I am really looking forward so seeing a little of the English country roads, with my camera and a book on the back. (Surely finding a few good ins out there to stop over at for lunch.)

More comments on fathers

There has been more comments on the God/Father post. I especially find that Pascal has some interesting points to make.

A favorite

I have several photos from Copenhagen/Easter that I am very fond of. This one has been catching my eye today sitting on my desktop. It grows on me. It is sort of multi-layered.
If you haven't seen it before, maybe you failed to download the special zipped collection.

By the way, on Mike Johnston's excellent photo blog there has recently been discussions of formats. Mike pointed out how we think we have seen an image when we have seen a small reproduction of it: which is often not true at all. Sometimes an image is totally different in full resolution. Which is true in this case. If you click on it, you get a version which is very large for a web image. It is larger than most computer screens allow today... And yet, on my Apple Cinema Display 30 Inches, the full picture is a totally different story! The textures of the boat and the sand, the faces of the people, the details in the buildings in the background and the distant people... they make it a really different picture.
An interesting point is that when I bought this huge display, I felt that I was merely pampering myself. And have been a little ashamed of such a luxury. But the fact is that without this screen I would never have discovered the qualities of certain of my own images, like this one. I certainly don't print out every likely image in a big size just on the chance that it might be something special!
(If you'd like a high rez version of this picture, mail me.)

Life as a party

This one from Jocie, it has floated around the net for a while:
"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming ~ WOO HOO what a ride!"

Well, it has a point. Life should include pleasure. Those who expect life to be a dour struggle with death as the only reward, well they'll get what they expect. We all get what we expect, no more, no less.

But I like to think that a sour struggle or a hedonistic, pointless party are not the only two choices we have. They are not even very good ones.

How about not getting your joy mainly via your mouth and alcohol and candy, but also getting it from accomplishments? From achieving something only you can do? From putting something in the world that would not have been there if you had not existed? Like a child. Or a book you wrote. Or paintings. Or a company. Or an invention. Or just a record of doing excellent work and friends who think of you with a smile.

Goth

One of my neighbors (an occasional commentator here) came over to have me witness her postal vote (carefully hiding who she was voting for). In my eclectic and rapidly expanding book collection she spotted a title with Dracula in it, looked at my black tee-shirt, and asked if I was a Goth.
I said I have a streak, as I have of so many things. But the truth is that I was wearing black (sometimes) and loving monsters a couple of decades before Goths were invented.
Being a trailblazer is hard work, but somebody's gotta do it. :)

In any case, you can't really be a male goth. You can't wear make-up and not look gay. Just look at Kiss.
Female goths are cute though.
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Blogger is acting up this week. "Posting" seems not to work, and then hours later suddenly there are five duplicates of the same post.

Nostalgia and Pentax ME Super

"Yes, daddy loves you both. But in very different ways!"

Pentax ME Super, from 1978. Nikon D200 (digital) from 2005. What a difference. Not the least in size. The Pentax goes in a coat pocket. Yes, the Nikon has a trillion features the Pentax had never heard of. Autofocus, programmed auto-exposure, built-in auto-winding (at five frames per second), Spot metering, matrix metering, etc etc. So they can't really be compared, size-wise. Yet, the Nikon has a smaller format than the Pentax had. The capture area of the chip is about half the size of the film format of the Pentax (35mm). So I had really expected that they could make the cameras at least as compact as the best they managed in the seventies! But noooo.

Also I really miss the solid industrial beauty of cameras from then. Admittedly, the plastic-moulded camera bodies of the last twenty years may hold a titanium frame inside (sometimes), and they certainly hold technological wonders undreamed of then... but they just don't have the style and beauty of those old cameras. How come you can't buy a chrome camera these days?

I used an ME Super back in the late seventies. I bought one used last week, for decoration. I was surprised at how much I still/again love this camera, its beauty, its functionality, its compactness, its simplicity, its style. If it was not because I really can't be bothered to have films developed and scanned, I could see myself using it, despite it being seriously outdated technically.

Blue Green White

This one I forget to post in March, despite it being one of my favorites.

Lives and movies

Somebody asked me: "if your life was a movie, would you watch it?" And it sounds like a good admonition to live an interesting life. But after thinking about it a little, I realized that I want to live a life which is interesting for me to live, not one which would be interesting for somebody else to watch.

Age and doing things

On a mailing list I am on, a man at seventy was wondering if he wasn't too old to start training. A list member wrote something inspiring, Jocie said:
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Just 2 nights ago we saw a little old lady on TV. I think she should be an inspiration to everyone, whatever their age.

She had a heart bypass operation last year, enough to stop most elderly people. But not this lady. She catches public transport and walks considerable distances to get to the hospital where she works (voluntary work). She does the filing (lifting heavy patient files effortlessly!), pushes trolleys full of heavy files from one department in the hospital to another, talks to the patients, cheering them up. All in all, a very physically demanding job.

‘So what!’ you say, lots of people in their 70s do that. But this lady is 104 !!!! and didn’t look a day over 75 !!!

Age is what you make of it. Many new retirees start new businesses, some of them very demanding, physically and mentally. It keeps them young, in heart, mind and body.

It seems to me that you are only as old as you allow yourself to be. If you want to give up and be an old man at 70, then you will be. I knew a man who died at 64 and looked 94. He gave up in his 50’s. Life was too hard for him and it was easier to be an invalid. Another friend (late 70s) has had heart bypass surgery but still manages to put on the best Christmas Lights show in his city, every year, all supported by his hand welded steel frames that he drags up onto his roof every year. It keeps him busy all year and it keeps him young. We all know examples of people at both extremes, those who give up far too early, and those who keep themselves young into very old age.

Without something to do, elderly people feel sorry for themselves and ‘take it easy’. The moment you start taking it easy, you are giving in to age, and you start to age, you start to slow down. This becomes a vicious circle and before you know it, you’ve stopped completely, all because you started slowing down.

So, you have a choice, you can do what you want to do. The secret is to find out what you really want to do, then do it.

Living for today

"I do believe in living each day like it was my last. That's why I never have any clean clothes, for honestly, who bothers to do laundry on your last day?"

Translated from Danish, apparently written by a school kid.
I think it is hilarious. And it exposes the fallacy of that adage. If you live each day as if it were you last, you'll never get anything done for the long term.

I think the best way is to spend time working for the future, and spend time enjoying the now.

Emotional Freedom Technique

I think this will be my best year so far. One of the reasons is Emotional Freedom Technique.

Round Tower

I have been asked about the Tower in the photo collection below. It is the famous Round Tower built by the triple-famous King Christian IV.