Hood River and San Juan Bautista

Happy New Year!

I'm taking advantage of the holiday (and the recent momentum I got from working on my India photos) to catch up on some other photos from 2015.

What do Hood River, Oregon and San Juan Bautista, California have to do with each other?

Ordinarily very little.

In our case, those were the locations for two weddings that we attended in 2015. With the exception of 2015, we've been a lull. You get to an age in life when all your friends who are going to ever get married are married. As a result the number of wedding invites tapers off considerably.

The nieces and nephews will get married some day in the not too distant future, but those weddings are likely many years in the future.

Right now it's lulls-ville.

So it was a surprise in 2015 to attend not one but two weddings.

The first was Richard and Sabrina's wedding in Hood River.

This was our first trip to Hood River, so we took the opportunity to explore the area. One thing that confused me initially was that I wasn't aware that I was looking at multiple mountains. If recollection serves, the photo below is of Mt. Hood.

We spent much of our free time touring the "fruit loop".

And we had the opportunity to meet some friendly alpacas. I say "friendly" because at the time I couldn't remember whether it is llamas that spit or alpacas or both. Still not sure which ones are the spitters. Fortunately, these guys weren't spitters.

You can see more photos from Hood River here.

Interestingly, I found out recently that I'll be returning to Oregon for a third time. The first time was the wedding in Hood River. The second time was for work in November. And I'll be returning the week of January 18th again for work. Not sure yet whether it'll be Beaverton or Hillsboro or Lake Oswego. All conveniently located to let me visit my mom again.

The second wedding was Larry and Dianna's in San Juan Bautista.

Mission San Juan Bautista is beautiful...

The plants on the ground of the mission were intriguing...

But some of the best photos weren't ones that I took. Rather, these were taken in the photo booth at the wedding reception.

Extra credit to me for the creative use of the mustache. :-)

You can see more photos from San Juan Bautista here.

The Finished Stained Glass Project

In an earlier post, I wrote about a stained glass project that I was working on. As I sat around in my hotel room this evening here in Bethlehem (this Bethelehem, not that Bethlehem), I realized that I never got around to posting a photo of the finished project.

Please allow me to correct that oversight...

I'm pleased with how it turned out. Working on this was both educational and fun. :-)

Photos from India

Absent life’s daily interruptions, I would dedicate more time to one of my hobbies: photography.

Right?

Ironically I spend so much time travelling that I find it a challenge to find the time to organize and post my travel photos.

For instance, I have some photos that I took while in India last month. Here it is December, and it has taken till this week to post those them.

In my defense I could explain that since returning from India, I've been in Chandler Arizona, Hillsboro Oregon, St. Helena California, and Stafford Virginia. To round that out, I've been at home in Aptos for all of - maybe - a week or so. And later this week I'll be travelling to the east coast -- twice.

But what kind of defense is that, really? You show up for life, or you don't. You do what matters to you, or you don't. You make your dreams come true, or you don't. The choice is yours.

Yes, I'm busy. Yes, that poses a challenge. But there are people in this world facing challenges that expose my "but I don't have time" whining for the FWP that it is.

I'm grateful to have had the good fortune to spend my entire adulthood traipsing across this beautiful planet of ours. For me, the travels that I undertake and the photos that I bring home are my way of telling those with the ears to hear it that life wants us to live our dreams.

Okay, enough of the philosophizing. On to the photos of India.

I would like to begin with this photo...

One note about this photo... This never happened. Yes I took this photo of the iron pillar and the archway at the Qutub Complex in Delhi, but that blue sky with the fluffy clouds... That sky definitely didn't happen. I freely confess that I Photoshopped in the sky.

The whole two weeks in India were spent in a haze. No, I don't mean I was caught up in a whirlwind mixture of sights and sounds - one blurring into the other. Rather, I mean that each and every day and in every city, air pollution dominated the skies.

I've been subjected to this sort of relentless onslaught of air pollution many times before (I'm talking about you, Beijing), but I don't recall a time I've ever traveled throughout a country and encountered air pollution like this in city after city.

Mind you it's not my intention to look down on India and publicly shame them for their air quality issues. They have a challenge of balancing their desire to grow their economy against the need for natural resources such as breathable air. I endured the air pollution for two weeks. I don't envy the people trapped in it day after day, week after week, month after... You get the idea.

Call me an eternal optimist. There was at least one positive side-effect of the air pollution: Some of the sunrises and sunsets were beautiful. Consider, for instance, one of my favorite photos from the trip to India:

Whenever I think of the Taj Mahal, I think of the staggering amounts of white marble. But this sunrise photo presents the Taj Mahal in a very different light. Yes there is the white marble, but the color of the marble is muted by the haze. The Taj Mahal is framed by the mosque archway. The floor reflects the sunlight in the stone bordering what I assume to be stone prayer mats. The overall hue of the photo is brown. Brown, brown, brown, much like the skies of India.

BTW... Earlier when I wrote that part about how I was going to be travelling to the east coast twice this week... I was still in California at the time. Now I'm on the other side of these here United States where I'm pleased to report that the winter is thankfully mild.

I'd like to write more about each and every one of the photos, but I'm going to lame out for the time being and just provide links to the photos of Mumbai, Delhi, and Agra. For now, I've got to get some sleep.

I Like to Score

Signed up for something different this weekend. I'm taking a class in making stained glass at Kiss My Glass.

In the photo below, you can see the 'homework' I did before the class began:

That's my plan for the piece that I'm creating. I created that plan a week or two ago.

Today I started on the project. As you can see from the photos below, I spent today scoring the different pieces of glass, cutting the glass, trimming the glass, trimming the glass, and lining the edges with copper foil.

As you can see in the photo above, I went straight after the hardest pieces to cut. It was a relief to get those pieces out of the way right at the start.

BTW... I'm talking about the purple pieces, not the beveled pieces. Whereas the purple pieces we the hardest ones to cut, the beveled pieces are the easiest by far. They're already pre-cut. :-)

After the tricky purple pieces, It was time for some straight cuts:

After taking a break with the straight green pieces, it was time again for some tricky cuts. Pieces 14-19 & 53 & 56 took some time an care:

After those, it was time for some more straight cuts:

All of my pieces are cut. :-)

I still need to wrap them with foil. Perhaps I'll go in early some week day to do that part. It would be nice to have that out of the way before the next day of class: August 15th.

I'm pleased with all that I learned to do today and appreciate Jackie Marr's instruction and patience.

Oregon

See that flight path over there on the right? See how the flight was heading south from PDX and then it banked eastward?

That's me not flying home.

I planned on being back in Aptos this week, but an unexpected medical LOA for a co-worker led to a reshuffling of my itinerary. I wish my co-worker a speedy and fully recovery.

In the meantime, you might be wondering where that flight path took me. If you caught the mention of "Houston" in the title above that diagram, you'd be in the ball park.

But Houston wasn't my final destination. Instead, I hopped a (sigh... inevitably delayed) flight westward to San Antonio where I'll be spending the week. I'm through day one of this five day class, and I'm pleased to be teaching such an energetic and amusing bunch. That's always a great combination.

But back to Oregon.

What can I say about Oregon? Time permitting I could tell about the great time I had visiting Mom, my sister, and my two nephews. Or I could write about the wonderful time we had in Hood River attending Richard and Sabrina's wedding.

But time is short... Too short.

Though I could (and I suppose I should) post some photos of the trip (sigh... maybe one day I will), I'd like to take just a few moments to try to capture in words the lasting impression that I took from this trip:

I was humbled by the beauty that I continually witnessed throughout the time in Oregon. I've been to Oregon several times before, but somehow I saw it through different eyes this time. Perhaps on all the other occasions I was simply stupidly viewing what I saw through a snooty Californian's eyes. I could struggle and strain to capture the beauty I saw this time, but I suspect words will simply fail me. Instead I'll just say one more time... I was humbled by the beauty.

So no photos of Oregon tonight. Maybe one soon (the same thing I've said about Japan and Russia and the Balkans and Peru and...). Till then, here's a silly little video I captured flying into PDX...

Too Caught Up To Catch Up

In my last post, I optimistically said that I might possibly catch up on some of my photos. No such luck. Been having too good of a time seeing the sights and taking more photos.

Till I get around to those Tokyo photos and the news photos from this trip, you can see some 360° panoramic photos I've taken in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Japan (and plenty of other destinations before those if you want to work your way back through the archives).

BTW... The 360s are best viewed using a iOS device. When you go to the link above, you'll see a icon on the screen that looks like this:

Click that icon, then twirl around. The 360 will move with you. You can pretend you're right there in Tallinn or Riga or Villinius or Moscow or St. Petersburg or Tokyo with me. :-)

Catching Up In St. Petersburg

Здравствуйте from St. Petersburg. What am I doing in Russia? I'm on holiday (translation: That's "vacation" for y'all back home).

I see that my most recent post was about Beijing. That means I'm already behind. A couple weeks ago I was in Tokyo for work. In my off-time, I took lots of photos, but I haven't yet gotten around to posting them. Instead I spent the week between Japan and Russia laid up with a stupid cold, passing a certification exam required for work, and scrambling to get ready for this trip.

I've completed my post-camera editing of the Japan photos. Now I just need to find the time to post them. Today's likely going to be a shorter sightseeing day than yesterday, so I should be able to get to them shortly. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, if you want to know a bit about what I've been doing this year, take a quick look at my work blog. Don't worry about understanding everything I wrote.