Afterhours

Vacation, Day 5: Wind and rain ...

... and lots of it. Big gale-like gusts of wind, hard to capture in a still image – imagine the spiral tree thingy in the photo blown horizontal.

A good day to stay inside, visit neighbours and play crib and board games.

Vacation, Day 4: Family and barge cruising

My nephew Joe, all geared up for hiking.

Great-nephew Jack, blowing bubbles.

Cruising on Grand Pond on the barge Jalaja with my sister Sharon and brother-in-law Paul

and the crab's legs we ate.

Vacation, Day 3: the Rooms

A rainy and very windy day. I went to lunch with a collection of cousins at The Rooms, a great museum/art gallery in St. John's.

The cousins:

As well as its menu, the Rooms Café is known for its views, at least on clear days. Here's St. John's harbour, with Cabot Tower on Signal Hill barely visible through the fog.

Vacation, Day 2: Memories

Went for a walk today past the house I grew up in. Our family hasn't owned it for years. It's been modernized somewhat on the outside, but not much on the inside, so I hear.

Very little on our old road looks as it did when I was a child – many new houses, and overgrown areas where there were once open spaces.

And just because I find pictures of weeds more interesting than those of flowers, here's one I took along the way.

Vacation, Day 1: Family

I spent today with my nephew's family ...

Jacob and Laurel in the backyard sandbox.

On the big slide with daddy Scott.

And some big kid having fun on the swings.

Visiting winter

We've been having a heatwave here - 34 degrees C in my apartment the last few days. What better time to publish an album of winter pictures.

Three bridges

A year or so back, the new Millenium line of Vancouver's Skytrain opened. Among other features, the new trains have large "view" windows front and back with a seat placed squarely in front of each for those who like the thrill of riding the front end of a speeding train.

"Aha", thought I when I first got my digicam, "what a good place to take pictures!" Unfortunately, most times either the seat has already been grabbed by some little kid (or an adult kid), or the window has more bug splats than the family car after the long drive home from the cottage. I did manage to get a few clear ones (or at least ones clearable with Photoshop). This one was the best.

It was taken a little before the train reached Columbia station, and shows three bridges crossing the Fraser River. The three have completely different styles, so I looked up bridge types to find out more.

The lower one (for rail traffic) is a truss bridge (relatively simple to make, can support large weights), and has a pivoting central part to allow river traffic to pass. The closer of the other two, the Pattullo bridge, is an arch bridge (classic, sturdy, needs firm ground at the ends), and carries vehicle traffic. The last, carrying Skytrain traffic, is a cable stayed bridge (light weight and economical, not good in wind but good in earthquakes). As we're expected to have a "big one" sometime in the (hopefully distant) future, that last is good news for us Skytrain commuters.

Scenes from Pools Island and environs

This past July, my nephew Scott was married in St. John's, Newfoundland to his girlfriend Tina, who's originally from a small place near Wesleyville called Pools Island. A few days after the ceremony, a party of us from the groom's family visited the bride's family to continue the celebrations. It was a wonderful few days - great people, great parties and great food (lobster, mussels, crab, smoked fish, seal flippers, caribou sausage, ...). And some very remarkable scenery in Pools Island and its environs, of which this album is but a small sample.

Surrey Central, late afternoon

As with most of the photos I take, I discovered the interesting aspects of this one only after I looked at it on a computer screen.

I think it's the way the light works with the lines and colours of the photo that I like here. The shadows cast by the western sun through the railings reinforce the lines of the platform tiles rather than crossing them obliquely. The warm yellow light is picked up by the platform edge, while the cooler blue light from the east is in turn picked up by the sign (which, contrary-wise, points east). The interplay of all this light produces the wonderful ceiling reflections. And the many lines - platform, windows, ceiling - all lead to the point in the distance where the trains "vanish" - the embodiment of the projective space well-known to us geometers.

Redbud

A branch of a very pretty tree in my sister's garden - don't know what it's called. I didn't notice the "livestock" until I looked at this one on a computer monitor. Bonus.