Paragliding Fest at Kamena Vourla. So, the story begins with me lying down at the edge of a pretty high and steep cliff, in front of a breathtaking panorama, an action deemed inevitable in order to settle to the most preferable position to shoot impromptu videos of the paragliding clan with my phone cam that was threatening me with instant explosion every second now. The sun could drill a hole through your eyeballs and it was a 36 degrees. Never have I ever tanned so much, so fast. Oh, but no. Scratch that. The story begins from... ... getting squeezed, amongst tools, flying gear and other strange individuals at the tiny back seat of some sort of Datsun. This Datsun was a beast. It might not show but the path was like a bull rodeo and the datsun was filled to its extra full capacity. Everyone is somewhat balancing on... stuff. And up we go! Until we reached there and yes, that's the most shade this place could provide. Thank god I went with my sombrero hat otherwise I'd get completely roasted in no time. Another view: The villagers of Kamena Vourla were... unique. The guy on the left is the driver that was hired last minute for the occasion (the previous one dumped us straight in our faces and was very irked for some reason) and he was our tour hero. Pretty friendly and talkative. The other two were quite... quiet. They only looked at us, since we were the routine breakers and from time to time they would nod their heads... even when no one spoke to them. Even when they didn't speak to anyone. They were a mystery. I think they functioned with telepathy. Overall, very friendly guys though. The prep. My crew didn't get to fly that day. The wind was dead. Next day was kind of better, but kind of. They finally flew, but boy, did we have to wait for it. By the end of day one, we heard from the news that a para-glider had fallen to his death, they same day we went up there and we where kind of anxious to see if we knew him, but not from the exact location we were at. From the cliff of a mountain across from ours, very near by. We could actually see it clearly from up there. Turned out he was a wing suit flyer after all, but you know how the news work. For them paragliding and wing suit flying is considered the same. Anyhow, nobody from the crew knew him after all, but still, in unfortunate occasions like this everyone gets a little gloomier and a tad more conservative. Perhaps for the best. Going down like a queen this time. Next up, The Gates of Hades... Edit: Btw, here's the vid I put together. Shots by me and my friend.
Came across this old signpost at work today. Ran it through a couple filters, thought it looked nice and spooky, in a classic ghost story kind of way.
Wow, those are really nice!! In each one it looks like there are shadowy figures forming and emerging from the darkness.
Nice! It's getting to be time for me to break out my screaming goat Christmas sweater. Pictures to come 'round Christmas time!
A little thing that captured my imagination. I saw this at an aerospace museum. It is mechanical porn. It the the dive brake mechanism of a WWII American naval aircraft called the Douglas Aircraft SBD Dauntless dive bomber. I took photos, and with the museum permission, climbed over the thing with measuring instruments, and came up with this. I used a software called Solidworks.
Thank you - a host of golden daffodils; you can see why Wordsworth was inspired! The forum won't let me put the full-def version up, the file's too big, but I was quite impressed - a surprisingly good image, no filters, taken with a telephone... (blackberry in fact!) close up from the full size...
Dunnock from a wander around the Lea Valley a couple of weeks ago. ETA: Huh, apparently every other photo I put in that album as well. Didn't realise Flickr did that.
Birds huh? Here's my favorite. Hard to get bird picks this good with a phone cam. This guy decided to be cooperative.
Over the weekend, a short story dispenser was installed at my local subway station. For those who aren't aware, Short Edition has dispensers throughout the US and Europe that distribute free flash-length stories at the push of a button. In 2020 they selected Philadelphia as one of their flagship cities and started rolling out dispensers. This is the first I've seen in the wild, though, and it's pretty cool! It has stories from international contributors as well as local students - my first one was a 1st grader's take on why Superman is better than Aquaman.
