smoke on the water

"Smoke on the water" is an oldish rock song, by Deep Purple.

This picture is steam on the water, the Ottawa river. Some time ago I visited a friend of mine in Ottawa, and as my good timing should have it, I was there on the coldest day of the year.

Hence all the ice and also the steaming river.

So this pic is, in part, for my friends who only know cold from their freezers.

As always, you can download a big version of this one.

slowing down

This is a train station. In particular it is the train station inside the Frankfurt airport.

It is the place where you wait for your train, after you fly into Frankfurt. Usually I get there in the late morning. The blue sky above the glass roof is unusual, normally it is rainy there. Or maybe the glass is colored, I'm not sure.

Why do I call this "slowing down"? Well, the speed of the trains is somewhat slower than the airplane that you arrived on. Ok, some of those trains go 300 km/h, but not for very long.

Of course, a trans-atlantic trip basically consists of waiting. You wait for the transportation to the airport. At the airport you wait to get on the plane. In the plane, you wait for takeoff. After takeoff you wait for landing, while watching the ocean and the sky. After landing, you wait for immigration and customs. After that, you wait for the train. On the high speed train, you check out the landscape, and wait for arrival.

That is high speed transportation for you. Have to be patient.

But in any case, the architecture of this top level of the train station is pretty well done.

24 hours

Sometime in 2008, I went to Florida. Watched a space shuttle launch, sat on the beach, and watched parts of a 24 hour endurance race at the Daytona Racetrack.

This picture gives you the cleanest car that I saw. After 24 hours of racing, with rain, all the dirt from tires, and all the usual crap. 600 or 700 laps or so of racing. All the preparation, optimizing the car's performance, drivers must be in good shape. A serious effort indeed.

Why is this car so clean?

It broke something on lap 1, didn't finish the first 2 minutes of the 24 hours.

I felt sorry for those folks.

then and now

Some years ago I sold my house on the lake. The top 2 pics are some views from the house. Big trees, some of them 300 years old. The bottom picture is what the new owners are doing to it now. Nothing left of the old trees, and nothing left except my memories. Sure it is their place now, and they can rightly do what they want with it. But still it makes me sad.