Last night I met Jacqueline... and took her home!
Apologies for the unflattering photo, but it was dark. Jacqueline is a beautiful vintage Waffenrad, which is an Austrian manufacturer no longer in business (more about that once I have some pictures of the bike in daylight). The bicycle is on loan from the collector Wolfgang Höfler, who also runs Vienna Active Tours and is involved in a variety of local bicycle-related projects. He is the one who named her Jacqueline. This bicycle is completely upright and very comfortable, which is why I can ride her despite not having entirely recovered from my injuries yet.
I picked up Jacqueline on Saturday night, and was nervous about riding home across Vienna for the first time. I considered taking the bike on the U-Bahn, but then decided to just go for it and cycle. The foldable basket-panniers even fit my huge laptop bag.
It was a 25 minute ride home, and I had no trouble at all. Figuring out the route was much easier than I anticipated, as was navigating the intersections and other quirks of the bike-path system.
And yes, this was playing in my head as I flew through the night-lit city. It was interesting to notice how much more lighter Vienna is at night than Boston; I never really paid attention to this before. The dynamo headlight and tail light on Jacqueline are dim compared to the set-up I have on my bikes at home, but they are more than sufficient here.
Jacqueline after I dragged her into the hallway of my building. She is tired and delighted.
So am I!I was worried about cycling after having just recovered from pneumonia, but the Waffenrad requires very little effort to pedal - it just rolls. I wasn't even out of breath when I got home. It is a similar ride to my Raleigh DL-1, but not quite the same. I am not sure yet whether I will use this bicycle for transportation, or just to cycle around a bit in my free time - it depends how I'm feeling. And speaking of that, I suddely feel much, much better.
Last night, Anna (from 
Among the more notable was this super-long chopper.
Don't be deceived by the fact that Anna is actually pedaling it in the pictures - these things are incredibly difficult to ride. The freakishly long fork throws the steering completely out of wack requiring extraordinary balancing skills and trust in the universe to control it.
And here is Wolfgang riding a Swing Bike. If it looks like the bicycle is folding in half whilst in motion, that's because it is.
The seat tube is split in such a way, that it pivots and allows independent steering for the front and rear wheel, to the point that the wheels can be almost parallel to one another.
Laura and I planned to go ice climbing with my buddy Matt Johns from Kentucky, Joel Torretti and his buddy Josh Hurst from Maine. Yeah you read right, he came here from Maine. After a start consisting of breakfast at Valley Dairy, shopping for - drill bits, a six pack, twice forgotten pants, non-alcoholic drinks, snacks and probably more. We've learned that buying a sixer around 9:00 am is harder to do than you think... Oh yeah I almost forgot it was raining. Not the best weather for ICE climbing, or is it? Well Matt had to stay in Kentucky so we sadly were Mattless. It ended up being Laura, Joel, Josh and I. After our morning shenanigans, we decided to drive to Meadow Run in Ohiopyle to check out the Upper Meadow amphitheater for potential mixed lines. The rains stopped by the time we arrived in Ohiopyle. Upon pulling into the parking lot we saw the quantity of ice along the Lower Meadow cliff band and decided it was clearly time to climb and check out the Upper later in the day. We spent the morning cranking the mixed lines and even added an alternate left var. to Captain Caveman that traverses left more under the roof before pulling the lip around the last hanging curtain. Slightly longer and harder than Captain Caveman. All kinds of shenanigans going on there. Fun stuff... short and pumpy. Laura busted herself up falling on Anger Management (which some asshole stole the draws off of) so she stayed to climb Hemlock with me and following the advice of Dr. Torretti, decided to head home to heal for tomorrow and Sunday. The 3 of us stayed and climbed a couple more lines and decided to walk to Upper Meadow to eye the amphitheater while we still had a couple of hrs. of light. What can I say... Its steep, burly, has free hangers and pillars galore. Its impressive to see. We explored around looking at potential lines out the steep cave. We decided to work on a line that starts on some ice in the back of the cave and heads up through several overlaps to the free hanging curtain at the lip. Burly, but by no means the most difficult line there. Joel rigged a line from the top while Josh started up the ice and got the first bolt in. I put him on belay as he worked up, go into position and placed the 2nd. He came down and I was up. I went up on lead to the high point and continued up into position and located where to put the 3rd. I didn't get more than a 1/2 inch when the drill was doing no good. The battery was dead. I lowered the drill and proceeded to get myself stuck for a while. After much effort, I was back to the ground. We cleaned up and walked out as it was getting dark. Good ice, good laughs, good fun. 1 down 2 to go. Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings... Enjoy the photos!
I was taking a walk around my neighborhood when I spotted a Dutch bicycle, looking disapprovingly at this poster. I am not sure whether the owner of the bike locked it up in front of the poster intentionally, but I couldn't get over the similarity of "colourways" and the bicycle's disapproving posture as it faced the image.
The poster is for an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Wien called Kontroversen - Justiz, Ethik und Fotografie ("Controversies - The Law, Ethics and Photography"). I hope to visit it over the weekend.
We took our first trip to the Jemez Mountains last Thursday to start woodcutting for the winter. When we got there we had to sit in the truck and wait for a rain shower to pass before we could start cutting. After the rain I noticed this nice pine tree with lots of green moss on the left side and the log and rock at it's base to make a nice photo.
The Sandhill cranes are big birds about 3 feet tall, gray with the bright red spot on top of their head. Cranes, as well as the geese, migrate down from their nesting areas in Alaska and Canada in the fall to winter along the Rio Grande River, mostly at the Bosque del Apache Refuge which is about 2 hour drive south of us. There are a lot of these birds that go to Texas to winter, too. They usually start arriving here in November. In late winter, about now, they start their migration back north to the nesting grounds. There used to be so many of these unique birds that it was unbeleivable. My grandmother told me of watching them in the fields especially of doing the stange dance they do when mating. I have seen this at other times but none were doing it on this day. The sandhills almost were gone at one time but they came under the protection of many bird groups and now there are lots of them again. If you are lucky and I mean very lucky you might see one of the extreamly rare hooping cranes in with the sandhills. The hoopers are almost white and taller. I did get to see one at a distance in the Bosque del Apache Refuge a long time ago. We had planned to go there but decided it was to far on this day. Link to the Bosque del Apache http://http://www.friendsofthebosque.org/Friendsindex.html#whatsnew
This state park of New Mexico is set on the edge of the Rio Grande River in an older section of the city of Albuquerque about 20 miles from my home. The nature center is home to many native plants and animals and lots of birds. There are many people who enjoy birding that come here to see the birds that live here and the ones that are just passing through as were the geese and cranes that we saw yesterday when we went there. It has been about 10 years since I have been here but not much had changed except then it cost $1 to get in and now it is $3 per car. We didn't see any of the sandhill cranes in the park but did in a field as we were leaving. One of the most interesting birds we saw was way off at a distance and I didn't get a close shot of him. It was a Kingfisher bird which I had never seen before.
