Tag Archives: hike

by

Design and build

The Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race has some serious designers. I don’t know if they use a forge, but the sculptures have to go in the 52 degree water and come out a few blocks away. They have to move in the water, not just float. They have to have functional brakes, since they go over a significant hill and they are human powered. They have to get through the mudbog somehow.

Some go for power and some try to go light. This one looked the lightest this year.

Many have been in more than one race and the racers and their support teams are happy to lift the hood and explain.

The two bundles under the hood are lifejackets and floats for the water course. They have to carry all the parts on the sculpture. Each team can have support personnel. Our local school kids’ STEM groups had a Maker’s Fair near the water course. We have a group that has made an underwater robot to fish out lost crab pots. If the pot’s line is lost, crabs and other creatures can be trapped inside to die. The robot helps to fish out the trash that traps creatures.

Wikipedia lists ten locations for Kinetic Sculpture Races. Ours has been going for 35 years. Will someone forge a new vehicle that we start using daily? I hope so.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: forge.

by

Storm tossed

The word tethered makes me think of the year and a half on oxygen. I had a standing concentrator for in the house. This means that I have oxygen tubing following me on three floors. I had to have connectors and I got caught on everything. I tripped over it. I wondered why it wasn’t helping and discovered the tubing was unplugged. The kittens chewed holes in it.

The sea plants are tethered too, to rocks, to grow up from the deep. I think this looks like a distressed stranded mermaid. Poor thing, her rock, her foundation has been thrown on shore by a storm. She can’t get home. I took this in May 2021, when I was still on continuous oxygen.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tethered.

by

Garden tour

On the day my daughter and I explored two Florence gardens, I tripped. I did not knock myself out, nor my teeth, but I scraped both knees a little and bruised both palms.

I fell on gravel. Can you tell? I held lots of pressure on the knees first, and then palms together. Less bruising with pressure because the bleeding stops sooner. I still had these nice gravel prints on the photographs taken the next day. I was looking at the garden and did not see a ridge to divert rain and fell quite hard. I rolled and did not break a wrist, which is nice. After that, my daughter warned me when she thought the ground was rough and I was looking up too much. “No texting while walking, mom.”

The cobblestones could be rough too.

And this garden sculpture is not watching his feet either.

This one might not need to, since he looks like he’ll be airborne.

Happily, I did not fall down any steps nor with my big pack on.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: explore.

by

Fashions

I did not sort out Italian fashions in the two weeks I traveled with my daughter.

For one thing, we were mostly in tourist areas. It was hot, though not as hot as August. Very thin straps on tops and short shorts or skirts were to be covered to go in to the big churches and the Vatican Museum. Having to cover up is just a little ironic since so many of the sculptures are nude or partly nude, both male and female.

I took a black skirt and a pair of pants that are loose and flowered and cool. These proved to be very good guesses for my age group. I had washable travel button down shirts, which worked well. I never used my fleece jacket or rain jacket, on this trip. My feet complained and I might choose different shoes next time.

One recurring theme that I noticed is leopard prints. Dresses, skirts, shirts, blouses. I saw them in each of the five cities. There also is a recurrence of rompers. My daughter comments, “There are very few people that look good in rompers but mostly people don’t.” I didn’t like them in the 1970s and I don’t like them now. We did see a very few either tall or thin or both women who carried them off.

Tourist wear is all over the place but mostly is driven by the heat. Hats were for sale to tourists and large scarves to double as a skirt to cover short shorts or skirts.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: unclear.

This website seems to think leopard prints were in this year. I really do not know. Do you?

by

No waste

My daughter and I hike in Cinque Terre, Italy. There are five villages along the coast and a trail from the first to the last. Lots of stairs! And look at the terraces, built to farm the area. They grow mostly grapes and olives.

No cars in the towns.

Here is a map.

Here is a stairway from the path to a terrace.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: waste. No waste here.

A view from the path.

by

Diversity

This is the Trevi Fountain. We can curate the photographs so that we can’t see the crowd. Here is the crowd.

There are lots of changes from 43 years ago, 1980, when I traveled there. More people. We were traveling in January and February 1980, so that’s not a fair comparison. But the crowd is more diverse. At that time we ran into Australian travelers, the same people in hostels as we traveled. We were mostly Caucasian. Now the crowd is much more diverse and I also do not know what language a person will speak. Race is a messy construct anyhow, very unscientific, but I really like the diversity and not knowing what language a person will be fluent in until I hear them speak.

Here is the Vatican Museum. Also crowded and diverse.

Here is a park near the train station in Rome with some “Olympics” for both kids and adults.

We were staying in hostels and only did one formal tour. I wonder if the expensive hotels have the same diversity.

Let’s end with the fountain again.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt.