As much as I have enjoyed Prague, I was happy to hit the road this morning, headed north. The city congestion soon gave way to wide open spaces as I pursued my theme for the day: things made of rocks. We start with a small church (St Ignatius Rock Chapel) carved into a massive boulder, complete with seating for a dozen parishioners.

Next, we have a two-story house built into a naturally split mountain of rock.

How about a private event space built atop several rock columns, previously the site of an unassailable medieval castle.

Speaking of columns, here we have Mansion Rocks, a magnificent example of basalt columns.

My ultimate destination for the day was the Pravčická Archway, the largest sandstone arch in Europe. Reaching it requires a strenuous 4.4-mile hike from the hostel I am staying in this evening. It is nestled somewhere atop the cliffs shown below. Rain in the afternoon kept me from starting the climb until 5pm. I determined that I had sufficient time to reach the arch just in time for golden light. The plan would have been perfect if not for the fact that I climbed the wrong trail (I am not so good at reading Czech). When the relentless uphill trek turned into an equally arduous decent, I realized this could not be the trail to the arch and then it started to rain again. It was a 5-mile mistake that I will not soon forget. It remains to be seen whether my legs are up for another dose of abuse tomorrow, especially in light of the fact that the morning sun will be on the wrong face of the arch for a good photo.

While on the subject of rocks, I passed two kidney stones this evening, a common occurrence for me after flying.

Given that I am a tourist, I have no standing to complain about the throngs that are drawn to Prague. I will say that it makes it nearly impossible to create images that are not populated by strangers all trying to take the same selfie in front of the same attraction. That said, I have found two ways to avoid the masses. First, by using the drone. Even though the people are still everywhere, they are very tiny.

The second is to photograph at night using long exposures. I particularly like the photo below of the Prague Astronomical Clock. Installed in 1410, it is the world’s oldest astronomical clock still in operation today. It is a medieval marvel showcasing advanced horological and astronomical knowledge of its time, created by the clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and Jan Šindel, a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Charles University. There was not a moment of daylight when this clock was not surrounded by hundreds of people. Even at 3am, I had to time my exposures to avoid people milling past on the way home from the many pubs in the area.

Uneventful travel concluded with my arrival in Prague this morning. I wisely parked my rental car outside the city center and walked to the apartment I have rented. Prague is an overwhelmingly beautiful city. There is something magnificent to enjoy around almost every corner. That said, the number of tourists here is staggering. They are of every age from seniors to elementary school kids on class outings and of every nationality you can imagine. The energy here is vibrant and there were people still out at 3am when I did a bit of night photography.

Drone use is permitted here, but it presents a significant challenge. Finding good launch sites amid the narrow streets lined by tall buildings was difficult. Instead, I opted to launch from the bridges and fly to my subjects, often far away.

In total, I walked over ten miles, and that’s before my night walk, which will be factored into tomorrow’s numbers. At the end of the day, I was utterly exhausted and have decided I will take a more leisurely approach to my explorations tomorrow.

I am headed to Europe for the next two weeks. I will spend one-third of my time in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Italy. My soccer team is playing in an over-60s tournament organized by the Italian police on the final weekend. I predict that our team will either place first or last, depending on the consumption habits of our opponents regarding the bomboloni (Italian donuts; my attempt at police stereotype humor). I will travel by foot, train, and bus while in Italy and by rental car elsewhere. For this reason, I am packing very light. My camera, drone, telephoto lens, tripod, laptop, and full soccer kit take up 80% of my baggage volume. The rest is for a minimal set of travel clothing and weather protection. Wi-Fi connectivity permitting, I will try and post from the road.

I have spent much of my life making things. I have never, however, made a human. That is a miracle that only women can perform. Jeanine has delivered three such miracles and nurtured them through adulthood. I could not have been luckier than to have shared my life with her.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mamma.

After three days, the rain finally let up this afternoon, allowing me to photograph the new Concord Middle School at the request of our local newspaper. Ribbon cutting for the $100,000,000 project is scheduled for June 11th , and once fitted with solar cells is expected to be a net-zero building and among the most energy efficient in the world.

Thus far, the primary use of the surveillance cameras on our house has been to apprehend culprits in the act of eating our plantings. This groundhog made short work of two Cone Bushes (upper right corner in the photo below).

An ideal solution to this problem would be to introduce the fox who routinely patrols our yard to the woodchuck.

This month, my blog will celebrate its twentieth anniversary. If you told me I would still be making daily posts two decades into this project, I would have thought you were crazy.

To date, I have made 9,293 posts containing 12,989 images. What started as an experiment with something new called a “blog” and an expectation that it would help improve my photography turned into something entirely different. It became a personal/family/travel journal that helped me find the discipline to write every day.

As I look back, most of the photos are OK, some are pretty good, and a few are great. Occasionally, I manage to write something funny, clever, or insightful; more often than not, I settle for not overly boring. Although I genuinely enjoy hearing from followers, I have never attempted to seek a broader audience than the one intrinsically drawn to these pages, whatever their reasons might be. At times, it has been a nightmare to keep this site up and running. You have no idea how hard it is to keep 20-year-old posts compatible with the latest software, or how long it took to detoxify the posts that were corrupted in a ransom attack. To say that maintaining this blog has been a labor of love would be an understatement.

I often think that it would be nice to take a break from the blog. Perhaps, going forward, I will extend myself the latitude to post less frequently. Perhaps not. When all is said, done, and posted, this blog has helped me to live the lesson I learned from the “Dead Poets Society”: Carpe Diem.

Construction is well underway for a house just down the road from us. Our new neighbors reached the same conclusion we did and opted to tear down the original house to build a new one. It is fun to drive by the site each day and watch the construction progress, especially when I do not have to concern myself with the work.

Memorial services for two of the three CCHS seniors who died 2 weeks ago in a car accident on a Florida highway were held this weekend. The third will be private. Students, family, and staff placed flowers in the shape of a heart on the school grounds as the community continues to mourn. Our town newspaper, The Concord Bridge, carries obituaries of town residents, which I routinely scan, comparing my age to those who have passed. I cannot express my sadness as I turned to the last page of this week’s issue and found the obituaries for two 18-year-olds and one 17-year-old. It is strange that I feel such profound grief for the loss of young adults that I did not know. Perhaps it is because, I share the fear every parent has that they will lose a child. I hope Jimmy, Maisey, and Hannah’s family, and friends can feel the love and well wishes I am sending into the universe for them.

Nico shared this reunion photo of his 2016 TREE (Teaching & Research in Environmental Education) cohort taken in Colorado this week.

Meanwhile, in a break with tradition, Maya is serving cat soup for Cinco de Mayo.

For the first time since we completed the house, my niece Rachel and her boyfriend Rob visited this afternoon. Maya and Kyle joined us for the mini-reunion with their cousin, Uncle Mark, and Aunt Marie. Nico was in Denver for work.

Mark came to my soccer game this morning and watched us systematically take apart our Russian opponents. The score at halftime was 1-0, a fair reflection of the match play to that point. In the second half, however, we ground them down and scored an additional 5 unanswered goals. It was a particularly satisfying win because our opponents played a very “dirty” brand of soccer and tried to physically intimidate us.

Jeanine and Maya helped Marie find an outfit for her son’s July wedding in Galway, Ireland. The trio disappeared for much of the day, returning triumphantly with their mission accomplished. Our whole family is looking forward to attending the wedding, the first of the next generation of Calabrias.

Jeanine, my brother Mark, my sister-in-law Maire, and I enjoyed a visit to Ferjulian’s Farm, where we visited their tulip field and picked a couple of dozen. The photos do little justice to the vibrance of the colors or the number of flowers, more than a quarter million.

After our tour, we looked at their donut-making operation before a brief visit to the Minute Man Air Field (my brother is a former commercial airline pilot). A short hike on the Heath Hen Meadow Brook Woodland Trail helped build an appetite for our dinner at the Less Than Greater Than speakeasy in Hudson.