I attended Open Table with Jeanine this evening to capture various photos for their website and newsletter. Pictured here are members of the board of directors in attendance this evening. Jeanine is now serving as the organization’s Executive Director.
Jeanine worked the Open Table booth at the Maynard Farmer’s Market. A careful examination of this photo taken by one of her cohorts will be worth the effort.
It has been over a month since Maya left for her internship at the Brookhaven National Labs on Long Island. We have been missing our girl and I suspect she has been missing her dog. Here is a photo from the archives intended to cheer us all up.
Today begins the long process of downloading, culling, post-processing, sorting, and tagging the 4000 pictures I took over the last three weeks (the goal is to get under 1000). I suspect it will take me about a week to do so while I also try and catch up on my blog postings. Iceland has an abundance of rivers carrying glacier melt to the ocean and most include several waterfalls along the way. Each also has at least one bridge to enable car travel. I would say that 90% of these are one-lane affairs of questionable robustness. Not so for this example which is typical of the newer bridges being built around the country to accommodate the massive increase in tourism that Iceland has experienced over the last few years.
Few things could be more relaxing after back-to-back soccer matches than a visit to the Blue Lagoon. Here our entire team enjoyed the restorative waters and silica mud masks before flying back to Boston.
Less than 15 hours since our last match we faced our second team from Iceland this morning. The game ended in a 3-3 tie. Let’s just say that the referee had a special place in his heart for his fellow countrymen. That said, a tie made it that much easier to socialize with our hosts after the match. Originally, our game had been scheduled for the afternoon but we agreed to move it up earlier so that everyone could attend the huge Gay Pride Parade and Festival scheduled for later in the day. Pictured below is the newly elected President of Iceland, the first sitting president of any country to address a Gay Pride event.
The parade featured performance artists, drag queens, and straight performers. I literally had a front row seat to the stage show and was able to get some nice close ups of the performers.
Our last dinner in Iceland was a fine feast where we were joined by several members of the team we played earlier in the day.
The motivation for my trip to Iceland is to compete with my over-50 soccer team, Concord United, in two matches against senior teams from Iceland. Our first match was this evening and ended in a 1-1 tie. Teams here take some liberties with age and I was surprised to be marking a 42 year old Icelandic giant. Even so, I did my job well and deprived him of any productive trips down the pitch despite his 15 year advantage.
I spent the morning on an organized walking tour of the capital with a small group of my teammates and captured many new sights.
During my last visit to Iceland I had to rush around the Snæfellsnes peninsula because I was running short on time. Today, I revisited all of my favorite locations giving myself plenty of time to explore. These types of images do not lend themselves to viewing in small format. Clicking on them should bring up a larger, higher resolution version. I had originally planned a third night of camping but opted to travel on to Reykjavik when it began to rain.
I shot mostly landscapes today but I couldn’t resist these little ducklings.
It is important to have a full tank of gas and carry your own food and water in the Westfjords as you can drive for hours before encountering any services. So provisioned, I set out to explore, beginning with the western most point of the the country, the cliffs at Látrabjarg. On the way I stopped frequently, as photo opportunities popped up at every turn including some rather unlikely subjects.
Most of the roads in this area are made of gravel. Frequent rock slides and ever enlarging potholes make constant work for maintenance crews. Because the roads are very narrow, you simply have to queue up and wait until the work is completed before driving on.
Látrabjarg is home to hundreds of thousands of cliff dwelling birds (it has the largest colony in all of Europe) including the ever so cute puffin. I arrived at noon when most birds are off at sea fishing but I did manage to find some nice subjects to shoot. I followed posted advice to lay flat on my belly when taking photographs from the cliff edge. Extremely high wind gusts have carried many a visitor over the edge (check out the person in the photo below for a sense of scale and to gauge the probability of surviving a fall). Had it not started to rain, I could have spent hours here.
The beach at Rauðasandur (red sands) is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen and not a single footprint on it. Aside from being extremely remote, I would venture to guess that few humans would find the water temperature to their liking. The seals, however, seemed to like it just fine.
By late afternoon I was ready to make my way towards Grundarfjörður on the Snæfellsnes peninsula. I plan to camp there near Kirkjufell Mountain which I hope to photograph tomorrow morning. In total I spent another 6 hours driving today and welcomed all the stops I made to take photographs along the way.
I have never been able to sleep on a red-eye and such was the case last night. My excitement at being back in Iceland, however, was enough to keep me awake as I made the 6 hour drive to Dynjandi located in the Westfjords, the only region of the country that I did not reach on my prior visit. Fewer than 15% of visitors to Iceland ever set foot in the Westfjords and a surprisingly large number of Icelanders have never been here either. It is by far the most pristine and some would say the most authentic experience of the country since the massive increase in tourism over the past few years.
Dynjandi is a series of waterfalls with a cumulative drop of 330 feet. The way the water fans out so uniformly makes it one of the most photogenic I have captured.
I made few stops en route to Dynjandi but paused for the ones shown below. A loyal follower of this blog requested more photos of bridges so I was on the lookout for good examples. I would say that 90% of the bridges in the country are one-lane affairs.
When the sun finally set at about 10:30PM, sleep came easily. I pitched my tent at the base of the falls where the thundering sound of falling water ushered in the best night’s sleep I have had in some time.
Jeanine spent the weekend in Stony Brook visiting Maya who is interning at the Brookhaven National Labs. Her visit was timed to overlap with the BNL Atom Smashing Fun Day during which members of the public get a behind-the-scenes tour of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and learn about the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle.
I bid farewell to Costa Rica departing my hotel at3:30 amm, flew to Miami and then Boston where Jeanine met me for a short time. She delivered a replacement camera I ordered earlier in the week and we caught up on the prior 10 days before I boarded a red-eye for Iceland where I will spend the next week.
By a margin of 6-0, the US defeated Costa Rica to secure third place at the 2016 Copa International Futbol Amputados, the teams highest ever tournament finish. There were a lot of hugs going around. Head Coach Lambert embraces Nico after his second of three goals in the match, a beautiful direct kick which he bent around the wall and placed in the upper corner. Nico kisses teammate, Foday, after he scores his first goal of the tournament. I hoist the US team MVP with a total of 5 goals and 4 assists while he hoists the team’s third place trophy.
Professional television coverage of the game can be viewed at the following link.
USA vs. Costa Rica Television Coverage
The US fell to Mexico 2-0 this afternoon in a disappointing semi-finals loss. Mexico went up 1-0 on an own goal (one of our defenders tried to head a corner kick out of the box but only managed to deflect it past our keeper). When one of our top players was ejected early in the second half on a call that was universally viewed as incorrect, the US, playing a man short, had little chance of holding back Mexico. With only 6 field players, losing one is a major disadvantage.
Nicolai played well, as did the entire squad. He finished the game entirely spent and with an injured ankle. His availability for tomorrow’s consolation finals remains in question.
Although I arrived early for some photography, my main purpose for visiting Costa Rica was to watch Nicolai compete for the US National Amputee Soccer Team in a 6 team mini-Copa Americas Cup tournament. The teams opening match was against Costa Rica. Nico scored two goals and had one assist in the 3-0 US victory. The match was streamed live and Jeanine had a virtual viewing party with several relatives and friends. Earlier in the day the team was treated to a tour of the brand new Stadium Nationale where I took this photo of him with Karuna. I have given the couple their celebrity nikname of Nicuna. Nicolai offered Karico as another option. We will have to see which one sticks. Without my good cameras, stolen earlier in the week, it was impossible to get decent photos of the evening game played under the lights. Tomorrow the team faces a very strong Mexican squad during the day and I hope to get some action shots with my back up camera.
