Mark had a speech therapy appointment this morning and I decided to tag along even as a fire alarm forced us outside for a portion of the session. Mark has trouble with longer or complex words often transposing the middle and beginning syllables.  Over the course of my three day visit it was clear he was making progress.  He often comes up with translations that are absolutely hysterical as evidenced below when he tried to say Osama Bin Laden (Obin Salad Men).  Immediately after his stroke his transpositions were even more extreme; mosquitos = pisculators. Difficulty with many words aside, I had no problem understanding or communicating with Mark.

Today I traveled to Minnesota to visit with my younger brother, Mark, and his family.  Mark recently suffered from a stroke which has left him with some speech, reading and memory deficits. I am hoping to help him out with some home projects and clear him for use of his woodworking equipment.

I took the commuter rail to Porter Square where I was treated to dinner by a former colleague seeking some career guidance. I then grabbed the Red Line to South Station and the Silver Line to Logan. Mark picked me up in Minneapolis and I was pleased to see that his driving skills had not diminished one iota.

Despite a heat advisory for Eastern Massachusetts, my soccer team had two more matches today in the NESO New England Open Soccer Tournament.  We made our way to the finals where the score was 1-1 after regulation time.  Overtime was scoreless and the match went to penalty kicks where we lost and had to settle for a second-place finish.  I was happy to survive the weekend without injury and was pleased with most of my play.  I had two opportunities to score in the finals but was not able to find the back of the net. Fatigue and exhaustion take their toll on accuracy and this was also the case for many of my teammates.

Jeanine and I joined Tom and Karen Metzold for dinner this evening at the Mexican Table in Waltham.  Tom was my high school wrestling partner and we have remained close friends since.  It has been a bit over a year since we last got together and it was great to catch up with each other.  Earlier in the day, I played a pair of soccer matches at the NESO New England Soccer Open.  We won our first match 5-0 and our second 3-1 which put us in great shape for the remainder of the tournament.

Although I am still mourning the loss of the images that were lost when my camera kit was stolen in Costa Rica, I now have replaced all the gear that was taken.  I carry a camera rider on my homeowners’ insurance policy which covered replacement cost for everything.  Keeping all of my receipts and good records helped to speed the process and I have been very pleased by the responsiveness and service I have received from Safety Insurance.  In the future, I will back up my images every night when traveling and be extremely suspicious of anyone offering to “help” me.

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.