When a fair weather and peak fall foliage forecast align on a weekend day you can assume with high confidence that I will be in the car headed for the mountains. I left early in the morning and drove to Franconia Notch in New Hampshire where the color was great but the sky was overcast. I paused for a few shots and then set out for Smugglers Notch in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont where the light was better and the color just as nice. I failed to find a perfect shot and spent more time enjoying the scenery with my eyes than trying to capture it with my camera. Realizing I was less than an hour from Burlington, and decided to drop in on my sister-in-law, Susan for a brief visit. By the time I returned to Concord at 8PM I had logged 515 miles on my trip odometer.
I was too busy at work to make it to Maya’s soccer game today. She scored a very pretty goal which I am very sorry to have missed. I am scheduled for some business travel next week and have a number of urgent items that need to be addressed before leaving the office. This photo of Maya’s friend Fiona was taken earlier this week.
The weather could not have been more perfect for fall soccer today. Maya still has to tape her ankle but is back to full strength and the starting line up at center midfield. Her distribution was excellent and she had a couple of nice shots on goal. Her team defeated Wayland soundly by a margin of 2-0 in a game that could have just as easily seen another four goals for the Patriots.
On this day, twenty five years ago, I married a woman who I continue to find as interesting, inspiring and sexy as I did then. The time has passed all too quickly and I can only hope that this is merely the half way point. Had I to do it all over again, I would make the same vows to the same woman.
Jeanine, today we stand before each other, amongst our family and friends, ready to embark on a life long journey together. In celebration of my love for you, I make these vows.
I PROMISE:
to care for you in sickness and in health
to nurture your emotional, spiritual, and physical well being
to honor you and remain true to you forsaking all others
to respect you as an individual and as a partner
to appreciate your uniqueness
to learn more about you as we grow and change over time
to share in your dreams, challenges, and accomplishments
to support your growth and development
to encourage positive change which you desire to make
to understand you well enough to give you the nurturing you need
to accept that there are some things about you that I wish were different but may change only in relatively small ways
to foster healthy communicating and problem solving
to forgive you when you seek forgiveness from me
to play with you
to seek deeper levels of emotional, spiritual, and physical intimacy
to create and nurture our own family (including a dog) further extending the union of our two families
Jeanine and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary tomorrow. This evening we curled up to watch a romantic comedy, oddly named Something’s Gotta Give, featuring Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. It was actually the perfect movie for the occasion and we both laughed our heads off. Given my exceptional romantic instincts, I seized the moment after the movie finished to present Jeanine with a gift to celebrate twenty five years of marriage. When she opened the box and discovered an iron inside (our current one, I discovered last weekend, has a broken handle being held together by packing tape) she was nothing short of furious. I believe her exact words were “this is the WORST anniversary present EVER!” I tried to console her by explaining what a high quality iron it was and encouraged her to take it out of the box and examine it more closely. She would have nothing to do with the iron or me. I persisted, however, and she begrudgingly took the iron out and then the special cup used to fill the iron inside which she discovered a lovely sterling silver bracelet. I was forgiven in the nicest way possible.
I played the worst soccer of my life this morning after missing two practices and a game last weekend while in Colorado. In all my years of playing, I cannot remember ever allowing a man I was marking to get an uncontested shot at the net, let alone score. Today I was so exhausted that I could not keep up with the man I was defending when he made a move to the goal and released a rocket from 25 yards out. Not only did I fail to block the shot, I shielded our keeper who had no chance of stopping a ball he could not see until the last instant. My only consolation was that we lost the match 3-1 which meant that my failure to defend was not the sole reason for our loss. My team also lost last weekend and we have moved from the top of the ladder to the bottom and must now fight for our lives to avoid relegation. This after winning the division last season. I was not in the mood for any photography after the dreadful morning and am posting a few gems from last week.
Maya threads a pass through the defense during her soccer match this afternoon, her sprained ankle having recovered fully. The weather has recently turned quite cold and her parents should have taken a clue from Maya and dressed more warmly for the game. Jeanine and I spent a good portion of the day rearranging furniture on the second floor now that the new floor finish has fully hardened.
The beauty of desktop 3D printing is that you can rapidly iterate on design refinements. Pictured above is my third version of a table top tripod. I have increased the size and height of the legs from my first version (shown below for comparison). In addition, I tapered the legs (which had the added benefit of creating some very cool carbon fiber patterns), increased the size and thickness of the shoulder joints and converted from a 1/4-20 to 3/8-16 mounting bolt. The result is a very stiff design that I would fearlessly trust supporting the $5,000 camera and lens combination I use for macro photography. This version was good enough to win Part of the Week at work, my first win since joining the company three months ago, a good indicator of the level of competition from my colleagues who each week create the most amazing entries. After using the new tripod for some actual work, I decided to increase the splay of the legs and make them a tad longer. I left Version 4 printing as I went home for the weekend and can’t wait to see the result when I return on Monday.
In any given week, I often volunteer to do failure analysis on a returned 3D printer. There is no better way to identify opportunities to improve quality and reliability than getting a first hand look at failures from the field. I take a very forensic approach to the work and enjoy getting to the root cause of subtle problems. What I don’t enjoy is scrounging around for the tools I need to do the work. For this reason I decided to make a personal tool caddy which contains exactly the right set of tools to inspect and service a Mark One printer. As an added refinement, I embedded magnets below each tool slot to keep the bits and sockets in place until needed. To prevent the magnets from jumping out of the print on to the print head (this happened on my first attempt), I embedded a series of thin blade sections from a snap off knife below the magnets. My first project which made use of embedding objects in a print made it clear to me what a great feature this is.
It may take close examination to identify the subjects in this photo. While not as dramatic as many of the landscapes I shot while in The Rockies, it is sublime and a personal favorite from my all-too-brief photography adventure in Colorado. It is amazing how much transpired while I was out of the office for two days and it took a very long day to catch up.
I cannot conceive of a better way to celebrate my birthday than spending it in a place of extraordinary natural beauty. The only improvement would have been to enjoy it with the entire family.
Another early start to the day afforded me an opportunity to photograph the super moon moonset. Not quite as dramatic as the lunar eclipse but still a beautiful thing to watch.
I spent the morning touring the Dallas Divide area, a section of the San Juan Mountains that are known for their fall splendor before heading to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The Black Canyon is so named due its steepness which makes it difficult for sunlight to penetrate into its depths. As a result, the canyon is often shrouded in shadow, causing the rocky walls to appear black. At its narrowest point the canyon is only 40 ft wide at the river. I timed my visit to the south rim to coincide with a 30 minute window during which the river was partially lit.
I was up early this morning and watched as the sun rose over the Great Sand Dunes National Park. The dunes are magnificent both in form and scale. I could have spent the entire day exploring the park and climbing the dunes but I had a great deal of ground to cover to stay on a very ambitious schedule.
Lake City was my next destination where I took the famous Alpine Loop scenic byway destined for Ouray. The three hours it took to reach Lake City passed quickly even though I stopped often to photograph the insanely beautiful fall foliage.
My traverse of the Alpine Loop took me over both Cinnamon Pass and California Pass. The “road” is for 4×4 vehicles only. My rented Toyota 4Runner was sure footed giving me great confidence as I ascended into the mountains even though many sections were very narrow with exposed drop offs (not something for the timid or those with a fear of heights, like me). The scenery and views, however, made it all worthwhile.
The descent was an entirely different story. I made the mistake of entering the Poughkeepsie Gulch despite posted warnings stating the “road” was only for experts driving 4x4s equipped with winches and lockers. When it became clear how technically challenging the path would be, it seemed safer to continue descending rather than to climb back out. I never felt that I was in personal danger but it is nothing short of a miracle that I made it down without seriously damaging my rental or getting stranded. I had to stop twice for a half hour each time to reconstruct the road with large stones so I could pass safely. I do not exaggerate when I say I could have walked faster than I drove down this gulch. A visit to YouTube and a search for the Poughkeepsie Gulch will tell the story better than I can.
I was tempted to spend the evening in beautiful Ouray but decided to push on to Ridgeway where I felt it would be easier to photograph the super blood moon eclipse. Had I know about this event before leaving home I would have brought a different lens. I did the best I could with the 300mm lens I had at hand.
This website is dedicated to sharing, with family and friends, the day-to-day adventures of the Calabria family.
