This week we return to the Science/Miscellaneous folder, and a photo that I almost included with last week’s Ancient Lore post because I mentioned how it might have been interesting to capture a sailboat within that one. The pagination of that post wasn’t conducive to the inclusion, so I let it be, but decided to post it this week because there’s not a hell of a lot in this folder anyway. You have to admit, when you think of sailboats they’re generally not this colorful, so I kinda like this one, but never thought it was strong enough to do anything with.
This is taken from the top of the same causeway as last week, a matter of lucky timing that I happened to be up there when the sailboat came through the channel of the Indian River Lagoon in Florida – yes, we’re still working with the Sony F717 during its brief stay with me. The causeway arced up to allow a solid 20 meters clearance underneath for traffic such as this, but I admit that, when I was bicycling around hill-challenged Florida, climbing the incline that this created was a hard slog, one that defeated me one day, two weeks after a serious illness when I thought I had recovered sufficiently. I have distinct memories of stopping and resting the bike on the shoulder (something that North Carolina seems completely unaware might exist,) and lying down in the pedestrian pathway waiting for the nausea to subside; this was not at all helped by being a blazingly hot day, and I was racking my brain trying to think of a place nearby where I might find some shade that was desperately needed. My mind obviously wasn’t working very well, because the nearest and deepest shade lay at the very end of a effortless and breezy run on the bike, directly underneath the bridge that I was on and precisely where last week’s photo had been taken. I could have turned around, literally coasted down without any pedaling whatsoever (I would have expended more energy in braking down at the bottom,) and popped down the ladder for the coolest and darkest spot within kilometers – Florida is not particularly known for deep shade, especially when the majority of trees are freaking palms.
Another time in the exact same location, I was looking out over the water for dolphins and manatees and whatever else I might spot from the high vantage – I’d seen some big jellyfish, manta and cownose rays, and even some sea turtles from up there – when one of the occupants of a boat passing beneath spotted the camera in my hands, squealed and waved. I quickly aimed down and fired off a shot, the haste partially evidenced by the lousy framing, but I had a bare second before the boat would have disappeared under the bridge. That she wasn’t really trying to have her picture taken is proved by her embarrassed smile here – I suspect she thought I was slower than that, which tells how out-of-touch she was in not recognizing me and my awesome photographic reputation.
And when I remembered this image and decided to include it, I realized this is one of the collection that was lost when a harddrive failed – or at least, the original was, and all I had was the version reduced to e-mail size (there was a purpose for it, then, but I don’t remember what it was now – old, you know.) While this particular frame isn’t one that I regret losing, always, always maintain backups. I still occasionally discover or remember frames that I wish I still had.