Tree face

today we went out exploring for a bit. someone had carved a face in a dead tree.... i hadnt seen it at first, but then i did, and it was a little scary... especially given the location.. (an abandoned state hospital, closed since 2003; you can visit the grounds during the day, but all the buildings are boarded up and nature is slowly overgrowing everything. some other time i should post some more pics!)

Nice... socks!

today it was pretty chilly! we went to a free photo exhibition and then had quite a walk through boston. along the way we saw some guys in speedos. standing around as if it was the most normal thing to do on a chilly saturday afternoon...

back home i found out it was for the 12th annual santa speedo run where men and women run for charity. in speedos.... and some santa decorations. they raised 250,000 dollars! too bad i missed them running... :( here you can see a video of the event. and here is their website, so that you can join next year, if interested....

Sexy legs

now thats a pair of legs... :) and heels..., and tight fitting pants...

you can check the statistics of your blog. how often is it visted per day/week/month. from which countries are the visitors? how did they get to your blog, where do they go afterwards? even, how long do they stay? as such, i found out that this is my most popular post. because.. most people fnd my blog through keywords like "short skirt high heels", "girls heels shorts", "too young for high heels", "really short skirt and high heels", or even "pictures of 50+ women in high heels".

so... im disappointed. and i guess the people that search images related to those terms are disappointed as well, when they land on my blog....

ah well.... :) i guess collecting all these search terms here might make this another well-visited post...

Speeding elephants

the circus arrived in boston. and therefore their elephants, 6 of them, walked from cambridge to the TD garden, where the circus will be. i had read this on universal hub, so me and tim where present to witness it all, in front of the museum of science. we were wondering how it would all happen, as traffic was just buzzing by. but at some point, big policemen on motors stopped all the traffic, and there they were, 6 elephants, one little one, holding each other's tails while they were walking by. ehmm... actually they were racing! they went so fast!!! universal hub did not warn me about that! i was so surprised by their speed, but then realized i never "walked with elephants" (another great title for a movie?!), so what do i know?

before i knew they had passed us, and this first shot was actually the best. we had to run but never really caught up with them (i cannot take pictures and jog at the same time!). well, that was funny.... although i had expected an entire parade... it was just those speeding elephants and their guards, and many, many fat policemen on motors...

i realize i once wrote about elephants and testing bridges, you can read that here. well, this bridge surely passed the test!

here some more pics that i took.

Thats boston

close to our apartment complex are 2 cemeteries, and i sometimes like to go there. especially when the leafs start to fall, it will be very pretty. you can get to both cemeteries through a small forest (can you still call it a forest when its small?). and i discovered there are several paths taking you there. i found a path i had not yet seen before, and just followed it, thereby discovering that the forest is actually a little bigger than i thought! i just followed the path (but aaargh, i was not pleased by all the musquitos), up and up and up, and suddenly i had a wide view all around me, i was so high up! there, thats boston, those tall buildings. then to the left (out of view) you have revere beach, right underneath me the cemetery and a little to the right our apartment complex. well, that was a surprise! 

i decided to walk on, but then got onto some construction site that was fenced off... :( buuuh. maybe i could have climbed over it, but i didnt want to embarass myself and get stuck somewhere or whatever, and thus had to walk the entire way back again. but actually i think that was nicer than going through the neighborhood.

here it seems boston is quite far away, but its only 12 minutes by subway.

Three miles!!

a few weeks ago i made myself the following promise; run 3 miles (5 km) without walking in between. and this had to be accomplished before i turn 30.... (iiieekkkk, 30!! 30!). now i know many people run easily a lot more than that.... but im not the sportive kind. i always liked swimming, but other than that, really nothing else. ok, i used to bike a lot, but for a dutch thats just a means of transportation. upon moving here, i stopped biking, as i think its too dangerous. ofcourse i feared not being able to bike properly anymore when going back to the netherlands, and thats what brought me to the gym of our apartment complex (plus i did not want to outgrow all those clothes i brought from home....) the past year or so i spent numerous miles on a stationary bike. my goodness, how boring! (but now i can bike better than ever..)

oh, but actually i wanted to write about running. well, at some point i decided to try running, and i hated it from the first try. but i just wanted to be able to do it!! so i continued... even got some real running shoes, but those turned out to be awful for my feet, and thus i remained with the sneakers above... and today, finally, i managed to run 3 miles in 29 minutes and 10 seconds, without stopping! jeeejj!!!! and im not yet 30... 

and im happy with that picture too! it might seem boring, but i could never have taken it without the photo-course i took. for this pic, i changed the ISO, the white balance and i choose a low aperture, while before all i ever did was changing the ISO a bit every now and then (if i thought about it). jeeeejjj! and also that before im 30, and my camera turns 1 (i got it last year for my bday from tim; hes also in the pic, can you find him?).

Mountain angels

on sunday we finally went to mount washington in new hampshire! i had been wanting to go there since a while now, but it is quite far (3 hrs by car). so, we got up early, and arrived down at the mountain around 11.30. it is 6,288 ft, or 1912 m high, the highest peak in this part of the us, and famous for dangerously erratic weather (wikipedia). the weather was perfect, sunny with only a few clouds. i had put on my most sporty outfit and my ugly running shoes. yep, we would walk up that mountain; a 4,4 mile hike! i decided to take tims camera bag taking all the lenses we have, and tim carried a backpack with food, water, extra jackets etc. the first part was fun and all. the path so rocky, but very doable. halfway, or rather, what we thought was halfway, we had lunch. unfortunately, we could not find the place where we supposedly could fill our waterbottle. not so nice, as we would have drank less.... soon after that, the path became more rocky, and considerably steeper. but still, doable. up, up, up we went. getting more and more tired. but the views were beautiful and the weather nice. and we saw so many people, also rather old people, so why wouldnt we be able to do this? at some point, while we thought we were really almost there, we drank all the water! and the path was getting more and more difficult. at some point, there were only rocks, and it was really steep. and i was tired, and we got  past the treeline and we were up so high and the sun was shining and i never did something like this before.... i was getting nasty with tim.... and why did i bring that stupid camera bag?!!

luckily, our fist mountain angel arrived! you can see her here. she was training and had an extra bottle of water, entirely for us!! that was great, and we got some courage again.... then we climbed up rock after rock for another 45 minutes, before we finally reached the summit. we took all the required pictures, including this one. in total, it took us nearly 5.5 hours!! all the while, i was telling tim that i was not going to walk back that path again... however... taking the train or shuttlebus back down would be 45 dollars per person!! we did not even bring that much money! lucky us, once again, we could drive down with a family that visited the mountain for the first time with their kids, 20 years after they had visited it together for the first time.... what would we be doing in 20 years?

so, we had a great day, but certainly it would have been less nice without these people that helped us out! thank you, once again!

more photos of our adventure? here!

Truly bizarre

this photo i took on one of our walks through the fells reservation, close to our apartment in melrose. found the shadows on this fallen tree so pretty. didnt post it so far as usually i like a story around a picture (unless i really like the pic and it speaks for itself.. :) or when im lazy... ;) ), but couldnt imagine the story with this picture would be this weird....

my parents went on holiday last week. the day after they left i got an email from my sister with the subject "IMPORTANT!!!!" that worried me a little... 

she wrote me that a blossom tree in my parent's garden had been cut down; the person taking care of the house could not open the door to the garden and discovered a huge tree was blocking it. uuhh??! i think the tree is as old as me, and a real! big! tree! (not as big as the above one though). pretty too, although not nice to sit under, as many birds liked it as well, and the chance of getting shit on your head was pretty big. anyways, on the day my parents left, someone, somehow cut down this tree!! can you believe it?! else nothing happened (luckily), but there was no sign, no note, no phone call, both neighbors on holiday...

and now this big, cut down tree is lying there. my parents came back today and called the police, but they said that its not something to come over for (it is a big tree! i would have no clue how to get rid of it..). im quite curious, actually, what the police here in the US would do about this...

now i told my sister to take some pics.... so maybe i can post one here... :)

normally i never do this, but today i violate my own rules; below 3 pics of the actual tree, before and after, and its removal.... see, a nice, big tree... (photos taken by my father, in the netherlands)
:(

 

Horse found

in fact the abandoned carriage from yesterday was not that abandoned after all. the building on the other side of the street that looked like it could fall apart any moment, harbored the horse on the ground floor (the other levels were clearly empty, there were not even windows anymore). it all looked soooo shabby. at first i did not even see the horse!

Abandoned cart

carriage, actually. also in new york; in the same street as the garage for cabs. it looked so strange, so out of place, finding this carriage there. it really looked as if it was abandoned in a hurry, and suddenly we were in another century, if not for the cabs rushing by.. we checked whether it was broken or so, but that did not seem to be the case.

i always heard this story that it is no pleasure to take a carriage ride in central park, as they keep the horse-shit somewhere close to where you are sitting. but i never tried, so i dont know whether it is true... :) (trying to find out a bit more about it, i came across this article, its about how badly these horses are treated, and that the average working life of such a horse is 4 years, whereas the average is 15 years for horses of the NYPD)

Common sense

when dealing with "officials" here, i often have the feeling that common sense is lacking. like at the liquor store.
this billboard is at the highway leading you out of boston, next to the fenway baseball stadion. at first i could not believe it, but i think it is actually meant to be against guns. i have been reading a little about gun possession in the US, and now i feel less comfortable, i have to say. in 1997, 40% of the households in the US reported to have a gun in their home. in total, there were ~44 000 000 gun owners, which means that 25% of all adults have a gun!! every fourth person!!! 11% of them say they just (?) use it for hunting, meaning the other 90% use it for.... ? i also found a pro-gun website where they state that it is ridiculous that guns are not allowed in schools.
well, let me just have my alcohol, then....