Entries from January 2010

2010

South African update

34 degrees of latitude south. Very comfortable bottom tip of the African Continent. South of us, I was thinking today, is a maritime void that drops all the way to Antarctica. Ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas probably do so in an affectionate fashion, keeping land in sight, wary of open seas. Nearby, they know, the mighty Atlantic and Indian Oceans collide.

And the skies over there, where no landmass remains, are surely empty too, exempt of air traffic; why would there be any? This is a space that leads nowhere, that just doesn’t fit on known lines from A to B.

South Africa, as I believe I’ve said it before, is a strange kaleidoscope. Where else can one drive for a few hours and see baboons, sharks, seals, penguins, dassies, sheep, horses, ostriches, antelopes, zebras, chameleons and two corgis? Summer weather is stunning, moody, Mediterranean. The ocean is all around us, ever-present. Life flows in a rather languorous southern way, rocked softly by the old rhythms of nature and the new controlling attempts of man. Wearing a watch down here no longer seems so critical, as there are no subways to catch nor tails to chase. If there is light and the air is mild and perfumed, it is morning. Once the heat picks up to the point of making shade a commodity worth trading, it’s mid-day. When sunset finally casts an orange glow on Table Mountain, it’s 8:00 PM. That simple.

Our lazy days are filled with sun and the chirping of many birds, and the caress of a southeaster that makes trees sing and keeps the sky ever-changing. Breakfast coffee is sipped in clear morning air looking up at the mountain, slow lunches enjoyed later in protective shade, and dinners served by candle light as stories are told of the day gone by, over platefuls of braaied boerewors and lamb chops, snoek pate, Woolworths custard, milk tarts, Malva pudding and the many delicious wines of the Western Cape.

Hints of a road trip are taking shape in our minds and being projected on maps. Echoes speak of the Great Karoo, a land of heat and flat nothingness, a return to lonely dirt roads and the solitude of the very first days. Beyond it, stuck between the Eastern Cape, the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal, lies the isolated mountain kingdom of Lesotho. Very much like the worlds of Tolkien, South Africa’s scenery changes radically as one travels along and Lesotho could easily be the Kingdom of Mordor, evil notwithstanding. Its western wall is protected by the infamous Sani Pass, highest and steepest mountain pass on the continent at 2873 meters above sea level.

For now, here are glimpses of a hike around Silvermine. A’rvi pas.

Posted at 9:03 AM in South Africa: 3 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

1 - PJ says:

« Your experience of South Africa (Cape Town) is a wonderful one, and your pictures are fabulous. However, even compared to the average white Capetonian, your experience is atypical. I assume your in laws are retired and quite well -off, living as they do in Constantia. There are plenty of people who wake to alarm clocks, work until late in the day, feel stressed out regarding economic things and politics, the future etc And of course you have made no mention of the people living in poverty, or somewhere in between.

I too have experienced the wonderful feeling of perpetual vacation when visiting family in Cape Town that you are experiencing. However I know very well that it is just as unrepresentative of every day life as it would be to characterize any vacation as a slice of the norm. You are indeed very fortunate to be able to take such a wonderful extended visit to this beautuful land. »
Date of comment: 2010-01-31 19:35 • Reply
1.1 - Vince answers:

« I agree 100%. My experience is completely atypical and I certainly never intended to imply otherwise. I am only exposed to the best of what South Africa has to offer and very much sheltered from the rest. However, this is indeed a vacation and we enjoy it as such, and a much deserved break before some greatly stressful times that will involve their share of alarm-clock mornings and what comes after.

As far as the poverty goes, again, you are right too. I am preparing a later post on the matter, one which even then will only scratch the surface, but it is there, ever-present and overwhelming. South Africa might have managed to wake up from a long, terrible nightmare, but the reality that rushed in when the alarm-clock rang hasn’t managed so far to improve much on the bad dream... »
Date of comment: 2010-02-01 03:07 • Reply
2 - marie says:

« Hi PJ

I would add that Cape Town is special in the sense that even if you are waking up to an alarm, with the responsibility of work, the mountain in the middle is quite easily accessible. My working friends use it in the week as an escape.

Be comforted that when we are back in New York there will be no more holiday, no mountain, no birds, and no beaches. And rent to pay.

My father might want to add that no, he has not retired - he works fulltime, and is 77 »
Date of comment: 2010-02-03 16:06 • Reply

2010

Panoramas

Below are a few modest panorama attempts. My little pano head gizmo is working really well and I’m slowly getting used to shooting panos in less than 15 minutes a piece. I’m hoping the silly mistakes of doing an arbitrary 30 deg. panning with the lens mistakenly zoomed in - and thus failing to overlap - and leaving the polarizing filter on are things of the past. I’ve got it down to just a few minutes in the field, plus some 30 to 45 minutes of post-processing for a single image born from an average of 6 stitched vertical HDR frames (or 18 files.)

As a rough guide, here’s my workflow: I bracket each frame into 3 exposures at -2, 0 and +2 EV, usually taking 4 to 7 frames to cover the scene (I rarely do full 360 deg. panos thus far), moving the head horizontally by 25 to 30 degrees between frames, or overlapping them by some 40%. Once home, I convert my Canon RAW files to DNG, process them with Tim Farrar’s FFDD6 to obtain EDR TIFF images (my own term: Extended Dynamic Range, as this is not the standard HDR + tone mapping process), develop them in a RAW processor with identical settings for all files and then stitch them together and apply the finishing touches such as sharpening and cropping.

The final output is a 16 bit TIFF file in the ProPhoto color space that’s up to 200 MB in size and measures up to 80 in. at 240 dpi. That final panorama should be pretty much free of noise thanks to FFDD’s brilliant scripting and contains superb detail. I must say it’s hard to scale it down to a web-friendly size and still have it look as good.

Of course, these are just my first baby steps in a broad direction and I have a lot to learn. A better camera and lenses will eventually yield much better results, and a more powerful computer will help the post-processing tremendously; my laptop, as it is, struggles painfully through the process and crashes regularly...

This will get better.

Posted at 6:02 AM in Photography: & South Africa: No comments yet » Post one!

2010

The Garmin Forerunner on Table Mountain

The first best purchase I ever made towards my running career was a simple pair of running shoes. They were Nike Air Max Assail II trail runners bought for $89 at a highway-side outlet in Minnesota. I never noticed they were trail running shoes. I didn’t bother with stride style or supination. I tried them on and they fitted both my feet and budget like gloves. Basically, I bought them because I liked the way they looked.

They lasted me well over 1500 km without flinching. I only changed them after 3 years because I was worried to see everybody else rotate their shoes much earlier. But I suspect I ran better in these than in my current Asics. Oh, that Nike model? Of course they don’t make them any more.

The second best purchase ever, well, that only happened this year (2009). I was leaving Vancouver and my all-time favourite Seawall route behind and was quite worried about what lay ahead in New York in terms of running paths. It felt like I would never find anything as good as Stanley Park and would have to get used to streets again. I would have to spend hours on the Gmaps Pedometer plotting multiple routes and calculating possible and probable distances.

So I was weak. I invested in a Garmin Forerunner 305 personal trainer, a heart rate monitor with integrated GPS capability. Equipped with the little beauty, I’d be able to follow my progress in real time and break free from pre-run distance calculations. I would be able to improvise and adjust to the Eastern Seaboard.

I’ve now been running with the Forerunner for almost a year. My last 3 trail runs down here in South Africa relied on it heavily. I simply love it. It is the most extraordinary tool and I seriously doubt I would be able to accomplish as much without it. Despite the obvious heart rate monitoring - which I am not really using these days, having temporarily stopped interval training when I left Vancouver - the Forerunner offers a multitude of features that really all boil down to this: its GPS capability allows for real-time tracking of distance vs speed and time.

That’s it. It’s that simple. With a glance at my watch, I know instantly how long I have been running, and how far. And what remains ahead if I’ve plotted a training course. This makes such a huge difference in terms of pacing myself, I can’t imagine running without it any more. I can double-back and run in my tracks, I can follow a previously uploaded route, I can run against myself to improve time, I can choose paces, heart rate zones and speeds at will, backed up by alarms to stay within chosen parameters. I have direct access to sunrise and sunset times, I can mark interesting spots as way-points, and later, everything gets uploaded to either of my 3 favourite pieces of training software, on the laptop or online, and the run is fully detailed and mapped onto Google maps.

Yesterday’s run once again led me over Table Mountain. Marie had a meeting in downtown Cape Town with an editor and dropped me off at 3:00 PM a little beyond the lower Cableway station, at the base of Platteklip Gorge. Platterklip reminds me very much of Vancouver’s Grouse Grind. Steep, straight up, painful, it took me a bit under an hour to climb. Two major differences here, though: the South African mid-day heat - it was about 27 deg. C - and its consequence, a welcomed absence of crowds. I couldn’t choose my window, having caught a ride, but I would recommend going much earlier in the day, or later.

In any case, no running up Platterklip for me, I don’t train on uphills often enough to manage it. And with 13 km to go once at the top, the name of the game was pacing. I was bringing along two energy gels and two Powerade bottles. I also knew I could count on water at the beginning of the Jeep track, near the reservoirs.

Platterklip, just like the Grind, is basically a long staircase. Initial elevation: 400 meters ASL. I started in the sun and eventually got some shade as the two walls converged on me and water sang weakly in the gorge, despite the summer. I sucked an energy gel two thirds of the way up. Towards the top, legs a tad shaky, I met up with an unrelenting sun again but the wind finally picked up as I came out onto the plateau at 55 minutes. A signpost indicated the cable car station to the right, and Maclear’s Beacon to the left.

I aimed for the latter, running on a pleasantly flat trail of large rocks and some sand, and reached the beacon at 1:15 hrs. Altitude, 1087 meters. I snapped a few shots and pushed on. From Maclear’s Beacon, I was on known territory. I negotiated the long descent on the Smuts Track, passed Skeleton Gorge (a tempting shortcut back home) and Nursery Ravine (an even more tempting shortcut to home and the swimming pool) and eventually came upon the beginning of the Jeep track, at 2:00 hrs sharp.

I filled my empty bottle with a water that is most probably drinkable but, as with all fresh water on the table, looks a little yellow and doesn’t really inspire me. I had Powerade left and decided to use the fresh water for cooling off, the sun still fiercely frying the top of the mountain.

The steep Jeep track is quite easy on the way down as long as I pay close attention to my knees. At the Constantia Nek, I took a sharp left and followed a trail into Cecilia, descending and crossing the road into the top of the Green Belt and running down a bit faster on my last reserves, like a horse smelling the barn.

I arrived on Brommersvlei Rd. at 2:47 hrs. The Powerade was gone, and so were my reserves. Once home, I drank a ton of water and jumped into the pool. The dogs looked worried, either about my redish face or about the risk of drowning. Theirs.

Beautiful run.

Posted at 8:45 AM in Reviews: & Running: & South Africa: 2 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

2010

Running around Cape Town's Table Mountain

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup* coming to South Africa this summer, or rather this winter as we are in the Southern Hemisphere, crowds will no doubt descend on Cape Town like flocks of vultures circling a tourism prey. Some will be hooligans and care only about drinking and causing trouble in the name of their team. I wish them to fail and be arrested. Others, I hope, will arrive with healthier aspirations and a few might even be able to focus on something other than soccer. For the runners in this last category, here’s my trail running suggestion of the week.

Cape Town is, and always will be, the city that lives by the many rhythms of Table Mountain. It would be hard to ignore said mountain as it stands right in the middle of civilization, surrounded on all sides by mankind and its many follies. Yet the table remains incredibly unspoiled, protected and grandiose. Easy accessible, it still retains a latent level of danger which claims lives every year. This, my friends, is where I want to send you running.

I posted about a trail run last year that started at the Constantia Nek and climbed all the way to Maclear’s Beacon, and back. This time, I’ve tried to avoid major elevation gains so that the running would be more even. The one kink with this run is that it will require friendly assistance from someone who can drop you off and pick you up later, as it isn’t a full loop, unless you can make it so. In my case, the final leg led straight home.

The starting point is no other than Table Mountain’s Lower Cableway Station, on the city side. You can wave at the tourists as they get ready to be cattle-carried up on a cable and you head north on the paved Tafelberg road, warming up despite the hot weather, just to be sure.

Your run begins right there, with the cable car ascending slowly behind you, the mountain rising steeply to your right and the city sprawled down below on the left. The road will be paved for some 5 or 6 kilometers, even though cars can only reach half-way. Start slowly, the heat might be new to you, and you have 16 km to go on very mixed terrain. Ideally, wear sunscreen, bring a hat, water and energy.

Up on your right, you’ll notice a very steep and narrow gorge leading to the top of the table; it’s Platteklip Gorge, only « easy » walking access to the summit on this side of the mountain. Slightly behind your left shoulder is the outcropping of Lion’s Head. You get a perfect view of Cape Town and its harbour, and can follow the shoreline further north around Table Bay all the way to Blouberg.

Eventually, you pass a barrier and enter the restricted part of the road. No cars beyond this point, you are free. Keep running along the mountain side until the road turns into a dust and rock path. Follow it down a little and you will get the option of climbing straight back up as you are about to turn the corner above Rhodes Memorial. Past this point, a map will do you immense good. I highly recommend The Maps’s waterproof and tear-resistant maps.

You now are running on hiking paths. They can be quite narrow and uneven, so watch your step. You climbed quite high on the slope of Devil’s Peak and have to descend back to the tree line. Hiking paths then alternate with wider trails that are called jeep paths and allow theoretical access to emergency vehicles. You’ll be running in and out of the forest, crossing small creeks and climbing short but steep sections as you progress around the mountain and onto the southbound second half, towards the Kirstenbosch botanical garden.

You should cruise above Kirstenbosch, past the path to Skeleton Gorge that leads up to the top of the table, passed Nursery Ravine, and along the water reservoir. This leads you into the Cecilia Plantation at which point you dash down to the left, aiming for the road that you cross, heading back to the civilized world. As a matter of fact, the Cecilia parking lot could make a nice pick-up point. As for me, I pressed on down to find Bordeaux Ave. and Brommersvlei Rd. to Sun Valley Ave, and I was back home in 2 hours flat.

(The pictures are rather crappy, taken by mistake as jpegs and shot on the go not to waste too much time. But at least, running with the G10 is quite doable and fun.)

Welcome to Cape Town!

* This means soccer. If you had to look it up, you might have earned my complete admiration. Or lost it.

Posted at 3:45 AM in Running: & South Africa: No comments yet » Post one!

2010

Cape Dwarf Chameleon found!

After two years of patient hopes and a few bursts of frantic investigation, we have finally found the lost family track of the Cape Dwarf Chameleon, endangered specie as per CITES.

They had disappeared from Maureen’s Constantia garden years ago but sightings were still being reported by various friends of ours in the greater Cape Town, so we set out on yet another survey of the green belt, a long path of nature right behind the house. The dogs were happily running around.

Casually, Marie headed towards a tree, stood there for a moment, and then called me over in the imperative tone she had used when she spotted our first leopard in the Kgalagadi. « I’m looking at a chameleon right now, » she whispered. She always makes it look so easy.

I took many average pictures and while Marie was walking the dogs back home, I stuck around and found 5 more individuals, within a 20 meter radius, hidden in small trees and seemingly enjoying the afternoon sun. The little guys are incredibly cute and totally remind me of seahorses; they shy away from the camera, spinning around a branch in a way that makes it very hard to photograph them.

Nature has such lovely surprises up her sleeve...

Posted at 9:53 AM in Photoblogs: & South Africa: 1 Comment » Toggle display • Reply

2010

African skies

This year’s trip to South Africa was a textbook example of glitchless-ness. We rose at dawn in Brooklyn, left the apartment at 7:15 AM and caught a cab a block away on the taxi corridor as we always do. The driver accepted to tackle Atlantic Avenue rather than the BQE, a cheaper, more pleasant and usually faster approach to JFK from our ‘hood.

At the aiport, there were no more than a handful of passengers in the line to the South African Airways counter. Bags were tagged and boarding passes issued all the way to destination and we then dropped off our checked luggage ourselves for screening. We headed down to the security checkpoint and were stunned to find it empty. Last year’s line had stretched half the terminal’s length and taken an eternity to process.

Our 10:30 AM flight boarded as scheduled from a quiet gate and left on time. The Airbus A340-300 was probably 80 to 90% full. We took off on a southwesterly heading, made a wide climbing turn to the left, came back over Jamaica Bay and then settled on an Atlantic crossing course.

The cabin purser had a surprise for us on the first announcement. We had expected a technical stopover in Dakar would be inflicted upon us like the previous year, but were informed that the 14:30 hour long flight would be direct to Johannesburg. Marie leaped in her seat, thrilled. She hates unnecessary landings and take offs.

I was initially a bit disappointed myself. I had found the moody Dakar stop interesting - arriving in the middle of the night, backtracking down the runway to exit at the only taxiway, the air foggy and warm, French signs on airport vehicles, grumpy officials climbing aboard and affiliated airline crew cleaning up our mess while we stood and stretched, not allowed to de-plane. But then they fumigated the cabin and the fun was over. And the stop was long, and half the flight remained afterward. No, 14:30 hrs non-stop was a much better deal.

With a selection of over 20 on-demand movies, the flight was easy and we never got bored - nor even really restless or uncomfortable. Lunch was served shortly after take-off and later, sandwiches remained available for the entire duration of the flight, along with water, juice, coffee and cookies, which I think is very civilized. Then breakfast was served some 2 hours before landing.

We crossed the ocean, catching up with the night about half-way across, ricocheted off the coast of Senegal, crossed the Gulf of Guinea and made landfall in northern Namibia, passing north of Windhoek and heading down in a diagonal across Botswana as the new day was dawning.

Sunrise was stunning and so were the later cloud formations over an extremely warm African land. We landed a touch early in Jo’burg, cleared customs much more rapidly than the year before, got our luggage and checked it back in for the short flight south.

We then left OR Tambo International at 11:00 AM and landed in Cape Town around 1:30 PM. The clouds had cleared shortly after take-off and revealed the Karoo in all its reddish glory. Our bags had followed us correctly this time and nothing got stolen. Marie’s parents were waiting for us with a flower and a hug. We were home free.

Posted at 3:29 PM in On the road: & South Africa: 3 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

2010

Soon airborne to South Africa

Coriolistic Anachronisms, already a little dazed by winter’s numbing caress, is going to slow down even further while Marie and I escape across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa. For the two months to come, I will only be posting brief and sporadic teasers from the road. I will, however, be taking photos like crazy and should have a lot to write about once we get back.

My goal this year is to concentrate on large scale panoramas and HDR. The new Manfrotto tripod and its ballhead will follow me everywhere. Going to extremes, I have rigged a makeshift panoramic head in the form of a $10 Nikon bracket that I attach at an angle between the sideways ballhead and the camera and which approximate the advantages of the $400 real thing, correcting parallax by making the camera rotate roughly around the lens’ entrance pupil. The 3 panos posted in a previous entry were taken using that rig but I have since then improved the design. Furthermore, they were shot in sub-freezing temperatures with numb fingers and little time to calculate and prepare. South Africa, in comparison, will be bliss...

Until next time, then.

Posted at 8:39 PM in On the road: & South Africa: No comments yet » Post one!

2010

Score

!

Posted at 8:50 PM in Other: 3 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

2010

Nervous Brooklyn snapshots

This will probably be the last - or next to last - post before wheels up. With suspense and stress levels hovering around critical, we’ve been taking walks around Brooklyn to relax our nerves. Both Marie and I hide very well behind a camera. Notice we took the same shots.

Funny how a single interview can carry the weight of an entire life path. With so much at stake, perspective is skewed and elusive. So my finger pressing the shutter has more to do with a spasm than a concerted effort.

These are but snapshots of what one sees when glancing around while surfing down the giant wave of fate. At this stage, greater care is given to avoid wiping out than to framing the shots. The crest is near, white foam all around, will this be a back or a record breaker?

Posted at 2:58 PM in Always: & New York: & Photoblogs: No comments yet » Post one!

2010

Panoramic New York

As D-day homes in on us, here are a few panoramic images to keep me occupied and distracted. And right after that, we’ll be on a plane. South Africa here we come. Who knows what the future holds?