What is seen, or rather unseen

I'm such a guy some days, wandering along oblivious to the world. I'm better now that I carry a camera around sometimes. I look for situations that would make a good photograph. Or what *I* think would make a good photograph.

Some sunrises I'm meh. Like this morning. There was some nice colour, and the undersides of the clouds had some interesting texture, but the overall shape? Meh. So I finished making coffee and did not scramble to get dressed.

A couple weeks ago I was working on the novel while sitting in a different chair than I usually do. It was mid afternoon, and I was thinking of getting up to do something. Maybe a walk. Then I noticed the afternoon sun had lit up these dried roses in a way I had never noticed before. These roses have been here for a long time. Many years, quite probably more than a decade. I had never paid any attention to them.

But I jumped up, spilling Curtis out of my lap (and yes, I know the cat judge shall hear of this) to grab the camera. It was actually a tough shot, trying lie down on the floor, shooting up a bit, almost into the light, with the sun coming right into my right eye. Even doing the articulated screen thingie didn't help, since it was right in the sun as well. In the end I took a bunch of different shots with different settings, trying to get the rose framed with a nice background, and capturing at least some of how bright that red was.

One of the main pieces of advice I say to myself these days is to look behind me during a photo ramble. Often. I have been rewarded so often that it's becoming second nature. A followup piece of advice is to make sure you're standing still while in the middle of a river, then turn around. Trying to look while walking on slippery rocks could be an extremely expensive mistake. Camera. Lens. iPhone. Wallet. Bones. Possibility of drowning in 3 inches of water because my head hit a rock and I blacked out for the wrongest 30 seconds of my life. Maybe that one should be first. This is NOT the voice of experience. It's the voice of cheap, and getting more cautious.

It's also the voice of falling down hurts more than it used to. For a while I was using these Repsol flip flops I got on points. They were fine, dry. But wet they were slippery. I should have turned them back in right away. Bad design, and I know better.

A couple weeks ago a woman was coming out of the female locker room, as far to the left as she could be, talking about the sauna, which is a few steps dead ahead and to her left. The problem is the male locker room exit is right there. I was walking along and then there was someone in front of me. I stopped to avoid running into her, and slipped right out of my flip flops, and landed on my left hip and thigh.

As I was going down, I was thinking, 'this is how old people break their hips.' I'd always prided myself on having pretty good balance and spatial awareness, and never thought such a thing would happen to me. One of the pool staff helped me up and offered to get ice. I carried along with my workout, taking it a bit easy, figuring that if I'd broken anything there, I'd know. Unlike that time with my elbow. (see below.)

I kept expecting a huge bruise to come out, and a couple weeks later, nothing has. I'm a bit surprised. My run the next day was a bit short, but it didn't hurt. It's been a bit sore to lie on my left side, but running, swimming, biking, walking, hiking, and kneeling, to say nothing of plank, pushups and squats haven't bothered me.

So I got lucky. I'm walking more carefully now. I'm also thinking about some of the exhilarating downhills I've done on Estela. Many at more than 80 kph, and a couple at more than 90 kph. Now I'm wondering what I was thinking. I can now imagine all too well the results of anything going wrong at high speed.

So the story of the elbow. It just occurred me that I passed the 10 year anniversary of that bike crash. It was a low speed bike crash, certainly less than 10kph. No links, you'll have to go to my blog archive for September 2008 and look for the blog titles with 'OW' in them. No, Susi, you don't want to. You know perfectly well what's there. For the people that are not Susi, and you aren't eating anything, that one has the very best comments ever in this blog, and for good reason. That one blog title is NOT a tease. Don't say I didn't warn you.