Karoo autumn colours

Winter's creeping up on Sutherland - turning it into a more beautiful space than usual...  & the temperature's changing even faster than the colours of the leaves, so the snow might not be toooo far off!

Biking the Ouberg Pass

A beautiful Saturday morning in the Karoo - perfect for a trip out to the Ouberg Pass...  1404 m above sea level & about 600 m above the valley below, this part of the escarpment feels like the edge of the world.

Not everyone's content to simply enjoy the view - Keith had decided to cycle down & then up the pass & it was up to us to document his insanity.

Scary enough to hand oneself over to gravity like that, but to still peddle on the way down?!  It was hard to watch...

This really isn't a bad place to be - especially if you don't have a bicycle to contend with.

Eben & Sam had a much better strategy for dealing with the pass...

Having driven part of the way down, you get a wonderful view back up towards the top.

In fact, the views are just superb no matter which direction you look!

After a while, curiosity got the better of the support crew so the KTMers set off to find Mr Brown.

 

If you look carefully you'll see the motorbike, heading downhill, about to meet the cyclist hauling steadily uphill...

The support team needed to be particularly vigilant about dehydration while they stood out in the sunshine watching their charge's painful progress back up the pass.

Here he is, having made it around the nasty hair-pin bend...

& then popping up behind where we'd parked.

Time for a quick stop & some half-hearted abuse from the astounded spectators!

Soon our hero was off again, still determined to make it all the way back up to the top...

& so he did - just an hour & 40 minutes after he'd disappeared down the road!

Vic, the eternal philanthropist, was on the spot to hand over first (& second) prize to the thirsty guy in the awkward shoes.

GPS & heart-rate monitor data from the two stages of the tour were downloaded & graphed to tell the story.  Noteworthy is the fact that Keith's highest heart-rate was recorded during the downhill ride - shortly before reaching a rather tricky corner...

Eben & Sam decided to take a more scenic route back to Sutherland, but were eventually thwarted by a flat tyre.  This led to Sam's first ever foray into the world of hitch-hiking, followed by a recovery mission that ran aground at the Sutherland Golf Club's notoroius 19th Hole.

Despite our best efforts, we were unable to console Charl, Oom Andries & Oom Gert who had, yet again, lost the morning's round of golf to Willem 'Seekat' - the one-armed barman/proprietor...  Only in Sutherland ;)

U2 in Cape Town!!!

We've been waiting since 1998 for them to return & they're finally here!!  We saw them in Joburg, on their PopMart tour - which was a bit of an odd excursion, + that stadium was miserable.  This time we did the Fan Walk to the magnificent Cape Town stadium, on a *perfect* summer's evening, with a full moon rising over our beautiful city...

The Computicket website said "no video cameras & no cameras with large detachable flashes", so we pitched up all set to capture the show with our strategically understated gear.  Only to be told that they'd meant to say "no detachable *lenses*" & so we couldn't take our cameras in!  Anger, denial, misery, dejection (& some more anger) later, we returned to the stadium (cameras back in the car) & found that if we'd only put them in my bag, we could've walked straight through security & proceeded as intended - like all the other people that managed to get in with their digital SLRs!!  Can time Really heal all wounds?? :(

But if there can be an up-side to something this painful, it's that we were forced to focus more on the show itself, rather than on taking photos all the time - although we ended up doing that with our cellphones anyway since we just can't help ourselves!  The stadium acoustics left a lot to be desired, but the stage & lighting was absolutely mind-boggling & the guys put on an incredible performance.  The duet with Yvonne Chaka Chaka was superb!

Kev's new toys visit our favourite hill in the Karoo

So the Seriously Cool Toys have arrived: a Nikon D3S, a Hasselblad H4D-40 & a bunch of Byoootiful pieces of glass to stick on the front of each!  That makes for one VERY happy brother, not to mention an incredibly proud sister, revelling - as usual - in the glow of said brother's sublime toy prowess & overall awesomeness :) 

The obvious place to go to give the new kids a good run-around?  That magic spot in the Karoo that's been the source of so much trouble for me over the last 18 years: the Sutherland field station of the South African Astronomical Observatory.  In fact, it was upon this very hill that we decided (about 7 years ago) that Kev ought to make a living doing photography...  As always - be careful what you wish for ;)

Besides a dramatic afternoon thunderstorm, a pretty sunset & an encounter with a magnificent martial eagle on our way up from the town, we had a huge amount of fun photographing this incredible rock!  It seems to have burst open after falling off the back of a spaceship, or perhaps it was cracked open by a grumpy troll?  However it got to be down there, over the eastern side of the plateau, it's just a fascinating subject!

The modern, technological equivalent is SALT - the 11-metre Southern African Large Telescope.  A delightful beast in its own right, even if it's been hell to nurse through kindergarten...  Years of effort by a number of extraordinary people have gone into getting every sub-system ready - may the data soon flow!

The next biggest telescope on the continent is our 1.9-metre, equatorially-mounted battleship, affectionately known as the 74-inch, or the Radcliffe Reflector (for those that take this stuff too seriously).  Even tarted up in bright orange, at the age of 72, she still exudes mechanical elegance & unmitigated charm.

There probably aren't too many places of work that one would happily drive 4 hours to get to on a weekend...

An icy lake in Missouri & a 1am visit to Times Square

It's taken ages, but here at last are some pics from my New Year trip to America!  So lovely to spend a bit more time with John's absolutely wonderful mom, a truly delightful soul :)  Great to catch up with the whole family over there & to get to stay out at the lake (Lake Lotawana in Missouri) again.  No bald eagles this time, but we did enjoy a few visits from the (ginormous!) Great Blue Heron...  Fun too to see how crazy these 'Markans get over Xmas lights - yikes!

We were entertained daily by the ongoing battle between the liquid & solid phases of water out on the lake.  Each morning there'd be new ice stretching inward from the shore, trying to claim as much of the surface as possible before the morning sun could resume it's fight for the liquid cause.

Although viciously cold most mornings, it was endlessly fascinating to go outside & play around with the ice in its intriguing array of forms.  "Non-destructive testing" wasn't a hallmark of our experimental approach ;)

The way my flights worked out, I ended up with about half a night to kill in New York on my way home.  Sad to be leaving, hauling all my luggage (admittedly there wasn't much, but still) & not exactly dressed for a windy 14 F (-10 C, ignoring wind chill), it still seemed silly to waste the opportunity to explore so I caught a Super Shuttle into the city & hopped off near Times Square.  Very cool to see all that & thanks to Starbucks for the life-sustaining latte that saved my hands when my gloves couldn't!

When all enthusiasm for stomping around the freezing city abandoned me, I caught a cab to JFK & tackled my next challenge: passing several more hours while waiting for the SAA check-in counter to open.  Turns out I probably could've gone straight into the lounge (as it's actually outside security!) & made myself at home, but instead I earned my "dodgy airport-sleeper" badge - albeit via a rather miserable attempt...  Ah, the many joys of travel :)

SALT Tech Ops as you've never seen them before!

At the risk of ruining the chronology of my blog, I'm posting these pics ahead of those from my December/January trip to the US (as I haven't sorted all those out yet).  However, as you'll see, this is  all terribly important so I'm sure you'll understand...

Over the weekend, the SALT Tech Ops gang participated in an team building exercise of unprecedented brilliance.  Teams were assigned & required to build rafts that could negotiate a specified course on a farm dam near Sutherland.  No fossil fuels or solar power, but just about anything else was permitted, at the eventual discretion of Judge Darragh.

The official photos from the day appeared on the SALT Astro Blog, but what follows was not universally ordained & so these compositions have been forced underground.

First of all - the presiding officials: Captain Ockert (our spiritual leader whose presence was felt, even though he was conspicuously absent on the day), Judge Darragh & Nurse Adelaide.

The winning team consisted of Eben, Chris & Hitesh on their bicycle-powered-propeller-driven creation, complete with a balancing out-rigger that closely resembled the downpipe that disappeared from the north wall of the store.

Runners-up Garith, Francois & Grant unquestionably claimed the moral high ground on their simple, elegant raft - with all hands on deck, 3 paddles + a sail.

The third-placed crew of saboteurs (Peter, Vic & Martin) did all they could to thwart the rest of the field & after having their outboard motor (purported to run on ethanol) disallowed, eventually resorted to stealing third on a technicality.

Stranded after their wild raft bolted for the severalth time, the crew of Zulu, Amanda & Jono ultimately claimed the team-spitit award for their subsequent humanitarian efforts in supporting other struggling teams.

The "Astronomer Pirates" crew of Johan, Nicolaas & Cobus produced the most innovative raft with their SALT-on-a-boat concept &, in a fair world, would have placed third.

Last, & undoubtedly least, the hapless trio of Charl, Paul & I narrowly escaped mutilation & drowing as our impossibly over-ambitious craft imploded in a shower of snapping cable ties & snarling paddle wheel blades.  Sigh...  Too bad Charl - that's what you get for having 2 astronomers in your team!