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| Olle, Ankan & me during a scenic stopover at the Niagara Falls (Juni is doing the Barrel thing in the background) |
I am severely sleep deprived at BWI airport waiting for my flight to Puerto Rico for yet another 3 week field mission for NOAA in the Northeast Reserve. Its been a scramble the last week to get everything together as the Government shutdown kept us out of the building until this Thursday, but luckily it ended right on time for us to pull it off. I tried complaining to Anna about my excessive workload the last 3 days, and that I have been traveling quite enough lately, but got nothing back more then spiteful looks. And fair enough. On top of her regular superhuman Johns Hopkins workload she just got on a plane to Geneva for a last minute meeting with WHO (first but guessing not the last time someone pays to fly her half across the world for a 3 day meeting!). Myself I exploited the lower work pace during the furlough with impeccable timing and I was able to take some more leave time (just 3 days after we arrived home from Colorado) and travel with my visiting Swedish friends Olle, his wife Annika and their 13 months bird Juni - Yes she can actually fly! After a 24h guided tour in the Baltimore hoods and playing with as many toys as we found time for we hit the road to Toronto to visit our Swedish friend David living there. Limited by a baby's patient for car driving we took our time across the Appalachian mountains to the great lakes, rounded lake Ontario then back to Baltimore again. Sights included Niagara falls, random towns deep in Pennsylvania, and an unexpected (? or was it part of a scheme...) river filled with landlocked pacific salmon in Upstate New York.
I have been fortunate to get away with all this, and getting the chance to hang out with one of my best friends. The cost? I am pretty sure Juni stole little chunk of my heart
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| Feeding the bird |
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| One of many activities along the way (looking back at the trip, the arrow target may not have been the best use of car space... but we did get some good use out of it!) |
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| Stop with a view |
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| Time to clean the camera sensor... |
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| Planning the next Barrel drop with Juni |
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| Olle trying to figure out the best place to go down |
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| A treasure awaiting the brave |
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| Not alone... |
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| Hanging around Toronto with David and Alida |
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| Learning new skills |
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| Olles highlight of the trip, petting a 600 lb pig at the local zoo. Nöff! |
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| Nice skyline! Though I preferred watching it from a safe distance on the traffic free island just outside town. |
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| Why Swedes become such great soccer players, They start early... |
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| Coincidence? |
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| Fall colors at the Salmon River, Pulaski NY |
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| Some fun late night fishing to make up for lost time in the car (later learned that this was not allowed and got a hefty ticket by an officer for not properly reading the regulations book... You live and learn...my bad! They really did not have any signs up). Though we strictly did catch and release fishing (the fish released before we really got any close to us...), there were a ton of other people at this popular river catching dinner, and the river bed was filled with stinking fish carcasses and an immense amount of left behind fishing line in and beside the river, potentially ghost fishing and catching/entangling wildlife. It was not very nice to see what too many people hungry to get a fishing story to tell their buddies can result in. |
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| Landlocked pacific salmon (Chinook, Coho, Steelhead and enormous brown trout) migrate into the river each fall from Lake Ontario to spawn putting on quite a show! |
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| Chinook Salmon taking to the air |
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| A quick slack-line along the road |
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| "Don't worry Juni, I got it under control... " |
Just arrived to Culebra after a long day of flight - car - boat travel. Its moist, there are plenty of mosquitos and the water is like a bathtub. Great sunset under a thundercloud heavy sky with a soft breeze blowing. Its quite, not many tourists around. Its good to be back.
