Off to Glasgow and the Hebrides tomorrow

the short time in london has been terrific but tomorrow the real adventure starts... we fly to glasgow, meet my daughter, pick up a car and head off for the outer hebrides... can't wait... the ash cloud is mostly impacting southern spain and morocco in north africa right now so there shouldn't be any volcano-caused flight delays, knock on wood...

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I'm outta here [UPDATE]

for those few who may be paying attention, you'll notice i haven't posted since last wednesday... i periodically lose motivation and/or momentum when i can no longer abide the dearth of good news... well, that's not entirely true... there's always good news when i bother to find it but it generally is good news on a micro, very personal scale... that doesn't make it any the less significant or valuable but, being the big-picture guy that i am, i'm looking for the BIG good news stories and those seem to be damn few and far between...

so, with the motivation and momentum problem, i'm now tossing in another reason for a lack of posting... this afternoon, my son and i are headed to london where we'll meet up with a london-based friend and colleague to spend a few days kicking around things like westminster abbey, the tower of london and other such tourist attractions... but the big deal starts on wednesday when the three of us fly to glasgow where my daughter and her roommate are flying in from the u.s.... there we pick up a car and set off to explore the outer hebrides islands of scotland for two weeks before swinging back inland through inverness and edinburgh... i visited the latter two cities many years ago and have very pleasant memories but i'm really pumped about the hebrides... something about the far northern latitudes, the long, long days and the spiritual quality of the air and the light i think will make it a most special time...

stay tuned for pics but pro'ly not very many posts...

p.s. the volcanic ash cloud spewing forth from iceland is currently causing transatlantic flight delays as planes are re-routed further north or south, adding as much as an hour to flight times... our route from san fran to london follows a far north route anyway so i'm not anticipating a problem at this point, but we'll see won't we...?



[UPDATE]

so much for "no problem"... the flight from san fran to london is on a 5-hour delay and that's on top of the 4-hour layover that was already built in to the original schedule... sigh... 9 hrs. sitting on our butts in san fran... guess we oughta consider taking the bart into town...

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The Iceland volcano at night

amazingly cool...

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano had been dormant for nearly two centuries before Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson, 51, flew to the scene on March 21 to photograph its first stirrings. Mr. Sigurdsson returned to the scene and made these dramatic photographs Saturday night and Sunday morning.

mr. sigurdsson...

This is not my first volcano, I’ve been shooting them for 30 years. We have an average of one eruption every five years but these eruptions are different from the rest. The first one in March, which stopped a few days ago, had very beautiful lava fountains and I could go very close and take beautiful pictures. It was what we call here a tourist eruption.

This one, last week, was different. It started underneath a glacier nearby the first eruption. It melted down a lot of ice and we had huge floods. When the lava hits the water you have a huge explosion and it explodes into thin dust . You cannot go close to this eruption because it’s on top of a mountain and the explosions are huge. The hole is about 5,000 meters wide and 2 kilometers long.

Standing in front of it at night is magnificent because you can really see the lightning that is at the center of the eruption. It’s incredibly exciting. The adrenaline flows and I was shouting ‘wow look at that’ over and over. I’ve never seen something like this before.

I just love volcanoes and the Northern Lights. I’m very happy to live here in Iceland even though we’re broke. We’re poor, with beauty.

ya gotta love that last quote...

(thanks to bro in mpls...)

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