Oxford

I did not think I would make it here. I'm not entirely sure I have.

It was hot and muggy (not New York hot, but hot) and I managed to get lost not once, but twice, and ended up walking more than I should have trying to find my way back to my hotel, and now I'm in that state of nerve-jangling jet lagged tiredness where I have to keep reminding myself where I am. But the photo evidence (a bridge on Castle Mill Stream) suggests that it is really Oxford and I'm really here.

Leaving New York

Looking down Seventh Avenue Friday night, towards Madison Square Garden where apparently some kind of wedding was going on.

The street closures had made traffic a nightmare all day—and it was over 100 degrees—so I cancelled my appointment at the DMV and spent the afternoon packing with the air conditioners blasting. I took this picture through the window of the Uber to JFK; the thunderstorm was brief but fierce.

View from Clava Cairns

I love Scotland. Maybe next year I can go back.

Mistaken identity at Clava Cairns

This was one of the pictures I'd never processed—me walking next to the main cairn.

I didn't really look that closely at it, apart from wondering whatever happened to the bag I was carrying since I don't remember it at all.

Then it occurred to me: Wait, who took this picture? I was there alone; the driver I'd hired for the afternoon was waiting for me outside the park. I realized that this wasn't me, this was some other woman with baggy jeans and a gray hoodie and a camera around her neck. (You can also see her off to the side in the previous picture of the cairn.) But I honestly thought it was a picture of me.

I found another picture from that day, obviously taken by the driver, and I was wearing a red jacket, not a gray one.

The jeans, alas, were just as unfortunate.

Flashback: Clava Cairns

The most famous of a group of cairns around Inverness. I posted pictures at the time (here, here, and here) but here's another that really shows the ring of standing stones around the cairn.

Flashback: Inverness

A spectacular day on the river Ness in 2015.

Sunday bird blogging

Another flashback to Hilton Head and a great blue heron.

Sunday bird blogging

An anhinga drying its wings after a dip in the Atlantic in Hilton Head in 2019.

Flashback: Glen Coe

The Scottish Highlands.

Glen Coe is famous in Scottish history for a notorious massacre during one of the Jacobite uprisings, but in 2015 when I took this picture it couldn't have been more serene: spectacular mountains looming over a narrow valley, some otherworldly light effects, and a lot of hikers.

And probably some sheep.

Saturday reflections

The Cherwell by Magdalen College in Oxford last summer. The floating leaves on top of the reflection make a nice effect.

Knicks!

Back in the (relatively) here and now: watching the Knicks ticker tape parade.

On TV, obviously—I would have liked to be there (and in fact I was supposed to be renewing my driver's license this afternoon at a DMV office near the parade starting point but rescheduled when the parade was announced and I realized there was no possible way I could get there.) But I definitely couldn't handle the crowds or standing for hours, so I'm celebrating from home.

Flashback: Peru

One more Peru image that never got posted: the train platform when we arrived back in Ollantaytambo after having been to Machu Picchu.