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1. The shutter release has a mind of it's own and has lossed the half-press position so important to locking exposure and focus
2. The protective front shutters now refuse to open fully
3. A lose wire in the bowels of the camera now cause the image to become a insane mess of chaos that looks something like purple pudding flowing horizontally. A sharp precise knock to the body often fixes it, but I've been seen to deliver ten repeated blows to get it back to a state that it can take pictures....sometime they (the pictures) go away.

In my younger days, I looked longingly at the film based Nikon FM and FM2. So after much deliberationn and a timely sale by a Electronics store, I bought a Nikon P50 digital camera. Have a look:

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I think it's that cat's meow!

Sept 18 , 2008
From the dates from my previous entry, you thought I've dropped off the end of the earth or hidden underneath a rock for the last two years. A lot has happened and some of it has had to do with this particular web page.

1. My internet provider has been upgrading its servers and has lost updates from the last year to these pages. Hence the date
2. My entries marking Sheldon Browns early exit to this planet have been lost. If you ever wanted to know how to fix any problem with your bike. Go there. The link is a web address that was setup some time after his death and taken from the Harris Cylcery site.
3. My entry marking my Mom's death last October (2007) is sadly gone. Thoughts are so fleeting and the human mind so transient...I'll never know what I put down in writing that day but it came down to that special place that we all reserve in the honour of Mom's that grew up in an age of little education and huge hearts. These people are rarerin "modern" societies and "world class cities" (NBA team, NHL team, tall skyscrapers)...but I guess that is why we sometimes long for the smaller cities. As Schumacher put it "Small is Beautiful". Opt for local autonomy.
4. I'm off for about a year and half sabbatical of sorts due to a combination of company downsizing and the idea that we all need to take a sabbatical of sorts. It's going to hurt the bottom line but I've been treated and rewarded "well" by my employer. Time to spend some of that good will on the economy:
   1. Adirondack/Vermount/Quebec cycle trip
      Basically 10 days of cycling/camping and hiking in these beautiful settings on the east side of North America. Highlight of the trip had to be a day of cycling on secondary roads in Vermount outside of the town of Warren. Details to come. Prior to that, some cycling and hiking in the Adirondacks up Mount Hurricane and along the Nun-da-ga-o Ridge. A six hour journey marked by lack of fluids and a compensating post-hike sit down at a Stewarts gas bar marked by lotsa Root Beer, ice cream floats and an old fashion ice cream...not all ingested by one person. Quebec's La Route Verte is a great concept that has exceptional merit in concept. For experienced cyclists, the route becomes somewhat predictable in that it will inevitably run by a river or body of water. These are typically the places that people tend to congregate and escape to by car and that is precisely the problem. The best riding was found off on the secondary roads that exists in close proximity to the route. One of the best places to ride (next to Warren's roads) were those outside of Richmond. On a 4 day loop, these nice open roads were a welcome change to the dark and closed in surrounds of gravel packed bike paths that so many people crave.
   2. Boston bus trip
      When I was about 12, my uncle was entering his fifties and decided to go vacationing with his wife. They took the Greyhound bus. Despite giving up the flexibility of a car and doing your own thing, these trips, as I came to find, have their own appeal of nice accomodations, food and socializing with like-minded individuals that want to be on time. So I went on this trip with my Brother's family and got to spend some time with my nephew, brother, sister-in-law, Aunt Betty and my father. We got to see Whales, dolphins, the Vandebuilt mansion, a casino in Conneticut and do some great factory outlest shopping....who could ask for any more over 3 days!!!
   3. Nahanni River trip
      One of my very favourite trips was to take a bike from Calgary to Jasper. There is something akin to speaking to "God" when you stare up at the changing views of those peaks as you ride on your bike. Picture that but with the base of those mountains moved in towards each other on either side of the road and with the road replaced by a river called the Nahanni. The logistics of a 15 day trip were handled by two other families that I was in fortunate enough to tag along. Highlights of the trip had to be the food (plentiful, great quality with great company) and the 320 km of river to paddle with a 10 km/hr current. Weird and wonderful.