Planned as another rest day. It wasn’t.

La Mongie. I haven’t done a 100 km tour in years. So my bright (spontaneous) idea was to do one just the day after I was on the Col du Tourmalet. And of course, go up there again, from the other side. Boy did the last bunch of kilometers hurt…

A welcome photo break. My road bike’s transmission isn’t exactly cut out for mountain climbing, requiring a lot of force rather than allowing high cadence. So in the end I needed a few micro breaks of 30 to 45 seconds every once in a while a few kilometers short of the summit, simply because I lacked the power to go on pedaling. Switching the transmission would likely mean switching most of the drivetrain – which could be quite costly. Therefore I’d rather live with the pain ^^

French ski resorts are mostly a great example of horrible architecture…

And there I was: 65 km and and about 2200 meters total ascension, only 35 km to go to return to Argelès-Gazost.

You can’t go too fast anyhow, there might be sheep on the road. Or cattle. Or tourists.

Back home. Not much power left, but happy ^^

Photo backup. I always made a triple backup. A good decision, as I was tired enough to delete my primary photo drive by mistake the day after I returned to Heidelberg…

Blue hour, closing the 10th day.

11th day, the weather coincided with my need for rest.

My last day in Argelès-Gazost. Bye.

Two months ago, this was my plan to refresh my french skills. Still haven’t made it past page 50 :/ But in the end, my french hadn’t degraded as badly as I feared.

A little bit of clouds in the morning. I’m afraid you might see these mountains quite often, it’s part of every mornings panorama. It’s nice to crawl out of the tent and see something like this, sometimes in bright sunlight, sometimes hidden by dark clouds. This one isn’t that great of post I must admit, but that happens when you decide to create a post for every single day.

First tour, starting (very) easy.

Lac d’Estaing. I remembered it with a lot less tourists (which I managed to keep out of this picture, well, mostly…)

Playing with Christoph’s 105mm macro lens. It was a little late for many flowers though.

Shooting myself while slacklining.

Rain. Just a bit.

Unloading CF cards.

Canasta. Lost anyways.

Hello again. In case anybody wondered why there were no new entries during the last weeks – I was on vacation in France, without access to the net but obviously with my camera. Since I had to go about 1400 km, this first day was spent driving. So was half of the second day. Don’t worry though – there’s a lot of boring pictures in this post, but I think the sunset is worth scrolling down ;)

Good weather to leave the country.

Rain.

Rain.

More rain.

Short break, found something in the radio. Still had a good playlist on.

Better weather?

Not exactly.

Short break in Eguisheim.

Extending the short break…

Gas, baguette and cookies. The latter two are favorites of mine ^^

Would have been lost without it.

Oh, rain again!

Sun.

Rain. The benefit was that the regular rain intervals kept the windshield clean.

Dark and looming from one side.

Bright and beautiful from the other side.

Goodbye daylight.

Time to search for a parking spot to spend the night.

Still searching. In the end I stopped past midnight somewhere in no-mans-land.

Bad weather, but great light.

Lots of rain lately.

Mmmh!

Short trip up the mountain, sorry Max, another spontaneous decision. It never hurts to have a polarizing filter in the backpack.

Part of the university campus at Neuenheim.

Descending. Switched my brake pads on the road bike after nearly 10 years. Got to ride more.

Short stop, looking for spots to shoot on Sunday.

Summer. Lots of it.

But finally some rain, and a tiny bit of cool air.

Chasing goslings.

Fourth game.

Rain.

Rain & sun.

Rain, sun & I.

Playing with fire.

Stars. Test shots.

Ugly plastic + sunset & blue skies = a little less ugly.

First try bombed. Back to black. This time it went much better.

Dark clouds looming over Heidelberg again…

…and unloading their water.

A little much for some university buildings.

That’s what my D700’s sensor looked like (heavy level adjustments for increasing the visibility of the dirt specs) when I got it. I didn’t spot this in the first few days since I hardly shot at apertures above F2.8… Had to clean it with swabs, the integrated cleaning function of the D700 didn’t have any effect on this kind of dirt. Works well though with small lint.

Play with me! Sorry, no time :(

Flower action shot.

MacBook grabbing action shot.

Rain. Again.

Getting used to CS5 by doing some work for a local election campaign at the university. Learning a lot.

Thankfully the rainy days are over for now…

Exploring the University with the 12 mm lens on the FX body. A lot harder to handle than on DX.

Harvest.

That’s what you miss when you prefer to watch Bayern München lose ;)

Summer breakfast.

Hello Mr. Blue Sky.

Rainy days. I’m not doing much other than learning at the moment anyhow.

Unibib im Feld.

Rain.

More rain.

A little catflower.

These images are quite dull. But so was the weather and all the learning.

Some impressions from Heidelberg’s main station.

December rain…

City snapshots, love the rain on the last one.

Playing volleyball at 2:47 in the morning…