A Red Ball in a Tree, a Bike, and some Snow?

One of the suns many faces. I shot this some years ago just before sundown. There was a spectacular sunset, very very red. I have never seen a sunset so red. Just before the sun disappeared, I got this shot. The shutter speed was 1/4000th of a second, the fastest my then camera could do. I used f/38 to further darken the image. 

I did not edit the picture in any way except to crop it. 

I have always like this picture, even if it is a little abstract.

I dont have much else to say about this picture, so I will tell you about today. It snowed a lot overnight. When I woke up it was to my amazement that there appeared to be a blizzard outside, which to be fair, there was. I have not seen it snow like that in quite a while. Looking online, I found that every single school in the Victoria region was closed...except UVic. Digging further, it turns out that UVic has only closed for weather 2 times in the past 50 years.

Being me, I decided to ride my bike to school. It was quite a lot of fun. The snow is that very powdery snow that is still very good for compacting into snowballs, or into a sheet of very slippy snow on the road. I found that going in a straight line is not too difficult. It is just turning that tends to be an issue. I made it to the campus without incident. I think that if I can ride a bike in it, there is no excuse for missing class. Anyways, good times were had by all.

A Snowy Walk

It was snowing heavily most of the day today. Just before sundown though, the clouds all cleared off. I was doing some homework and was not really into it, so I packed up my gear and jumped in the car. My destination was Mount Douglas, a small mountain/large hill surrounded by a park. Never having walked up it before, I set off. Turns out it is a lot steeper and a lot taller than I thought.

After stopping a few times for photos, I finally reached the top. The view of Victoria is stunning. The whole city is laid out before you, and even across the water, Port Angeles is easily seen. I spent quite a while taking some photos, then headed back down. It seemed even steeper on the way down. And slippier. About two thirds of the way down, unable to slow down because of the ice, I tried to turn towards the side of the wide path, but it was not to be. I executed a picture perfect cartoon slipping on ice and landing on my bum.

The moral of the story is, if you are going to go up Mt Doug at night after it has snowed then cleared off, and frozen, either stick to the side of the path, or wear crampons.