Break’s over, back to work

As your sitting there lamenting the drudgery of your day job please take a moment to consider the plight of the unfortunate zoo veterinarian who is having a day far worse than just about anything you might imagine.

Crocodile severs zoo worker’s arm

A crocodile at a zoo in the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung holds the forearm of a zoo veterinarian in between its teeth, April 11, 2007. The crocodile bit off the arm of the zoo veterinarian treating it, an official reported. Picture taken April 11, 2007. REUTERS/Frank Lin (TAIWAN)

Practical considerations – photography

Obviously one of the key components to the upcoming trip is the photography. It’s my first trip with my new digital SLR and Cynthia will be bringing her new Pentax K10D.

On our previous trip I used the Sony F828 which was a glorified point and shoot camera.
It had the benefit of having a built in but very versatile 28-200mm lens and it did a good job. I can’t complain about the pictures I got in Venice or the glorious time-lapsed picture of the Eiffel Tower.

Now with the Sony Alpha 100 I find myself with 6 lenses, 4 of which I plan to take with me on the trip.

Where the F828 was easy to manage and carry in a small shoulder bag, my current photo equipment needs required the purchase of something a bit larger. I went with a Domke F-3X after seeing how nice Cynthia’s Domke F-5XB bag was.

It’s made of good, solid canvas construction with minimal padding except on the bottom. This makes it much more flexible for storing a variety of lenses and other gear. The strap has a non-slip surface so it doesn’t continuously slide off of my shoulder.

It holds all I need plus some stuff I don’t. The side pockets hold my external flash and the charger quite easily.

I was really happy to get this sorted out but during our research we realized something that has thrown a kink into our planning. We kind of knew this from before, but it’s even more of an issue now and that is the fact that many museums don’t allow camera bags. You have to check them at the front desk. Of course this means you might get your bag back with certain key elements missing, like your camera or lenses.

Most places will let you carry your camera and some allow photography without a flash but the bag-check issue it a real problem. It looks like I will have to purchase a photographers vest. That way I can check an empty bag while carrying my lenses and accessories on my person.

When looking at the camera store the vests run around $100. I just ordered one off of EBay for less that $40.

Monarch Caterpillar

I was over at my friend Jim’s house working on his computer.
He’s finally replacing his old E-Machine running Windows 98 with a newer IBM running XP.
Sadly he’s still using dial up rather than high speed Internet which presents it’s own set of challenges.

We took a break and went out in the yard. Jim has tons of Monarch Caterpillars which have been attracted to the numerous butterfly friendly plants he keeps growing.

Advance travel planning – Gibraltar

We spent the better part of today hammering out some of the details of our trip. We’re determining how many days we need to each leg and starting to fill in the schedule.

We have discovered that getting in and out of Gibraltar is going to be much more difficult than we had previously imagined.

Apparently the fact that Gibraltar is subject to a disputed irredentist claim by Spain means that practical methods of ingress and egress are not high on the priority list for Spain.

We have determined that we will need to take a 3-4 hour bus ride to La Linea from Seville as there are no trains that travel the route.

From La Linea you can just walk across the border to Gibralter. We ‘re trying to find out if we can manage this as a day trip. From what I can tell there’s not enough to do in Gibraltar to fill two days. If we can get there early enough we can tour The Rock and then go back to Seville that evening.

We have not been able to find too much information on the web, but if we’re lucky, there will be any number of companies marketing trips to Gibraltar from Seville and it will just work itself out once we actually get to Seville. Otherwise we’ll need to stay the night in La Linea and then find our way on out the next day to go back to Seville or just move on to Granada from La Linea via a convoluted combination of bus and train trips.

Even though the Spanish government and the transportation system seems determined to hinder our ability to add Gibraltar to our itinerary, Cynthia is adamant about going to see the monkeys (apes) and Europa Point.

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