Play time and a delicate experiment

 Okey doke - I'm supposed to be getting exercise so here goes.  Bike's already in the car so off I trot to the marshwalk, home of a flattish road and a load of boardwalk.  It's largely a pedestrian area so no Tour de France stuff.  There's also the delicate question of how certain parts of me will react to being bumped around on a bike saddle.  No problem.  It was cool, cloudy and windy which made the bike a bit tricky to control at low speed on the boardwalk.  So I used the approach of walkers or the occasional close encounter with a fence as a cue to take photos.


Cormorants on mooring posts at the local dock.  Note that the posts are vertical and the horizon slopes - takes great skill for a photographer to do that!

This is what a cormorant looks like right before its rear end explodes.  Glad I missed that shit shot.
Nice ride along here and a pleasant surprise to find that my brakes worked at the end.

Honking great crab with my dinky size 12 for scale.  Pretty sure it was dead - it wasn't very energetic and didn't thank me for returning it to the water (which is bloody cold).

In the afternoon I went in search of some stamp collecting supplies only to find that the shop I'm looking for now sells only coins and was closed anyway.  That saved a few bucks, I suppose.  And to prove I don't live on shrimp while I'm here I made a mighty fine chicken dopiaza for dinner.  And then added a strainer to my shopping list - I'e often thought of bringing my own wee kitchen on these trips and next time I will.  It's now 8 pm and I'm enjoying a DVD of a 1964 Ray Charles performance that I bought at the local flea market for $2.  A bargain.  Which is more than I can say for the $2 DVD of the British "Office" which won't play.   

The view from the deck shortly before sunrise.  The pier is still under construction.

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