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Posted on October 9, 2013 by odycycle
Ever wanted to pedal from London to Bangkok in under 4 minutes? Click on this photo to do just that…..
Before we parted our shores Francesca's cousin, Chris Riley, had a plan. He proposed that we take photos of the road ahead as we journeyed east. Some 4,500 images later, with Chris' immense skill and dedication, you can now odycycle at a little over 73km per second from West to East. We are so grateful to him for bringing our old adventures back to life.
If you enjoy this short film please forward the link (Facebook, Twitter etc etc) to friends, family, colleagues or anyone who has 4 minutes of their day to spare.
Posted in Bike Odyssey | 5 Comments
Posted on September 19, 2012 by odycycle
When we hung up our cycling shorts and kicked back for some well deserved rest earlier this year, little did we know that the idea of our next Odycycle adventure was already brewing….
No, we are not about to depart our fair shores once more, with tents and pots and pans and just bicycles for company. Our next adventure is of a much more domestically-rooted form and one that has, in just its first 6 days, provided us with ever-greater highs than a year cycling across continents, and a smidge of sleep deprivation too.
In the late evening last week our new Odycyclist friend, Aurelia, was born in our front room. She came swimming into the world (not cycling!). She has beautifully-long cycling legs, however, and we can not wait for her to take us out for her first spin on the roads of the globe.
Dreaming of bicycles….
Posted in Bike Odyssey | 20 Comments
Posted on February 19, 2012 by odycycle
We are now back home, down by the River. Pedalling around on our old city bikes, encountering those familiar assault courses of pot-holes, cycle-unfriendly intersections and madcap gyratory systems that some civil-servant signed off on without ever comprehending the perils that lie within. But we are become made of stronger stuff these days…. jaunts through the throbbing streets of Cairo, shimmying around the pulsating concrete arteries of Zagreb, and Russian-Roulletting our way across Chinese mega-town after Chinese mega-town has immunised us like you never quite would believe.
Those were the days, my friend...
Saying all that, however, it took less than 48 hours for Sam to go tumbling over his handlebars and stare bemused at a mischievous fissure in the road that surely never existed before we left. Not a single fall in a solid year of cycling and more than 31,000km between us…. It was inevitable we suppose.
But our adventuring days are being gently parcelled up and cupboarded, as we re-don old robes and think of trundling around our mighty city in search of work and buttery bagels.
What do we say to the inevitable questions of "How was it?" before conversations meander on to tales of snow in Ithaca and it actually having been a mild winter? There is no answer. At least not one that we can satisfactorily verbalise to friends and family. What we feel though is that if Odysseus had roamed the world on a bicycle, to come home to Ithaca or London or wherever, he may well have stared doughy-eyed towards his beloved Penelope over a steaming cup of tea and cast his mind back to glorious days on the open road with the wind in his wheels and the joy of sharing those curiously precious moments in the best of company.
This is the end of Odycycle. It has been the market place of our last year in the saddle. A market place in which we have gossiped wildly, shared tales and photos from our adventures, and most enjoyably for us, received the steady stream of support and encouragement from you. We cannot thank you all enough for joining us on our journey and making it never a lonely road.
We really hope that in 2012 the adventures begin or (better yet) continue for all of you and that we get to see some or all of you in the flesh very soon!
Cheesy closing shot
Posted on February 2, 2012 by odycycle
When we used to roll around playing in the mud as kids, the day would inevitably conclude with a soak in the bath that, when drained, would deposit a tell-tale scum line of a day's high adventure in the neighbourhood. Maybe as a result of our newly acquired high standards of hygiene or due to diminishing playtime over the years (surely not!), it had been a long time indeed since we had observed the two-tone world of an emptied tub. Yet this is what we found as our final pedal strokes carried us into the northern suburbs of Bangkok, where the cycling part of this Odycycle would come to rest.
Two-tone town
News of the epic flooding in Thailand in October may have only briefly registered with many of you. Yet another natural disaster far from the mostly meteorologically benign parts of the world we inhabit. For us, however, we had skidded onto the set of what seemed to be a post-apocalyptic landscape. Once a gentle middle-class neighbourhood; now a zone of decaying furniture, rotting toys, shrivelled photo albums, swamped immobilised vehicles, and a mosquito-infested stench weighted in the air.
Troublesome tides
Where was the bunting? The ticker-tape parade? Our irrepressibly kind and hospitable warmshowers hosts, Nawin and Anan, had accepted our request for a bed and a place to store bikes long before the biblical rains came, the day the levees overflowed, and the night Anan's own waters broke too. She gave birth to Punpun the night that crocodile-infested, disease-ridden, murky waters rose to almost 190cm throughout their district and, depressingly, inside their living room.
In the weeks prior to our mid-December arrival, we were repeatedly updated on the level of floodwater in the house. "It's almost down to 1m!" chirped yet another absurdly optimistic email. When the floods did eventually depart from the front room, some 9 weeks after they arrived, our hosts toiled endlessly to get their home back into shape to welcome us. They simply wouldn't entertain the idea of turning us away. We tell the story of Nawin and Anan for a simple reason. For us, they embodied the kind, gentle spirit that we encountered throughout our days in Thailand. Warm smiles at every turn, and incessantly going out of their way to shepherd us along.
Unsurprisingly, Thailand is a tourist's paradise: wonderful food on every street-corner, stunning scenery (not even counting the picture post-card beaches), charming and friendly people, and it's cheap. Such a cocktail inevitably leads to coach-loads turning up on a truly vast scale, and yet this country (and its character) appear so remarkably unscathed. True, we avoided the mega-tour traps that abound on some parts of the coast but life in Bangkok on our three sojourns, and on the arrow-straight highway that shuttled us into the capital from Cambodia in the final four days of our cycling, presented glorious trawling through giggling night-markets and deliciously contented post-noodle highs at every pit-stop.
Red sky at night.... Thai beach-bum's delight
Being the aberrant bicycle parents that we are, our bikes rested up in the floodlands of Bangkok while we went off to explore an Australian Christmas. Our return to the periphery of the big smoke was, however, startling. The desolation that stained such a large swath of the city had received, in our month away, a life-giving dose of the magic wand. Roads had been swept clear, rotting waste banished, and abandoned streets were filled once more with the high-pitched chatter of nutty kids careering around on improvised go-karts. All that remained of those dark autumn days was the scum-line running chest-height throughout the neighbourhood.
Notwithstanding the tireless clearing, cleaning and cleansing that the positive Thai folk of Bangkok have undertaken, a steely pragmatism stalks their thoughts. Each year this area of Thailand is flooded. Usually, a handful of inches come and go quickly without drama. The scum-line that runs throughout the area, however, is not the only scar that remains. In the absence of concerted government action to ensure flood-waters are properly dissipated through a series of (probably very costly) improvements to the storm levees, the people are waiting. To see what this year brings, before deciding whether to invest once more in their lives here. As with so many of the places we have passed through on our Odycycle, we will follow events in Bangkok closely in the coming year.
Tock. Tick. Tock. That clock that had begun to sound just a few weeks ago has come full into view now and 7 measly days remain to draw breath (we have really been doing that all year) before we are catapulted home through airport lounges, along runway strips and across immigration checks, with our trusty bikes hopefully in tow.
Incarcerated cycles at BKK airport
And draw breath we did, in joyful circumstances. With our good, old friends: The best people from Portugal, ever, Rafael and Tanya. After cycling so many kilometres with them through Central Asia our paths had split in western China and while we scurried north of the Himalayas, they ducked underneath and through India. We shrewdly conspired, however, to meet on a little slice of heaven, a small island off the Andaman coast. So in our final days we reminisced, we jumped, and we swam. Incessant bicycle chat, yet not a bicycle in sight.
Boat the Impaler
344 days after we set out from Sam's sister's front door, we are now wrapping up our lovely bikes in cotton wool and hurtling towards the BKK airport. We think that one blog remains and then this Odycycle too can be laid to rest.
As ever, photos can be found here, and final map here.
Posted on January 15, 2012 by odycycle
Unclad in the Lucky Country
"The wind was now fair, the sky serene…and the termperature of the air delightfully pleasant. Joy sparkled in every countenance and congratulations issued from every mouth. Ithaca itself was scarcely more longed for by Odysseus, than Botany Bay by the adventurers who had traversed so many thousand miles to take possession of it."
Watkin Tench, 1788.
Terra Australis Incognita may indeed have proved a felicitous destination for First Fleet Officer Mr Tench. The stench of the convict hordes below obviously didn't permeate to the deck above and interfere with the fresh sea air and scent of eucalyptus whistling in his nostrils. Mr Tench was one of the first of many who pined in heady anticipation for the sight of these Australian shores.
Australiana Ahoy
Fyodor and Valentina Rusakov (Francesca's Grandpa and Nanna), fleeing post-war Europe and the looming spectre of the gulags, with little Juliana and Nina (Francesca's mum and aunt) in tow, arrived by boat in Adelaide in 1949. Grandpa fondly referred to Australia as the 'Lucky Country' long before the 1964 book coined the phrase with the somewhat harsh words:
"Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck".
Notwithstanding criticism of those who have governed here, for the Rusakovs, along with an entire population of other refugees and immigrants over the past 224 years, it really was.
S O H good
Last but by no means least, for us Odycyclists, catapulted bike-less, to antipodean depths in mid-December, Australia had the ring of adventure accomplished.
For Uncle Paddy, though, it was a different story.
While old Watkin Tench paraded on deck, Paddy languished down below in the hold. For him the word Australia had an altogether different ring. Great Great Great Uncle Patrick Delany (to be precise) – a devilish rogue and Macheathian villain – was convicted of highway robbery in 1783 at the York Lent Assizes. He was sentenced to be hanged but reprieved at the eleventh hour, his punishment ultimately commuted to transportation on the First Fleet of convicts to the penal colonies for a period of seven years.
Having escaped the good ship 'Mercury', Paddy was thrown into the stinking hold of the scurvy-ridden transport vessel, 'Friendship', where he festered for eight long months in Portsmouth Harbour before the ship finally set sail. Chained and diseased – without ever laying eyes on the golden sands and delightful, turquoise, shark-infested waters of Botany Bay – he met his doom. The records say he died at sea on 23 June 1787. Not so lucky for some.
Less lucky for some
With such a deep-rooted connection to these antipodean shores, it was no wonder that Francesca was granted immediate citizenship and the Odycyclists were invited by the Prime Minister, Rolph Harris and the entire Aussie cricket team to regale the populace, Homeric-style, with tales of pedalling across continents, the cities of men they saw, the pains they suffered and the frogs they ate with sticky rice.
In fact, Australia was not originally our planned final destination as you can see from our map of the planned route, but a desire to tread even further in Juliana's footsteps, indeed to the culmination of her own epic voyage to Adelaide in 1949, had begun to grow. It seemed a fitting tribute. Us, pedaling on terra firma, where 5 year-old Juliana had rolled on the wine-red high seas, taking in the walls of Rome and the Suez canal as she went. We wanted to spend Christmas with Nanna, to see as many of the Aussie relatives as possible, and to visit the places where Juliana had grown up.
Watch out! The Rusakovs are coming
And so we were greeted into the bosom of our Australian family and friends for a sunny, southern hemispherical Christmas. We were taken to Woodside, now army barracks but then rudimentary refugee camp, where Francesca's Mum's family lived in a corrugated iron shack until Juliana was 9. We found Hendry Street where the family had moved in the fifties – their first 'real home' in Australia – and from the bedroom of which 17 year-old Juliana dreamed and plotted her escape to London and its Swinging Sixties. We were entertained by the lovely octogenarian Anna Supco, Nanna's friend, who told us tales of arriving on the boat at the same time as the Rusakovs. For her the land had truly been incognita. With no knowledge whatsoever of what Australia had in store, she had been gobsmacked to see white people when she landed.
Terra Surfa Paradisa bene cognita
We spent a wonderful christmas with Nanna – delighting in the twinkle in her eyes, smiles of recognition and her mischievous appetite for champagne! We feasted among cousins and second cousins we had never or barely met, came face to face with koalas and kangaroos, manta-rays and toothy sharks, wineries, golden coasts and panoramas galore and were fattened up in true Aussie Throw-Another-Shrimp-On-The-Barbe fashion.
Unclad? Well, no nudy beaches for us, given Sam's terror of Australian wildlife and desire to have at least some meagre protection from the Great Whites' jaws, but we truly did feel naked without our bikes and our numerous panniers. Had we had another 12 months it would have been a joy to have cycled Down Under and beyond, but that odycycle will have to wait. We do not feel short-changed, mind you, having lounged on Sydney's city beaches, hopped madly along at her yearly festival, watched the fireworks whoosh impressively on NYE, gazed on at India's humbling in the 2nd Test at the SCG and finally, grooved along with all those Melbourne groovers (you know who you are).
Meeting Australian Dignitaries
We now write on the eve of our journey back westward. Tomorrow we will be back in Thailand and preparing for the final leg of our voyage back home. We leave with mighty memories of the Lucky Country and how fortunate we were to be among such wonderful family and friends at the very end of our adventure.
Maybe as the crow flies, but not as an Odycyclist pedals
As ever, we have loaded up our last few snaps from sunny Australia, which can be found here. And the old maps are here. And the first instalment of "Juliana's Footsteps" can be found here.
Posted on December 9, 2011 by odycycle
His name was Dong Muan and he sat enthroned by the carcasses of dozens of 12 foot-high bombs that stack up as the grimmest of rural furniture in this part of central Laos. Following years of nigh-on incessant fly-overs by US B-52s, dropping their payloads on the population of Laos, the landscape left behind has taken on the identity of a true lunarscape. Pock-marked with countless deep craters, many of which still retain deadly Unexploded Ordnance (UXO).
Uncle Sam's hardware
Dong Muan had spotted us wolfing down fried rice in the dusty market town of Muang Khoun and with a broad grin, joined us for the chance to impress with his entirely broken French, learnt decades ago, long before the Americans and their war against the communists of North Vietnam came to town. The "Vietnam War" may be the name by which we will always remember the US military aggression in this region between 1964 and 1973, but to use this name risks forgetting that this Second Indochina War had far-reaching and devastating consequences for neighbouring Cambodia and Laos too.
The consequence of Laos' fraternal stance to the North Vietnamese, permitting use of its territory for the flow of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, was that Laos became the most heavily bombed country per capita in history, with more ordnance tumbling from the skies onto this small country than all the bombs dropped during the entirety of the Second World War. Of the 270 million bombs that the US dumped on the country, (a B-52's contents falling every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day for nearly 10 years and delivering a shocking 500kg of bombs for every man, woman and child) Xiang Khouang province was the most heavily hit. And with Muang Khoun as the principal town of the province, you might say that where we sat with Dong was, to borrow a term, Ground Zero. The most heavily bombed area in the most heavily bombed country ever. And little survived, but Dong certainly did.
A country of many hills and many, many cluster bombs
As his life-story made its way through his difficult-to-follow French, extraordinarily, he was able to laugh and beam and chirpily describe the instinctual response of running into the surrounding jungles when the drone of B-52s sounded above and the rat-at-at-tat of gun-fire from the heavens echoed. He survived those years and even managed at times to teach his students and local militia how to read and write.
Although we have started with tales of the central heartlands, our time in Laos had begun much earlier, more than 500km away in the north-east where we criss-crossed bright and lush undulating hills, and paddled our bikes on rickety canoes across swollen muddy rivers that had overtaken the poor old highways. Highways that wrapped their way around hilltops and unfortunately had to dip into and out of countless steep valleys.
Racing invisible bikes
Our meandering through the numerous huts-on-stilts villages, peppered with never-ending salutations of "Sa-bai-dee" and absurdly excitable, friendly kids whose energy levels we fiercely envied, eventually brought us out into the gem of Lao tourism, the enduringly charming town of Luang Prabang. Dotted with tranquil Buddhist temples (Wats) and protectively enveloped by the mighty Mekong River and its tributary, we found the ideal idyll – lazing away the days and restoring ourselves generally. It was a strange experience for Sam to be back here after almost 14 years, having visited as a very wide-eyed teenage lone traveller. The town, and Lao's increasing appeal on the tourist trail, has since turned this sleepy place into a major tourist haunt. Friendly opium dens replaced with fancy patisseries, now laden with life-giving cakes.
Our Best Buddhies
It proved difficult to leave Luang Prabang. Just one more BeerLao, just one more tarte au citron…etc etc. And when we did manage finally to pack the bikes and bags and prevaricate until we could no more, we met Justin and Emma (Kiwis cycling from London to NZ) and Philipp and Valeska (novice cycletourers – having only cycled for 6 years and across 75,000km!). The result was that the bikes were leant up and chins began to wag. To our great credit we did wrestle ourselves away the next day only to bump into Marc and Chris, a delightful couple from Belgium who were merrily pedalling around SE Asia.
Roads?.... Where we're going we don't need roads
Little did we suspect that when we shared our first BeerLao ("het is zoals een engeltje dat pist op je tong") with these plucky retirees one night at fork-in-the-road Phoukoun, that we would end up sharing the next 10 days adventuring through the back-waters of Laos together. But they were more than game to put their city bikes to the test and outpaced us with such an infectious positivity that we ended up taking on some of the worst broken roads that Laos could throw up, crossing river after river in search once more of highways that would simply peter out. Staring up 20% hill-climbs on truly shitty roads induced no fear in these two and cajoled us onwards. As three of us gritted our teeth in the heat of yet another arduous ascent, Marc would whisper, "what a great life we have!"
"Wat een geweldig leven we hebben"
And it propelled us onwards through the truly extraordinary 7km long Tham Kong Lo cave, whose skinny motorised canoes were not accustomed to our heavy touring bikes but delivered us nonetheless into the lonely jungles on the other side and what promised to be a brisk 15km cycle to the highway and civilisation.
Spa-ing with the mud once again
60km and 2 days of devilish pedalling and pushing later, we emerged off the most demanding of tropical forest trails, having consumed frogs in their entirety just to survive. Well something close to that anyway.
Dusty Foot Philosophers kicking up kilometres
With over 80 million of those 270 million bombs that rained down on Laos left unexploded and scattered on the hills and plains, the current population has inherited fields pregnant with danger. More than 50,000 people have been killed or seriously injured due to UXO accidents since the 'bombies' (cluster munitions) began falling in 1964 and continue to claim lives on a daily basis. In light of the above statistics and the robust advice we were given, our camping days – much to Francesca's great disappointment – were limited to roadside pitches. Peace of mind and a good night's sleep, however, entailed resting up in one of the many friendly guesthouses that have sprung up all over Laos in recent years.
A local adopting the lethal frog-catching position
The hard but wonderful roads of Laos had put us through our paces just when we thought we had escaped days of gruel. It was joyful gruel that took us through the curious ancient Plain of Jars, and gruelling joy that took us finally over our last few hillocks and gave us our first broad views of the flatlands of the Mekong, which would allow us to flow alongside this heaving mass of murky water all the way to the south of Laos and the border with Cambodia. That was to be the plan anyway.
Plain Jars on the Craterscape
A mental clock is now ticking for us both. One we always envisaged as being so far off, yet the tocking is irritatingly and discernibly getting louder and time is running out on this Odycycle. With this in mind, we have exited Laos prematurely and raced the diagonal through Thailand to enter Cambodia and pay homage to its (and the World's) gem that is Angkor Wat. A visit to see Sam's colleagues working in Phnom Penh is on the cards too, but more of that next time.
We sign off by saying that our most recent snaps can be found here and our updated route is here.
Hand a crayon to a small child and ask them politely to draw some mountains. Most likely your little artist's method of choice will be to clutch the implement dagger-like and repeatedly stab score marks, lie-detector style, onto the page, leaving behind a faultless hack-saw teeth range of perfect peaks. These may or may not be the mountains of your dreams but they are certainly those that intermittently appeared before us between the blooming (yes, in the sense of mild expletive too) clouds that hung lethargically, and consistently, over the Tonkinese Alps around the much-loved little hill-station of Sapa, our first real port of call in Vietnam. But more about this and coffee-grinder head-gear in a moment.
Keep crayons out of children's hands
We were wary upon entry into this first South East Asian country, the slow turning of our cranks demonstrated as much, because you see we had been warned off Vietnam. Numerous travellers (usually irritably fatigued cycle-tourers) grumbled about the hassly, annoying, always-trying-to-rip-you-off experiences that would surely follow for us too. We, however, in our cycling days through the north-west of the country found little, if any, of this. We may not have made life-long buddies here but the only phở (sic) that confronted us was of an altogether different sort.
Sam's soul sister
Our aspirations for Vietnam were deliberately limited. We wanted only a taste. To confirm that the sublime cuisine that encircled our old flat in east London, in the form of a zillion Vietnamese restaurants, had its true origins here. And maybe to see a little of the countryside too. So, our plan was to cut the corner. The north-west corner of the country. Through the hills and hill-tribe lands before finally exiting stage-left into Laos where we would once again steer south. Unfortunately in some senses, this route through Vietnam passed no big towns. Critically, no bike shops. So, in an attempt to search out new bottom-brackets, to eat Vietnamese noodle soup (Phở) better than the stuff we gulped down on a weekly basis back in Hackney and to visit one of the new Seven Natural Wonders of the World, we wistfully decided to abandon the bikes in soggy SaPa while we flew the sleeper train into Hanoi.
Hanoi hustle
We arrived off the train from Hanoi in the half-light. In fact it was not even half light. Maybe only slightly light. Or even pitch black. To be honest, at 4.14 am we were so bleary-eyed that we hardly registered much, but we were confused by shadows floating in the periphery of our vision as we ambled along the ghostly streets in search of somewhere, anywhere, to await midday when we could seek out our crash-mat in the nest of our kind Couch-Surfing host, Caro.
We had no idea about street safety in the wee hours in Hanoi and were a little cautious, being on foot rather than on our twinkle-toed two-wheeled friends. We'd found a park bench in what seemed to us to be a pretty fancy end of town with embassies in old French colonial buildings dotted about in wide European-feeling boulevards.
The shapes and shadows grew more and more numerous. Hoodies, we think? Despite the plush environs of nesting embassies we started fearing the worst. Who wouldn't in a strange capital city at 4am? One specter ran past us. Another jumped up and across our line of sight, and another onto and then off a bench. And as it dawned, it dawned on us, that these menacing silhouettes tormenting our primal emotions were in fact hundreds upon hundreds of ludicrously early-morning fitness freaks. Mostly over the age of 50 and all out and about taking their rigorous matinal constitutionals. As we strolled (now playing it ever so cool) past Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, the light had well and truly outmuscled the dark. Uncle Ho was presently in Russia visiting his mate Lenin, and being 'repaired', so all we could do was gawp at these hordes of Hanoi inhabitants diligently adhering to their daily regimes. We felt vaguely silly about having been even vaguely concerned for our safety, and boldly celebrated with gritty snail phở at 5:30am.
Frankie goes to Hanoi
Our days in Hanoi dripped by deliciously as we gorged on croissant, summer rolls and all sorts of fearsome phở that kept us tanked up on our marches around the city. By contrast to Sapa, where the furthest we could see through the thick fog was to the croissant on our plates (if we were lucky), the 19th floor of Caro's luxury apartment afforded unrivalled views out of this heaving metropolis and an entirely different perspective from our habitual saddle-height observation decks. The energetic buzz that we rubbed up against each day on the streets and alleyways below, however, took on no lesser immensity from such a height, as scooters surged and every other form of traffic imaginable rumbled on through.
Ay Ay Capitan......
Our infidelity to the bikes, with strolling smoothly replacing pedalling, encouraged us even further afield with reports that Ha Long Bay was a mere 3 hours away by bus to the coast. A chance to savour one of the newly crowned Seven Natural Wonders of the World. And for our two pennies-worth, it was worth every penny. Sleeping out on a bobbing junk boat in the South China Sea enclosed by sheer, brooding karst rocks rising out of the sea's greyey-green at 90 degrees; and we were awe-struck. On a bike you don't see these things, but the maritime equivalent of our bikes, namely a 2-man kayak, took Sam and Francesca under sea-arches and into stunning, isolated, tropical lagoons with only masturbating monkeys for company. Ah, the joys of nature.
Anyone seen my bike?
Hanging out in Hanoi and soaking in salty seas had once more re-kindled our energies and desire for the road. We were eager to get out of over-rated Sapa, destroyed by demanding western tourists the vast numbers of which we had not seen probably since leaving London. Within a handful of kilometres we were creaking up the highest pass in the country and past the highest mountain in SE Asia, Fansipans (you can only imagine the fun we had with this name). Creaking, because our mini-tour of Hanoi's bike shops had been fruitless. Creaking past wonderfully cheery Montagnard tribal folk with an immaculate sense of dress. Traditional outfits remain the norm here and are utterly elegant. As with Yunnan, there are numerous tribes, some of which spread over such a limited area that the sartorial charm can vary markedly from one village to the next.
Our favourite winning outfit entailed a lady from the Black Dao tribe sporting what can best be described as an art-deco coffee-grinder headpiece interwoven into her shiny black hair. No photo sadly, so we will have to leave it to your imagination instead.
As our north-westward road began its curve southwestward and finally westward towards a newly opened border-crossing with Laos, we dropped out of the mountains and into rolling hills that provided our final micro-adventure: an intimate face-to-face encounter with one of the locals, a South Asian Cobra. It slithered out 6 feet in front of our wheels and turned to face us. A raised head and a fanned hood was enough to persuade us to stop. Maybe upon catching a whiff of two unwashed cyclists, we know not why, the hood swiftly retracted and it turned tail and slid off. It was time to leave. We happily did not end up as one of the 30,000 souls (overwhelmingly rice farmers) who are the victims of snake bites each year in Vietnam.
The legendary snakey fan-dancers of north vietnam
Resting briefly in Dien Bien Phu, a site of great importance for the Vietnamese in their ultimately successful battle to rid themselves of the French colonial yolk in 1954, we readied our limbs once more for the bumpy, less developed roads of Laos that would lie ahead. And, of course, dived into one final steaming bowl of Phở before getting stamped out of the country.
Being escorted out of Vietnam a la Ride of the Valkyries
As ever there should be our updated photos here and our route has been updated (here) to some point somewhere in Laos. Irritatingly, Googlemaps only allows 200 markers (very inconsiderate) so we will try to figure a way round having exhausted our quota for next time.
Posted on November 15, 2011 by odycycle
"I'd rather cry in a BMW car, than laugh on the backseat of a bicycle". These, of course, are not the words of Francesca, offered in return to Sam's courting gesture that the two of us cycle across the world. But they are words that now grip the burgeoning Chinese middle classes in their soul-searching identity crisis, as super-fuelled capitalism seeps into every nook and cranny of modern life. They are words that have come to epitomize the seemingly unquenchable materialism of the post 1980's generation that prizes celebrity and wealth over the more traditional Chinese values of honour, integrity and respect for one's elders.
Attempts to control the Next Generation
These words are those of Ma Nuo, a young and eager contestant on China's biggest TV dating show, If You Are The One. Words uttered with no sense of shame to her bewildered, naïve suitor. Fortunately for Sam, Francesca was never deterred by her co-adventurer's proposed impecunious pedalling plans. And away we went. Ma Nuo may not be the most profound commentator you will find on the state of modern Chinese society but her words, and desires for the future, do encapsulate much of what we saw and experienced throughout our 2½ months rumbling through present-day China.
Naxi Networking
This former colossus of communism has embraced the Western urge for personal enrichment and commercialism to the max. The verbs "to buy" and "to sell" in Mandarin probably tumble from a babe's lips not long after "Mama" and "Baba" have been learnt. But, boy, are they a hard working nation, not limiting themselves to daylight hours, whether it be flogging imitation tat in the towns and cities or grinding away at the soil in the rural areas, where every square inch is put to some use. (This made searching for camping spots a long and sometimes hopeless task).
Hmmm, Bole: Knock-off bananas
Shops invariably opened early and remained so until late into the evenings and we were struck by the apparent equality in the workplace. We cannot comment on the upper echelons of society; the board rooms, committee meetings, or political hierarchy etc; but road construction sites were heavily populated by women toiling at the earth and rock; the wheels of city buses were firmly in the hands of hardy Chinese ladies; and the markets and shops were predominantly tended by women. While we frequently slid past roadside diners full of gorging, puffing Chinese men, no such downtime appeared to be afforded to women.
Hi Ho, Hi Ho.....It's off to work we go
But as TVs, computers, new cars and those other trappings of modern life have found their way into the mitts of many of the industrious people of the People's Republic, the pace of development has left some, particularly the rural ethnic groups (Dai, Bai, Yi, Hani, Naxi, Miao, Lisu, Hui, Lahu, Va, Yao, Tibetan, Jingpo, Blang, Pumi, Nu, etc. etc. etc. – in fact nearly 50% of the province is non-Han) that we came across in Yunnan, to blink bleary-eyed into the harsh, white light of the latest super super-market to open in their nearby booming town. Wandering around in traditional garb, as pumpingly crap dance music reverberates, these bewildered folk fondled one shiny product after another as if the magic, that must surely come with paying double or triple the local market price, might rub off on to their hands. They exited through the pearly sliding doors, proudly clasping the one small item (in logoed carrier-bag) that they had paid way over the odds for, feeling as though something important had just taken place.
Our super-market experience took place within a few hundred kilometres of China's most southerly frontier, where Yunnan Province drops from the vertiginous Tibetan plateau and slides into the preposterously muggy and suffocating jungles of the borderlands cupped by Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. Banana trees jostling along our roadsides now, where once we were cheered onwards, Tour-de-France style, by beautiful pine trees.
Blazin' Fields
As soon as our weary limbs were rested up, we jetted out of depressing old Shangri-La (Ha! What a shit-hole to build in such a glorious setting with its surrounding fields afire with crimson shrubbery) and began our trail southeastwardly. This final Tibetan outpost (or gateway, depending on your direction of travel) did not, however, signal the end of the high hills for us. We – no exaggeration – plummeted almost 2km vertically through the implacable rains to reach the mouth of the one of the world's deepest gorges – Tiger Leaping Gorge.
Sam preventing imminent collapse of gorge
Legend has it….. you can probably guess the rest. Whether an agile cat could have made it across is dubious, but what is certain is that that tiger certainly did not suffer from vertigo, like most foolhardy tourists who periodically tip-toe along the slippery, old tea-horse trail that is scratched high up into the gorge-side. All joking aside, it is rumoured that a handful of careless visitors disappear over the edge each year, a fact not widely publicised by the Chinese government. Dangers aside, we loved this place, and were able to share the experience with Francesca's dad, Laurence, who had generously come to deliver much-needed slabs of English Cheddar Cheese and Italian Gorgonzola. The locals gazed on bemused at the frenzied consumption of such prodigious quantities of unpasteurised dairy but we didn't care. It was what we had been missing the most.
Laurence learning a thing or two about Yunnan yak tails
The bikes caught a breather as we plunged headlong into the chaos of a 7-day national holiday in the absurdly touristy (yet undeniably pretty) UNESCO protected, Lijiang. One of China's old Ming towns, sprinkled with lovely Naxi locals in the kind of get-up that makes tourists want to spend their money. And they do. While the town did grate a little with its rampant commercialism (and 6 hour traffic jams), it became more alluring as the tide of Han tourists ebbed back to the east coast and we readied our neglected bikes once more for the roads southward. We waved good-bye to Laurence and thanked him once more for his cheese emissary duties, and soon we were bobbling into the charmingly cobbled old town of Shaxi.
Horse-pen horse play
Shaxi is everything that Lijiang and Dali (the equally popular tourist hotspot) should aspire to be, and aren't. Tranquilly set among gentle rice paddies and forgiving hills, we could easily have stayed longer in our converted horse-pen of a hostel, but an itch was surfacing. An itch to leave China and sample new roads. We had periodically crossed the paths of other cyclists (mostly in Central Asia) who had spoken of this same itch. An itch that, while appreciating the joys of China, nonetheless tires of the inability to communicate (i.e. asking for a bowl of rice and being presented with a tooth-pick), and baulks at the incessantly nauseating boom of drunken Karaoke that belched out from each hotel we appeared to select, and itches to conquer the kilometres rather than be conquered by them. This itch was coupled with excitement too, at the prospect of Vietnam and our transition into South East Asia.
Stairway to Rice Heaven
Our final days in China took us onto the laser-straight south-easterly diagonal Red River road that eventually flushed us out through reams of tumbling centuries-old rice terraces, the Tropic of Cancer, all those banana plantations and increasingly poorer valleys to Hekou: our ultimate port of call in this vast and complex nation. A painless border official and a wheeling of bikes across a bridge and we were in Vietnam.
Our snaps from Yunnan can be found here, along with a super updated route map here.
Posted on October 25, 2011 by odycycle
We wake up in those grotty hours between 6am and 7:30am when the most cacophonously feral activity to ever grace this earth is in full swing. A pursuit that appears to form the very quintessence of what is to be Chinese. Men (most definitely), women (of all ages), and even young boys and girls ("Errrrrrrrr shinn!" …Disgusting!) on a daily basis will summon immense snorting strength to draw from the very darkest, deepest depths of their inner core (possibly even from their very souls) the foul yellowing mucus that Chinese lungs produce by the Sinotrukload. And with a symphony of gravelly, grating, honking hacks they will expectorate literally everywhere (in restaurants (a favourite), shops, living rooms, hotels, lifts etc etc). Our days in China have often taken on the feel of a shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.
Making a citizen's arrest at the O.K. Corral
One attempt by local government to combat spitting, in the build-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, was to introduce a 5-Yuan (~$1) fine. When one soul was caught in the act and attempted to pay her fine with a 10-Yuan note, for which the policeman did not have change, the lass in question found a simple solution to the problem, gobbing contentedly for a second time in front of the officer, and calling it quits.
We apologise for beginning this blog with such grotesque detail of quotidian life here but we just felt we really needed to get it off our chests. Sorry. It's also somewhat unfair on Sichuan that such a grumble appears here, given how much we have loved being in this particularly stunning province of China. Be under no illusion that this phlegming phenomena is unique to Sichuan. The Gobbers of Gansu and Yakkers of Yunnan are right up on the pantheon too.
Just like a prayer (flag), you know I'll take you there
But amid this grim cascade of flying phlegm we have made our way most joyfully through a truly beautiful part of the world. And a big part too, fully justifying a weighty blog entry given that we spent more than 3 weeks pedalling up and down (and up and down) seriously steep and very high peaks.
And while we are in repentant mood, we must apologise too for what now seems like somewhat breathless and over-enthusiastic hyperbole regarding our pedalling feats in the Pamirs. (see here for modestly over-the-top commentary). Let's not belittle what was undoubtedly hard cycling there but Sichuan trumps those Central Asian highways with a topography like the spiky spine of an enormous dragon. Add to the equation the fact that the aforementioned beast arcs its back, stands high on its toes, and does all this while on top of the roof of the world, otherwise known as the Tibetan plateau, (which encompasses most of western Sichuan) and you get the picture.
Through much of Sichuan we really did scrape around for oxygen molecules at numerous mountain passes that regularly elbowed 5,000m. When we now look back at our commentary on "gulping for air" in the Pamirs we feel a little like the children that cried "Wolf" or "Dragon".
But it hasn't all been super high peaks. There have been super high grasslands too. With their mega-colonies of stalking honey-bees that can sniff Sam out from 40km away and head straight for his ever-expanding "hair-hive". But we should start with JiuZhaiGou (Nine Villages Valley), the poster pin-up of Chinese nature tourism. If Great Walls, Terracotta Armies or Forbidden Cities are all a little too man-made for you, then you go here. Along with the largest scrum of Chinese tourists you ever did see……………(at least since you went to the Great Wall, we imagine).
His and Hers walking in a Willy Wonka Wonderland
And we see why more than 2 million Chinese head to this gem in the north-eastern corner of Sichuan each year. It's just so damn beautiful, just how Willy Wonka would have designed a Nature Park if given the chance. Crazy colours, absurdly wonderful lakes, waterfalls, mountains and trees and all spread over 50km of tumbling ravines. We swear we have not photo-shopped any of the images.
And this paradise would have been hell if we had not been able to escape the teeming trillions who arrived in the fog and left in the embracing early autumn sunshine. But we managed it. The thing is, we are not very good at reading "No Entry" signs in Chinese, and both Sam's and Francesca's cycling limbs hop over "No Entry" barriers ever so easily. And a little bit of heaven unfolded itself to us. For four glorious hours we ambled along old hiking trails, (probably deemed a little unsafe for the massing masses), down cascading streams, until finally we re-emerged into the crowds and were swallowed up by all the obscene surrounding Han commercialism, rubbing its Giant Panda memorabilia paws greedily, just beyond the visitors centre.
Playground Bullies
Back on the bikes, the roads swept us south-westward through the wet grasslands of the north, their vast plateaus of jade with happy yaks everywhere grazing like it was going out of fashion, unfazed by us whirring past, and of course the ever-testy bees angrily chasing Sam. As the kilometres came and went beneath us the distant hills began to rise and close in above us like playground bullies, until we were finally racing alongside plummeting rivers and dwarfed by those infamous turreted karst peaks that loomed overhead through the hunching mists. Have another look at the images on the sides of your faux (or not!) Ming vases, that hold your old brollies and walking sticks, and you can understand what an inspiration Sichuan has been throughout the ages for Chinese painters and poets alike.
Jiu-Zhai-Flow
And the people. Little mention yet of the folk who populate this province of the Four Rivers ("Si Chuan"), all of which drip mightily off the Tibetan Plateau and water (and feed) much of eastern China. For any path through the western half of this province (the biggest in China if you discount the "Autonomous Regions"), will swamp you with all things Tibetan. For days on end we rolled on through their villages and towns in the sunshine, and then through the incessant rains (so much of it, we again understand the envy hue of this region).
Every Tibetan has an opinion on just how lost we are
Unlike Tibet itself, where a £500 per tourist permit fee is required to enter and be guided around by a Chinese official tour operator, journeying through the Tibetan parts of western Sichuan incur no such constraints. But numerous police checkpoints on the roads often blocked our path. Particularly, when we strayed too close to the Tibetan border and to towns, such as Aba, where monks are increasingly self-immolating in protest at Chinese rule.
From what we were able to see from our saddles, however, the repression and ill treatment that Tibetans suffer at the hands of the Chinese central government within Tibet itself, appears to be toned down for the majority of western Sichuanese Tibetans. Prosperous communities filled with mini-castles and healthy-wealthy contented locals tending unmolested to bumper crops of barley and corn. We would be keen to hear evidence to the contrary, but we reckon that Chinese authorities are striving (and have been for some time) to integrate (through subsidy or otherwise) these communities into the greater Chinese family and dilute feelings of antipathy to Beijing rule and any strong sense of solidarity to brothers and sisters still residing within Tibet.
This Charming Man
Beijing rule is engaged in a bizarre balancing exercise with, on the one hand, a strong urge to homogenise this behemoth nation pitted against, on the other hand, the desire to preserve regional particularities to maximise tourism revenues. We suspect that the pockets of depressingly disneyfied Tibet that we have also passed through, and which tally with the tales we have heard of how grimly commercialised Lhasa has become, is one of the disheartening consequences.
Between the Tibetan communities themselves, however, we have been transfixed by the ever-changing clothing and architecture that we have observed as we have hopped from one valley over to the next. Nature's natural barriers have so effectively separated villages and towns that even language can vary significantly within the space of a few dozen kilometres. Yet the beaming smiles and multiple thumbs-ups, as we have toiled up their hills and zoomed down their dales, always remained constant.
People say we're monkeying around......
One town in particular, Danba, deserves a mention not least for its fabulously pretty surrounding villages that recently earned themselves the title of "China's most beautiful village", according to China's National Geographic. This is some accomplishment if you begin to tot up just how many villages there are in China. And National Geographic may well be right too. Set in an impossibly steep-sided confluence of three valleys, Tibetan homes speckle the hillsides where the laws of physics allow, and are interspersed with curious and aged watch-towers that sprout heavenward, ostensibly as a mediaeval form of protection but 'latterly' as symbols of wealth and prestige. Whatever their raison d'être, they look pretty cool against a backdrop of imposing peaks.
All along the watch towers....
Despite all its treats, Sichuan saved its real cycling pleasures until the very end of our time there. Our last 6 days of exertion took us from the no-nonsense crossroads valley town of Litang, (on the massively-under-construction (G318) Sichuan-Tibet Highway), which houses Tibetan gompas and the odd Momo (steamed dumpling) bar, to Zhongdian in Yunnan Province (now cynically renamed "Shangri-La" – Tibetan Paradise – to bring in the tourists).
The route lifted us, slowly and dustily at times, over gloriously isolated and desolate mountain passes with only flapping Tibetan prayer flags for company and with distant white peaks hinting at the even greater heights of Tibet itself. Despite warm days, night-time temperatures brought a veil of ice to our tent when we camped atop one high pass. This lovely and lonely route out of the mountains of Sichuan and into the mountains of Yunnan also gifted us with one final mighty 40km downhill stretch, on smooth-as-a-baby's-bum-asphalt, and we smiled and laughed all the way down, gleefully cocktailing levity with gravity.
Falling off our bikes again
Before we leave the subject of Sichuan we cannot sign off without doffing of our cycle helmets to the eponymous hero of this blog: Spiky, or really, Spicy Sichuan. For to get up all these mountains an odycyclist needs rocket fuel by the barrel-load. And we found it in the form of those riotously rocket-red chillies that are as synonymous with Sichuan, as say, Four Rivers. At first we feared. But it wasn't long before we were querying their absence, even at breakfast time.
Little Rockets
It has been some time since we last posted and we place the blame squarely on having incurred the wrath of all 70,000 Chinese censors by taunting them about their failure to block us. Well, they won. They obviously read our minds and knew that we would write about the recently proposed 6 months detention by police of any suspect without the requirement of informing families or legal representatives, those self-immolating monks in Aba, and all the Tibetans that we met who extolled the virtues of the Dalai Lama. Apparently, all is well if you tow the line.
As ever we have tried, when possible, to upload our latest snaps from life on the road. They can be found here. We have also updated our route map, which is here.
The final piece of business is to announce the grand winner of the All-Star Caption Contest and it goes to Mr Phil Barber. But in an unprecedented move by our panel of illustrious judges Mr Barber, of the United States of America, is to be stripped of his prize and it is to be awarded to his four daughters, Inez, Alice, Simone and Nora, as we suspect they were the real source of the caption. Shame on you, Phil.
He's strong to the finish cause he eats his barley and rancid butter, he's Po Pai the sailor man (toot, toot).


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Faith, Uncertainty, and the Raptors' Kawhi Leonard
Joshua Coldagelli • June 8, 2019
The NBA star's dominant run in the playoffs serves as a metaphor for keeping faith while under fire.
As a tortured, lifelong fan of the Milwaukee Bucks, I recently had my heart ripped out by Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors in the NBA playoffs. Leonard has been putting up outrageous numbers during the postseason, dispatching my Bucks after already sending home the Philadelphia 76ers with a Game 7, buzzer-beating, series-winning shot. Now in the NBA Finals, Leonard and the Raptors are one win away from dethroning the defending-champion Golden State Warriors.
Looming over Leonard's play and the Raptors' success is the fact that he will most likely decide not to re-sign with the team after the season. It has long been speculated that Leonard wishes to play in his home state of California; with his contract expiring at the end of the playoffs, his future will be entirely in his hands.
That has left Toronto in a state of anxious uncertainty, even amidst the team's success. The city is doing everything and anything to coax Leonard into re-signing with the Raptors. Local businesses are offering Leonard free meals, free rent, and free movies for life if he stays with the team. Will this be enough to keep the Klaw in Canada? What if the Raptors go on to win the championship? What if they lose?
Whether we like it or not, we are all bound to experience seasons of uncertainty. Whether we are a Raptors fan, a recent college graduate, or someone who has lost a job, uncertainty can infect our every thought. It causes us to make desperate choices and do things that are out of character. Certainly, there is a cure for uncertainty...
We are all bound to experience seasons of uncertainty.
Scripture offers comfort regarding this sort of anxiousness. In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us, "So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
We struggle to have faith in times of uncertainty. This is why Christ encourages us to keep our eyes on the kingdom of God, to find our identity in him. Not in our job, our sports fandom, our wealth, or our poverty. We can weather uncertainty if we remain rooted in Christ.
Sometimes, uncertainty leads to a better season of life. Take a closer look at Leonard's series-winning buzzer-beater against the 76ers. The ball rainbows high in the air, hits the rim, appears to bounce away, then bobbles around—hitting the rim three more times!—before rolling into the basket. For Raptors and 76ers fans alike, those three seconds of uncertainty felt like hours. But Leonard had faith, against long odds, and a historic win was his reward.
Of course, faith does not guarantee rewards, at least in this life. The ball may have bounced in on this shot, but plenty of other shots—including those taken by Leonard—have missed. We can take encouragement, then, from 1 Peter 1, where we're told to stand firm in faith even when we endure disappointment: "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."
We can embrace our seasons of uncertainty by leaning on Christ. Who knows what tomorrow holds—sickness may strike, a career may crumble, Kawhi Leonard may miss a crucial shot in the NBA Finals. Yet we can be assured of Christ's return. Until then, we must stand firm in our faith, even when being refined by fire.
Joshua Coldagelli is an event planner at Arizona State University. You can find him on Twitter @J_ColdAsJelly.
More Articles by Joshua Coldagelli
The Steadfast Career of Manu Ginobili
Pride and Fire Sauce: The Conflicted Humility of Kevin Durant
Ray Allen's Jump Shot and the Sovereignty of God

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Release International Prayer Shields, Sri Lanka
Pray that it will be possible to hold more Shalom camps in Sri Lanka, funded by Release, where Christians can come together for spiritual refreshment and mutual encouragement.
Sri LankaPray that the state in Sri Lanka would treat all citizens equally. Buddhists in rural areas have ready access to financial support to help with funeral costs when a relative dies: Christians receive no such support.
Pray for an end to discriminatory practices against Christians in Sri Lanka. Believers are routinely refused access to family burial plots in Buddhist cemeteries, denying them the ability to uphold cultural traditions of relatives being buried together.
Pray for relatives of the Easter Sunday suicide bombers in Sri Lanka, that they will come to experience the life-transforming love of Christ.
Pray for wisdom, stamina and grace for Release partners in Sri Lanka as they work to comfort families who have been bereaved and to provide medical assistance.
Pray that the authorities will do more to protect Christians in Sri Lanka. Senior church leaders criticised security arrangements for churches after the Easter bombings, amid revelations that officials had ignored warnings of attacks.
Moderate Muslims have been vocal in supporting Christians following the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. Pray that the legacy of this tragedy will be greater unity and tolerance.
Further attack on Nigeria's Kaduna Christians.
Thank you for praying earlier this month for Christians in Nigeria following the brutal killing of 50 believers in the northern Kaduna state and the abduction of 100 more by Fulani militants. Sadly ju
#12 in Christian persecution, Syria What does persecution look like in Syria? Syria's continuing civil war has made the country a breeding ground for the persecution of Christians. The unrest, which
Prayers for persecuted saints
Aug. 05, 2021 | Iran Boy Selling Socks Receives SD Card with Christian Literature [6] prayers in [1] nation have been posted for Boy in marketplace. When a team of evangelists went to a marketplace


Storm is to showcase the full line of products from LiveXpert at NAB, opening this Saturday, for the first time.
3D Storm is to showcase the full line of products from LiveXpert at NAB, opening this Saturday, for the first time. LiveXpert solutions have been developed to complement NewTek TriCaster production workflow. The company aims to help users produce high quality content by providing advanced solutions to manage the large volumes of information essential to live productions.
LiveXpert advanced peripherals and add-ons for NewTek TriCaster can be used as remote applications, or as independent products, operated from a computer connected to the TriCaster via iVGA.
Solutions include LiveMixer, an application that provides remote control over the audio mixer of all TriCaster HD models; LiveCG Football, a software graphic solution to cover football games in stadiums and for TV broadcast; and LiveCG Broadcast, a stand-alone 1RU device, allowing users to send all graphics needed for a TV production.
LiveXpert solutions aim to enhance live production workflow, speed up production time, reduce costs, and increase revenue opportunities. Visitors to NAB can see the full LiveXpert line at stand SU621E1.


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A Madame X Tour az amerikai énekesnő Madonna tizenegyedik koncertturnéja volt, amely 2019-es tizennegyedik stúdióalbuma, a Madame X népszerűsítésére szolgált. A turné 75 koncertet foglalt magába, amely 2019. szeptember 17-én New Yorkban vette kezdetét, és 2020. március 8-án Párizsban fejeződött be. A turnét a Maverick és a Live Nation Entertainment menedzselte.

Ez volt az első alkalom az 1985-ös The Virgin Tour című turné óta, hogy az énekesnő kis helyszíneken is fellépett. A koncertek főként az Egyesült Államokban, Angliában, Franciaországban, és Portugáliában kerültek megrendezésre. A mobiltelefonokat és az okosórákat kitiltották a koncertekről, amit vegyes reakciók fogadtak a rajongók részéről. A nagy érdeklődésre való tekintettel New Yorkban, és Los Angelesben új dátumokat adtak meg, amikor a turné állomások hivatalosan is bejelentésre kerültek. 2019. május 20.-án hivatalosan is bejelentették a többi amerikai város dátumát. A turnéról készült Lisszabonban forgatott Madame X koncertfilmet Ricardo Gomes, Sasha Kasiuha és Nuno Xico rendezte. Premierje szeptember 23-án volt a New York-i Times Square Edition Hotelben, a Paramount+-on pedig 2021. október 8-án adták ki.

Szetlista

Az alábbi díszletlista a 2019. október 16-án, a Chicago Theatre-ben tartott koncertről készült. Nem reprezentálja az összes koncertet a turné időtartama alatt.

I. felvonás:

 "God Control"
 "Dark Ballet"
 "Human Nature"
 "Express Yourself" (
 "Papa Don't Preach"
II. felvonás:
 "Madame X Manifesto"
 "Vogue"
 "I Don't Search I Find"
 "Papa Don't Preach"
 "American Life"
III. felvonás:
 "Batuka"
 "Fado Pechincha"
 "Killers Who Are Partying"
 "Crazy"
 "Welcome to My Fado Club"
 "Sodade"
 "Medellín"
 "Extreme Occident"
IV. felvonás:
 "Rescue Me"
 "Frozen"
 "Come Alive"
 "Future"
V. felvonás:
 "Crave"
 "Like a Prayer"
Bónusz:
 "I Rise"

Turnéállomások

Lemondott koncertek

Felvétel és dokumentumfilm

Még 2019 elején a lisszaboni székhelyű produkciós szolgáltató vállalat, a Krypton International kezdett el dolgozni a The World of Madame X című mini-dokumentumfilmen, amelyet Madonna régi munkatársa, Nuno Xico forgatott, és amelyet végül 2019 júliusának elején vetítettek le az Amazon Prime-on. 2020. január 12-én ez a cég közzétett hivatalos Instagram-oldalán egy képet az All Stage Access Pass programról a lisszaboni turné estjén, majd azt, hogy forgatják és rögzítik a koncertet egy esetleges későbbi élő albumra és Blu-ray-re. 2021 februárjában bejelentette, hogy újra forgatja a műsor egyes elemeit a közelgő élő adásban. 2021. április 14-én közzétette hivatalos Facebook-oldalán, ahogy a film privát vetítését tartották egy 500 férőhelyes színházban.

2021. július 15-én Madonna bejelentette, hogy a Madame X című dokumentumfilm, 2021. október 8-án fog megjelenni a Paramount+-on. A hivatalos előzetest 2021. szeptember 14-én töltötték fel YouTube-fiókjára, a film hivatalos premierjére pedig szeptember 23-án, a New York-i Times Square-i Edition Hotelben került sor.

Jegyzetek

Turnék 2019-ben
Turnék 2020-ban

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Neyyattinkara police arrested a 29-year-old man and seized gold ornaments that come around half kilogram on Saturday. The arrested has been identified as Jagadeesh, son of Babulal, a resident of Udaipur in Rajasthan. He was carrying the gold from Nagarcoil in Tamil Nadu to Mumbai. According to sub-inspector Rakesh, the incident happened at 12 pm.
"The man belongs to Udaipur and he was travelling from Nagarcoil to Mumbai in Kochuveli Express on Saturday. When he came to know about the checking inside the trains, he got off at Neyyattinkara railway station. The officials who were engaged in vehicle checking ahead of election at TB Junction found him wandering. When he saw the police officers he walked in the opposite direction. When interrogated, he appeared to be nervous," said the Neyysttinkara SI.
The officials then searched his bags and found the gold. "The gold ornaments were new and he lacked valid documents. Thus we seized the gold and took him into custody," he added. He was presented at sub- divisional magistrate court on Saturday under section 102 CrPC (power of police officer to seize certain property).


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Niyo: Dreadful exit isn't how Wolverines want to frame 30-win season
John Niyo
Anaheim, Calif. — They looked dazed. They seemed dumbfounded. And without a doubt, they were defeated.
But after Michigan's players filed off the court at the Honda Center, some of them with towels over their heads and others with tears in their eyes, including senior Charles Matthews making a somber final exit, the postgame message from their coach was more of a plea than anything else.
"This game," John Beilein said, "shouldn't define who you are."
And yet it will for a while. Maybe a long while for some, like Matthews, who was sobbing at times as teammates came over to him one by one with words of thanks and apologies for how it all ended Thursday night, with a 63-44 drubbing at the hands — literally and figuratively — of third-seeded Texas Tech in a NCAA West Regional semifinal.
A year ago out here in southern California, Michigan put on an offensive clinic in its Sweet 16 matchup with Texas A&M, draining 10 3-pointers in a 52-point first half that prompted one of the Aggies' players to admit later, "I was just wondering when they were going to miss."
Thursday night, it was the polar opposite, as the Wolverines began by making some silly turnovers, then proceeded to dent the rims, going 7-for-25 from the field in the first half, including 0-for-9 from the 3-point line.
Michigan attempted 13 jump shots in the first 20 minutes and made not one of them. And if an eight-point halftime deficit felt like a chasm against a Texas Tech team that came into the game with the nation's top-ranked defense, it wouldn't take long for it to look like the Grand Canyon.
Way off
The Wolverines didn't score their first basket of the second half until nearly 5 minutes had elapsed, and by then the Red Raiders had doubled them up, building a 36-18 lead that was insurmountable.
"A little bit like our Villanova loss last year," Beilein said, referencing last spring's season-ending defeat in the national title game. "We're not a great offensive team ... and coming back from that was going to be really hard."
Impossible, as it turned out. Texas Tech plays defense like no other team in the country, really, and Thursday they were out to prove a point against a Michigan team that was ranked No. 2 in defensive efficiency.
This was going to be a rock fight, everyone agreed. But Michigan forgot its slingshot.
Hawkins, Niyo break down UM's Sweet 16 loss to Texas Tech NCAA Tournament: Texas Tech 63, Michigan 44 Thirty and out: Michigan season ends with a thud in 19-point loss to Texas Tech 'It's been amazing': Michigan freshmen warm up to bright lights of NCAA Tournament
The Wolverines didn't make their first jump shot of the game until Ignas Brazdeikis finally got one to drop from the baseline with 10:01 to play. And they'd finish the night a mind-boggling 1-for-19 from 3-point range, with the lone make a last-minute bomb from walk-on reserve C.J. Baird that trimmed the final margin under 20 points.
So it wouldn't be the most lopsided NCAA Tournament defeat in program history (Loyola Marymount in 1990) or even the second-worst (the 71-51 loss to Duke in the title game), but the 19-point final deficit was the third-largest ever for the Wolverines in the tourney.
And that helped explain some of the 1,000-yard stares in the postgame locker room. Or the motionless figure of Zavier Simpson, hunched over in a folding chair with a towel draped over his head after a night he'll probably never forget — zero points, one assist and four turnovers in 36 minutes.
A few seats away, Jordan Poole, credited Texas Tech's defense in one breath and cursed Michigan's luck in the next.
"We picked a bad day to have a bad day," he said, shaking his head.
And even the opponent was willing to agree with that.
"Some shots weren't falling for them that usually fall," said Jarrett Culver, Tech's star guard who finished with a game-high 22 points. "I mean, that's just how it happens sometimes."
Long-range hope
That it happened as often as it did to the Wolverines this season was jarring, though. The scoring droughts were frequent and frustrating, and this was Beilein's worst 3-point shooting team since his first one at Michigan nearly a decade ago.
That will have to change for next season, and chances are it will, as the roster gets more experienced — assuming Brazdeikis and Poole both return — and more shooters emerge. John Beilein hasn't forgotten how to coach offense, folks.
Still, perhaps it was fitting that this season ended with one final clang, and a program-worst scoring total for an NCAA Tournament game, one point shy of the 45 points Michigan scored in a loss to Holy Cross way back in 1948. In many ways, that was the story of this season, as Beilein's team raced out to a school-record 17-0 start but couldn't win the games that mattered most in the end, losing the Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles to their rivals from East Lansing and then coming up short here.
It's also a reminder of how the standards have changed for Michigan over the last decade, with five trips to the Sweet 16 in the last seven years and two trips to the national title game.
"We talk about championships every single day at practice, and that's the great thing about our culture now," said Luke Yaklich, the assistant coach whose role as defensive coordinator has played a huge part in these back-to-back 30-win seasons. "So this feeling right now, you hurt for Charles and you hurt for the team, obviously. We were able to accomplish a lot of things. But when you have that feeling in the back of your mind of what it was like to get to the Final Four and to play for the national title, and what it was like to celebrate those kinds of moments, it just stings in a different way."
And in a way that, by the looks of Thursday night, will linger.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
twitter.com/JohnNiyo


text:
Fitness+%26+Sports
Basketball In Australia
Posted on February 1, 2022 by Reece Potter
Basketball Australia begins in 1897, just a short time after its innovation in the United States. The very first game held was in South Australia and was between Our Boys Institute (OBI) and the Young Men's Christian Association Training School (YMCA). The game soon immediately spread across Adelaide and Victoria. Ultimately advancing into humble communities, the ball began to establish a connection all through all of Australia. The social part of basketball helped children and grown-ups the same relax in the late spring months.
Basketball Australia is the administering and controlling assemblage of basketball backboard Australia, answerable for the turn of events and advancement of the game at all levels. Basketball Australia endorses Australia's two expert associations, the National Basketball League (NBL) and the Women's National Basketball League (WNBL) just as the semi-proficient associations that were once essential for the Australian Basketball Association (ABA). Ball Australia likewise handles delegate groups in FIBA and Olympic rivalry. Basketball Australia is the administering and controlling body for the game of basketball Australia. A not-revenue driven business, Basketball Australia's individuals are the eight state and domain basketball affiliations.
Basketball Australia Foundation
Australia as a country is as of now positioned fifth on the planet by the worldwide overseeing body FIBA. Basketball Australia oversees 15 public groups which contend in Olympic and Paralympics Games and FIBA World Championships Basketball Australia Foundation has been making to help all of the tip-top execution needs of BA's first-class groups. As the program endeavours to proceed with global strength, it looks to offer more types of assistance, access, openness, and visits for the players. These endeavours will proceed to develop and foster the fate of Basketball in Australia. By and by, for some, BA visits, members and their families are needed to make a monetary commitment towards the expense of the visit. The current vision for the ASF program is to diminish this expense for crate balers', making the visits more open to a more extensive gathering of expected members.
In late 2006 Basketball Australia (BA) moved toward the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) mentioning a survey of its superior presentation pathways. With current pathways have been in presence for a considerable length of time and bringing about the ladies' public group as of late being delegated World Champions and Australia authoritatively positioned number two on the planet generally, the survey's point was to freely look at pathways to guarantee what right now exists will keep on addressing the necessities of things to come. Basketball Australia has created a progression of free instructive handouts which are explicitly intended to assist mentors, chairmen, and arbitrators with improving the norm of their commitment to the game.
South Australia New Arrivals Basketball Program
The New Arrivals Basketball Australia Program offers ball preparation and contest to new and ongoing appearances to South Australia. The program expects to make an investment in ball open to displaced people and fresh introductions by giving standard preparation and games in an inviting and fun climate that is midway found and near the open transport.
Posted in Fitness & Sports


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Today's game against the Tigers might be the biggest of the spring so far. Of course, I'll be traveling during the game.
The first matchup you'll see are outfielders Curtis Granderson and Johnny Damon. In a recent poll, fans voted Granderson would have a better year than Damon in 2010. I didn't agree.
Go to Trenton Thunder beat reporter Mike Ashmore's blog for a review of Jesus Montero's recent career and his expectations for this year. Ashmore has seen this guy more than anyone.
Mark Newman, Yankees' senior vice president of baseball operations, was charged with DUI last night in Tampa.
Nomar Garciaparra will retire with the Red Sox.


text:
John Cribb, Carbon County News Publisher
By: Alastair Baker News Editor
John Cribb has joined Yellowstone Newspapers as the publisher for The Carbon County News. Cribb is a first generation Montanan, born and raised in Bozeman. He recently worked for the Whitefish Pilot and the Big Fork Eagle. He graduated from University of Montana with a degree in communications studies and history. By his own admission he is a Griz fan and knows the county is Bobcat country. He is an avid skier and is looking forward to trying the runs at Red Lodge Mountain resort. He also is a cellist. Cribb's first wish is to get to know the communities around the county and meet those who live in them.
"I've also lived in Townsend and Deer Lodge so I know about rural communities. I'm excited to see a new corner of Montana, a State I love. I'm looking forward to visiting all the communities in the valley from Fromberg, Edgar, Bridger, Bearcreek and Belfry, as well as Joliet and Roberts," he said. "I'm very happy to be here at the Carbon County News and hope we and the communities can continue to grow together," he said. Cribb invites people to come by and visit him at the Carbon County News. "My door is always open and you can reach me at 446-2222," he said.


Anyone expecting Mayor Bill de Blasio to gently pivot toward a more pragmatic brand of municipal politics was in for a surprise Thursday.
After 100 often-punishing days as the chief of America's most cantankerous city, de Blasio just doubled down on his vision of a renewed progressive movement that will someday guide the city toward the promised land.
He wants to create a city of effective schools, great neighborhood hospitals and decent jobs. And he would turn New York into a place where residents can stay in their homes without fear of economic dislocation.
But let's not kid ourselves. So far, he sounds far more like the Miracle Worker than a seasoned, cigar-chomping, get-it-done-now pol in the mold of Fiorello La Guardia.
He sounds like a fellow still stuck in campaign mode.
He says he would improve the schools by "embracing" the role of parents and by making it easier for them to push their schools forward. Wonderful. But how is this going to work? The last time the city tried it, the result was community school districts -- which proved disastrous.
He says neighborhood hospitals are closing and people should be worried because we need health care spread equally and fairly in the city. But he doesn't say how he would turn back several decades of fast-changing national trends in medical economics. And he doesn't explain how these neighborhood hospitals can efficiently deliver the highly specialized medical care Americans expect today.
De Blasio is good when he talks specifics.
He wanted a prekindergarten program for every eligible child in the city. Albany gave it to him. He wants to repair our dilapidated public housing stock. That's doable. He wants developers to build more affordable housing. He can use city leverage to make that happen.
But the mayor is wrong if he expects an ethereal ethos of progressivism to somehow solve the city's most intractable problems. Life is more complicated than that. So is New York. He needs a plan B anchored in the here and now.


text:
«Глазами убийцы» — кинофильм. Экранизация произведения, автор которого — Кристофер Фаулер.

Сюжет
Лори Фишер, молодая и симпатичная женщина, рассорилась со женихом.

От безделья она начинает отношения с другим, ничего о нём не зная…

В ролях
 Марг Хелгенбергер — Лори Фишер
 Ричард Дин Андерсон — Рэй Беллано
 Дэвид Маршалл Грант — Макс Кэмпбелл
 Мелинда Кьюлиа — Элисон Риверс
 Типпи Хедрен — миссис Беллано
 Джо Пантолиано — Джерри
 Моника Паркер — Дороти
 Джойс Сили — секретарь Джерри
 Джон МакКанн — отец Лори

Фильмы-триллеры Канады
Фильмы Канады 1992 года
Сексуальное насилие в фильмах
Фильмы о сталкинге


text:
namespace cdif {
    template <Scope TScope, typename TService, typename TInterface, typename ... TCtorArgs>
    class InterfaceRegistrationBuilder : public RegistrationBuilder<TScope, TService, TCtorArgs...>
    {
        private:
            typedef std::array<std::function<std::any ()>, sizeof...(TCtorArgs)> ResolverCollection;

            template <typename TRet, typename Indices = std::make_index_sequence<sizeof...(TCtorArgs)>>
            void buildRegistrationFrom(
                const std::function<TRet (TCtorArgs&& ...)>& factory) const
            {
                this->m_ctx->template bind<TRet>(
                    Registration(this->buildResolverFrom(factory, Indices{})), this->m_name);
            }

            template <typename TRet, typename TCasted>
            void buildScopedRegistrationFrom(
                const std::function<TService (const Container&)>& factory) const
            {
                this->m_ctx->template bind<TCasted>(
                    Registration(buildScopedFactory<TRet, TCasted>(factory)), this->m_name);
            }

            template <typename Indices = std::make_index_sequence<sizeof...(TCtorArgs)>>
            void buildImpl() const
            {
                buildRegistrationFrom<TService>(
                    defaultFactory<TService, TCtorArgs...>());
                buildRegistrationFrom<TInterface*>(
                    defaultInterfacePtrFactory<TService, TInterface, TCtorArgs...>());
                buildRegistrationFrom<std::shared_ptr<TInterface>>(
                    defaultInterfaceSharedPtrFactory<TService, TInterface, TCtorArgs...>());
                buildRegistrationFrom<std::unique_ptr<TInterface>>(
                    defaultInterfaceUniquePtrFactory<TService, TInterface, TCtorArgs...>());

                this->m_ctx->template bind<std::function<TService (TCtorArgs...)>>(
                    Registration(this->buildFactoryResolver()), this->m_name);
            }

            template <typename T, typename TCasted>
            std::function<TCasted (const Container&)> buildScopedFactory(
                const std::function<TService (const Container&)>& resolver) const
            {
                std::function scopedFactory = this->template getScopedFactory<T>();
                return [resolver, scopedFactory] (const Container& ctx) -> decltype(auto)
                    {
                        return static_cast<TCasted>(scopedFactory(resolver, ctx));
                    };
            }

            template <typename Indices = std::make_index_sequence<sizeof...(TCtorArgs)>>
            void buildScoped() const
            {
                auto resolver = this->buildResolverFrom(defaultFactory<TService, TCtorArgs...>(), Indices{});

                buildScopedRegistrationFrom<TService&, TService&>(resolver);
                buildScopedRegistrationFrom<TService&, TInterface&>(resolver);
                buildScopedRegistrationFrom<TService*, TInterface*>(resolver);
                buildScopedRegistrationFrom<std::shared_ptr<TService>, std::shared_ptr<TInterface>>(resolver);

                this->m_ctx->template bind<std::function<TService (TCtorArgs...)>>(
                    Registration(this->buildFactoryResolver()), this->m_name);
            }

        public:
            InterfaceRegistrationBuilder(Container* ctx, ResolverCollection resolvers, std::string name)
                : RegistrationBuilder<TScope, TService, TCtorArgs...>(ctx, resolvers, name)
            {
                static_assert(has_constructor_with_args<TService, TCtorArgs...>::value,
                    "Cannot find constructor for service matching provided arguments");
                static_assert(std::is_base_of<TInterface, TService>::value, "TService must derive TInterface");
            }

            virtual ~InterfaceRegistrationBuilder() {}
            InterfaceRegistrationBuilder (const InterfaceRegistrationBuilder&) = default;
            InterfaceRegistrationBuilder& operator=(const InterfaceRegistrationBuilder&) = default;
            InterfaceRegistrationBuilder (InterfaceRegistrationBuilder&&) = default;
            InterfaceRegistrationBuilder& operator=(InterfaceRegistrationBuilder&&) = default;

            void build() override
            {
                if constexpr (TScope == Scope::PerDependency)
                    buildImpl();
                else
                    buildScoped();
            }

            template <Scope TNewScope>
            auto in()
            {
                return InterfaceRegistrationBuilder<TNewScope, TService, TInterface, TCtorArgs...>(
                    this->m_ctx, this->m_dependencyResolvers, this->m_name);
            }
    };

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital is going to recruit fresher candidates in India for Technician, Physiotherapist Posts. So, those candidates who are willing to work with this organization they May apply for this post. Last Date of Apply 05-June-2017. Total numbers of vacancies are 124 Posts. Only those candidates are eligible who have passed 10+2 in Science (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) and Bachelor's Degree in Physiotherapy Therapy from a recognized Institute/University. Indian citizen having age in between 20 to 55 years can apply for this Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital Recruitment 2017.
Those who are interested in these Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital jobs in India and meet with the whole eligibility criteria related to these Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital job below in the same post. Read the whole article carefully before applying.
Educational Criteria: Only those candidates are eligible who have passed 10+2 in Science (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) and Bachelor's Degree in Physiotherapy Therapy from a recognized Institute/University.
What is the Application Fee for these Technician Jobs in India?


Water for injection and Sodium Hyaluronate 6.0 mg/ml (Mw # 3000 kD).
The product is intended to hydrate the skin through superficial injections and to improve skin quality.
Ideal for preventing early aging signs of the skin, rehabilitation after chemical peeling, sun exposure and couperosis.
The product is to be injected into the superficial dermis.


Weekly classes last for 3 hours, 1 hour is dedicated to each discipline.
The cost is £300 for a term. Fees are payable by direct debit in one termly instalment, three times a year. For all new students, their first term will be payable by debit card, prior to your child starting classes. The direct debit mandate will then be set up for all consecutive terms. A discount of 50% is offered, at application stage, for second same/step family siblings. The discount is applied to the lowest full fee.
To apply for a place at one of our academies you just need to complete the 'Apply now' online form on the home page and the relevant application will be sent to you.


text:
Bryum sullivanii är en bladmossart som beskrevs av C. Müller in Brotherus 1893. Bryum sullivanii ingår i släktet bryummossor, och familjen Bryaceae. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Bryummossor
sullivanii


Hmm hey guys and girls, hows it goin? My name Ron and im still pretty new to this forum. I only recently started getting on here. I know a good ammount of stuff about bike and i have many things done to my 2006 F4i already but I have a question about something.
I will be doing a very long trip in a couple of months, and i got to thinkin about my fuel mileage. I used to race and we had a Power commander on my 600RR. I know you can alter the fuel to air ratio and other things, but that can also be modified to give me more gas miles right? or what about some kind of fuel controller. I know theres alot on the market these days. I guess my main question is, Whats the best way to get all the miles possible out of one tank of gas? what would be the best thing to buy to get the most miles, or the best thing to do?
After looking on power commander's website the only maps for your CBR are performance ones specific to different exhaust/air filter combos. I'm not sure if there is a fuel management setting on the actual software once you install it but I doubt it. Without proper tuning by somebody who is trained and knows what they're doing you run the risk of permanent engine damage. I would just make sure you go over the maintenance for the bike, eg. tires, chain, plugs, and oil, to get the best and healthiest gas mileage for your bike. Or just change around your gearing to drop RPM's on the highway.
what is better a wide band commander or a power commander??


text:
Surfaces Sparkling: The cityscapes of Scott Williams
Scott Williams: Recent Places at 490 Atlantic
November 3 to December 18, 2018
490 Atlantic Avenue, between Nevins Street and Third Avenue
Brooklyn, 490atlantic.com
Scott Williams, Right Turn, 2018. Oil on linen, 34 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist
The paintings of Scott Williams are both deadpan and subtly poetic. If the wastelands of Brooklyn and Queens have a poetry, Williams is their laureate. I never realized how many succulent varieties of asphalt and concrete and rusted metal the boroughs have to offer, never fell for the charm of their frowzy canals and desiccated wharves until I saw these paintings.
The nine plein-air cityscapes in this show demonstrate an intensity of observation that for many viewers will recall the panoramas of Rackstraw Downes, but where Downes's gaze warps gradually and inexorably across the canvas, Williams organizes his views around separate focal points, like Piranesi's views of Rome in which you look simultaneously down two streets plunging into the distance at different angles.
In the foreground of Williams's From the Roof, (2018) Jackson Avenue and 47tht Road intersect at an acute angle, flanked by massive buildings. Along the split perspective, your eye encounters a series of tiny dramas of street life–micro-events like signage, a cement mixer, parked cars–revealed in detail that manages to be meticulous without being mechanical. It's enough to reward a longer look but not to stop the eye from navigating the rest of the intricate topography. But it isn't the quantity of detail that makes the pictures memorable—stuffing a painting is easy–so much as the organization of incredibly complex parts into a convincing, unexpected order.
Scott Williams, From Studio Roof, 2018. Oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist
Williams has a gift for light, a perfect pitch in transposing the vast scale of daylight into the narrow tonal range of painting. Controlled richness of facture keeps his surfaces sparkling. The melding of light and surface reminds me of Ruysdael's Quay at Amsterdam, Vermeer's View of Delft or Corot's The Belfry of Douai—paintings that share Williams's fascination with vision and devotion to urban space. The exactness of Williams's color allows him to reduce the glut of fact into a coherent mosaic that communicates precisely where things are and what the light is doing to them there.
Working outside is key to the specificity and richness of this light. A photograph inevitably flattens the interplay of direct and reflected light and the power of deep pictorial space. Of course, many great paintings have been made from photographs, but the result is different than working directly from life. That being so, why are ambitious plein-air paintings of this kind so rare? For a start, the artist must contend with the elements, with a painting you've been slaving away at blown on its face or soaked in a squall. And then there are the kibitzers: dogs, children, property owners, opinionated spectators. It takes a stubborn zeal to keep working in the teeth of these problems, but the payoff, at least for Williams, is a powerful sense of being present, immersed in the world.
Honestly, I don't usually care for this kind of painting. Detail for its own sake is deadly, and diligence as an artistic goal is irritating, like watching someone try to solve a problem arithmetically that should be solved with algebra. But Williams beguiles you with the prosaic, makes you want to study the banal, patiently teaches you to see it his way.
Scott Williams, Fenced Waterfront, 2017. Oil on panel, 18 x 28 inches. Courtesy of the artist
Surface Tension: William Corwin on Amalia Piccinini and Stephen Maine
The Visitor: Vermeer's Milkmaid at the Met
Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham and Greg Lindquist at Elizabeth Harris
"Coaxed into fullness of existence": A conversation with Rackstraw Downes
The World Outside: "Landscapes" at Marlborough Chelsea
Thoughtful critique. Great capture of light! Congrats.
cadredmed
An excellent take on this fine observational painter's work. I guess we'll have to wait a few hundred years to see how Long Island City stacks up against Delft as subject material, but that it has its own beauty is undeniable.
More articles by Stephen Ellis
The World Outside: "Landscapes" at Marlborough Chelsea"A Sanctuary for Weeds": Social Ecologies at the Gallery at Industry CityLove Canal: Joan Linder at Mixed GreensSurface Tension: William Corwin on Amalia Piccinini and Stephen MaineDavid Hockney: A Bigger VisionKiller Opening For "Murdering The World," Mark Greenwold's Long-Awaited Debut at Sperone WestwaterThe Visitor: Vermeer's Milkmaid at the MetRackstraw Downes Rackstraw Downes at Betty Cuningham and Greg Lindquist at Elizabeth HarrisOctober 2004: Ken Johnson, Maureen Mullarkey, and Jerry Saltz with moderator David Cohen


To undertake activities conducive to the Hindu Way of Life.
To hold regular religious services embracing the full spectrum of Hindu Spiritual Beliefs.
To provide an opportunity for maximum fraternization and integration among Canadians of all walks of life and religious beliefs.
To promote inter-religious harmony and understanding by periodically inviting teachers, theologians, and philosophers of different faiths to speak at the Centre and by providing speakers to do likewise elsewhere.
To celebrate Hindu festivals such as Holi, Ram Nawmi, Janam Ashtmi, Diwali, etc.
To establish and develop a resource library on religion, philosophy, culture, music, art and languages, etc.
To provide a place for social functions such as marriages, ceremony, dances, cultural shows, etc.
To organize schools for children to be exposed to the tenets of Hinduism.
To arrange for Hindi and Indian music, wherever possible, to be taught to interested persons.


Pressure Cleaning Moonee Ponds is the highest rated, professional pressure cleaning & exterior home washing company in Moonee Ponds. We service all suburban areas across Melbourne and Mornington Peninsula.
We are a local, family owned and ran company and we pride ourselves on excellent client service and in delivering our customers with high quality outcomes.
It is recommended for most paths, pools & patio areas, pavers, tennis courts & retaining walls. For roofing systems, we have a special treatment to prevent tile deterioration and to minimise the risk of water damage.
Our soft washing treatment will bring a fresh look to your investment and increase the residential or commercial property value. The removal of dirt and germs will also leave your home or business healthier and more hygienic for you and your household.
Roofings can end up being extremely unattractive due to organic growths like moss and lichen. Roofs are also regularly discoloured and stained by a prevalent bacteria called gloecapsa magma. Roofing associations and manufacturers do not recommend high pressure washing to clean roofs. It might eliminate moss from the roofing, but the aggressive jets of water may likewise harm tiles, ridge capping and other roofing system fittings as well as boost the threat of flooding. There is likewise a good chance that the moss will grow back. Cleaning with the manufacturers preferred detergent is suggested. This is exactly what we do! Softwash roof washing is by far the most effective method to clear moss or other bacterial developments from the roof, whenever they are at risk of ending up being a major issue.
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Have you got tired looking wood decks? Our team will make them look new once again. We apply a light chemical that will clean up and rejuvenate the timber. This is followed by 2 coats of premium decking oil or stain. Our process will make your deck look a million dollars and leave you genuinely surprised by the outcomes!
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We really are the experts in what we do and we're proud to be able to offer free quotes that will provide you the best value in the area.
No task is too big. We have the equipment required for large warehouses, sports surfaces, school premises, shopping centers, body corporate complexes and large parking area.
We works with businesses throughout Moonee Ponds, supplying environmentally compliant, high pressure steam cleaning and water blasting services that enable organisations to meet hygiene compliance policies and provide personnel and visitors with an enjoyable environment.
Our certified, licensed and fully insured staff clean both indoor and outdoor areas around your business. Our reliable staff are available to work after hours to avoid any disturbances to your company. We are also qualified and licensed to work at height as our service frequently involves tall buildings, which might need abseiling or elevated work platforms.
Our company has a strong reputation among its customers for reliability and workmanship. No 2 jobs are alike, so call us to discuss your pressure brick cleaning Moonee Ponds requirements, whether you require a one-off pressure clean or a regular contracted service.


own group or culture (Sue, 2006, p. 116)." It could have been the first time I actually saw the impact of the media on a white person that was not exposed to other cultures. I was never taught whites were better than anyone by my family and my education did not make me see white people in a positive light. Also, I was not taught to be colorblind. I was allowed to form my own opinions.
My racial identity has grown in ways. I am more aware of the impact of Jewish history on my identity. My white racial identity has not been changed from being in this class. I have grown and I believe that it is not stagnant or a zero sum transition or I could be in overlapping stages.


text:
DEFINE_int32(port,
             8087,
             "Port for DIG server (default: 8087)");

DEFINE_int32(num_of_threads,
             4,
             "Number of threads (default: 4)");

using namespace apache::thrift;
using namespace apache::thrift::async;

using namespace cpp2;
//using namespace facebook::windtunnel::treadmill::services::dig;

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
  google::InitGoogleLogging(argv[0]);
  google::ParseCommandLineFlags(&argc, &argv, true);

  auto handler = std::make_shared<DIGHandler>();
  auto server = folly::make_unique<ThriftServer>();

  server->setPort(FLAGS_port);
  server->setNWorkerThreads(FLAGS_num_of_threads);
  server->setInterface(std::move(handler));
  server->setIdleTimeout(std::chrono::milliseconds(0));
  server->setTaskExpireTime(std::chrono::milliseconds(0));

  server->serve();

  return 0;
}


Our signature moisturizing lotion to rejuvenate, detoxify and nourish your skin.
Size: 16 oz. 34 oz. 1.4 oz.
Coco Mango 1.4 oz. Shampoo, Conditioner, Shower Gel, and Lotion, Face and Body Soap packaged in a reusable zipper bag.
Our luxurious body creme infused with the essence of Coco Mango and formulated with shea butter and coconut oil to soothe and protect the skin for a silky finish.
A deluxe exfoliating treatment infused with the essence of Coco Mango and formulated with shea butter & safflower oil to renew & rejuvenate the skin.


We are proud of those who serve our nation, past and present. We are proud of those sons and daughters that we know by name and those we know by heart.They are all our children. Words are never enough to explain the depth of gratitude we owe these brave men and women.
I am proud to say that my son, Sgt. Joe Reinart is a veteran. My Dad, Joseph Christophe Vayo was a veteran. Thank you to all who have served and for your many sacrifices. We are so proud of your commitment to us. We love you more than you know.
After the retirement ceremony for our son CMDR James Barry Ryan, USN Ret., the captain who had emceed the program made it a point to tell me how much he admired our son. He especially mentioned how patient and helpful Barry was to the entire staff. "He doesn't show people how he loves God," the captain said. "He shows God how he loves people." There have been many times we've been proud of Barry, but that has to rank right up there near the top.
I am proud to say that my son, Sgt. Joe Reinart is a veteran. Thank you to all who have served and for your many sacrifices. We are so proud of your commitment to us. We love you more than you know.
Veterans Day gives us the chance to honor all of our sons and daughters for serving and protecting our nation. My dear friend, Mary Ryan, (children's author) is the proud mother of CMDR James Barry Ryan. Mary told this story.


Our CRL Load Rails are made of extruded aluminum with a black electrostatic powder coated finish.
CRL Load Rails include steel "tie downs" bolted to the ends to keep the load from sliding, and PVC inserts to protect loads from being damaged. CRL Mounting Legs are made of aluminum extrusion with a black electrostatic powder coated finish, and are available in three heights, sold in kits to accommodate the variety of camper shells on the road.