Vaccinations and Wee bottles: Pre-Kilimanjaro Preparation

And we're off!! Anita and I are flying out today to our next big adventure, with a goal of summiting Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, around Feb. 12th. The months long lead up to today's departure has been a mixture of fear and anticipation, of gear shopping and vaccinations, and a strange debate about whether to use pee bottles (so one can wee in the comfort of your tent, as opposed to venturing outside in the middle of the night and potentially falling off the mountainside). Wouldn't that be a headline: Hikers die while 'pissing off Kili'. Literally. :)

We had spent all of the past summer training for this trek, scrambling peak after peak, only to have converted every ounce of fitness into fatness in the three months since cold winter weather hit. So while I thought at one point I was going to kick ass up Kili, I fear now it'll be Kili doing the kicking, and my ass the recipient.

Anywho, I should probably go do something productive in our final hours pre-takeoff. I'll leave you with these photos from Gusty Peak earlier this summer, the first 3000m summit Anita scrambled. To think that in just over a week, we will be summiting a mountain nearly double that elevation. Here's hoping.




Gusty Peak, as seen from the Chester Lake approach.


Quite a few kilometres in, with the bulk of the elevation yet to come.




Never ending scree and rubble.

Samuel L. Machson

I needed a passport photo taken so that I could apply for a tourist visa to visit the motherland this coming September. So we went to Costco tonight to get them done, because you really can't beat 7 dollars for a set. Except... well... I'm not usually mistaken for a black man. But from this photo, I would fit right in with a Black Lives Matter protest. #MachLivesMatter. Take a look at the mugshot they gave me (bottom), and tell me you don't have a curious/ shocked expression on your face like these fine folks do at my sudden transformation into Samuel L. Machson. Allow me to coin a new slogan for the Costco photo department: for all your digital blackface needs.








African-American George.
And this is after I brightened up the the photo after scanning it. I'm even darker in the actual print.

The G.Mach School of Husband-ology 101

Welcome to the G.Mach School of Husband-ology 101. Lesson 1: How to be a good spouse - send text to wife saying, "Plane's about to take off. See you soon! Love you!"

Lesson 2: How NOT to be a good spouse - Send said text from the lock screen of your iPhone, not realizing it is actually replying to a female colleague you just spent the past week with, and not your wife. #awkwaaaard

Anyways, I transgress digress. Thought I'd share a handful of film photos from Anita and I's visit to Barcelona last fall, our first time back since our honeymoon 7 years ago. These were taken in the Eixample district, along the block of discord, where a handful of "Modernista" building facades dominate a block on Passeig de Gràcia. And there is a shot of another Antoni Gaudi designed facade (Casa Milà) mixed in, which isn't on the block of discord.


Casa Lleó-Morera


Casa Amatller


Casa Batlló






Casa Milà, not on the block of discord, but not far away either.

All shots taken with the Holga 120N, on Ilford Delta 400. Souped at home in Ilfosol 3, 1+9 @ 68 deg. F for 6:30.

Chernobyl, 30 Years On

Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, where a routine test at the facility triggered the largest and most devastating nuclear meltdown in history. Here's a throwback to a few years ago, when Anita and I toured the exclusion zone around the evacuation area just an hour away from Kiev, Ukraine.  

We were initially taken to a little briefing centre where our slightly kamikaze guide explained how he figured it was no less bad for your health to sit in daily traffic jams in Kiev, than to live and work in a radiation exclusion zone such as the area surrounding Chernobyl.  I'm not so sure his science was as sound as he seemed to believe, but whatever.  Without him, we would not have been granted access to see the remains of the actual reactor that exploded that fateful day, nor the surrounding ghost town of Pripyat, which had forcibly evacuated on short notice, leaving behind a time capsule of everyday life in Soviet era Ukraine circa1986, only slightly worse for wear from decades of reclamation by nature and the elements. Urban exploration enthusiasts would have a heyday in this town site.

Regardless of your feelings about the utility vs safety of nuclear power, these photos demonstrate the very real human impacts associated with it when it things go awry.






Inside an abandoned school in Pripyat.








The rotting floor and remains of the gymnasium.






There's something incredibly sad and haunting about seeing an abandoned amusement park.




This ferris wheel in Pripyat never got to take it's maiden voyage...








Our guide, using some kind of geiger counter, attempts to explain how even the most irradiated military vehicles used in the cleanup are only mildly radioactive anymore. I'm not so sure I believed his meter, but considering I was standing pretty close, it's probably too late for me.


Reactor number 4, which exploded on April 26, 1986. It was subsequently 'entombed' in a concrete sarcophagus to reduce radioactive emissions.



















Black and white photos shot with the crap Holga toy camera on Ilford XP2 Super 400. Colour photos taken with the Nikon D300.