not winter

spring making its march north. around the dukedom the crocuses are showing, in the pissoir there is the last mound of snirt where the ploughs piled the snow particularly high.

in sheboygan, there is a debate on whether it is warm enough to eat outside if the warmth of the sun will over power the ambient temperature, if there a place place out of the wind. it is nerve racking time of year as briefly cold and warm intermingle. taking an indirect route back from sheboygan, roads are still empty for although this is the upper midwest and one is used to winter lasting until may, people seem to hunker down rather than go out. being far enough north there is still snow in shaded areas and frozen lakes strong enough for shanties but not for machines. like when it is duckish, the land changes so rapidly that any delay means that potential photographs are lost.

and everything is being delayed. as it is the time of year when although we are supposedly winding down more and more little duties are undermining my attempts to wander - the plan being a race up us 45 to kewaskum then roaming the kettles along state road 67 where the shady side of hills still have remnants of white, there are enough lakes around to find quite a few frozen over and the sun is still low enough in the sky to penetrate forests and façades . heading east via elkhart lake and open fields to sheboygan and then down the frontage roads south. i ma making mental notes on which roads i should take how quickly should i try to make it up fond du lac county and attempt to if not remember the actual attractions at least the route so that i’ll notice them when i see them again. which route has the most abandoned ski-doo signs? the most picturesque snow ponds?

i wonder, if i there is no season mixing, should i continue north until i find some. when should i give up and turn back. enforced procrastination makes me manic.

but it cannot be this week, as i have to prepare for the fact that i have to go into the dukedom for the next five days straight, next week is looking iffy again due to school duties and using my day off to prepare for classes. heading further and further south i can hear the thaw and can for for weather around freezing until i can get back up here.

back in the pissoir the mound of snirt seems markedly smaller.

19C to-morrow, i thought, heading to the machine after getting down from the train, better not blow this chance. the warmth came as such a surprise over the week-end that i missed it doing nothing in particular but after a full day looking at slow download of portfolios - web-based strip tease as the image slowly scrolls down and when finally all is shown one realises it wasn’t worth the wait but cannot speed up the process. i have only one day off this week and while i want to start with the post again - the post office is sending out a search party - i am not going to be in the house. madison is an option - a great wandering city i don’t have to choose where to go until i find a parking spot, coffee is always near and it is nicely walkable.

pulling out of the carpark and trying to wind down the window to give a lift to someone heading to the top of the hill, i found that i couldn’t. there was this odd orange light on the dashboard blinking “service”. well maybe someplace closer. milwaukee - well wauwatosa - a straight line walk along north avenue. at the pet expo - yeah yeah more later - made mental notes of walking west allis for the taverns and restaurants - all the crabs you can eat wednesdays - and then searching for a new alterra found north avenue. did a straight line walk down michigan avenue and this one seemed to have more potential as there were locally owned businesses and most of them were still open.

not wanting a breakdown along i-94, thought that i would try to get over my complete lack of interest in kenosha choose a walk around here. it was either roosevelt road or up sheridan road in somers where there were still small motels, road houses, supper clubs and rental units available by the day and the week. kept passing them heading up to racine and thought this would be the day to finally document it. thought that this could be a serial of arterial roads and thought of grand avenue in gurnee. route 12 in fox lake to the wisconsin border, bluemound road in brookfield...

knew there would be no place to park so parked below carthage college and started the wander north.

came to realise why i am having so much trouble getting started again. this culture is so wheel based that leg based motion is not even contemplated. there were more bikeways in greater copenhagen than pavements here, even heading through the campus the pavement had me crossing back and forth across the drive thinking that maybe it would be easier to follow this way if you were a drunker frat boy trying to get home. logic would have it that a pavement would keep one away from the street.

when i finally headed out onto sheridan road there wasn’t a hint of a walkway. i alternated among snirt, ice, mud and the roadway. progress was jerky as i would have to determine if i could get to the next driveway before the traffic got to me. i forgot that with the thaw the ground would be soft and while later on in the season i could trespass near the road now it was impossible due to the remaining snow mounds. i was coming to the conclusion that this wasn’t worth it. but thought that i would at least get the blue bird motel, well then there was the sheridan lanes, another motel, a road house until it was done.

play restarts...

rant the second

needing authorisation on some medium format cameras, i volunteered after all ubirajara and edevergio have been with me since the time of student railpass awaydays. got a mamiya rz and a 645af, found some place quiet to show the workings of the cameras so that they could be checked out and used.

it seems that the idea of multitasking doesn’t only apply to humans. i don’t think that they was anything on the cameras that had only function. after the film was loaded it took a good five minutes to work our ways through all the fail-safe systems to actually make a snap.

the rz looked like a pretty straight forward camera but every dial had another one around it so that one wouldn’t fire the camera by mistake. what it achieved was slowing down the photographic process to the point by the time that we were ready to actually make a photograph we were exhausted. multiple choice locks around the shutter release, multi -exposure locks, mirror locks, camera back locks, rotating back locks. there was one nice option where the shutter would actually fire but at 1/400 of a second - the default setting - for someone photographing on mercury.

at least there was a shutter speed dial. the 645af went with buttons bringing the level of complication to yet another level.

i knew that i hated digital cameras as every button, every dial has a half dozen functions making the cockpit of a 767 seem relatively simple. i had forgot that in the last years of film most manufacturers had already started to hide functions within others.

looking at the lads, that i use wonder why i rarely had problems with them for so few safety features. with the blads, there was a dark slide and two windows and i cannot remember when the camera went off by mistake or when i double exposed. i also realised how i took the process of making a snap for granted for all i had to do was look down see f stop shutter speed and distance - if i were really ambitious i could turn the camera on its side and see how many exposures i had left. didn’t have to turn it on. didn’t have to make sure that everything was colour coded.

if i am manic now i cannot imagine how worse i would be using cameras where i would have to run through a litany of tests while trying to calmly carry on a conversation with someone that i have said that i would photograph because they have spoken to me.

the student seemed unfazed.

rant the first

my printer broke. it was barely two years old - epson say that it has reached the end of its life. most computer repair places refuse to fix it telling me to buy a new one. after a week of numerous searches, a purchase on e-bay, loading windows on my mac with the aid of a grad student, and finding the reset code, it is up and running again for a mere $15.


my 35 year old print washer broke a day later. after applying pvc glue it was up and running an hour later.

snow halts printing...