Biathlon with a camera

Lights on snow, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Loaded with snow, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Fence, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Trees, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Biathlon refers to the winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. Yesterday I went skiing and invented a new sport: use a camera instead of a rifle to shoot. After skiing for a while, it is very hard to take a handheld photograph without camera shake showing. Here in the first photograph the exposure was 0.3 seconds. I took ten photographs of this scene - only one was sharp.

Well, that wasn't so seriously meant. I'm feeling better, and yesterday I made an hour-long skiing excursion. Today, I'm feeling not so good. My nose is running, some kind of flu I guess. It seems that these things hit one after another.

Here are four photographs in all, the first two taken yesterday while skiing, the last two taken today while going for a slow walk. There is plenty of snow, but the depth of the snow is decreasing a bit because of compression and evaporation.

Slow walking

Snow field, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I went to work today, but didn't feel quite ok yet after the sickness. At sunset we had a slow walk with the wife, but even that was a bit too much leaving me a bit exhausted. But at least this is better than one or two days ago.

Surviving the winter

Bird, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

All our family succumbed to the vomiting sickness, which takes 2-3 days to recover from. Not a pleasant experience, especially as the change in condition was so drastic. On Saturday, I made a long cross-country skiing excursion, but on Sunday I was so weak that a couple of dozen steps had me sweating.

Today I watched our garden from the window, and a pheasant seems to have adopted it as her home. She was there already yesterday at least. Seems to be in good condition, a well fed specimen.

And yes - we got more snow during the last few days. Now the official depth of snow figure here in Vantaa is 65 cm, which is 12 cm more than on Saturday. And some more snow is on the way.