Your Today in Pictures...

[Dominique De Bast]

Seen, yesterday, in Paris.

[Graham Ritchie]

Steven, Yvonne and myself visited the local adventure park last week, Yvonne had been given a present do do this Zipline. I must admit I had never been to this place before, but had heard all about it from grandson Connor who bikes there all the time with friends. It was a really nice afternoon, the staff were great, very friendly and helpful. The person doing the Zipline came from Scotland, "its a small world" and was out here like many on a visit, wanted to know where I came from in Glasgow?. While we were waiting at the bottom for Yvonne we talked to others that had just done it, tourists from Canada and England, they all enjoyed the Zipline and in particular there holiday to New Zealand. Even down at the Ferrrymead park there are still a number of overseas visitors at the moment I have talked to from countries like Romania , Germany , Canada, Switzerland even England, none from Scotland as yet. On the tourist side of things New Zealand seems to be a popular place more than usual to visit if the numbers are anything to go by.

What I do enjoy the most is when I talk to folk and hear about there own country and how things are for them, anyway back to that Zipline and Yvonne video weeeeeee . I now understand why junior likes to spend his time there, although those bike tracks are are for the more adventures types.... certainly not me

[Graham Ritchie]

Yesterday I finished building a cover for the projectors on display, quite a bit of work to get it done, built to stand earthquakes floods and anything else sent our way picked up some display boards for a total of $30 dollars from the Eco shop which will be used to display photos of local cinemas. The Westar is running like a swiss watch at present, although I would still like to swap it with my 35mm that is already to go using 6000ft reels, finding the time that's the challenge. Yesterday was interesting when I was talking to a young lady holding onto I think around two year old age wise. This youngster had a tube up her nose, so was not sure of her health, but the nice thing was her mother said afterwards, give the man a high five, she reached out and I gave her a gentle high five back, nice people hope the we girl is OK health wise. My next visitor was a X projectionist, we had a very interesting chat , his wife said, I have heard all this before so that was day when I took those photos.

[Graham Ritchie]

The most expensive thing these days was the framing timber 90/45mm thankfully the person in the timber section of Bunnings is also the chairman of the tramway association who offered me cash discount on there own account. The photography crowd I am with are paying for all the material so I have to be careful of spending other peoples money, plus almost every week I would give them the receipts so I can get a refund.. I feel now, its just about finished as I would want it. Its been a interesting project, only fell of there crappy aluminum ladder once and that was enough, I mention this so beware of cheap ladders, not a good idea at me being 73 years old that old ladder went one way I went the other while I was up it, apart from a few grazes I was lucky. I found a couple of earlier photos as below.

[Graham Ritchie]

Been a busy little bee of late. I intend to replace the awning that's over the cinema seats with something a bit better so have been pre-painting up a few sheets of wood today plus changing things around


This will be used to display photos of Christchurch cinemas past and present.

[Steve Klare]

Graham, you do “retirement” right!

i hope in a few years I do the same.

[Graham Ritchie]

Steve once I start something I tend to keep going. My downside is when I step back I look at things, and think mmmmm that needs doing or mmmm that does not look quite right and away I go again. On the visitor side I had a kid come up to me the other day and asked where are the dinosaurs? his mother said sorry about that, I replied no problem and that we "do" have dinosaurs and that they usually meet downstairs every Wednesday at 10am over a cup of tea. Another interesting visitor lately, was a lady with her family. I mentioned that the projector was not running today, but the 35mm reel I use did contain some trailers like Jurassic Park and Matilda as a example. She replied that her name was Matilda, and that her mother gave her that name as she was a big fan of the film. Its quite funny what people say at times between coats of paint

[Graham Ritchie]

Yes folks this is a real photo taken a few years ago at a local department store being Easter I thought I would post it here

[Douglas Meltzer]

Graham,

That's scarier than the Donnie Darko costume!

[Douglas Meltzer]

You normally don't see a duck hanging out on York Avenue in New York City.

Unless it happens to be covered in orange sauce.

[Steve Klare]

Some days there is just no explaining them!

[Brian Fretwell]

I think that cat misunderstood the term "Puss in Boots".

[Steve Klare]

Well...we're gonna file This One under "Something You Don't See Every Day"!

There I was Friday afternoon westbound on The Long Island Expressway, headed home from work. I was stuck in traffic behind a truck pulling a utility trailer.

-there was some sort of...junk in the trailer...easily two feet deep. I thought maybe he was hauling some sort of scrap metal off to salvage given the rusty color, but then I started to see roundy-shells and pointy tails and I came to recognize something very familiar to somebody like me who's spent more than half a century walking the local beaches: This was easily a hundred horseshoe crabs!

My immediate reaction was to close my sunroof! Where there are dead shellfish there are never seagulls too far away! -and where there are seagulls there is always also...you know...raining down from the sky! (I can hose it off a fender or a trunk-lid but who wants...that on a shirt-sleeve or even worse!)

-but this is where the questions begin, starting with the basic ones: where did they get them? Why do they have them? Where are they headed?

Where they got them is easy: we have over 1,000 miles of seacoast here and there are days you need to step carefully to avoid crunching a dead crab on the beach.

They sure aren't headed to a seafood market. These are sort-of edible, but maybe the kind of thing Chuck Noland would have eaten in Castaway rather than starve to death. They are described as "rubbery" and not very tempting Flavor-Wise!

I looked it up: these are often processed as bait for commercial fishing.

Where they are headed is some factory that'll grind them up into chum (-makes me glad I work in an office!), so some crewman can scoop it over the side to attract fish. We have decent sized fishing fleet operating out of a number of ports here: so there are always people looking for some nice Chum to take fishing!
.

Then again there was that time I saw a dead shark laying on a bank parking lot
...but that's a story for another day!

.

(So long guys: nice knowing you!)

[Steve Klare]

.
It's Memorial Day weekend here and there is always an air-show off our South Shore this weekend. Rather than go down to Jones Beach with the crowd, we took in the show from behind the scenes. All sorts of military aircraft of many eras set up their home base at Republic Airport, where Republic Aviation once built many WWII era aircraft, and not very far from where Grumman did the same. We spent a couple of hours at the air museum there watching them come and go.

This is "Doc": one of only two flyable B-29 bombers remaining in the world today. She was found in an aviation boneyard in the Mojave Desert and restored to flying order. While we were there she landed and pulled up, then they turned off those immense props and a tug pulled her close-in so people could see her in person.
.

B-29 DOC at the Jones Beach Air Show: Link