Today was a gorgeous warm sunny day, with temperatures in the mid 60s (~18°C) and a warm breeze. T-Shirt weather. It's difficult to believe that just a few days ago we had lots of snow and temperatures approaching -10°F (-23°C).

A week ago I posted "Snowy Frigid Ohio Morning", with lots of snow pictures. A few days later a storm brought a bunch more snow, and I went out early for some more pictures, from which I posted "A Warmer Version of That “Warm” House Photo". This post has some more shots from after that second storm.

Early before sunrise, [...]

We had a family vacation to New Caledonia last week. When my wife suggested it, I had to look it up because I had no idea where it was. Here it is:

The capital, Nouméa, at 22 degrees south latitude, was just starting to enter its summer.

It's a bit more well known in Japan due to a well-known travelogue, 「天国にいちばん近い島」 ("The Island Closest to Heaven"), published in 1966. The book was also made into a movie.

Minimal research before I left told me it's a French Republic with, like so many islands in the Pacific, a marginalized indigenous population.

Sadly, we're at the Hilton on the mainland, with the worst in-room WiFi I've seen since.... well, since I last stayed at a major American hotel chain.

I've been meaning to write about a nice little solo ride I had two weeks ago, to the Ochiba Jinja shrine. It's the same place that I wrote about in "Great Day in Kyoto’s Colorful Northern Mountains", which actually happened the next day.

The course for this day's solo ride can be seen on my cycling heatmap.

The fall colors had been pretty subdued, but with my health back after six weeks of colds/allergy/something, everything looked beautiful to me.

The small sign pointed up what looked like a driveway, but turned out to be an old logging road. I probably [...]

Paul Barr, in town this week, and I made a visit yesterday to the Tenjuan Temple (天授庵) within the Nanzen Temple complex. It was my second visit inside, my first visit here having been three years ago. Earlier this year, though, I did feature the main gate of this shrine covered in snow.

Anyway, the fall colors this year in Kyoto seem a bit subdued, but it wasn't crowded yesterday and overall was really pleasant. We ended up sitting and enjoying more than taking photos.

友達ポールさんは来日して、一緒に天授庵行って、もみじを撮影しました。今年は色は薄い方ですが、雰囲気はなかなか良かった。よく落ち着いて、リラックス出来ました。

With the dark shadows under the overhang, and bright sunlight in the background, the [...]