Aniversary Waltz.

 I didn't intend that to be the title, what I intended was for the waltz to have a strike through but is seems Blogger won't do that as a title, and, at least for me, if you try then the bloody thing won't turn off.

I must admit getting used to Bloggers quirks is not the easiest of tasks, with a lot of Google storage it is a no additional cost option for me but sometimes I just can't to what I want, maybe chatGPT can help🥴?

Thats interesting, I just did with the above paragraph, and it worked. Will have to play later.

Anyway:

Today is March 17 which is, as all good boozers and little (and not so little) people with a bit of Irish in them know, is St Patricks day and with a bit of Irish ancestry in me, I will be out to take in a bit if the craic tonight, I am sure that will lead to a blog 😁.

As for St Patrick driving out the snakes from Ireland, well I wondered what types of snakes they were, so I Googled it and basically Google said " Patrick did not drive the snakes out of Ireland. As for the miraculous snake-charming attributed to Patrick, it could not have happened because there were no snakes in pre-modern Ireland. Reptiles never made it across the land bridge that prehistorically linked the island to the European continent."

So I asked chatGPT the same thing and this is what it replied with.

"The story of St. Patrick driving snakes out of Ireland is likely a myth or a metaphor, as there is no evidence that snakes ever existed in Ireland. The island has been surrounded by water since the end of the last ice age, which would have prevented snakes from reaching it without human intervention. Therefore, it is unlikely that St. Patrick actually drove any snakes out of Ireland. The story is often interpreted as a metaphor for St. Patrick's Christianizing of the pagan Celts in Ireland, as snakes were a common symbol in pagan religions."

I prefer the latter AI generated reply to my question especially about the pagan reference, but I have to say that some snakes are rather good swimmers and maybe some of them got there having taken on a bet as to who could swim furthest...

Right, back to reality, today is the anniversary (yep here is the relevance of the title) of the birth of my paternal grandfather here is a snap of him. He would have been 143 today and sadly I never knew him.

And just what about the waltz?

Well I meant walk and prompted by my friend Charlie Farley and a nagging from Mrs T that the burg has laid idle for too long I though it was time to see if the old body was back in enough shape to go for a walk at Mae Kuang Dam.

So I did, and it was good to be back on the burg, must get out on a few rides soon. The ride to Mae Kuang is only 25km though. Still as it has been a while since I last sat on the burg, my arse felt it a little.

At Mae Kuand the AQI wasn't too bad:

But I put my mask on anyway and went off.

The pollution was easy to see on the snaps I took this one so show the hazy hills and reflection in the water.

And because I like to do some quite simple 1 click post processing I loaded the same image into Luminar Neo where it suggested the "overcast range of scene processing, this was a one click from that range, dynamic:

But actually I liked this one called mystery better.

At the end of the main dam you could clearly see that the water has receded quite a bit.

Then back and over towards the bridge side, on the way I saw these bright red flowers on a tree

I am not sure if they are flowers, maybe they are fruit or seed pods, let me know what they are if you know, thanks.

As I came towards the east dam, I saw the barrier was down.

That didn't surprise me as I had seen a number of vehicles going that way only to return later 😃

So I turned back stopping to take a snap of what I called a bridge too far.

And incase you think things had become far less hazy, I have cheated on this snap with a bit of dehaze for clarity online 😄

Soon the walk was over.

I headed back o the burg and instead of the direct 25km ride, Waze started directing me all over the place down little lanes and rural areas. Was this something to do with the motorbike algorithms they use?

Nope, I had forgotten to turn off the Wi-Fi and it was getting the local Wi-Fi from my bike camera system, duh.

Anyway that was the waltz, sorry walk at Mae Kuang at 37°C.

Are you wondering, OK but where is the usual Relive 😁?

I have yet to become 100% at inserting this into Blogger as it has to be done using code so until I sort that you may well find the Relive at the end.

Here it is 

Coffee