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Take a Boat Tour

You will notice a new tab along the top of our blog.  If you click it, you will be taken to a new page that contains a description of H2OBO.  Eventually, I will include a gallery of pictures to illustrate the features that are described.

Win Some, Lose Some

We had a lot of fun this past weekend.  Maggie had signed up to join our friends Conchi and Lydia for a 9 km. run in the nearby city of Adra.  Maggie had caught a cold a few days earlier.  She wasn't in top form and she probably should have stayed home, but mere illness won't keep Maggie down.  I went along as team photographer - what a nerd.

Conchi, Maggie and Lydia

Things got off to a bad start when they got into trouble with the police for looking so good.

Hey, your hands are cold!

After I got them off the hook, they got down to some serious warming up.

Honestly, I didn't see you there with the camera.

Warming up

Pretty soon it was time to start the race and the girls were off.

Also running was Joanne, another friend.  Her husband, Jose, and their three children came to cheer her on.

At the start

Here are some pictures of the girls in action.

Jose and Lourdes

They all finished strong....

and brought home some hardware!

Joanne finished first in her category and Conchi got third in hers.  Maggie also got a first place trophy, but she lost her voice in the process due to the cold she had.  I have been getting a lot of mileage with that one among all the guys back at the marina over the past few days.

Lourdes and Alva

Joanne

Conchi

Lydia

Maggie

Conchi at the finish

Lydia at the finish, looks like she made a friend during the race

Maggie finishing up

The happy winners

Afterwards, we went for some tapas at a nice restaurant and had a great time.

An  oddly named dessert: "Nun's Boobs"

Que gozada!

Branko

P.S. I won first prize because,  well,  I was the only person in my age group running.....my worst run time ever but  with a happy ending :-)
Maggie

The Missing Link

Last year when Maggie and I had sailed into Gibraltar Bay and stayed in La Linea, Spain, we went with Yoshi and Fumi for a hike to the top of Gibraltar Rock.  A cable car can make the round trip, for 26 pounds, or you can do what we did: climb up and sneak onto the cable car going down for free.

While we were there waiting for the car, I was leaning against the railing and admiring the magnificent view, we were over 300 meters above sea level, when I felt something bump into and brush by me.  It was an adult Barbary Ape that loiters around the cable car station.  Since he was forward enough to jostle me, I figured that he would submit to my petting him, so I gave him a pet.  He patiently sat there as I scratched his back.  I for my part, kept a close watch for signs that he might suddenly turn and sink his considerable fangs into my hand.  Thankfully, there was a peaceful understanding between the two representative members of their primate species - a connection was made across the temporal gulf of millennia from when my ancient forefather dropped from his branch, stood up and first thought "What can I have for a snack?" to me thinking the exact same thought while scratching some monkey on Gibraltar Rock.

Monkey business

This sublime Darwinian moment was interrupted by an adolescent monkey that seemed to think that I was a new social-climbing interloper in the tribe and he was going to put a halt to it.  He jumped over, insinuated himself between me and the other monkey, and started to groom the alpha male - not me the other one.   For a while I stood there and watched, feeling somewhat that my social standing in the tribe had just dropped a couple of notches, when I spitefully decided  that I would return to my own tribe, so I turned and started to walk away.  Just then, the adolescent made his bold move to cement his position in the hierarchy of the tribe; he would make a monkey out of me!

Sometimes you feel like you have a monkey on your back.

Here's the hat but where's the cup?

 He leapt from the railing and sat on top of my hat, which I was unfortunately wearing at the time.  He sat there for a few moments grinning and mocking me while Fumi snapped a few photos (she just found them on her hard drive which is why I am posting this now).  When he abruptly jumped off onto the railing, he knocked my hat to the ground and my humiliation was complete - I would never join their tribe now.  The older monkey confirmed it by turning his back to me and once again contemplated that snack.  By now even the members of my old tribe were laughing at me.

Did somebody say something about a snack?

Am I bitter?  Yes, a little, but it is, after all, a matter of survival among the fittest, and that has little to do with me.

Branko