As I went running today and I was drenched in sweat, I was wishing for those frigid ice-pellet in my face days in the Isle of Man. It’s feels like forever since I was there… here are a few of my best from that trip!

Something about our latitude + the time of the year + the Irish sea made the sky an unearthly blue at dusk, so I went out to grab a few pictures. The local Manx people scowled at me as I set up my tripod on the side of the street in the rain, but they pretty much scowl at everything, whether it is rain or shine, and it is usually the former.

The second picture is of the outside Theatre and Opera House that was showing a play about the American south called Night Mother. I’ll save that picture for the next post, because I think it is an interesting composition by itself.

This is taken at dusk from the beach at about 210mm with multiple overlaid exposures and tone mapped for contrast correction.

Between some meetings today, we took a walk around downtown Douglas and I got some pictures. It’s a nice little town, although the townspeople are generally dour, downcast, and dispirited. This is why Will felt right at home.

Will is actually quite convinced that his “Kelly” heritage comes from the Isle of Man because he was looking at a WWII memorial and there were lots of Kellys on the list. I told him the only thing this proved is that his kin is likely to be on the front lines of a battle and Kellys, by way of this simple embossed illustration, have a greater propensity for death in conflict. After I made this point, he immediately backed off.

This hotel is greatness. It’s several orders of magnitude better than the last place we stayed. Having free wireless internet is such a simple thing and I don’t think most hotels know how attractive that is to tech travelers.

There was a closed inner atrium area where all the rooms had balconies hanging out over various plants and fauna. Each of us had a room and we would sit out on our balconies between meetings on our laptops and talk to one another across the atrium. I don’t know why, but we all found this very cool. From this picture below, Will was above me and to the left and Monty was across the way to the right. After we got bored we would do rather immature things like throw candy to each other and see if we could catch it. This is something that would not have happened if our significant others were with us. They don’t allow that sort of activity.

The rooms themselves were very nice, but the TVs only got about 9 very strange British channels. You could either watch the local news, which spent all its time talking about how horrible private companies are, or you could watch strange British soap operas where everyone looked rather old and drained by the goings-on around them.

Here is the exterior of the hotel close to dusk. It is next door to the opera house and one of the best-preserved buildings in Douglas.

I found this 12 Monkeys area of the Isle of Man that was probably a very trendy place when it first was built. Obviously, it’s fallen into a state of disrepair, and I thought this was an interesting clock.

We walked over to the key to see some of the boats and activity around the harbor. There really wasn’t much activity, except we did see a crusty old sea captain that had just rowed back from the Falkland War.

Manx Pounds were interesting. Since the Isle of Man is independent, they are not under the rule of the British Crown, so their money features an Elizabeth that is not wearing a crown. It’s the quick way to see whether or not you are holding a British Pound or a Manx Pound. All stores seem to accept both, so I don’t really understand the bother, unless they just want to be quaint.

I’ve contacted my old GeoPhysics professor (I used to double-major in GeoPhysics and Comp Sci until I dropped GeoPhysics because I had a different hopelessly liberal professor who was a nincompoop) to find out this exact formation but it is some sort of folded limestone that has been eaten away by the river and lichen. I thought this was one of the more interesting rock formations I have seen on the island.

Here are some of the more interesting photos I took at the castle:

The three of us visited the Castle Rushen in Castletown and took a nice tour of the insides. It’s a very well preserved castle and it is my second time there.

The castle was founded by Norse Kings to guard the Silverburn River and saw most of its growth between the 13th and 16th centuries. It was partially destroyed by Robert the Bruce in 1313 and subsequently rebuilt by other rulers that did not have broadband access and must have been quite bored.

Here are a few pictures from before and after the tour:

Here is a picture I took after I managed to get my circa 1950’s British bike down to the beach area. Right after that, I figured out that the bike really only goes downhill. This is the sort of thing you wish you had figured out before you went down that hill.

We took a bus to Castletown and ended up with some extra time so we went into a local grocery store to see what kind of crazy items they had inside. It’s always strange being in another English-speaking country but with slightly different consumer products. It sometimes makes me feel like I am in a parallel universe.

Here is an interesting candy bar whose tagline appears to cut out about 50% of the market:

Here is a Kit Kat bar that has actually been renamed to a rather cumbersome web address:

Here is Will - he has Nice Biscuits:

And this is some honey that must be made by some distant relative of mine:

I like the tagline on the one below…so mysterious:

And then here is a Cadbury bar filled with a very sketchy looking pink substance:

Here are some pictures that I took on the bike ride.

I got a bike from the hotel and decided to throw on my backpack and go find some interesting sites. I tried to bring along Monty and Will, but these guys are not much for adventure. They tend to enjoy sitting around and generally not adventuring. They do adventure in Cyrodil, however, although that place does not really exist.

Here is a picture of the bicycle and my gear at the top of the sound. The bike wasn’t really the best, but I’m sure it was great when delivering telegraphs during the second world war. It was also a bit unnerving riding on the opposite side of the street - narrow streets at that. It was sunny and warm for most of the day, but then some squall blew in from across the Irish sea and dumped freezing rain on me for the ride home.

I set out to ride from Douglas to Laxey to see the giant water wheel, but I had no idea how far it was. It looked close on the map, but I forgot that those things are drawn to scale. I had to ride up a killer hill just to get out of Douglas and at the top I asked some Scottish girl how far I was from Laxey and she just laughed and then went to go find the nearest pub to get drunk.