Last couple of days

I got up early this morning and headed out to the above mess on the M25.
Its 120 miles from Cambridge to Oxford.
The journey was just under 4 hours.
The trip back was via another route and still took 3 hours.
Driving induced stress.
The knots between my shoulder blades attest to the insanity of bumper to bumper 70+ mph and stop-start, steering wheel banging frustration.
A sign on the A 14 just outside Cambridge somberly states that in 2006, 285 people died on that little stretch of road.
I was doing 70 and the cars blew by me a foot off each other's bumper like clockwork.
It's amazing that I used to do a 4 hour round trip every day between London and Cambridge.
Its likely I'll be doing the Oxford-Cambridge thing 3 or 4 times a month so I better get used to it.
I was in London on Tuesday and took the train.
That should have been better right?
Well I stood the whole trip both ways. Some of my fellow passengers have paid as much as £3,000 for their season's ticket to stand for and hour and a half each way.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
I live on Midsummers Common in Cambridge and this was what greeted me upon my return from fighting the traffic.



I bought a new camera, which is supposed to be a step up in terms of quality and sophistication.
Gotta learn to use it to see the difference. It does make a satisfying deep click when I press the shutter and has a nifty feature allowing me to continuously fire off pictures one after another. That gives me a very "pro photo guy" buzz. The above was my first try with this and I have 30 frames of bemused bovine cud chewing progress.
Cool enough but probably more impressive if I shoot athletes or something.
This weekend I'm taking Jess to Ireland as my parents are there.
Monday, I'm in Prague.
Following week: Madrid and Istanbul.
The week after I'm going to Columbia and Rio......back for a couple of days then Dubai and New Delhi.

Check back for the pics.
In the mean time, do the new poll
Terry