Luke Burrage's Blog

First up, answering some questions from yesterday:

“How high is the mountain?” 2365m, or 7760 ft.

“How did you manage to map the 3D track onto the 3D Maps? Did you use a special app on the iPhone? Or was this a from a dedicated GPS unit?”

The way I made the 3D map was quite simple. I have a Amod GPS tracker. This spits out files in a .log format. I then import the track data into a program called HoudahGeo. I use this software to attach long/lat coordinates to the EXIF data on my photos. It can also spit out a file that opens in Google Earth, a KLM file, or something. Here I can say “Include track data” and “use absolute altitudes”. I opened the file in Google Earth, and un-ticked all the elements I didn’t want to show up (other tracks, photos, labels and suchlike). I then pointed the camera where I wanted it, and did a selection-of-screen-grab using Grab.

That’s it! I found it a bit tricky, as I’d not done all these exact steps before, but once I worked it out I found it quite simple.

On to Friday of the Turkish Juggling Convention. I woke up a lot earlier than I planned, due to my tent warming up to uncomfortable levels. I didn’t take a swim right away, as I just couldn’t be bothered. Instead I had a big breakfast, then sat in the shade on the beach, listening to some music and admiring the view (yes, mostly unclothed ladies).

Following that I hung out in the campsite for most of the afternoon, chatting and juggling, and giving a few workshops on club juggling and backcrosses.

Later in the afternoon I planned to walk along the beach to the ancient ruins, to get there at about sunset, but someone scheduled the volleyclub tournament right at that time. I asked someone to sign me up, and my randomly chosen teammate was Irmac. There were eight teams in total, and we played on a very small court. I didn’t take many photos today, but here are some of the event:

No, you’re meant to catch it…

Much better!

So… Irmac and I won the volleyclub tournament quite handily. The prize was a loaf of bread. Yay!

As night fell we were treated to a very scary sight. Arif flew overhead on a tandem paraglider… and jumped off! He wore a wingsuit, and picked up quite a bit of speed. And he released his chute really late. Or it felt really late, when you see someone plummeting earthward at such a high speed. He landed safely in the field next to the big top.

Talking of the big top, here’s a nice photo I took this evening from across the river:

So… dinner, then some juggling in the big top. The fire show began, and I went over to check it out. But it was just a jam session with burning props, and didn’t keep my interest. I took a few photos, but didn’t really try to get good shots:

I went back to the big top, and decided to video a two club routine I’d developed while waiting in between volleyclub games. I’ll make a separate post about it soon, but it’s already up on YouTube.

I drank tea and played ukulele in the chillout tent for an hour or so, but decided not to stay in for the renegade show. I wrote this blog post instead.

Today started in the typical fashion; a swim in the sea, a hot shower (and shave today) and a big breakfast from the cafe. At 12 noon we gathered to catch some buses to the Tahtali Mountain. Tahtali is one of the many mountains once called Mount Olympus, home of the Greek pantheon of gods. Unfortunately I forgot my convention pass, which we had to show to take the cable car to the summit, so I ran back to my tent to pick it up. When I got back, the buses had gone, so I had to wait with the other late risers/late sleepers for a bus to return.

Waiting in the sun for the bus.

So we took the bus, then the cable car, and reached the top of the mountain. These photos will illustrate:

From the top of the mountain we could look down and see the convention campsite below:

However, the convention had relocated to the mountain top, so we set about entertaining ourselves in various ways.

While us conventioneers hung out at the top, a few of the locals took off with their paragliders, including the owner of the Sundance Nature Camp. Unfortunately the wind wasn’t very strong, and the takeoff runs looked really sketchy.

Lukas and Zanip imagine taking off with a hang-glider.

Here is Arif (might have the spelling wrong) getting his canopy ready. Arif was going to be my pilot; the plan was for him to take a flight, land again at the top of the mountain, then get out the tandem rig and fly me to the convention camp site below.

But the wind was too slow, and landing again at the peak of the mountain wasn’t possible. This meant Arif flew off by himself, and the rest of us took the cable car and bus back to the convention site. Boo! No flight today, maybe tomorrow if the weather was good… or so I thought…

I managed to get on the first bus, so didn’t have to wait around .When I got to the site I had some Turkish feta pastry thing, which could seem exotic, but I’ve eaten them many times in Berlin, bought from a stall at the Turkish market. As I sat at a picnic table, Arif, who had taken a long, meandering flight, landed in the field, right beside the big top. He gathered his canopy, walked over and said “Are you ready to go right now? We can catch the 5pm cable car and fly during the sunset.”

About two minutes later I’d changed back into my boots, grabbed my bag again, and was in a small van, racing back up the hill to the cable car station! We got to the top of the mountain again at about quarter past five, and spent about 20 minutes licking our fingers and holding them up in the air, trying to work out which way the wind was blowing. We also cleared a launch path of spiky rocks, so as not to catch the lines.

In the end Arif picked a “runway” that had us running diagonally across a very steep hillside. It turns out this was the first ever tandem launch from that side of the mountain, but Arif has done something like five million tandem flights, so knew exactly what he was doing. The key piece of advice, which I’ve heard from numerous people about paragliding is this: DON’T STOP RUNNING! KEEP RUNNING!

And I did! Good job too, as we half took off once, but came down for another short sprint, and bounced back up into the air.

The flight was amazing. Paragliding is something I’ve wanted to do for about ten years, and the past two summers I’ve investigated week-long courses to get started flying myself. This flight was probably the best first flight ever, and has just made me more certain that paragliding is something I want to do more of in the future. We got the timing just right too, so as we flew we passed in and out of the sunlight and the shadow cast from the mountain behind us.

I didn’t take my stills camera, just my video camera, which means the photos below aren’t great quality. But this way I could get some video too, and I’ll edit something out of that later.

The convention site from the air.

And again.

Not only did I take my video camera, but I switched on my GPS tracker too. This way I could see EXACTLY where we’d flown… and the results are quite spectacular. This first image shows the path from above:

Looks good. But wait… let’s check that from the side:

See that REALLY STEEP DESCENT at the end? That’s when I agreed Arif could show me some of his competition-winning paragliding acrobatics. We did some stomach churning swings and loops, plus a very tight corkscrew like dive. Here’s another view of our path:

We came in low over the beach, past some trees and landed very gently, right next to the big top. I felt ill, of course, but I expected that.

A short while later I sat down in the cafe, nominally to check my emails and/or write this blog. Instead I fell asleep, as I was super tired, and woke in time for dinner. After dinner I got my stuff together, as I’d offered to do a show this evening.

Not much to say except that I performed my show, and I rocked the house! It’s great to do exactly the same material as I do in my cruise ship shows, and it go down just as well, if not better, at a juggling convention. It makes me proud of my work, knowing I don’t sell out in either direction. Here are three photos:

After the show (mostly standing ovation) I packed my stuff and hung out with Lina in the other tent. Renegade was planned, and slowly came together:

The coolest thing was that Arif saw my show and really liked it. So much so that he wants to get his camera rig out tomorrow, take me on another flight, and video me juggling while flying down the mountain! I hope the weather holds out, because this will fit right in to my year-long video project.

Stay tuned for more adventures tomorrow!

Yay, I’m at the chillingest juggling convention ever. It’s like Bristol 9 dayer, but in Turkey, right next to the sea, so gets plus 100 awesome points due to hot weather and handy swimming.

I arrived yesterday, very tired due to lack of sleep and too much travelling. The site is the Sundance Nature Camp, and Deniz, an old juggling/acrobat friend of mine lives here year round, and organises the convention. I’ll be posting more general pictures of the site later, but here is my tent:

First thing I did, after borrowing a tent, was swim in the sea. I imagine I’m going to be doing this a lot. Then said hi to as many people as possible, and I remember none of their names. I walked in to town yesterday evening, and slept when I got back, so missed some bits of the evening. Then I juggled in the big top… well, it isn’t a big top really, it’s a big geodesic dome! Actually I think I drank tea in the chillout dome first, then juggled. Either way, I had a good evening, mainly messing around with 3 clubs, and doing an impromptu spinning ball stacking workshop.

Bed at about 3 am. Up at 11 am, and straight into the sea! Showers are solar heated, so are nice and hot at midday, so I took one directly after breakfast. I spent the next 3 hours laying on the beach, finishing the novel I’ve been reading, which I enjoyed a lot.

Next up I ate lunch, then I caught up with emails, played with Google Wave a bit, but couldn’t get the latter to work very well. Then Deniz walked by and told me that the games were about to start. I grabbed my camera, and a set of balls, and popped over to check them out.

The games were, to be honest, some of the worst organised I’ve ever seen, but in no way boring, and really a lot of fun. Instead of giving prizes on a game by game basis, each game was worth a voucher of 2 to 8 points, and the winning person/team got the voucher. At the end of the games, the juggler with the highest collection of points got the top prize. I’ll reveal the winner and the prize in a bit… first, some photos:

“Get into groups of… three!”

“Groups of…. five!”

Body surfing game.

“On your marks…”

“Go!”

Winners/cheaters.

Diabolo in the basin filled with water.

Club-man race lineup.

The race is run.

Three ball limbo.

Here’s a photo of the tossup.

And the winner of the games was… me! I won three games and got 18 points. Of course, as I was taking part, the games aren’t mentioned above. They were “3 ball yoga” (a bit like 3 ball simon says, but works better with mixed language groups), 5 ball endurance, and “blindfolder slow motion race” (the last person across the finish line won, but as I was blindfolded I didn’t actually see what happened in this one).

The prize is something I’ve wanted to do for the past two years, but haven’t got round to yet. Actually, I’ve wanted to do it for much longer, but only REALLY wanted to do it more lately, with a view to taking it up as a hobby. The prize is a tandem flight on a paraglider, from the top of the highest mountain nearby, and landing directly in the convention site. There is a cable car to the top of the mountain, and the entire festival is relocating there for an hour tomorrow, for games, photos and another big tossup. Everyone else will be coming back on buses, but me and the pilot will be arriving in style.

The pilot took a flight today, and landed right after the games ended, as we were playing 3 club combat.

After the games I went out to pick blackberries, but it was getting too dark to see. I took some photos, but the wide angle lens gets in the way and casts a shadow from the flash.

I’ve just eaten yet another huge meal from the cafe here, and am currently uploading photos. They are taking some time though, so I’ll leave my laptop here and come back later.