This picture shows an abandoned house building project, yet this is a car related post. I was making this panorama in Grobina one Saturday night about 10 pm. The picture consists of 8 separate exposures. I noticed a small dog coming down the walkway. With the main road behind my back I started taking the consecutive exposures from left towards right, avoiding the dog to be caught in any, except in the the very last one. Immediately after that last exposure the poor dog walked straight into the road and was hit badly by a car which escaped the scene. The dog cried loud lying on its side, apparently not being able to lift himself up. I attempted to help him off the road but before I reached him, he suddenly managed to pull up and limped across the road and vanished into a house’s garden. Assuming he might belong to the house all I could do was leave a note of what happened.

Last summer in Kapsede I made a test drive with Maira’s cousin’s beutiful green Žiguli. The car simply beat me. I could not start the engine, I could not keep the engine running, I did not manage to shift gears, I hardly had the power for turning the car around in the courtyard. A sudden setback for my secret dream of having one as our summer car in Latvia! I was confused, as my first car long ago was a Žiguli (in Finland they are named Lada) and I remember it being quite comfortable actually.

Normunds, the cousin, is very cool about vehicles. He is the kind of person who can overhaul a caterpillar in an instant, spread all the parts in the grass, come back next month and reassemble the monster tractor without difficulties—of course without any repair manual. The same goes with any other machine. As I stopped the car, Normunds, with an understanding smile on his face, uttered in a smooth tone: It is a bit different, isn’t it?

Well, I may not return to the same dream again. Ironic enough, I had just found in our bookshelf these old Žiguli manuals, thinking that they might be useful. Until… But the pictures are nice to look at.

The annual festival takes place in Kurikka, the hometown of the world-famous ex-cross-country skier Juha Mieto:

In the small town the jolly atmosphere easily extended well beyond the festival tent and its fenced surroundings. Two boys were loitering around the square on their fabulous tandem bicycle.

These girls demanded I take their photo. A well-rusted Opel was parked behind the same bush.

More of the festival audience:

A billboard at the town border reads: Kurikka – Your chance…

Ladies and Gentlemen: the only non payable good slope in Riga or its vicinity.

Let’s see how things will be in midsummer. Below is the remaining snow mountain in mid-June 2011, also in Helsinki’s Herttoniemi.

Candidates’ posters in Helsinki while the presidential election day (first round) was just a snowball’s throw away.

The Liepaja–Ventspils narrow gauge railroad had been out of operation already for decades. In 2011 the wooden rail sleepers from Kapsede region were removed. Being hazardous waste, EU support was granted for shipping them to Sweden for safe processing.

Peculiarly around Christmas and New Year the air of Kapsede had a constant odor of creosote fumes. It turned out that mounds of rail sleepers had been driven to the communal heating house: the local school was being heated by burning carsinogens.

The beach in Skede, north of Liepaja on January 1st.