Since I was somewhere around 7 years old, I’ve longed for a radio controlled helicopter. In the youngest version of this it was all about the “Verti-Bird” toy for kids. I wanted one every Christmas. With time it changed to wanting an RC helicopter, then to little mini indoor flyers, and then to the modern, fully stabilized flying drones. The Bebop 2 is a quad-copter, meaning it has 4 rotating blades, and I’ve recently been trying some initial test flights of the Bebop and playing with some of the settings and features. Here’s a video from my second test flight, started at the parking lot by Cranberry Flats, just south of Saskatoon.

If you are curious what’s going on in the video, I do a simple take-off and hover, then I try some “track me” commands where the drone automatically keeps me in the centre of the video while I move, then I have it follow me (watch for the moment I briefly, mistakenly think it’s about to fly into the back of my head), then I try a low fly-by over my head, and finally I climb to about 125 meters for a view of the distant river, with a slow rotation from north to south. You can watch all the dials and gauges at the bottom if you are into that sort of thing, as I am. Next time I’ll remember to wipe the camera lens clean before the flight. Sheesh!

Recently my mom asked if I had the same kind of coffee maker that they did. They have a Keurig. I admitted that my coffee life is much more complicated and unnecessary, what with grinding, tamping, pulling shots, steaming…

So I thought I’d show them my convoluted coffee-making process. The rest of you can safely ignore this and your life will be none the poorer.

Ingenuity! Doing whatever it takes to get to your destination.

And on that note, off to sleep and awake, ready for 15 hours of flying.

A few bits and bobs from our day. More details in each photos captions.

We are now in Jerusalem, staying in a guesthouse operated by the Lutherans, atop the Mount of Olives.

We took a bus down to the Old City in Jerusalem, and walked through various souks (markets) on our way to worship – English Lutheran today. Beautiful service and communion.

We also toured and wandered about the Old City for the afternoon. Here is some of that experience.

Today we went from Nazareth through Jericho to Jerusalem. My Internet is too slow, and I’m tired, so here are simply a few pics.

Nazareth has a little historical reenactment village which attempts to show the place from the time of Jesus. We visited there. Video of donkey running the olive crusher follows, plus 2 pictures from the village.

A trip to Capernaum and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee followed. Most of Jesus ministry happened here.

Sorry some of these are out of order and have other problems. Some of this would be much easier if done on a computer.

We have headed north! After successfully making it through an unphotographable checkpoint, and some  driving, we have made it to Nazareth.

• Since I’m typically a cereal guy for breakfast, and can’t really imagine savory foods until later, the breakfasts keep surprising me. We stayed in a local home in Bethlehem last night (actually Beit Sahour) and our host made this breaky for us – as you can see, stewed tomatoes and garlic, eggs with za’atar, etc.
• The next 2 pictures are from the Church which honors the news to Mary “Hey, you are going to have a baby”.
• This little coffee shop is trying to breathe life into Nazareth’s economy.
• We got to feel the first raindrops of the season on this dry land while listening to some amazing history stories.

After a full day is getting too late and time for bed. So here’s a shot of Bethlehem at night.