{"id":4004,"date":"2023-06-30T15:21:38","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T14:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4004"},"modified":"2023-07-01T05:33:34","modified_gmt":"2023-07-01T04:33:34","slug":"week-22-pauls-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4004","title":{"rendered":"Week 22: Paul’s goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"

The main event of the last week of May was the retirement of our director, Paul Maier. He has been my boss for the past 11 years, and has worked in our office ever since its founding in 1994, in many different capacities. He does not like fuss (we never celebrated his birthday etc.), but in this case he could not avoid it, and on the penultimate day of his employment here we had a cocktail at the office and a reasonable amount of fuss.<\/p>\n

22_1<\/strong>
\nI started the week with my usual cycling, to the mountains north of here. The road between Agost and Maigm\u00c3\u00b3 offers great views, especially on cloudy days like this:
\n\"1030278\"<\/p>\n

22_2<\/strong>
\nAt a certain point, the road is close to the V\u00c3\u00ada Verde, the gravel trail on what used to be a narrow-gauge railroad:
\n\"1030273\"<\/p>\n

22_3<\/strong>
\nOn the way back, I stopped in Agost and happened on a match of the traditional local sport, pelota valenciana<\/em>. One of the streets in the centre is closed and becomes a pelota court:
\n\"1030264\"<\/p>\n

22_4<\/strong>
\nThe game of pelota involves throwing a small, hard ball, slightly smaller than a tennis ball, at rather high speed. I never figured out how points are scored, but the rallies are very short:
\n\"1030261\"<\/p>\n

22_5<\/strong>
\nThe play starts with a kind of serve, but what happens afterwards is rather blurry:
\n\"1030269\"<\/p>\n

22_6<\/strong>
\n\"1030260\"<\/p>\n

22_7<\/strong>
\nThis elderly spectator provided expert commentary and advice to the players throughout:
\n\"1030272\"<\/p>\n

22_8<\/strong>
\nThen the day of Paul’s retirement arrived. Paul had chosen the people to invite, and we were quite a big crowd. He made sure to chat with everyone:
\n\"DSF5332\"<\/p>\n

22_9<\/strong>
\nAs usual, I walked around the crowd, picking off people or groups of people. Here my colleagues V\u00c3\u00a9ronique and Antoine:
\n\"DSF5334\"<\/p>\n

22_10<\/strong>
\nPaco, Carolina, Juan:
\n\"DSF5335\"<\/p>\n

22_11<\/strong>
\nMy favourite “victim” Eri talking to her fellow Greek, Lila:
\n\"DSF5331\"<\/p>\n

22_12<\/strong>
\nAnd doing what I do, but with different equipment:
\n\"DSF5342\"<\/p>\n

22_13<\/strong>
\nThen three people (also selected by Paul) made brief speeches:
\n\"DSF5343\"<\/p>\n

22_14<\/strong>
\n\"DSF5346\"<\/p>\n

22_15<\/strong>
\nFinishing with Alexandra, who has been Paul’s deputy for the past several years and is now acting director:
\n\"DSF5350\"<\/p>\n

22_16<\/strong>
\nThen Paul spoke…:
\n\"DSF5353\"<\/p>\n

22_17<\/strong>
\n…opened the various presents we had bought for him:
\n\"DSF5357\"<\/p>\n

22_18<\/strong>
\nAnd then some general merriment ensued:
\n\"DSF5365\"<\/p>\n

22_19<\/strong>
\nOn my way home that afternoon, I stopped at the beach:
\n\"DSF5375\"<\/p>\n

22_20<\/strong>
\nI finish with two photos from my garden. This flower is technically not mine, it grows on a bush in the neighbour’s garden:
\n\"DSF5371\"<\/p>\n

22_21<\/strong>
\nBut this one is definitely mine. The lemon tree and the Magic Cactus are the only plants in the garden I really care about:
\n\"DSF5374\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The main event of the last week of May was the retirement of our director, Paul Maier. He has been my boss for the past 11 years, and has worked in our office ever since its founding in 1994, in many different capacities. He does not like fuss (we never celebrated his birthday etc.), but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3855,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4004"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4004"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4007,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4004\/revisions\/4007"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}