A time-lapse view out my front window
Click here to go to my Flickr, where you can watch the video in a larger format. Next video fun on tap–adventures in slow-mo kitties. :-)
A post in honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day
Even though it’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I’m not going to write in Pirate-ese. While I know the intention is to be silly, I still feel a bit too silly to do so. So instead I’ll post the pictures I took this summer in London of the replica of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind that sits on the banks of the Thames near Southwark Cathedral. Ok, so it’s not an actual pirate ship, but it’s close enough. Aaaarrrggghhh.
One of the things Drake was famous for was circumnavigating the globe, and the Golden Hind was the ship in which he did it.
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Drake named the ship in honor of his patron, whose heraldic crest had a hind (female deer) on it.
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These days you can rent out the Golden Hind for birthday parties and other events. I wonder what Drake would think about that?
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Reno Balloon Race, Day 2
Here are the rest of the pictures from the Reno Balloon Race. I didn’t take nearly as many on Sunday, mostly because I wanted to just sit in one place (ok, more or less) and enjoy. I’m still working on my grand plan to get to ride in one of the balloons next year during the Mass Ascension–the race organizers do a photo contest each year with first prize as, among other things, a free balloon ride during next year’s races. You can enter unlimited pictures, so I’m going to pick the ones I like best and enter those. Crossing my fingers–I WANT TO WIN!! :-)
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Behind the scenes--getting ready for Dawn Patrol.
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Lights out. I don't know why I like this one so much, but I do... I think it's neat to see them *not* illuminated, just faint colors and patterns in the glow of the construction lights they had set up in the staging area. I also like the landing light (flashlight?) hanging from each balloon. Twinkle twinkle, little star...
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Patrolling the dawn.
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The giants slowly awaken.
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I love that the balloons spread all the way to the horizon.
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Dancing bees.
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Starting 'em young. I have no idea who this kid is, but I'd love to see his pictures!
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The Great Reno Balloon Race, Day 1
Last week I decided more or less on the spur of the moment to go to The Great Reno Balloon Race. Both of my photography groups were going, and I figured it sounded like fun, so why not? I mean, it’s not like I never go anywhere fun… ;-)
Seriously though, I’m SO GLAD I went!! Those of you who know me know my obsession fascination with transportation, and hot air balloons are no exception. Add to that the vividness of all of the colors and the beauty of balloons before and at sunrise, and the whole thing was one of the neatest things I’ve ever seen.
I’d only planned on going for one morning–I’d figured that the second morning, I’d stay at my hotel, sleep in, and then make it back home in time for my kickball game at 2:00 PM. Whoops. That didn’t happen… but I did get some lovely pictures, so that’s a start, right? :-p
I already posted the teaser picture a couple of days ago from the Dawn Patrol, so here’s a few more from Saturday. The full gallery is here.
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The best seat in the house for the sunrise.
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Inside view.
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Sunrise 1.
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Sunrise 2.
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Straightening up.
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American flag and the National Anthem.
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Looking up.
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Awakening the sleeping giants.
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Beginning of the mass ascension.
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Replica of the Breitling Orbiter 3, the first balloon to successfully circumnavigate the globe. Wikipedia article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitling_Orbiter_3 (You'll have to copy and paste the link because my HTML seems to not want to cooperate. Bleh.)
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Burners.
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Mass ascension. There were over 100 balloons there!
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Duck pond reflections. Incidentally, for a bit of Saturday morning adventure, I pulled a kid in a wheelchair out of there shortly after taking this picture... I swear it was like something out of a movie. Toddler with a broken leg was strapped in a wheelchair, I hear someone shout and see movement out of the corner of my eye, and the kid's bumping down the slope toward the water, hits the edge, and faceplants in. Some guy and I jumped in and pulled the chair out. Poor kid was covered in algae, but other than being totally scared, he was fine. The mom... not so much, and I don't blame her. And her other kid (probably four or so) was so scared he wet his pants. Whew.
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ChalkItUp!
Ok, I know I promised balloon pictures, but I figured I should stick to chronological order and get these online first. Hence, balloon pictures shall be online sometime in the next few days. (Incidentally, I have quite the backlog of posts to get to–I would like to actually finish my trip to the car museum from, er, last April, and then there’s my trip to the Gladding McBean factory which was incredible, but those pictures haven’t yet made it out of RAW format. And finally, there’s my London/Amsterdam trip from this summer, which is on Flickr, but I’d still like to blog about. So yeah… trying to get everything on here, eventually anyway.)
Last weekend I rode my new (used) bike (my old one was stolen while I was in London) down to ChalkItUp, a street chalk art festival at Fremont Park in downtown Sacramento. I’ve been to I Madonnari in San Luis Obispo several times, and I’ve always loved it, so I was really looking forward to this. While it was nowhere near on the scale of I Madonnari, it was still really neat to see–I absolutely LOVE the colors and watching art come to life like this!
Here’s a few pictures–the rest are at the Flickr gallery here. :-)
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Tools of the day.
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Street chalk artist
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I don't know--what would Scooby do?
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I love these bats. :-)
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It's an egret. Playing a bass. SWEET.
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I absolutely LOVE the color on this one. I SO would hang this on my kitchen wall if I had it in painting form!
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Not only is this awesome for sheer weirdness, but check out the foot shadow.
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I decided to take this next picture:
Neat concentric circles.
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and have fun with a long shutter+zoom. It would have been better if I’d used a tripod instead of handholding the camera, but it still came out neat.
Trippy!
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Dawn Patrol
I randomly decided this past week to take a road trip to Reno for the Reno Balloon Races–I’ve always liked hot air balloons (part of my ongoing fascination with transportation, I guess) and I thought it’d be neat to see.
Anyway, I had to post just one picture while I’m working on processing the rest of the pictures from this morning. This was part of the Dawn Patrol, a group of balloons that ascend before dawn and fire their burners all at once so that they’re all lit up against a slowly lightening sky. It’s absolutely gorgeous… I just can’t get over how amazing the whole morning was. If you ever get a chance to go see something like this, DO IT.
Evergreen Supertanker
Ever since I read this Wired article Joel sent me about the Evergreen 747 Supertanker, I’ve been mildly obsessed with the thing. I have a somewhat buried fascination with planes(*) that only this morning as I was driving to work did I realize was my mom’s fault. When I was a kid and we were driving to my grandparents’ house, the route took us on the 405 freeway past John Wayne Airport, and if she saw a plane taking off, she used to open the sunroof of the car and try to time it so that we’d cross the plane’s path as it was directly overhead, and we’d be able to look out the sunroof and up at the belly of the plane.
Anyway, when I read in the Wired article that it was stationed on the former military base where I work, I realized I’d seen it from afar, and hadn’t really thought anything of it (while 747s are not really common over here, there seems to usually be at least one kicking around.) Yesterday morning (after I read the article) I stopped and took a lousy cameraphone picture of it. When I first drove over to where CDF/CalFire normally parks its planes, I didn’t see it, and was really disappointed (and amused at myself for my disappointment)… and then I looked the other direction down the runway, and there it was, sitting in all its beluga-whale glory. I actually giggled when I saw it–that’s how much of a geek I am.
This morning I took my good camera out to take a couple of pictures and ogle it some more. This time, the engines were idling–I wonder if it’s headed back to LA for more fire action? I’d LOVE to see this thing take off or land!! Maybe I’ll head over there at lunch and see if it’s still there…
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Evergreen Supertanker
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The center section of the jet. The nozzles for the fire retardant/water dispersal are barely visible on the bottom of the plane on the left side of the picture. Ignore the dark blur on the right side--I was taking this through a chain-link fence.
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Here’s a few more shots that I didn’t think needed to be posted full-size, but you can click on them to get the full-size versions.
- Tail section
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- Front end
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- I had to climb up on the base of a lightpost to get this one. :-)
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(*) and jets
