Birthday in the River Market

Last year for my Birthday I gathered a few of my closest friends in the River Market area of Kansas City for dinner and an evening out in our old neighborhood. I decided to go down there a bit early and spend some time alone with my Olympus. As I write this almost a year later, I can't help but think about how badly I need to do this more often. Equipped with what I think is one of my favorite films, I shot the better part of a roll while slowly roaming. It was so nice, and so relaxing, which was one of the reasons I took up photography in the first place.

To be completely honest, I've been eagerly anticipating posting these photos for a while. I can't entirely explain why I waited this long, but I have a habit of sort of hoarding photos. It isn't that I want to keep them for myself, it's more that I'm just not very good about sharing sometimes. I love all of these photos so much though, that I have to share them all. Not only did I want to share them all, but I think they deserved to be shared together... And I don't blog enough. Really, I don't take enough pictures anymore. I need to fix that, and fast. I don't go on enough walks, instead I run. I need more creativity in my life, and these photos are a reminder to myself of this fact.

Sorry there's no humor in this post. I almost always try to keep it light and toss in a few jokes here and there (even if I'm maybe the only one who finds me funny sometimes). For some reason I just started writing tonight and this is where it went. And I'm OK with that; as long as I keep my promise to myself to start shooting more photos.

Mooring

I'm fascinated with all things nautical; I really should make a career of it somehow. I love learning about all the different kinds of ships out there. From your freighters and tankers to mega-luxury cruise ships, I want to know all about them. I sort of wished that I was awake and out of my room each morning when I awoke to see us in port already so I could see us docking. I did get to see some workers pulling up the mooring lines one afternoon as we returned to the ship much closer to our departure time. Even though I didn't get to see all the workings of the ship, I did manage to take a few pictures of the moorings and whatnot. I thought the lines made for nice pictures!
 
Some of these lines were so huge I can't imagine it was easy to even move them!

 
Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, but there were a couple ports where the front was moored to a concrete pillar out away from the dock. I thought that was pretty cool too.

 
I liked this graffiti because I just imagined the taggers rowing up in a rowboat or kayak and tagging the pier.

 

Barbados Slim

Lately I have been posting multiple pictures in the comments on my Flickr, instead of using my blog to display extras. Today I thought I'd stop over here and give this blog a little attention with my last few pictures from Barbados. These three were taken at a beach on the Atlantic coast side after our monkey encounter in the jungles. I really liked the rocks sticking up out of the water. It was so cool how they were extremely worn down around the base where the waves hit, and still huge on the top; like a mushroom. I wonder how long that took? And I wonder how long it will take until one tips over.

Old Timey Fortress

As I mentioned in my last post, we got to tour an old fortress in San Juan. It was a cool place, and probably would have been more interesting if we had taken a real tour. What we did do was wander around and look at stuff, which was fairly interesting on its own. Below are the results of my self-guided tour, in picture form.




Proof that Puerto Rico is indeed part of the United States!


Want to initiate a siege against Puerto Rico? This might be a good place to start.


See? A great view of a capital looking building. I wouldn't do it though, because as I established, Puerto Rico is part of the US.




There were lots of dark corridors all over the place. Maybe you could blindly shoot some arrows out of this? I don't think that's a great idea though.


This might be a better place to shoot an arrow.. or a gun since that's a more effective weapon in modern times.


There's a pretty good view of the ocean, I promise.


I'd wager that this is the only kind of shooting that goes on in this fortress anymore. It's a good kind of shooting for sure.


They do have a little heavier artillery, although it's all cemented together.


On the inside of the fortress there were all sorts of buildings and barracks.


This one held cots and some pretty sharp looking military uniforms.




There was religious shrine in there too.


I hope you've enjoyed this fairly odd tour. ¡Adios! (They speak Spanish there, you see)

Alaska... kinda smelly

Welcome to the view from the World’s Smelliest Rest Stop! Located somewhere outside of Denali National Park, this rest stop was seriously foul. It had a pretty view of Mt. McKinley, and of this river, but man, the odorous nature of the environment permitted us to stay only long enough to take the quick hike up to the lookout point and then back to the car. I don’t know what it was, but the consensus for the whole trip was that Alaska was, in general, “kinda smelly.” It didn’t detract at all from the trip, but did lend itself to our amusement.

tennis!

Traveling and staying in hotels is nice sometimes because it gives me an evening to sit around and write... if I'm not too tired from the day. Luckily tonight I'm tired, but not too tired. I've been thinking about tennis lately. Tennis is a great sport. I love playing it and I love watching it. I started playing tennis when I was pretty young, but then stopped and didn’t pick it up again until I was in college. These days I generally play until I’m physically too tired to continue; I can’t get enough. It’s a good lifelong sport too; something you can play for your whole life. I wish I played more often than I do right now. I need to work on that. I also need to work on being better at tennis. Anyway, here are some tennis related pictures I’ve taken over the years.

Oh but first, how about a little pro tennis? Who's your favorite? Rafa is clearly mine. One year I listened to the French Open on the radio at work. It was a lot more entertaining than you'd think, because there were these two guys commentating, Eli Weinstein and Araz Gulekjian. These guys were a couple of the most entertaining color commentator guys I've ever heard. Unfortunately they're not on Roland Garros radio anymore, so it's not worth listening next time around. Anyway, they took a lot of letters from listeners, and the one that has always stuck out in my head was someone comparing Rafael Nadal to Roger Federer. Now this writer was a Federer fan, and was writing to explain why Federer was better. He explained that in his mind Federer was far more graceful; a maestro on the court. He proceeded to characterize Rafa as far less refined; "a fist pumping farmer" were his exact words. This was back in the good old days of Rafa. The days of him wearing capri pants and tank tops. Classic Rafa. I think he needs to go back to that wardrobe.

Oh and did you see this? Pro Robby Ginepri will miss the rest of the season due to a squirrel attack. He was riding his bike and swerved to avoid running one over and fell and broke his elbow. I've never been attacked by a squirrel, but strangely know a few people who have; one of whom has been attacked multiple times. Pffft, squirrels.

Ok enough of that, here's this:







(holy crap, I took that one in 2005!)


(film! and california!!)

bicicleta

Bikes are fun vehicles, and I’m intrigued by the different types of bikes out there. In California everyone had sweet beach cruisers (I spent a lot of time in places those were practical). Around here there are a lot of general bikes, like mountain bikes and road bikes. Then you’ve got your hipsters with fixies, like my dad, who just built a cool custom one from scratch. In Minneapolis you can rent community bikes from little stations all around town; freaking sweet. I think after I get settled here I might want to build a fixie too. I’ll give my dad’s a try next time I’m home to see how I like riding it before deciding, but I can imagine it’ll be pretty cool. There are a lot of really sweet looking bikes on Flickr, and that only serves as more motivation to build my own. There’s something about a fixed gear bike that looks especially cool. That short chain going straight from one cog to the other, with no derailleur hanging down is so clean and simple looking. They look even cooler with custom handle bars, like bullhorn handlebars, or some drop handlebars with a nice smooth arc to them. Then when you color coordinate certain parts, it just brings it all together in one sweet looking piece.

California Love

I've had a lot of mixed feelings the last few weeks.  So take a look at these California love based pictures.  On film.  As they should be.  Courtesy of my Olympus OM-2n.