Friday, October 30, 2009

The expert is a person who avoids the small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.

I caught this on video when driving to the Lutz area down Dale Mabry Highway, just north of Tampa. I simply had to catch up and try to get this on video. One must commend the efficient use of all applicable carrying capacity. The remainder also seemed to double as a highway sweeper unit.

Trash Hauling FAIL or Highway Sweeping win?









All photos and video CC-by-sa @mblitch

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Snow is nature's way of telling folks to come to Florida.

As soon as I got back from my AYCJ trip, I got a call from the property director for the corporation for whom I was working until the end of July when I lost my position. They were still working on grants and hoping to at some point find another full-time position for me, however in the meantime, they wanted to hire me for a particular consulting job. The company had 1800+ housing units throughout a two dozen properties around the state. Only one or two people in the company had ever actually been to all, or even most, of the sites, so they wanted me to visit each on and take photographs of the interior and exterior areas of each place and even some portraits of residents for potential future use. So within a few days of getting back, I was on the road once more, this time on a job to shoot pictures around the state. I had to visit most of the major cities in the state including Gainesville, Lake City, Jacksonville, Cocoa Beach, Miami, Sebring, Ft. Meyers, Ft. Lauderdale, and multiple sites around Tampa and Clearwater. It was actually kind of fun to get the chance to use some of my skills and provide the service. Though I cannot post any of those pictures here due to NDA and copyright retained by the client, but I was able to take a little bit of time between driving stints and take some shots of roadside Florida. I was able to visit Ft. Caroline National Monument to get my park passport stamp for that site and even get in a training run with the local H3 group in Ft. Lauderdale. To add to the adventure a bit I used the little tear drop trailer for sleeping so I could be on site at first light whenever possible in order to get the best shots outside. The new wide angle lens I picked up a few months ago was excellent for getting inside pictures without having to deal with stitching things together and the resulting ghosting artifacts.
















Friday, October 09, 2009

Close to home, feeling so far away

Day 31
Home

Since my flight originated on the last day of the pass, I was still traveling via a red-eye flight to NYC and then a last segment home to Tampa. As far as I know, I was the first person to start utilizing the pass at 6:50AM EDT on the first day of the pass and started my last flight at 11:55 PDT on the last day of the pass. I arrived back home at 11:50 EDT on Oct 9th.

Overall I had 14 different flights, visited 6 different states, 2 other countries (both for the first time), traveled with 4 other people at various times, and made several friendships. Overall it added up to 1 lifetime memory. It was nearly all a great experience. I met and hung out with a lot of good folks and get to see a vast majority of things that I had always wanted to witness. Highlights would be Niagara Falls, Rocky Mountains, Olympic National Park, Victoria, ziplining Costa Rica, and walking the Freedom Trail. I'm not sure if I would do it again if the pass was offered next year since I think there is more of the world I want to see first, but it is definitely something I'll remember for a long time. I do wonder, what is next?

Thursday, October 08, 2009

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.

Day 30
Seattle

After nearly 30 days of traveling, this was my last full day to be a tourist. I stayed near Granville Island overnight in Vancouver and walked around the various shops as they began to open in the morning. I picked Chris B up and we made out way south back towards the US and made a quick stop at a small Canadian town called White Rock for lunch and a drink. When we got to the international border the guard started asking a few various questions; who are you, how did you meet, etc, and merely shook her head as we both jumped into a long-winded explanation of the AYCJ Jetblue pass, our coordinating through Twitter, and such. It was funny to have a large border crossing here with official check points, duty free shops, customs, etc, however we were able to stop, just after passing the security stuff, through at a park just a block away was literally on the border with the only barrier a 3 feet wide ditch and a sign marking the imaginary border boundary.

We headed back through to Seattle where I dropped him off once again near Gasworks Park so we could do out own thing. I headed over to the Experience Music Project for a while. While I enjoy music, I'm not so into the memorabilia, so I was more interested in the science part of the museum. After that building closed down I walked over to get a few pictures of the iconic Space Needle before driving around a bit and visiting the grave site for Bruce and Brandon Lee. after walking through the parks for a while I joined Chris B at a nearby bar doe a last bit of dinner and sushi meal. After finishing up, it was time to head to the airport for some final flights to get home. We were luck enough to be able to book a flight right at 11:55PST so that it would still count as part of the pass, thus giving us a full day in the city.