Not So Lazy Afternoons

The landscape is glowing, gleaming in the golden light of day I ain’t holding nothing back now, I ain’t standing in any body’s way

-Bob Dylan, “Rollin’ And Tumblin’.

Twilight on a river in a shiny new red canoe is not a bad place to be. Not to mention the fact that you often meet some rather interesting products of American culture at various points along the way.

James said let’s go paddling the new canoe after work. OK by me. We loaded up and headed for the lake or so I thought. After it was clear we were heading in the wrong direction to go to the lake I asked, “Where are we going?”

“Oh we are going to the Meremac.”

“OK.”

We crossed the river and I said, “Hey didn’t there used to be a boat ramp on the side of the river we just went past.”

James says, “I don’t know.”

“OK, so are you going to Winter Park?”

“No.”

More driving while I thought about all of the river access points I could remember along the path of the highway. “So are we going to Meremac State Park?”

“No.”

“Where are we going again?”

“To Onondaga.”

“WHAT?”

An hour and a half drive on a Tuesday afternoon to test paddle a canoe seemed a little excessive even for James not to mention the dark clouds that were rolling in as we drove south. We made it down there in good time though with one stop at a very interesting gas station with very interesting people populating the scene. Finally we arrived and even though James had called in advance to arrange for a shuttle driver at this mega canoe rental and campground business the young ladies working in the office acted as though this was their first experience at canoe rental and that was despite the fact that we had brought our own canoe.

We finally hit the water sometime around 5 pm and has a really grand little float trip that lasted about 2-1/2 hours. James brought along a Nikon D-90 in a Pelican case and I brought my Canon A-1 waterproof camera. We took a few photos for the adventurecanoe.com website and I took a bunch of photos of things that caught my eye. We should have been a little more serious about it but we were mostly into enjoying the new boat and seeing what we could do with it. We’ll save the photo shoot for another day and maybe hire some of those local cultural icons we met to act as models.

Another internet success story... Well some sort of success story anyway. I think I might go to the store today and look for a new pocket camera. I now own three broken Canon Powershot cameras of various vintages. If I could afford an iPhone I might just forget about a camera and use the one on the phone instead. I was looking through some old photos yesterday and it is clear that there is a great benefit to having a camera on hand all the time, especially a stealthy little one. Hell, I like playing with cameras at a restaurant while I am waiting for my food to arrive. It's hard to leave the house without one in my pocket. Right now I'm looking at the Fuji Finepics for their wide angle and low light capabilities.

I guess the secret to longevity in compact cameras is to rarely use them like a lot of people I know. We go out and I say, "Where is your new camera?"

"Oh, I left it at home."

Now I know why mine never last as long.

We are supposed to go canoeing this afternoon and that sounds like a pleasant change of pace from working at the office. My neck is killing me again so some time away from the computers and keyboards will probably do me a lot of good. At least I'll be sore in a couple of other places to distract me from the pain in my neck. I'll be taking the Canon A-1 waterproof camera of course and finishing the roll of film I started last week in Michigan.

There is some demolition up the street that I want to get photos of and there is a full moon tomorrow I think so I'll keep my eyes open for some night shots. I still have film in the Sawyer's Nomad that I need to use and get processed.

Sunset At The Beach Or Pie For Desert?

Sunset on the beach last night turned out to be pretty nice. Unfortunately if you have come down to enjoy the spectacle or to meditate on the blessings of life, forget it. I am going to put you to work and then tell you exactly when and how you are messing up MY photo. After fifteen minutes my subjects could not take it any more and announced that they were going back to the cottage to eat pie. Did I mention how much I like my Nikon D300 and the new Nikon SB600 flash for balanced fill flash? In this photo everything is on autopilot. That's not to say that I took all the photos that way because I didn't. Most were taken on full manual in order to adjust the ambient light and flash against each other. I was doing some off-camera flash in iTTL mode also. There is always more than one way to do things and creativity often dictates alternate approaches but if you are going for a safe shot and working against the setting sun it is nice to know that the camera and flash combination will provide you with a useable exposure without a whole lot of head scratching on the part of the photographer.
Breakfast update: Todd and the Uber-fit gang seem to have been corrupted by the constant smell of bacon wafting over to their compound every morning. No yoga, no jumping jacks, no running in place and no free weights today. Maybe it's their rest day or something but I like to think that we had something to do with some sort of mutiny over there.
Speaking of super-fitness, I had the worst headache of my life last night and nothing seemed to knock back the pain. I had a cold compress on my head and a hot water bottle on my neck. I started by taking a hot shower in the outdoor shower which usually makes me feel good but no go. I took some ibuprofen and that did nothing for me at least not for about an hour. I can usually ignore a headache if I am doing something but there was no ignoring this one. It's better today but I am still taking aspirin.
We had pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. It was the battle of the blueberry cakes verses the chocolate bacon cakes. Yes, there is a commercially available chocolate bar with bacon in it. In the end it was a tie. We started the prep work for tonight's dinner which is all about skewers on the grill. Jumbo shrimp for the shrimp lovers and chicken for the rest. We don't exclude anyone here. There are also pepper, onion and tomato skewers to keep the shrimp and chicken company on your plate and some sort of fruit or melon salad to round things out. I went on a bike ride this afternoon so I am all set to chow down this evening.

Note - I'm blogging over at insidetheviewfinder.com so I'm dual posting some of these. There are photos at the other site.

Relax, you're on vacation.

Today’s post is coming to you from the Village of Douglas on the shore of Lake Michigan. The days fly by too fast and run together like watercolor paints. We had a bonfire on the beach last night and stayed up way too late once again. It took me a while to get going this morning even though I was woken up prematurely by some sort of clatter going on in the kitchen. When I got up to investigate, I discovered some banana bread waiting on the counter that was still warm from the oven. Yesterday we had baked eggs with cream (like a souffle), bacon and warm croissants for breakfast. In the afternoon we had home made cookies, again straight from the oven. It’s about food first with this group.

There are some people renting the house next door and they appear to be super fitness freaks. I glanced over there this morning and they were running in place on those small trampolines prior to going on a bike ride which was probably following by a mile swim. When we went to the beach today (or rather when I wandered down there much later than everyone else) there was another family of super fit parents and kids. The kids ranged from about eight years old to maybe fifteen years old. Those kids were running in the water, wave boarding, tossing footballs and about a hundred other activities all at the same time and never paused to take a breath. This afternoon Tod the Uberman came over to chide me for starting the BBQ grill at four in the afternoon. Well, I may not be able to beat him in a marathon but…