The Narrow Door

Driving across Illinois the other day (on I-55), I decided to take the straight shot through Lincoln, IL. This meant jumping off the interstate, onto Business 55. Which also happens to be historic Route 66. A pleasant, if not hugely memorable side trip. But I did see this funky building while sitting at a stop light in downtown Lincoln.

Rolling and Rolling

Ah, nothing quite like a birthday party at a bowling alley…. Interesting, though, as our community has evolved, about all of our bowling alleys have been replaced with shopping centers. Except for the one at the local University. One of my son’s friends had his party there… Yee ha!

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We finished off Saturday with the regional competition of the Cub Scouts’ Pinewood Derby. My son’s car had placed 3rd in the Troop competition, qualifying him for regionals. So yesterday it was off to Greenville (about 40 minutes east of us). It was a lot of fun, and he finished 34th out of 76 cars from all over the area. Around 1/10th of a second behind the winner, very close competition!. In the photo, he’s in the far lane.

No Camping at the Rest Stop!

A little “slice of life”, from a rest stop along I-70, somewhere in Ohio or Indiana. Don’t ask me why this little scene struck my fancy, but it did.

Spring Is HERE!

Getting ready for spring, I was looking through my images from 4/2006. For some reason this one bever got “processed” last year. I’m a sucker for strange lighting, and the late afternoon sun on the bike trail was my inspiration here. This is the kind of image I like, but few other do. That’s probably why it fell by the wayside, it would stand NO CHANCE at Better Photo, where I was spending a lot of my energies last year.

Just A Walk In The Park

Spring is on the way, but not quite here. My son and I went for our first excursion of the year, on the trail behind “The Airplane Park” this weekend. A nice little (emphasis on little) walk, but it’s still all quite brown. There were several big trees down since last fall, presumably from this winter’s ice storms.

Two Wheelin'

We finally had some time, and a decent day, and pushed my son to learn to ride his bike w/o training wheels. We’d been working just a little each day, here on the street, and not getting very far. But last weekend, my wife had the brilliant idea to take him up to the wide open parking lot at the high school. He was hesitant, right up until I explained that both his sisters had learned to drive cars on that very lot. He was up and running pretty quickly, and is now pumped and raring to go!! Now we just need to replace his bike, which he got for his 4th birthday (just over 3 years ago)!

Spring Flood

On a recent side trip along SR-40 through Ohio, I discovered this cool park in Englewood, not far from Dayton. There had been a lot of recent rain, and there was some significant flooding… This is just upstream of a flood-control dam that route 40 crosses…. This created a backed-up, but placid area. I tweaked the rotation, and decided (for some unexplainable reason) to leave the black edges.

Ice Behind The Falls

An “artsy” shot from last week's excursion to Charleston Falls Preserve, near Huber Heights, OH. The shutter speed was 1/6th second, to allow blurring of the water. Without my tripod, I had to brace the camera on some split-rail fence. I converted this to B&W in Photoshop Elements.

De-evolution?

I’ve always been drawn to scenes and images of decay. Specifically, of the fading of humans’ constructions. Old building, in particular. On my recent trip to Ohio, I came across this industrial plant. Still in service, I believe they make light bulbs. But I was captivated by the mood of the place, and managed to capture a images:

Brown Sign Bliss

I was driving across Ohio, westbound on I-70, with a stop for the night in Huber Heights (near Dayton). After checking into the hotel, and having a quick dinner, I had about an hour before the Duke game, and decided to explore. Just a few minutes up the road, a Brown Sign!! Worth a quick excursion…

Despite it being in the high 30’s, overcast and nearing sunset, I braved the short walk from the parking lot, and found a VERY cool set of waterfalls. With my tripod safely back in the car, and light fading, I braced my camera against anything I could find (trees, rocks, fenceposts) and snapped away. Here’s what I got:

This is a gem of a place, only 10 minutes from the interstate. Sometime I’ll have to give it a proper explore!

Bloggered....

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, folks. But between plain old "busy", and blogger issues....... well, it's not been getting done. Ever since the new blogger by Google came out, I've been unable to log in from my laptop, which means whenever I'm travelling. And I've been having a lot of issues with my FTP site, where I store the images. I tried to post something earlier, but can't upload the images (yet). Very frustrating. Bear with me?

Spring Melt...

A couple of images from Lake Springfield, which is on the south side of Springfield IL. Driving up (or down) I-55, you cross over this lake. I recently took a side trip around the lake, which is ringed by cool little parks. It’s worth the side trip.

European Identities

This was posted at one of the Yahoo photo-groups I belong to, I thought it was pretty funny. Credited to musician Richard Thompson, twixt-song banter at a concert.

In heaven:
The English meet you at the door,
The French do the cooking,
The Italians provide the entertainment,
And the Germans organize everything.

In hell:
The French meet you at the door,
The English do the cooking,
The Germans provide the entertainment,
And the Italians organize everything.

Wipeout?

Yesterday we had my son’s birthday party; he turned 7 years old last Thursday. He opted for a skating party at the local YMCA, where a good time was had by all (It seemed). This image is during the game of “Wipe Out”, where (on cue) everybody tries to fall down as quickly as possible. They compete girls vs boys, and the last team with someone standing loses the round. They do 6-8 rounds to determine a “winner”.

Solitary Study

A young man studying in the cafeteria of the local High School, after an evening event.