I did make it to San Francisco in one piece – lots and lots of unpacking and a whole hell of a lot of walking have ensued – it’s kind of insane how much easier it is to walk around SF than it is around LA.

As an example, here’s a few photos from my walk today, from my apartment to Coit Tower to Pier 39 to Ghiradelli Square (I did break down and take Muni back, though – 5.5 miles plus 432 stairs up to Coit Tower is a LOT). Slideshow below, flickr link for those who hate flash.

Really enjoying things here so far – I feel like I’m moving in the right direction towards gainful employment, and starting to feel a teensy bit less like a tourist. But not enough like I live here to think going to climb Coit Tower is a dumb idea.

Yet.

So I’ve been super, super busy, but I finally managed to get my pictures of my trip to DC in May up. Highlights include a random visit to the Zoo when I was wandering around town, Mount Vernon, a Nats game, and the Udvar-Hazy center out by Dulles, which is fucking awesome and full of totally neat-o planes and spaceships.

Direct Flickr link here, slideshow #1 below (Note, there are a bunch of adorable videos – you can tell they’re the videos because they only have titles, not notes – of pandas chowing down on bamboo that don’t play through the slideshow, click on the thing that says “link” to be taken directly to the Flickr page to view):

And then as a special bonus, Direct Flickr link and slideshow #2, of a hike I went on with my dad and Ray Ann out in Idaho this past weekend:

More photos to come in the next few days – I’m still plowing through the photos I finally got off my SD card from my recent trip to SF to prep for my move. Way more to come on that.

Note: I’m linking to pictures individually as they’re relevant, but if you’re interested in seeing my full photoset for Madrid, please check out my Flickr. I may also do photo slideshow posts at some point, let me know if you’re interested.

Previously: The preface.

GETTING THERE

The flight. Oh, the flight.

Not one, not two, but THREE screaming children in the row behind me. They shut up for a while after dinner, but there aren’t enough sleeping pills in the world to have kept me asleep once the youngest woke up with a hideous coughing fit.

Fog at the airport when we finally made it to Madrid meant circling for half an hour, an aborted landing attempt, then circling for another half hour before actually landing.

And since there had been multiple international flights held up by the fog, passport control was a total shitshow. I also managed to pick the line in which everyone wanted to chat with the customs agent for 10 minutes apiece, so it was past noon by the time I finally got out of the airport.

Luckily, things improved vastly from there.

MADRID: DAY ONE – HITTING THE GROUND RUNNING

Got to my hotel, Hostal Santo Domingo, and was very pleased to discover how nice it was for the equivalent of about 80 bucks a night. Right outside was a big plaza with a holiday shopping area and a temporary skating rink.

The whole city was actually very nicely done up for the holidays, which attracted completely batshit insane crowds. Imagine Michigan Avenue during the holiday shopping season, then about triple it. It was absolutely bonkers.

Anyway, after dumping my backpack, I went to Palacio Real, the old Hapsburg era royal palace. It’s very cool – quite a bit less “let’s gild EVERYTHING!” than Versailles, but with every ceiling in the joint immaculately painted to make up for it.

There was an interesting temporary art exhibition comparing old world and new world art from the Spanish colonial period (surprise! Everyone loved painting religious iconography), and there was a very cool little tour of the Farmacia Real, but the highlight for me was the Armory.

Really, really amazing old suits of armor – I really wish they hadn’t been such sticklers for the no photo rule, because the detail work on these things was absolutely spectacular. Lots of old weaponry too, including the largest musket I’ve ever seen that didn’t require its own little cart to carry it.

Read the rest…

Below, shots of my trip to Chicago for Northwestern Homecoming – lots of fun, friends, and general shenanigans that I enjoyed quite a bit.

You’ll see that I also used this trip as an excuse to take a dry run with my new Powershot S95, which is great for both impromptu shots when it’s a totally fine point-n-shoot, and for stuff I have more time to actually properly frame and twiddle with settings on. I think a few more days practicing fucking with it and I’ll get some great shots in Spain.

Also, I’m proud to note that I managed to get back to the weight I was at before I left by today. Which considering the vast, vast amount of food I ate all weekend, is something of a minor miracle. I thought I’d gained 15 pounds in one weekend.

A small set of photos from driving Nate’s car cross-country. He, his wife, their two cats, and their two month old son moved from LA to Chicago, and I offered to drive their car since I was scheduled to have nothing better to do and I LOVE roadtrips.

This is a mix of stuff shot with my good camera and with my phone, since the weather was such that the one day I had for wandering around Chicago, the weather sucked.

Speaking of the weather sucking, you can see how bad the snow was up on Vail Pass when I came through, but there was a stretch of I-70 on the way to Green River, Utah that was much, much worse.

Thunder, lighting, snow, hail, sleet, freezing rain, and at one point I was driving through a solid inch of unplowed snow. It was insane, and I’m lucky that car has damn good traction or I would have been in a ditch.

If I hadn’t been staying with step-relatives in Denver and Omaha for two of the three nights I was on the road, I might have looked at the weather and taken I-40 through Albuquerque instead, though that would have put me right in the middle of a bunch of tornadoes on I-44 the next day anyway.

Anyway, all in all it was a great trip, I got to get my roadtrip on without putting more miles on my car, and I got to hang with my friends in Chicago and stuff myself silly for a couple days when I got in. Good times.

I went for a bike ride this afternoon, partly because my cheapo necklace finally broke and I needed to buy a replacement. Fortunately replacements are 2 for $10 at Venice Beach.

I actually dragged my giant camera with me this time because it’s been pouring rain and a lot of the usual pollution and gunk has been washed away, and things are much, much clearer than they usually are.

Anyway, some of the better pictures from this little excursion are up on my Flickr, which you can access via this link or this lovely slideshow:

I will say, days like today make me wish I had a working point-and-shoot camera. The small-ish one that I carried around Europe with me (and which compared to today’s point-and-shoot cameras, is freakishly huge) died some time ago, and sometimes the iPhone’s camera just isn’t enough.

I love the pictures my D50 takes and the level of control it gives me, but there’s no getting around the fact that lugging a giant DSLR around with me on a bike ride is a humongous pain in the ass.

And now, in honor of the holidays, a slideshow of some of my (heavily, heavily cropped due to all the cars coming through) photos from the LA DWP’s Light Festival:

Full sizes of everything can be found at Flickr – I realize some of the cropping doesn’t make for the best viewing in the slideshow format.

I’ve been rather bad about blogging consistently, so in case I don’t get a chance to post again until after the holidays, I hope everyone travels safe and enjoys the holidays.

The first, both pretty and telling, comes courtesy of the New York Times’ photography blog’s feature on Dubai. Lauren Greenfield, who had mostly been documenting the way the recession hit here in the States, went over to Dubai and snapped this telling shot:

The juxtaposition of the impotent palm tree next to an empty McMansion, both of which are on a man-made island built in the shape of a palm tree, is just too fantastic.

The second is just a random one from a story on the LA Times’ local breaking news blog about a Shetland pony that was found wandering around the streets of Norwalk. Just an outstanding shot by the Times’ Don Bartletti of an animal control officer trying to calm the pony, gorgeously backlit by the sun.

Sometimes it’s just the random stuff that happens around town that turns into a really amazing photo.

The silliness that the flu can inspire:

More of this goofiness available at Flickr.

I saw it in the distance. And I thought,”What the fuck is that sitting on the sand? It looks like a boat. It…is a boat…”:

Okay, so it’s a boat just sitting in the middle of the sand on the middle of a very busy beach. I have a few questions.

1. How exactly did this boat get there? It hasn’t been stormy enough for the damn thing to just wash up, especially not that far up the beach and particularly not relatively upright and totally intact.

2. Why is it just sitting there? If it’s for a TV show or a movie or something, which is about the only rational explanation I could think of besides it just washing up, why is there nobody guarding it?

3. If it actually did wash up, why the hell did they put a fence around it instead of removing it?

So bizarre. I’m hoping I can do some more riding this coming week – though I seem to have re-aggravated a pectoral muscle that’s been giving me trouble for a couple weeks by hauling my heavy-ass backpack around for 31 miles, so I may have to figure out an alternate way to carry all my water and Gatorade and granola bars before I go out again.

But we’ll see if the boat is still there in a few days or a couple of weeks. Anybody else got ideas of why the hell a boat would randomly wind up sitting on the beach a couple hundred feet in from the high tide mark?