Day One: London and Jet Lag

I was ready as ever to start my first trip in a long while. I was so ready that I got to the airport WAY ahead of time, and got to kill a couple of hours in Denver International Airport. We pulled out of the gate on time, only to spend an hour on the tarmac! The wind shifted right as our flight was lined up to take off, and we had to taxi all the way to the other side of the airport, and wait in line to take off. Luckily, I made my connection in Munich, though it was by a whisker.



Arriving in London from the Europe side was great, we flew right over the city on our final approach and peeking through the clouds I got to see such landmarks as the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament from the air. It was like Google Earth, only real and a lot more clear! Meeting up with one of the groups, we bussed into London and set about our activities for the first day.



Our hotel was in a very good location, right by Hyde Park, in the middle of a very pleasant residential neighborhood. Everbody was pretty sleepy, but still eager to explore the city.



After a dinner of fish and chips (of course) we cut through the park into central London and saw such sights as Trafalgar Square and a far off peek of Big Ben. By this point is was getting late and most of the people headed back to the hotel for a well earned snooze.



Being of the mind that one can sleep when one is home, I joined up with a teacher and his wife and we went walking all over London! It was a beautiful night, and the lights of the city and her landmarks reflected in the Thames really are glorious.



I was the only one who had visited London before, so I became the tour guide, which was fun. Checking out Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Big Ben, The London Eye, and more at night was a really great way to start the trip. I just wish I'd had a tripod so more of my pictures came out!





Around 11 pm it was finally time to pack it in, our feet were sore and our eyelids heavy, so we caught the tube and went back to the hotel, ready for another busy day!

Sunset over Wash Park, Part 2

As the sun sunk lower, the colors just got better and better. These pictures really must be seen larger than this to be appreciated. I'll admit, I love the sharpness and quality of the D-80!

Sunset over Wash Park, Part 1

While strolling the park one fine June evening I happened upon a glorious sunset, and was lucky enough to have my camera with me. While my incessant snapping annoyed my companions, the results were more than worth it.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Every year Denver has a street festival to commemorate the impact Japanese immigrants have had on the area, and to celebrate Japanese culture. The fair is held in late June, which is months after the last cherry tree has shed its blossoms. I went, ready to be disappointed, and while the scene couldn't hold a candle to an actual Japanese festival, it wasn't as bad as I feared, but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped.

The worst part was the food. I'm used to American street food being horrible, but when we transform the teriyaki beef bowl into a greasy bunch of slop, it really is pretty tragic. Festival food in Japan was a highlight, yakitori skewers, teriyaki beef skewers, okonomiyaki, taiyaki, grilled corn, all of it amazingly delicious. Added to that were the festival games, girls in kimono or yukata, and the occasional bout of joyous taiko or street dancing. While I don't expect Denver to be able to match Kanazawa in it's display of Japanese culture, I think a little more fidelity would go a long way towards making the whole thing a lot more fun!

I did find a nice wall clock that has all the numbers in Kanji, so the day wasn't a total wash.

The 4th of July

Nothing brings the term "National Holiday" Home quicker than being out of the nation on that day. Having Independence Day be a day of barbecues, fireworks, and (for some of us) birthday cake is just natural. Being in Japan cured me of that really quick. Having to work on July 4th just seemed wrong. Though of course my students would think the same thing about having to work during Golden Week or O-bon. Why, only savages have to work during those important holidays!

This year is even stranger, in addition to being the third year in a row that I am out of the United States on Independence Day, this time I'll be in London, in the seat of power of the very country we declared independence from!

The Grand Tour

Tomorrow at 2:05 PM, weather permitting, I will be departing Denver International Airport for Europe. As mentioned previously, I haven't been to Europe for a very long time, so it seems that I should be utterly excited. I am... but. It honestly doesn't seem real. I know that within the space of 24 hours I'll be somewhere over the mid-Atlantic desperately trying to sleep, but I don't feel it. It seems strange to me that on the verge of an 18 day whirlwind tour I don't really feel much at all.

Though certainly I am looking forward to my trip, it will be great to see London and Dublin again, as well as to fill in a few gaps in my Irish sightseeing. The following 9 days in Italy is just icing on the cake, and a delicious, gelatto and pizza flavored icing it is!

For the blog, and myself, I have plenty of memory cards to go with the new camera, so I will come back with a great many wonderful photographs. I'll have things set up so that while I'm gone a few posts will be made, so this blog won't be a total wasteland.

And...

I'm off!

The New Camera

I've been lugging around my new pet all week, getting ready for Europe. While this post is hardly unified, here is a selection of my better work from around Downtown.












We had another glorious thundercloud the other day, lurking off over the plains. The lightning was going off all over the massive cloud, but I only got ONE picture of the phenomenon. Every other bolt happened when my shutter was closed. Lucky me though, this was the second to last shot before I filled up the memory card!

Art Market

Last weekend was the annual Art Students League Summer Art Market. This was the second year in a row my mom exhibited her paintings there. It can be pretty intense with the heat, the crowds, and the sheer artiness of it all, so I came along to lend a helping hand.



Growing up with an artist mother, I suppose I have had an inside track for art appreciation. Being surrounded by so much art, some good and some bad, certainly made for an interesting weekend. While I wouldn't want to do it every weekend, I have already volunteered for next year! I made a few acquisitions myself, buying a Crimean seascape, a Kyoto street scene, a Mexican sunset, and a Colorado owl. My aprtment is looking more and more international by the minute!



The market also provided a good proving grounds for my D-80, giving me a chance to break in the camera a bit more and learn what button does what.





My Aunt flew in from Hawaii to help mom at the show, or should I say she sneaked in from Hawaii, as nobody knew she was coming. Well, nobody knew but her mole on the inside...

She was a big help at the market, and of course it is always nice to see family!



The artist in front of some of her works. The geese in the background are based off of one of my own photos, something I am inordinately proud of.



With all the art watching and people watching, my sister dropped by to the market twice, and even posed for me!

Flowers, Foxes and Fritz

My mother keeps a very beautiful garden, and early June is pretty perfect flower time around Denver. I got some nice pictures of the garden last week. Little did I know that they would be the last photos taken with my venerable D-50.





I like the bee in this one, he looks like he is in heaven!





A den of foxes lives in the area, and the family dog, Fritz loves barking at them and smelling their foxy home. Being urban foxes, they are fairly bold around humans, and I got pretty close in my car do get this shot.



These last two photos are the first D-80 shots to be presented, mostly me messing around with the camera and learning which button does what, as well as playing around with the extra zoom on the kit lens.



I can't include of photo of Fritz's nemesis without a photo of Fritz himself. This is one of him chasing a soccer ball that is larger than his head!

Indian Peaks

Last weekend was a glorious June weekend, perfect for a stroll in the Rocky Mountains. Dad and I went hiking in the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area, a collection of high peaks along the continental divide above Boulder.



The day couldn't have been better for hiking, clear and warm without being too hot. It is still early in the season though, and while there was much less snow than there has been, there were still some pretty big drifts at the higher elevations.



With such nice weather the snow was pretty busy melting, and in some spots the trail was less a path and more a small lake. As the day went on, the area got wetter and wetter, and I learned that after a decade of use my totally broken hiking boots aren't quite waterproof anymore. Alas.



Damp feet aside, it really was the perfect way to spend a Saturday. As the weather gets warmer and the hills get greener, I am feeling better about being in the area. I thank my lucky stars that Denver has such low humidity!



In other news, I broke down today and got a new camera. While the pictures on this page prove that my D-50 is a good as ever, I've been on the lookout for both a new and improved lens and camera body lately. After much soul searching and review watching, I settled on the Nikon D-80. It is an older camera, only a bit newer than my model, but it is a bit higher on the food chain technology wise while still coming in at a price point I can afford. I wish it was a D-300, but I don't have $1,700 to spend on a camera body. I also picked up an 18-135 mm zoom, which gives me a bit more reach from the 18-55 that I have been using, and is a sharper, better lens. (Europe here I come!)

21 DPD

It's been a while since I did much with HDR images, so I decided to give a few of my sunset/ thunderhead shots the treatment. While I shot a couple of multiple exposures, my lack of a tripod combined with the ever moving traffic and clouds has led to some pretty unexceptional shots. Luckily, I was shooting RAW, and while you cant quite make a true HDR out of a RAW file, you can certainly make a good go of it.



21 DPD is a reference to Days Prior to Departure, office jargon that we use to keep track of when our customer's tours are taking place. My tour is now 21 DPD, so I am off to Europe in a mere three weeks. Color me excited. I had hoped I would be taking a new camera with me, but perhaps it is best that I am bring my trusty Nikon D-50. It may be an older model, but I know its features and functions pretty well, and I should focus on taking great pictures, not learning a new camera. Though I wouldn't mind learning how to use a new camera...

Class Three

The Customer Service department was rewarded for beating our insurance sales goal 5 weeks early with a half day of white-water rafting! Our day of fun on the water was originally scheduled for Thursday, but that day dawned wet and cold, more suitable for early November than early June.



Luckily, the unpredictability of Colorado weather paid off big time and Friday was glorious, sunny and warm, a perfect day for rafting. After a mere two hours of work, we were whisked up to Idaho Springs for a trip down Clear Creek, which parallels Interstate- 70 as it travels towards Denver. We rode the beginners section, which had nothing more dangerous than a class three rapid.



While the rapids weren't all that big, they were certainly big enough for us beginners, and they provided quite the thrill. Everybody had a smashing good time, even Bobby, who fell in the 40 degree water (but who was pulled right back out!). Indeed, some of the attendees are already discussing a trip down the intermediate stretch of the river...

Thunderhead

Yesterday evening saw a tremendous thunderhead form over eastern Denver. I noticed it on my way home, and luckily I had my camera with me. The epic cloud was a seething mass of rising and falling air, and you could see it change dramatically from moment to moment, a real testament to the power of weather. While I perched on the roof of a parking garage, I turned my eye westwards as well for a few shots of the setting sun.