I spent a long, lazy, perfect Labor Day weekend at Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, with my brother, sister-in-law, and some friends. We stayed near a place called Smith Mountain Dock, which sells popcorn to children (and, um, us) for them to toss at the enormous carp that swim in the lake. The fish love this!
I just posted a page of photos from my recent trip to Dublin, Ireland.
Hello from Dublin! I’m here for the CEPIC Congress, but these snapshots aren’t of the conference; they’re of other stuff I’ve seen in the city. Please enjoy. I’ll do a full edit and create a travel page for Dublin when I have time.
(P.S. to the CEPIC folks who asked about my Diana camera: I’ll post those pictures on this blog in a few days, after I get the film processed.)
A DART train (Dublin’s metro) and the brand new Aviva stadium, where the conference was held.
Last weekend I attended a conference in Austin, Texas. While I was there, I walked over to the Congress Avenue Bridge to watch the nightly flight of the bats. Here’s a video:
Centralia is back in the news today thanks to an AP story about the star-crossed Pennsylvania town’s last days: “Few remain as 1962 Pa. coal town fire still burns.”
I was briefly fascinated with Centralia when I lived in Pennsylvania. I drove there one Saturday to gawk at the smoldering streets take some pictures of the desolate place. I think these muddy old digital camera shots actually do a good job of reflecting the town’s atmosphere of unease and sadness. Here’s a post I published on my blog in 2002, with more pictures below:
Over the weekend, airport security was stepped up after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the (mercifully) incompetent underwear terrorist, tried to blow a hole in a Detroit-bound airliner. Most air travelers don’t mind odd new rules and long lines at the TSA checkpoints because they realize there’s a real threat that some nutjob might try to kill innocent people.
Yesterday I traveled from BWI Airport in Maryland to New York City carrying several bags of gifts, including two sharp kitchen knives and a big bottle of delicious Belgian beer. No one asked any questions—because I was on an Amtrak train!
Bags are never searched or screened on the train. Knives? Liquids? Guns? Drugs? Explosives? They’ll never know! No metal detectors, no dogs, no TSA. You can board an Amtrak train without ever showing anyone your ticket or ID. (Conductors check the tickets along the way.)
This afternoon I took one of my favorite bike rides—following the Belt Parkway out to Floyd Bennett Field, the decommissioned airport in Brooklyn. There’s a lot of stuff out there in a state of beautiful decay. Three pictures:
Lonely Planet guides often begin with the author’s “top day” in a particular location. My brother was visiting this weekend, and I think on Saturday we achieved my personal top day in New York City.
Here’s what we did. I’m going to include Friday and Sunday, just for good measure.
By four o’clock on a Friday in late August, with all sensible work having ceased after lunch, Manhattan is in the midst of a mass exodus. The commuter trains teem with office workers bound for summer excursions, overstuffing the luggage racks with rolling suitcases and sipping bottled beer from paper bags.
