“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” - Tim Cahill

It is hard to put a number on the amount of fun you have when surrounded by good company. Especially when you are blessed with having the type of friends like I do. Therefore in an effort to put a quantitative number on this trip I give you this, 1,938. That’s the number of miles that I have traveled in the past 2 weeks visiting both Atlanta and Chicago. Traveling between the two cities resulted in over 30 hours of driving time. In fact, I have spent so much time sitting in a car lately that I’m pretty sure I induced traumatic shock to my butt resulting in permanent numbness of the bottom end. You’d think that I wouldn’t want to spend another minute in the car, but if you asked me to do it again I’d start packing in an instant. I must say, I have the best friends one could possibly ask for and I cherish the times we spend together. But now back to business, I’ve got pictures to show you! So here we go!

Atlanta, GA

Recently, my good friend Ronny graduated from the BMW Step Program in Cleveland (congrats again Ronny!) and got hired by Global Imports in Atlanta, GA. According to Ronny, it is the largest BMW dealership in the Southeast region. I don’t know whether or not it is true, but Ronny is a good guy and I doubt he’d misremember a fact like that (It really is a word!). All I can say is that it easily dwarfs any dealership I have seen in Cincinnati or Columbus.

I left Columbus, OH Thursday morning bound for Atlanta, GA. After an uneventful trip down I arrived in Atlanta right around traffic-thirty and got a good dose of stop and go traffic. Later on I began to realize that there is always traffic in Atlanta, it doesn’t matter what the time is. Fortunately, Ronny was able to utilize his Ninja stalking ability and leave work at the precise moment to enter the highway right next to me, literally. This was a good thing because I was able to follow him through his secret route that avoided all of that nonsense. Thursday night was uneventful, as I didn’t have much energy to do anything other than sit on the couch.

Friday I woke up and headed to Stone Mountain. It is basically a giant rock that sits just outside downtown Atlanta. I only had a short amount of time to explore since I was supposed to meet up with Ronny for lunch. Instead of driving around and looking for a good picture of the entire mountain, I decided to pay to take the gondola up to the top. Once I was up there I was able to snap some pictures. Really, they don’t do the view from up top any justice.

After Stone Mountain I went up to Global Imports and met up with Ronny and Bobby, another G20 enthusiast, for Ronny’s lunch break. After lunch we got a tour of his work, which was awesome. I took some pictures, but tried to limit them since I was getting some funny looks walking around there. I was asked a couple of times if I was shooting pictures for someone. Anyways, I got to see the new 135’s and a few M cars. We waited around to see if we could get to test drive the 135, but there ended up being a 2 hr. wait to take it out. I was tired from walking all over the top of Stone Mountain so Friday night was also low-key.

Saturday we woke up early to meet up with another G20.net member (they have quite the “crew” down there!) for breakfast at Waffle House. Speaking of Waffle House, I’m convinced that Atlanta has the most amount of Waffle House’s per square mile out of any city in the world! They are quite literally on every street corner down there! After breakfast Ronny and Gerard (yet another G20.net member) and I went to a shooting range to fire some pistols since I had never fired one before. We shot a 9mm Glock, a 1911 (I think that was it), and a dinky 22 cal. revolver. When we were shooting that, a group of guys came in with a Smith and Wesson 500, which is basically a hand cannon. It was hilarious to see us shooting the dinky revolver next to guys shooting a gun that’s muzzle flash is easily 1 cubic foot. Then we went out to a diner for lunch and ran back to BMW to grab some tools to swap Ronny’s rear suspension out. Later on in the evening we ate at a bar located right next to the local airport. It was a pretty late evening which ended up being a bad idea since we had agreed to go fishing on the Chattahoochee River before I left on Sunday.

On Sunday, we met back up with Brian to do some fishing at the river just down the street from his house. Ronny and I had purchased some $15 fishing kit from Walmart the night before. The decision to do this reminded me how nice a good rod and reel combo really is. I ended up fighting tangles more than the fish. Because of this, I didn’t catch anything but a cold (not really). After giving up on fishing I put my camera together and snapped some pictures. Shortly after we packed up and I headed back home to Cincinnati leaving me with the hopes for warmer weather coming soon.

I want to take this time say thank you to Gerard and Gellian for graciously allowing me to sleep in their guest bedroom for free the entire weekend. To all of the g20.net members that I was able to meet, it was a pleasure! You guys have a very cool group of friends going on down there! Maybe I’ll look into buying a home down there someday! Probably not though, I couldn’t deal with all that traffic, haha.

Chicago, IL

What can I say, when you are surrounded by good friends you are destined to have a good time! Eleven of my good friends from high school got together to celebrate some birthdays. I left Columbus bound for Cincinnati after my classes on Friday afternoon to drop off Sherman and meet up with some friends to carpool up to Chicago. Our hotel was celebrating their Grand Opening so we spent a lot of time just walking around there and hanging out, since there weren’t too many people in the hotel and everything was literally brand new.

Fast forward to Saturday morning, after waiting for a few friends to arrive that lived locally, we set out to walk the streets of Chicago. Our friend Amir was able to get off from a double shift at work so he needed to find a free place to park. I volunteered to ride with him and catch up with the group later. We ended up getting a spot south of Soldier Field, quite a ways away from our friends. We tried catching up to them at the Bean, but they were tired of waiting and decided to continue on. Because of this, we didn’t get to spend too much time taking pictures but I forced Amir to stop once so I could at least get a few shots from the walk. 

We finally met up with our group of friends at the base of the John Hancock after walking from 23^rd St. on the South Side, needless to say I was ready for a rest.  This was good because we had planned to go up to the bar on the 96^th floor. This was actually cheaper and higher than the observation deck. I had a Goose Island and some girly drink on the menu. I then proceeded to snap some pictures of the Chicago skyline from up top. 

It was an amazing view up at the top, in fact I was told it is better than the Sears Tower. couldn't get too close to the edge because my vertigo started going like crazy. That's easily the highest I have ever been in a building. It is especially crazy because you can literally go right up to the glass if you wanted to, but I couldn't cut it. After we paid our tabs we headed towards the finest restaurant in Chicago, McDonalds.

Our trip to McDonalds took us by Gold Coast Lamborghini so I was able to see the all mighty Veyron in person. As I stood there staring at it I couldn't help but think how lucky someone must be to own such a magnificent piece of machinery. The grills, the brakes, the interior, the engine, everything has been looked at with the utmost scrutiny. It is a truly beautiful piece of machinery. This is a definite must stop for any car enthusiast as the Veyron is the pinnacle of automotive excellence. The price to own one is reported as $1,000,000 but that won't get you anywhere near owning one. I was unable to speak with an associate, but I have heard of some crazy price tags for Veyrons. Because of the extreme price the car is roped off behind a velvet rope to keep the public from putting their fingerprints on it. 

Since I live for adventure, I decided to get the best shot possible of the engine I would have to hold my camera perilously over the car. I couldn't help but think about how much money it would take to repair the car if someone would happen to drop a heavy camera on it. After I snapped the picture I quickly returned to the safe zone behind the velvet rope.

I opted to skip the McDonald's goodness and take in as much as possible with the cars in their showroom, including another trip over to the Veyron. 

Unfortunately as I met up with my friends at McDonalds I had found out that Amir, the accident-prone guy that he is, managed to severely sprain his ankle and was sitting at the table with his foot propped up on a chair and a bag of ice over it. We decided to return to the hotel and rest up before the Xavier/UCLA game later on that night. From then on out I decided not to bring my camera. It instead, rested safely back in the hotel room for the remainder of the evening.
Sunday was rather uneventful, we met up at my friend's condo to get organized for the trip home. The weather turned dreary so nobody really felt like sight seeing. Instead we headed out in the early afternoon to return home.

Sorry for the abrupt ending to the post, I have sat here typing this entire story with few breaks and I am pretty much through with typing. Keep an eye out for yet another trip, this time to Washington D.C. to snap some pictures of during the end of the Cherry Blossom season. Lets hope for good weather!

Tony's lost it!

Well, I have a rather interesting posting for you today. About a week ago my good friend called me asking if I would be able to help him out with a few pictures for a website he joined. Of course I agreed and he came over after work one afternoon. I used a blanket that I had as a backdrop and took some head shots for him. As you'd expect, we goofed off once I was able to get some acceptable shots. I couldn't stop laughing at some of them so I had to post them up. That's it for now but keep an eye out for another post about my recent trip to Atlanta for some warm weather and good southern hospitality.

Sherman Doing What He Does Best

If you continue to keep up with my postings on here, you will begin to notice that I take a lot of pictures of my trusty sidekick Sherman. This works excellent for both of us. I can practice with new photo techniques or new equipment and he gets all of my attention!

Lately I have been reading a wonderful guide on flash photography with Canon EOS systems. If you are interested, you can read it here. Anyways, I was working on placing the light exactly where I wanted it, which is a lot harder than it seems. After tons of failed attempts I managed to get a few good ones. Let me know what you think!

My incomplete coverage of the Blizzard of 08

In case you haven't heard, Columbus, OH got a dose of some record snowfall this past weekend. I think the official total was 20.6" making it the worst snow storm in a century. In a 24 hour time frame we received 15.5" which was also a record. The snow started around 9am on Friday, March 7th and finished around 7pm the following day.

Once we had received about 5" of snow I suited up to face the storm with my camera and trusty sidekick (Sherman) in order to snap some shots. We ended up walking to a park along the Olentangy Bike Trail which has a path in the woods along the river. Usually you can go a good mile or two along the river, but it was already flooded about halfway through. We'll see what it's like once it thaws, maybe I'll head back down in a day or two to check it out. Sherman was having a blast prancing through the trees like a kid in a candy store. I managed to calm him down enough to snap a few pictures of him in these wintry conditions. I also observed a bunch of elusive robins playing in the snow. I managed to get one while he was in mid-air, I call it "Air Robin". On Saturday I decided to go back out with Sherman. We went back to the same park for Sherman to get some play time in. On the way there I didn't have to have him on his leash at all, there were no cars out at all. Everyone was taking shelter in their homes. Out in the open at the park was pretty intense. I would walk along just fine in 10" of snow and then all of the sudden fall in a snow drift up to my thighs. I remembered my camera, but unfortunately forgot my memory card which was sitting next to my computer from the day before. We were probably out the for an hour but it felt like we were out there for three hours walking in the knee high snow.

A couple of hours later I decided to make an attempt to go out and see what it was like beyond the park by the river. As I was cleaning off my car an older gentlemen came up the street sliding along on his cross country skis. I had to laugh because nothing beats being able to ski down a city street.

Finally, after cleaning my car off for 20 minutes I was out on the roads, which were pretty bad at the time. Luckily I only got stuck once, and that was due to the fact that the main road was blocked by someone stuck, so I had to cut through an unplowed parking lot. I managed to get out without any help and began to head towards downtown. On my way there were cars stranded all over the place and I helped 3 people get out of the snow. I actually pushed a van up a hill with my car at one point, that was entertaining. Once I got to downtown I felt like I was Will Smith starring in my own "I am Legend" movie. The city was deserted. I pulled off to take a few pictures, but didn't venture too far away in fear of slipping and breaking my camera. In one of the pictures you can just barely make out the silhouettes of downtown Columbus, less than a mile away.

On my way home I decided to stop at OSU to check out the view off from one of the parking lots. Cruising through campus was pretty interesting to say the least. I had a jerk behind me who thought he must have been Micheal Schumacher driving in a new Dodge Ram. He ended up spinning out in the middle of an intersection, almost hitting me as he lost control. Further down the road I saw a small blob coming at me. It was a snowmobile, blasting down Woodruff Ave! I couldn't help but think how pointless it was to have something like that here in capitol city of Ohio, maybe Cleveland but definitely not Columbus.
On Sunday I decided to start the day out by heading to a park I had read about online near downtown. It was supposed to be a bird sanctuary, but really all it turned out to be was a pathway going along a road, not much of anything besides seagulls there. So I decided to head out to Alum Creek State Park up North, near Delaware. There was only one road open to get into the park, and it looked like only one other person had dared to make the trek into the park. I was a little nervous at first, but soon I found that my new Subaru is a beast, even on inadequate tires. I managed to get all the way back without a hiccup. Sherman and I spent about 5 hours there walking around in the middle of the park. The park was empty and was basically untouched. Sherman and I tracked 3 deer for about an hour until finally they lost us in a ravine. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any good pictures, that would have made the day that much better. We ended up stumbling upon a bird feeder in the middle of a big meadow surrounded by birds. I slowly snuck up and nestled down to shoot some of the visitors. They were surprisingly fine with me being within 10' from them and having Sherman lay at my feet. I got some fun shots of a few birds and decided to head home, I was beat and Sherman had softball size snow balls hanging from him!