The CafeMerlin

Hangin'...

..... at the Iron Cactus in Austin, TX

Just back from a weekend in Texas visiting family and some quality time with Henry - who is now nearly four...  A good time was had by all including Henry who tolerated the disruption to his routine quite well...

When I quit my day job back in 2004, I made a trip back to the UK and a trip on SWA to Austin, then  I swore I'd not get on another aeroplane again, not because I don't like aeroplanes, but because I can't stand airports and all their attendant stress generators.

Never say never.... Seven years almost to the day found me back at BWI and a SWA flight to Austin.... So what has changed in all that time...?  

Nothing. Nada. Zippo.... The airports the same, the foods the same, you still disrobe, take out your computer and dump them in the same grey trays to get through security - although the uniforms are now blue and say TSA instead of Wackenhut - the aeroplanes the same, and I swear I remember the FA's.... Even the peanuts haven't changed...

Nice to know some things stay the same... 

Skline Drive

Spent a couple of chilly days on Skyline drive for a photography project... dawn on day two saw wind chills in the low 20's and blowing snow.... back to bed...

The gallery is here

Back...

.... from a week in Maine on Mount Desert Island, and Acadia National Park.  Great photographic opportunities while I was there with George DeWolfe's Maine Photographers workshop...

I'm adding daily to the Maine Gallery on Smugmug, which you can find here

The Sun first touches...

.... the East Coast of mainline USA atop Cadillac Mountain, in Acadia Nationional Park, Mount Desert Island, Maine...

The little blob beneath the limb of the sun is a lobster boat, headed off to work.

But of course, what goes up, must come down...

...as it did last Monday, October 9th. 

The leaves by the way, are the same color as the sun...

It's tough...

... to breathe up here, but the wind takes care of that if you just open and close your mouth...

But the view is awesome...

Another thing...

... to consider as we wend our way west, is fuel..  Well, duh - we're putting 50 -60 gallons into the beast every day, so it's important to know the best place to buy the stuff.  Pennsylvania is usually the priciest, and it gets cheaper the further west you go towards the Rockies, although this year there hasn't been that much of a range.  The cheapest was in Missouri, a whopping 20c/gal cheaper than anywhere else.  So, how do you know where to buy the stuff?  An iPhone app of course....  GasBuddy lets you check real time prices across the country, so you can plan a strategy...  Sometimes you take min fuel at the beginning of the day and reach the cheapest pump on fumes, sometimes you tanker the stuff as much as possible, and sometimes you pull in for ten gallons to get you just far enough down the road for the good stuff...

Buying at Flying J earns a 2c/gal loyalty discount - every little helps - but occasionally you see sights like this...

  

The guy was pumping gas into his Hog and lights a cigarette..... 

Finally...

.... after a two day delay we headed out towards Colorado.  The twelve or so inches of rain we've had in the past two weeks caused all kind of electronical conniptions in the RV - all hooked up, boarded and ready to go...  the windshield wipers came on and refused to quit....  After performing an unnatural act to get under the dashboard, I pulled the fuse and hoped for no rain for three weeks.  Pulling out of the driveway I found the a/c and fan had quit, and the step by the door was still protruding.

We went to the WaWa, had lunch and came home.

After a day of troubleshooting, the wipers had healed themselves following a night on their own without power, and an obscure 5 amp fuse labeled 'Jack Alarm' proved to be the culprit.  Whoever Jack is I have no clue, but if he ever shows his face around here, I have a fuse that I'll be happy to plug in for him...

On the road two days late and a fresh itinerary, and we were off Buckeye Lake in Ohio where we were greeted by hordes of ravenous mosquitoes (Buckeye Lake), and a night of torrential rain, thunder, and spectacular lightening.  Max surpassed all previous panting records and managed to deposit saliva at an unprecedented rate of 1 gal/hr all over the interior of the coach.  It now has a shiny yet slightly slippery patina....

The mountains by Thursday is the plan....

Joplin....

.... is a mess...

We left Tulsa, OK yesterday morning and headed up I-44 towards St Louis, MO, the sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day- until we drove past Joplin.  The tornado touched down just south of the Interstate, and there's a small swath of destruction across the road, just a drop in the bucket compared with the town itself, but what we saw was mind blowing.  All the descriptions you hear of this kind of damage pale into insignificance when you see it for yourself - the destruction is total, and what's left is barely recognizable.  Two Blackhawks were flying over the city, I'm assuming it was the President, getting a first hand view of the chaos.  Whatever he was looking at was ten times worse than the small corner we saw from the road.

So far we've surfed the leading edge of this storm, but as I type these words in the early morning dawn of Granite City, IN, the rain is starting to fall, and the thunder roll around the sky - time to pack up and head east once more....

Santa Fe Workshops

We're about to pack the RV up and head back east after sixteen days on the road, the last week spent in Santa Fe, where I've been attending a workshop on Digital Printing at The Santa Fe Photographic Workshops.  It was given by George DeWolfe, a Master Printer, and Fine Art Photographer.  It was a pretty steep learning curve, but a lot of fun.  We had a field trip up to Red Rocks north of Abiquiu, and spent the rest of the time processing the images.  I have posted a photo album here, with some of the final product.  I know six images doesn't seem much, but it took two days to cough that much up.....

For the geeks who need to know, the camera is a Mamiya 645AFD with a 22MP ZD digital back.  It weighs a ton....  The images were recorded in RAW format, in color, and then post-processed and turned to grayscale in Adobe Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5.

Thought for the day.....

... did you hear of the Buddhist Monk who saw a hotdog vendor in the street, and asked him to make him One with Everything....