In my (old) job, I travel(ed) fairly often. Most of the time it's in the middle of nowhere, but some of the time it's in .. other places. Most of which can be seen on the other (first) page.

  So without further ado...

Marco Island, Florida

Here is a completely man-made resort that should not exist. The entire "island" is dedicated to recreation for people who are retired, all the way down to having an entire waterway system going to peoples' back yards so that they don't have to travel all the way to a marina to take their boat out. For us (my wife and myself), it was an all-expense paid trip from my company, in reward for me doing an outstanding job with whatever it is that I do (?).

We were only there for a few days (which was plenty), and didn't have a car, so the opportunity to take lots of pictures (with variety) didn't really make itself available. We stayed at the Marco Island Marriot, one of the better resorts in the area from what I could tell looking around. It was 45 - 55 degrees most of the time, but that didn't stop anyone from wearing shorts and sandals, as most people there were probably taking vacation from somewhere much much colder. There was plenty to do, from jet skiing to surfing, from playing golf to watching a movie, from drinking all day to shopping. A lot of it was out of the question due to the temperature of the water (freezing), but I did get some new shorts and sandals (because I only brought jeans and my one pair of Timberland boot-shoes), and she got a purse. We also went on a 4 hour fishing trip that was supposed to be deep sea, but the wind was too hard, which made big waves, which prevented us from going off-shore.
Pulling out of the marina on the way to go fishing. It's very early in the morning, and very windy and cold.
Out of the marina, and into the small bay. Screens protect the back porches from Summer bugs and rogue seagulls.
Still in the bay, but close to the ocean, the corpse of a once great sailboat lays abandoned.
My wife, catches a monster. Our crusty sea captain was very happy, because he gets to keep all the fish we catch.
Sandy lies on the beach, not caring about the temperature and the wind. (saw it while roaming; not my creation)/
One of many beautiful sunsets to be seen in Florida. This one is a bit blurry and has lots of seagulls.
The view from our hotel balcony. As you can see, every inch of the area is cultivated by man.
A couple gets married, and have their picture taken on the beach. The bride's family must be pretty wealthy; this isn't a cheap place.
Yet another sunset (or maybe it's the same one, at a later time). This one is taken from the elevator lobby balcony.
A "toad fish" caught by someone on our boat. Picture is out of sequence, because I needed filler for this space.
One of the two huge heated pools at the resort. This one is for kids.
Hey, it's a seagull on the beach! (This picture is also filler)

Unless I became super wealthy, I would never go to Marco Island on my own. I don't particularly enjoy fishing. I might like jet skiing, but that can be done cheaper just about anywhere else (especially if you know someone with a jet ski). I've yet to swing a golf club - and again, it's cheaper to play golf just about anywhere else. Maybe if Marco Island has an especially nice course, and I get into golf (it's a possibility), I might bring my rotting dolphin sleeping bag and camp out on the beach between matches. Anyway, here's to hoping I make it again next year... Don't know how I can do it, but I'll certainly try (which, of course, is the point of the whole thing).


Accra (Akwaaba), Ghana

I'm sorry I waited so long to talk about my trip to Accra because I've forgotten a lot about it since I've been there. I remember the people being friendly... but I can't think of any specific instances where they acted in this way. I remember that the official language was English - yet nobody spoke it.

I also remember noticing that just about everyone had a job. Not employed in the way that we are used to in the US... But doing all they can to make money all the same. Like Dakar, there were people at traffic lights with baskets full of cell phone accessories, soap, toiletries, candy, etc.. In Accra this was a lot more popular, and not reserved just for adults. Also there were stands everywhere advertising "get visas here!", Space2Space (kind of like a point to point phone network that charges by the minute) huts, and all kinds of trinket and fruit stands. One thing I did not see was a McDonald's. There was a Champ's sports bar, but it had nothing to do with the American franchise. I ate some sort of chicken kebab dish. It was pretty good.


Okay, so it's a tree. Not much more than that... I just like the way it came out. A convention center along the beach. I didn't get to see inside, but I did manage to squeeze a picture from outside. In my entire life I have seen maybe thirty bats. Here I increased my quota 100 fold. They were everywhere, and I actually liked the atmosphere of it all.
This picture is pretty self explanatory... It's the side of a street with people going about their daily business. Another self explanatory picture (that I will explain anyway)... Baboons were gathering around near the entrance of the Shai Hills reserve. In my entire life I have seen maybe thirty bats. Here I increased my quota 100 fold. They were everywhere, and I actually liked the atmosphere of it all.

Unfortunately, I only ate at three other places my entire time there. The hotel in which I stayed, a generic outdoor restaurant, and Southern Fried Chicken, Ghana's first fast food franchise. The hotel food was okay, but expensive. There was a buffet that the chef personally would try to get people to eat there... There was a different theme every day for different kinds of food.. Oriental, African (of course), American, French, etc... A lot of food went to waste every day due to the fact the cost to eat it was the equivalent of $40. I felt bad for the chef and the 5 waiters/waitresses constantly standing by, waiting for customers. There was a lounge-type restaurant in the hotel that charged more reasonable prices for their food but the service was awful. Sometimes it would take 10, 15 minutes to even get a menu, and another 10 minutes to get the drinks ordered, another to get the drinks and order the food, and probably 30 minutes to get the food.

Southern Fried Chicken was awesome. I want to say I went with five different people and everyone got something different and nobody had anything bad to say. The prices were very good (about $3 for a meal and a drink). If I'm ever back in Ghana I'll definitely have to go there again. The "generic outdoor restaurant" was just that... You sat outside under an umbrella or tree and got served this way. I would give a critique about how good the food was but I don't remember the name of the place so it would be pointless.
Landscape, scenery, etc... A baby alligator/crocodile/whatever that wasn't hungry enough to eat us. Hey, more landscape, scenery, etc...! This time without a pond.
Landscape, scenery, etc. with the vehicle we rode in. An important tree; I forgot the name of it. Apparently this tree is used to everything from making mortar to curing malaria. Remember that, it may save your life one day and shelter your babies. Landscape, scenery, etc. with a tree on top.
Landscape, scenery, etc. from high up. Landscape, scenery, etc. from high up and facing a different direction. (I'm starting to see a pattern here) I had to chase this lizard around trying to get a good picture of it. I initially saw him with his head raised high in the middle of a road, but he ran up a tree before I could get my camera ready.
Trees and grass. Neato. Hungry cows eating trash on the ground, right outside of Southern Fried Chicken. A guard told me that I couldn't take pictures of them after I had already snapped two. The bottom of this picture is the vehicle window. I'm glad the image is still croppable to be something worth printing out.

I thought all Guinness came from Ireland, but it turns out I thought wrong. One of the more interesting things I learned about Ghana was that they have their own Guinness brewery... and the Guinness tastes remarkably similar to the Guinness I had when I was in Shannon. There Guinness also makes a malt drink called... Malta that to me tasted like liquid Wheaties. It wasn't bad, but it definitely wouldn't sell in the states.

All in all, I think Accra is probably the best place to visit on the western side of Africa. Dakar was a pretty big city, but the pollution was out of control and the people were not friendly at all. Accra seemed to keep the trash piles in control, and the livestock was much better taken care of (even if they do eat junk food all day). One thing I did notice though, was that people peed everywhere. I had to wait outside of a gate to a loading dock and while I was there I noticed a broken down van in the middle of a dirt field. The ground around it was soaked and in less than a minute I knew why... In the twenty minutes I waited there I saw about 30 people walk up to it and pee on it. I guess they didn't have bathrooms anywhere near there. I have a picture somewhere of a sign in front of a construction zone that says "Do not urinate here" but I can't find it.
Special coffins are a specialty in the area for some reason. This particular shop had about 20 of them ranging from large beer bottles to an airplane. A two for one special... Right outside of a military academy these guys are marching with logs in cadence... And in the foreground you see someone driving my Prelude.

St. Louis, Missouri

I've been here twice, and I've yet to see the famous arch... Well, that's a lie. I saw it while riding by them on the way to the Hustler Club. I didn't get a picture of it, but luckily for you plenty of other people did... If you are aching to see the arch click here. If not, continue on. (UPDATE: I did go there a third time a year after this time, and was able to take some excellent pictures of the arch. I may post them, I may not.)
This is the hotel I got to stay at. Very inefficiently constructed for today's society (small U-Haul trucks get stuck underneath that portion of building all the time) We were sitting at a stop sign and we saw all these hopping heads coming towards us from a distance. Turns out it was an all female jump-rope team marathon thing. You don't see that everyday. A layout of road seen from up high. Enjoy. (if you are into that sort of thing.)

While I had plenty of time to go sightseeing, I spent most of my time enjoying delicious Steak N Shake meals and free internet that was reachable from the Starbuck's across the street. In addition to this, I also had a couple of internet friends in the area that I was able to say hi to.

The pictures directly below have nothing to do with this.


This is the valet area of some other hotel that I didn't get to stay in. I had an opportunity to take a picture of it from up high so I did. I couldn't seem to get a good picture of this building downtown.. The sun was right behind it and there was no way to even out the lighting in my camera. Instead what you have is a quality picture of a sky with a silhouette of a building, or a quality picture of a building with an extremely bright sky. This was the most 'best of both worlds' one in the bunch that I took. Sometimes when cars are parked on the side of the road in a picture, it makes it a little bit more worth looking at. Agree? No? :(

The internet can be a dangerous place to meet people on, but then so can anywhere else. I feel strange to say that I've actually developed a friendship over the internet; one that's actually developed into a face to face "Hi, how are you doing? I happen to be in the area... Do you want to go drinking?" and BAM I'm drinking pitchers of Guinness with three people I've shot to death hundreds of times over and over - over the internet (not to mention the times that they've killed me), and playing Buck Hunter 2006 at a bar called Blueberry Hill and BS'ing about things that weren't important enough for me to remember.

Another night out I tried some other kinds of beer for the first time... One of which is called Oatmeal Stout. I was very impressed with it, but I don't remember the brand. I did try Young's Oatmeal Stout later on but it didn't taste the same as the stout I had in St. Louis. The place we went to had all kinds of different beer from different countries and my hopes got up (extremely high) when I saw Lithuania on the list. Alas... they didn't have Svytury's (the best beer I've ever had as far as I can remember, save for Guinness of course) but instead a lemon-flavored Utenos that I could barely stomach.

Anyway I had a pretty good time and my apologies for not being able to say much about the city itself... Besides, my city descriptions are usually pretty boring anyway.
WOW!
It's a building somewhere in St. Louis!
0_0
 To the left is a guy that recently (against my strongest discouragement)joined the Army posing in front of his car, and his friend to the right recently purchased a blackberry (not to be confused with a dinglebery). To the left is a guy who drives a Chevy Custom Van with a bed in the back, and a television with a Sega Genesis (and a 32X attachment) hooked into it. We couldn't seem to get it to work, but we probably weren't trying too hard either.

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit, Detroit... I was impressed with the exterior of the GM building, but that pretty much covers the extent of it. Of course, I didn't get to see much of the city.. save for the Hard Rock Cafe and the stadium that the Lions play in (is it called Lions Stadium? I can't remember). I did get to ride the monorail (which was almost faster than walking) and see all the abandoned buildings, though. One complete loop around the city (excluding the 15 minutes it stalled between stations for no reason) took about 10 minutes and there were no sights because of the location of the rail... It didn't seem designed for sightseers at all. On the way to Hard Rock (walking) I was acosted by four individual homeless men asking for the usual spare change... one asked me for a couple of dollars. I hadn't had that many people do that in such a short amount of time since I was in Portland (there everybody asked for spare change... not just the homeless people).

The thing I think of when I think of Detroit is the mayor's big (gold?) toothed smile and his motorcade of Escalades with spinner style rims (the rims are a rumor I heard). Despite his image he argues against the continuing plans of a new subsection development called Africa Town which so far is to only allow black business owners and investors. I knew a little bit about the state of Detroit prior to coming to the city but I was hoping that the media was doing it's normal job of blowing things out of proportion. But after having been there I can confirm that Detroit is not going to get any better any time soon.

Almost every store has bars; almost every fast food place is enclosed in bullet-proof glass (with a little turnstile for you to exchange money for your food). The crime rate is ridiculous for such a small city, and during the day hundreds of people can be seen BSing on the sides of the streets, drinking, smoking, etc.. Pretty much the only place I felt safe was right near the GM building and inside it.

The suburbs of the city are nice and seem to be growing fast. There's one nice (very rich people's) neighborhood I was in where I got to see a private school that was architecturally designed akin to Hogwarts (School of Witchcraft and Wizardry). I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside it though unfortunately... Shame because they would have been good ones.


GM building (and others) and flags flying at half staff. I don't remember why. The GM building from the other side. You can actually see the logo from here. The east side of the city from inside the hotel. It's colored funny because of the tint on the window.
Canada, oh Canada. Right across the river the whole time and I didn't know it until my last day in the city. There's the monorail going around a near-abandoned convention center. Hey, it's the GM building again. This picture would have come out great if I could have made it a bit more symmetric. This is proof you get what you pay for.

Knoxville, Tennessee

Not quite what I expected out of a major city in a state famous for Country music and pretend cowboys/girls... The most memorable thing I remember about Knoxville is that the people there drive worse than anywhere else I've been... and I've been to a lot of cities. I've never seen so many people slam on their brakes to change lanes in my life; and the flow of traffic definitely suffers for it. I found it hard to move more than a mile at a time on the interstate without coming to a complete stop and sitting bumper to bumper for ten minutes before moving on to the next mile.

That being said, there isn't much else I can think of to tell you. So here's some pictures.
One of the better pictures of downtown that I was able to get. I don't know what that ball is, but it looked cool in sort of a retro "from the 70's" way... There was definitely no shortage of rolling countryside in and around the city. I wish I was able to get more pictures/examples.
That first picture was one of the better ones.. This one is the best. A pretty nice picture taken at twilight. Below you see the Tennessee Grill where I tried for the first and last time a Monte Cristo sandwich. I liked the way the sun and shadows displayed themselves on this Q-bert styled building, so I took a picture of it.

One of these trips I might be able to go around and actually look around with the sole purpose of getting some good pictures... But until that happens I'm limited to only taking pictures where they are convenient. Knoxville was an interesting town, and the people were fairly nice. Groceries were cheap and there were lots of places to eat. There was a mall that was pretty big but you had to sit in a lot of traffic to get in and out of it. There was also a Chinese Buffet restaurant that advertised 350+ items that we didn't get the chance to try, but if you're in the area and you happen to go please write down what all the items are so that I know how people can come up with 350 of them each and every day to serve at a buffet.


Shannon (Sionainn), Ireland (Eire)

Of all the countries that I've been to, Ireland is the only one that ended up to be exactly as I expected. Rolling countryside galore, narrow roads, rainy, foggy, and sunny all in the same day (with plenty of rainbows).. Towns were small and cozy, each with a couple of Irish-pub style pubs (go figure) and restaurants.. Guinness signs posted almost everywhere.. It was great.

I was only there for a short time, but I got more of a chance to sightsee than I did pretty much any other country I've been to... And sightsee I did for almost a full day, and I have many pictures to show for it... 19 of the best of which you will see here. I am now making them a smaller size due to the rampant picture stealing going on from MySpace users... I can only see the ones that hotlink my pictures.. who knows how many people actually save them and post them on their own sites.

When we first arrived at our hotel it was late.. The hallways were very confusing and there were four 10 - 13 year old girls sitting on a bench in the hallway. "Hello!" "How are you?" "Are you American?" "What room are you looking for?" "Yes, it's that way." and then as we dragged our bags down the hallway, I hear one of them loudly say "Yes, we're helping the American people out because they are so friendly." which simply had to be one of the most sarcastic remarks I'd ever heard. I walked back to them and said "Thank you for your help everyone." to which I got four loud "You're welcome!"'s, coupled with big smiles.. So maybe they weren't being sarcastic.. or maybe they were being especially sarcastic.. I don't know, and never will... It was definitely awkward.
There were lots of people biking all over the place.. I don't know what the phenomenon was about.. I guess not many people can afford cars, because obviously if given the choice considering the narrow roads and lack of sidewalks a person would definitely rather drive than bike. I forgot what this house/castle was called and what it's purpose was.. but the picture came out fairly interestingly even though my lens was fogging up and the picture was taken from behind a dirty windshield. Gus O'Conner's pub was the most recommended place to eat by almost all the locals, so appropriately that is the first place we ate. I got the opportunity to take this picture thanks to a car in front of us that had killed going on the steep uphill slope (it stopped to get around some bikers and was unable to get moving again) for a full minute or two.
What's this? Rolling countryside?? In IRELAND? Am I going crazy? That cow looks mighty yummy though. More rolling countryside.. This time with a dash of stones and rocks. A very beautiful spot right in front of the Ailwee Bear Cave tourist location (we didn't go in).

When I said Ireland was exactly as I expected, I was a little wrong.. What I didn't expect was the sheer amount of rock everywhere.. Stone walls divided every property, every hill had rock jutting out of it.. If a tsunami ever hit Ireland, I am confident all of the land will remain intact.. It is definitely a very stout island. I had no idea grass could be so green when it's growing on less than an inch of rocky soil, but as somebody pointed out to me.. it rains just about every day there.
Right up the road from Gus O'Conner's Pub is this castle looking thing. Our driver said something about it, but I forgot what. Picture came out okay, I guess. Cows on the horizon, and a fence that is not made of stone. If you turn left from looking at the cows, you will see this thing. It had a name, but I forgot it. Lots of tourists...
An Irish 6-pack of Guinness Extra Stout.. My favorite beer. I don't know if it will taste different but I'm sure I will find out soon. Part of the Cliffs of Moher. I tried to get as much scenery in one shot as possible. Sorry if you have to tilt your head to look at it. I find this to be the best picture I took in the country. This is Burnatty castle, a brewery/tourist attraction/banquet center all in one.
The magical Cliffs of Moher! You would think that since there are so many tourists walking around and even climbing the edge that there would be a lot of accidental deaths here.. But no. Most deaths here are from suicides. That statistic might be "modified" by the local government though.. maybe to keep from having to put barricades everywhere destroying the landscape. A little bit to the left of the cliffs, there is an opening between a couple of ridges, and a town is visible in the distance, along with a few mountains. Too bad is was so foggy and rainy... the picture still came out well regardless. A small service road located across from Burnatty castle... Very charming.
Hey! It's Burnatty Castle again! This time from the road behind it that led to it's entrance. Very difficult avoiding cars here because I'm used to looking left first when crossing.. Guess what this is. I'll give you a hint, it starts with a "B" and ends with "urnatty Castle". Good close shot of the architecture and makeup of the building. Countryside again... picture taken right outside of my hotel on my last day in Ireland.. Also the day I did the most work, which is unfortunate because the weather was the best.
A family staying at our hotel playing "Pitch 'n Putt" with a small castle-like building in the distance.

Moscow, Russia

I don't really know what to say about this place.... It's a typical city, with city people and city businesses.. It just happens to be located on the other side of the world. People are a little rude (about as much as they are in where I live now) and I was surprised at how little English everyone spoke.. Surprised because of how Americanized/Europized the city was.. There were advertisements everywhere in English, plenty of American originated businesses (surprisingly, no Starbuck's though) there with English menus.. But nobody spoke English. Not the cab drivers, not the cashiers at McDonald's, not the Mexican restaurant (surprise surprise), not the waiter at TGI Fridays.. Nobody (well, at the hotel they all spoke decent English.. but I think they had to to work there). So.. basically if you're ever going to Moscow, learn Russian before you go. I had a fun time deciphering their letters, though. I can read the words out loud pronounced somewhat correctly, but I can't tell you what they mean. Sometimes they sound like something familiar (like most of the menu items at McDonald's.. McFlurry, Big Mac, etc. all sounded the same but with a Russian accent).

I didn't get a chance to get out much.. Surprisingly, I got out less than I did on my trip to Lithuania, so most of my pictures are from the hotel. We did get to go to Red Square on our second to last day, but it was closed off and we didn't feel like bribing the cops to get in... so we walked around the perimeter looking around, and of course taking pictures.
A TV tower off in the distance. The street that ran right by our hotel. Just a general picture of the downtown area, with a large building off in the distance (I don't know what it is).
A good night shot of another building I don't know.. The first floor of it is a casino, though. A flea-market type shopping area that was just about as expensive as the shops downtown. We told the driver to take us to the Moscow Harley Davidson shop. Instead he brought us to this Mad Max museum and gift shop.

Okay, so the Mad Max museum and gift shop wasn't really a museum.. I actually have no clue what it was.. It sold used motorcycle parts and paraphernalia.. And behind it looked to be a concert area with several Mad Max themed establishments.. and it included a Harley Davidson shop in the corner. I bought a patch for the equivalent of $12. We later found the HD shop we wanted to go to and they turned out not to have much worth buying. A simple T-Shirt with the word "Moscow" on the back was priced at $55.
Just a normal street near the city... I would have liked to get more pictures like this one. There was a street worker to the left who got mad at me when I took this picture. I guess he though I was taking a picture of him. Here we were walking around looking for a restaurant called Tinkoff's. We asked a local where we could find it and he got angry with us and yelled and pointed up the street. Needless to say, Tinkoff's wasn't in that direction. At all. Yet another building that I have no idea what it's purpose is... I like the architecture of it, though... There are many similar buildings in Moscow.
Here a bus came in from a side street and joined the parade (celebrating their 60th Victory Day), almost running over the people walking with the parade. An old, unfinished building behind our hotel.. And a tree I've never seen anywhere else. Right outside of Red Square.
Again, right outside of Red Square. Since Red Square was barricaded off, we had to walk around it to get a good picture of the backside of St. Basil's cathedral... This is the first of that series of pictures. Street traffic in Moscow moved very slowly. There was one traffic light (that we had been stuck at) that would be red for 20 minutes, and green for 15 seconds. It took us about two hours to get through it.
St. Basil's cathedral.. the very thing that distinguishes Moscow from other cities, and in many cases Russia from other countries. It is very dream-like to see in person. This was taken during our walk back to where we started from.. I think it came out interestingly. This was an old train station (or something) that was turned into a mall. It was very huge and near impossible to navigate systematically... I'm sure we missed about 25% of the stores.

Jackson, Mississippi

I was only here for a couple of hours, but I got a couple of good pictures out of the deal.. I was visiting my cousin Stacey at the time and during the visit we went to the Jackson capital.. .. .. So here are some pictures.
Capital building. Good picture. :) The church that was across the street from where we parked. The picture came out good, so here it is. And finally, inside the Jackson capital.. On the far end is the base of a huge, well-decorated Winter tree. (Politically correct)

Reno, Nevada

Most of what I know about this city came from watching the spooftastic Comedy Central show Reno 911. Just from watching the show, I always wondered where the show writers got their ideas from. After being there, I know. Just hang around the city for a little while and you're sure to see something weird. There's nothing like driving behind a small pickup truck with about two rooms worth of unsecured furniture in the back, and then swerving around a recliner when it bounces out.

More or less, the city is very dusty and dry.. traffic sucks for about one hour out of the day (oh, and it's best to remember that McCaran Blvd. goes around Reno. Knowing that will prevent quite a bit of driving while trying to find something).. and most locals do not speak English. There's lots of adult video stores, peep shows, and places to gamble your money away if ever find yourself bored.

Here's some pictures. Not too many... because as usual I didn't have much of a chance to take them.
A (golf) driving range right outside the hotel. A job that seems to go only to the non-English speaking locals is to retrieve the golf balls that don't make it into the green. A perfect desert-esque sunset. Unfortunately the sun managed to stay hidden behind a cloud the entire time it went down. Just a simple zoomed in picture of downtown Reno. I think the big white dome is the most distinguishing building for the whole city.

Hurricane Relief, Florida and Alabama

Well these trips really sucked. There was no electricity, no running water.. it was hot and for each we had two days to do seven days worth of work. The first one was for Hurricane Charley in (somewhere??) Florida and the other one was for Hurricane Ivan in SouthofMobile, Alabama.

Here's some pictures of the damage that I got to take a picture of. I don't know which are from which hurricanes. Most are out of a moving vehicle. And what you see here isn't even close to the worst that happened. I wasn't lucky enough to see that.
This is what happens when you speed. Good ole rotted wooden telephone pole. Those cables are much stronger than they let on. Red Cross relief workers.. they gave us free soggy baloney sandwiches. One guy had about four pounds of piercings.
Some business owners were too lazy to remove the boards from their windows, so they just spraypainted "Open" on them. The people who own this building probably parked their cars in it to protect them. Lucky house only recieved little damage
This reminds me of a bald guy who's toupee got blown over by the wind. I don't think anyone was living here anyway. This is the remains of a small aircraft hangar. To the left is what's left of a small aircraft. *note that there are no wings on it)
Nice, brand new solid concrete light poles.. Blown to an angle from the high sustained winds. None fell to the ground. This is us after our work is done and everything is packed up.. Ready to go home. Good pic.

Overland Park/Kansas City, Missouri

I wish there were something special I could say about Kansas City.. but there really isn't anything worth saying (from all that I experienced). .. traffic wasn't all that good or bad.. Nothing really impressive or dismaying. Just a standard city from what I could see. Lots of empty buildings with boarded windows.. Lots of nice buildings with expensive cars parked around it.. etc, etc..

In Overland Park I stayed at a Doubletree hotel that didn't give out fresh baked cookies (like Doubletree's are supposed to). Here is where I realized that America's new cities/suburbs are very cookie-cut. You have your Best Buy right across the street from Circuit City, with CompUSA a block down the road. In between are a bunch of restaurants (such as Chili's and Applebee's) and grocery stores.. Complete with many Starbuck's and Subway sandwich shops. Anyway.. here's some pictures.
Just a picture of some building from the roof of my hotel. Just another picture of some building from the roof of my hotel.. This one shows road layout! Saw a steam roller chugging down the side of the interstate.. so I took a picture of it.
Huge, beautiful well kept office building.. Dead empty for two years... Located right smack in the middle of a residential area. The person that owns it just doesn't know what to do with it. I thought this was an interesting graffiti deterrent. In New Orleans there was a similar building that got a different picture painted on it every month.. done by prisoners. Picture of downtown Kansas City.
Took this picture out of a moving minivan's window. I thought it came out good. Kansas City, of course. I was just playing with the shutter speeds on my camera, and thought this picture came out well. Could serve as a good advertisement for whatever car that is.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

I was expecting Pittsburgh to be this nasty, dirty, grungy, ugly looking city. To my surprise it was very well refined.. and much of it new.. or refurbished at least. Not much else to say.. Just look at the pictures now.
A couple of older looking buildings.. styled to look older at least.. I think this is on 6th Avenue. A really big post-modern looking building with what looks like airplane windows. On the first floor is some sort of ultra-expensive lookin internet access room. This is the courtyard right behind the hotel we stayed in.. When we first arrived the fountains were on, but they are off for this picture. :(
Taken from the roof of the tallest building in the city. I was not supposed to bring my camera up there.. I was told after the fact. Another from that same roof. See the clouds, see the sky, see the shadows, see all the little ants that call themselves people. Taken from the street.. this one is cobblestone, and to the right you'll see one of my coworkers ruining my picture.

Beaver Creek, Colorado

This is my second time in this place. The first time I went was about two years ago.. and I strongly regretted not bringing my camera.. because this place is BEAUTIFUL. Even this time, I did not get as much of an opportunity to take pictures.. most of them did not come out nearly as good as expected... and some came out a lot better than expected.
Just some very green mountains.. and clouds. I have no idea what that contraption on the ground is.. It was probably very expensive to use..whatever it was. A stream that was probably man-made running through the shopping area. Very pretty.. I took several pictures of it, but a lot of them came out kind of cruddy looking. The same stream.. further down. I almost got hit by a car trying to take this one.. so you better appreciate it.

Believe it or not, there were LOTS of rich people here. Lots.. and lots .. and lots. Drinking their coffee.. wearing their wool vests.. letting their kids run around smacking expensive items with sticks... etc. etc.. They were all seemingly pretty nice people. This could be mainly because I didn't have the pre-impression that I would hate them, like I used to.

One time, I saw a guy taking pictures with a camera very similar to mine. He had the LCD screen flipped out, and my camera is the only one I've seen that had the same feature.. I walked closer to him to get a better look and said "Almost the same.. almost the same..". He pulled his camera down and looked at me (I was holding my camera..). He asked me what 'Meg' it was and I told him 128 Megs, as that's the size of the compact flash card. He kind of looked sad and said.. wow.. mine's only 4.0. I realized he was talking about the Megapixel, and not the memory.. so I had to tell him mine was 5.0. And he said "Wow.. yours' has even more definition. What kind is it?" and I said that it was a G5. He looked at his.. it was only a G2. Heh. My camera penis was bigger than his. We talked a little about taking pictures and when I started to walk off I noticed his entourage of about 12 people all looking at me smiling like they wanted to invite me to dinner with them... Apparently they were standing there for a while. I should have stayed and talked with him a little more. Maybe he would have given me a Porsche.
An ice rink in the middle of the shopping area. I thought the reflections of the buildings looked neat in it. More buildings made in an architectural style that.. I really like for some reason. There's the ice rink down there.. all covered up. This time I'm a little bit higher (I'm wearing stilts) and there's a good view of the green mountains in the background.
Another picture taken while I was on really big stilts.. More houses.. more mountains.. You can just smell the money. This is the last picture I took of the little expensive town. The shadows sort of screw it up.. but it still came out nice.

 

 

 

 

 

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