Bloomingdale Trail

For the past year or so, whenever I was riding the el I would see an elevated railway that occasionally had a person walking on it. The other week my curiosity got the best of me so I decided to finally figure out what the heck it was. Turns out it's an abandoned elevated railway that cuts through the north city.


Normally I would be in that train looking down at a strange man taking a photo and thinking, "How did that guy get there?" Oh how the tables have turned. The trail is easy to find but difficult to access - I only noticed two feasible "entrances" in a 2-3 mile span.


Same spot as above but the view to the south.


Anyway, I ended up taking my bike for a ride down the path after work the other day.


Looks like a normal trail but notice the lamp posts on the left. Since the path is elevated, you can take a stroll through Bucktown, Logan Square, Humboldt Park, and other regions with the traffic and crowds under you instead of around you. Although I definitely wouldn't hang out here at night since plenty of vagrants were already wandering around here by the early evening.


The path is pretty rough. Plenty of broken glass, plastic shards of all shapes and colors, tire-busting gravel, random car parts, broken electronics, piles of old railroad ties, an uncovered manhole, etc. Oh yeah, and freight cars. Apparently there's an ongoing effort to clean up the trail (cool) and also to transform it into some paved walkway (not cool).


Ride control.


Street level view of the walkway. It crosses over a couple dozen streets just like this. The murals I posted here are actually taken right off the walls and underpasses of the walkway. Apparently the rail company elevated the track about 20 feet to comply with a city ordinance which sought to reduce pedestrian fatalities at crossings. Yikes.

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Liatris

Cathy's Bridal Shower

Cathy's bridal shower was last weekend and I was recruited to take some photos. It was kind of difficult since I don't really do event photography and I'm not exactly well versed on the going ons of a bridal shower. But I did what I could and here's a few I took:


Listen to the cake. It is wise.


Bernice setup a nice party room in her building to have the shower in.


That's Bernice next to Cathy.


The rest of the guests.


Favor box. Filled with girly stuff. I was hoping it was going to be filled with beef jerky and knives.


Flowers (which Bernice arranged) hanging out with the cake.


Some of the food. Tasty.


Some of the treats. Tasty x 2.

Cathy and the guests had fun. I had fun too since all I did was eat and occasionally wave the camera around. More photos on Cathy's facebook.

Fixed Internets

Hey who fixed the internet? Anyway, like I was saying, the roof of our building got some much needed repairs. Despite being a relatively new construction, there was some water infiltration problems with the prior roof. I think the technical term for the problem was that it was a "crap roof."

Sometimes I miss the days when I rented and a crap roof was someone else's problem. And when I would open a fridge to find that a housemate's fresh venison had dripped blood all over the beers. Yes, those were the days.


Rained a couple weeks ago and Cathy noticed our balcony drain was not draining. She called me and said, "Hey, your sandals are floating. On our balcony." Needless to say, I rushed back so that I could play battleship. (The problem was that Quentin's hair was covering the drain - crisis averted).

Broken Internets

Internet connection at my place has been and still is down due to roof construction. Looks like I have to go to the store and pick up some tubes to make myself a couple new internets.

Cathy's bridal shower was this past weekend, I'll post some photos when my connection is fixed.

Prospect Park

On a recent Saturday morning, I took my car in to get a safety recall done. I was then told that my car's engine would eventually explode. Thankfully, these days I ride my bike to work and anywhere else I need to go so I'm okay with that. No oil changes and I fuel up by eating sandwiches. Still, I like keeping my car around so I can occasionally shout insults at it.

Anyway, while waiting for my car I took a walk around Prospect Park across the street. Only spent about 15 minutes there and took photos of exactly two things:


Bumblebee on a coneflower, eating and pollinating. Bumblebees aren't very aggressive and tolerate having a camera shoved right up to their snout pretty well.


Traffic jam on the surface tension highway.

Invites

A couple weeks ago, Cathy started putting together the wedding invites. She had to cut some paper and I went for moral support. Used Cathy's Sony point-and-shoot to take a couple photos for posterity's sake:


Setting up the paper...


Cutting the paper...


All with the Self-Sharpening Safety Super Roller Cutter. Awesome.

Only three months left. Time flies.

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Tent

Freedom Cake

Hope everyone had a good July 4th weekend. Cathy and I stayed around here which was real nice since we've been recently out of town quite a bit. Among other things, we went to a nice family barbeque at Tim and Julie's multi-acre residence where the dogs ran around, a frisbee was thrown many a time, and some serious badminton matches took place.


After we got back from the barbeque, fireworks were going off all around us. Looked like some people really made an effort to put on some good backyard shows this year. I don't really like fireworks, but hey, I had nothing better to do so I grabbed some brews, sat on the balcony, and enjoyed the view. Check out the obnoxious smoky haze created by all the fireworks going off.


Cathy put together a little July 4th dessert for the barbeque. We called it the Freedom Cake because freedom is delicious.

Michigan Again

Went to Michigan to pick up Q and visit the parents. Good times as usual.

I usually only bring my fixed 25mm lens when I visit. It's a simple lens that takes simple photos: Its field of view is roughly equivalent to the field of view for human vision so what you see is what you get. Combined with the fact that it's very compact, it would be good for street photography (unfortunately I'm not really into that these days).


Like I said before, always something going on in the backyard. Some red lilies were blooming - never knew they were there.


The weather was great so I went for a swim with Quentin. Cathy took a couple nice photos.


Albert: "Quentin, there's a tennis ball over there."
Quentin: "This is relevant to my interests."


Kya got in a grooming session with my dad and Cathy. She was very relaxed.


Very relaxed.