4th

Had a nice July 4th weekend, hope you did too. Our time was evenly split between partying at Nick's and relaxing at the parents. As always, good times were had all around.

These days I'm a little bummed I haven't done any real hiking trips this season, but hopefully that will be remedied soon. At the least, I'm planning on getting out to good ol' North Manitou Island for a long weekend in August. It's a tiny little place, maybe 20-25 square miles, but it has incredibly good bang for the buck and offers some classic Michigan hiking. Actually, South Manitou is where I took my first serious backpacking trip at the tender age of 14 and annual summer trips followed for years. I haven't been there in quite some time so I'm pumped to go back. Anyway, enough pontification - I'm going outside to play.

LOUD NOISES.

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Dive

The 4th

How was your July 4th? I hope it was filled with freedom because I know mine was. This year Cathy and I went to Michigan over the long weekend to celebrate our country's independence. We first sauntered over to West Bloomfield to say hi to my parents and then traipsed back over to Ypsilanti to hang out with Nick and Emily at their place.


The weekend revolved around relaxation. I discovered that sitting on the dock and enjoying a Scotch (Bourbon is also acceptable) really strengthens relaxation's gravitational pull on a weekend.


It is Lowcountry Boil. It is a South Carolina dish. It is delicious.


Nick, wakeboarding. One day I hope to be able to accurately describe a photo as "Nick, hoverboarding."


Good weekend? Great weekend.

Memorial Day

Ahhh...finally back home and time for a new post. First up is Memorial Day. Like last year, Cathy and I went up to Nick's cabin. Last year was awesome and cloudy, this year was awesome and sunny. Needless to say, the weekend was chockablock with good times. Chockablock. I took a bunch of photos, natch, here are a couple:


Emily and Cathy on the pontoon boat. Lots of time was spent floating around lazily, enjoying some drinks, and enjoying life. Super-mega fun.


Nick and Brent on the deck, probably talking about the American imperialists.


Nickbot


Brentbot


Bell's Oberon Ale was the weekend's drink of choice because it is the color and scent of a sunny afternoon.


There is a joke to be made here.


(Sun + pontoon boat + tunes + friends) x Oberon = daaance paarty


Nonsense shot. However, when I took this I didn't see that a dragonfly (known as the bonus dragonfly) was on the mushroom, which is on a stump, which is in a lake, until I looked at the photo back home. Great stuff.

To sum it all up: Awesome friends, awesome weekend.

Chicago Geysers

So when the weather gets even remotely better around here, something I do for fun/exercise/training/exploration is to take long urban hikes. This usually means a 15-ish mile wandering walk through the city with a 10-15 pound backpack (containing sandwiches and photography equipment). I took one such walk a couple weeks ago on a sunny but chilly day and it was pretty routin for the most part. Most of my photos were more pointless than usual. However, at one point I got close to the lake and I heard these loud booming sounds. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the booms were waves from an uncharacteristically brown Lake Michigan that were slamming into the corrugated sea wall and blasting geyser-like columns up to 40 feet into the air.


I wish I could have put something along the boardwalk for scale since it's hard to understand how huge it really was, but: (1) there was a solid sheet of ice covering the whole area; (2) the waves were unpredictable; and (3) anything on the lower section would have been immediately sucked right into the lake from the receding water.


Wall of water.


There was a serious wind rolling off the lake and as the "geysers" erupted, the mist was being pushed into a chain link fence up on a small hill. Although it had not been cold enough deeper within the city for ice for some time, it was cold enough by the lake for the mist to totally envelop the links in solid ice. I imagine the whole fence was a solid block of ice at some point before the sun came out.


Frozen links.


Absolutely epic. It was an amazing find, and the fact that it was totally unexpected made it that much better. I spent at least an hour watching the show as I enjoyed my morning sammich, and since it was so cold/icy/misty/inherently dangerous (and a weekday), I was the only one there - which also made it that much better.

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.

Memorial Day

Cathy and I went up north to Nick's (who happens to be one of my groomsmen) where good times were had by all. It's always nice to get out of Chicago to get a change of scenery, relax, and see my friends. Took a bunch of photos, here are a couple:


Cathy, Emily, and Brent watching Nick ready the boat. Sweatshirts since it was still a bit brisk in the mornings and three of perhaps hundreds of thumbs ups over the weekend.


Nick.


Nick's stalefish.


Brent.


Brent's profile.


Lots of this too.

Jump

I've been kind of busy these days with a lot of nonsense, so haven't really had much time to take photos. However, I did pick up a low-endish 25mm prime that I'm itching to try out. The image quality isn't that great but the lens is about the size of an Oreo, so it's all about the portability with this one. We'll see.

In the meantime, here's a scan of a ~10 year photo of me (taken by Chuck):


I don't remember the name of the river we were jumping into or even the year this was taken. All I know is it was somewhere in the upper peninsula of Michigan and that it was damn fun.

A New Generation!

As of today, my brother is a dad, my parents are grandparents, and I'm an uncle!

I don't know what that makes Quentin, but he's happy too!

Thanksgiving

It's about that time. End of the harvest. The one day I might consider giving sweet potatoes another chance. Black Friday Eve. Turkey o'clock as we in the biz say. Thanksgiving.

My parents are coming in for the week. We'll be spending the holiday at Cathy's parents' house for a hybrid Korean/American feast. Meaning turkey served here, ggakdugi over there, maybe some stuffing in this bowl, octopus on a stick on that plate, and of course a number of desserts from Cathy.

So most people get together and become hedonists for a day, but remember it's also a day to appreciate what you have in a spiritual sense (or material, if that's what floats your boat). I think a lot of people, including me, often get carried away with all sorts of irrelevant shit. The inverse is true too, which is equally unfortunate. So kick back for a moment and take some time to reflect, to consciously put things in perspective. I do it whenever I can - and I think it helps me stay grounded in an increasingly ungrounded world.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Randoms:


Cathy tossing caramels. She was making a turtle cheesecake.


Taken at the Robert Sinskey Vineyard. We did some wine tasting there. As you can see, there was another tasting going on in the koi pond, lol.


Clem!

Great Blue Heron

Took a walk around a random park during the summer. I ended up spending some time on a small lake watching this heron fish for food. He was pretty cautious, and took flight when I first walked to the lake (but returned a couple minutes later). He moved very slowly, peering into the water from all sorts of angles. I did my best to sneak around to avoid bothering him.


I was lucky to get this shot. I retreated from the lake to change my position and came back in a roundabout way to hide behind a tree. I waited for him to walk by so that I would be in his blind spot, but he seemed to be taking too long. I peeked around the tree just in time to see his first and only attempt at catching a fish. He snapped his head into the water, speared this bluegill, promptly ate it, and then flew away.

Lassen Volcanic National Park, Pt. 6

Shortly after climbing up and down the Cinder Cone, we reached our site for the day, Butte Lake. We actually got there ahead of time so we decided to go for the next day's campsite, Snag Lake. We kind of overestimated ourselves and the fatigue made enjoying our surroundings secondary to just finishing the hike.


But we eventually made it to Snag Lake, and it was a great spot. Once again, we were the only people there. Here, Eric is actually standing on the dried lakebed. The shore had receded by 20-30 feet due to the drought.


After relaxing a bit, Eric decided to practice some capoeira. Nice air on a roundhouse.


Meia lua.


The presence of fish was suspected during the day when we watched gulls divebomb into the water to catch them. At dusk, it was confirmed when we saw some trout literally jumping out of the water to feed on the insects that had come out. Eric decided to give it another try.


He fished for quite a while, right to the sunset.


Finally snagging a juvenile rainbow trout after a serious bout of patience. He ended up catching two of these little guys, and snapped a line reeling in a much larger one. It was the classic "big one that got away." My brother was pissed.

Bike Ride Through the Lagoons

Cathy and I went to the Skokie Lagoons for a bike ride on the North Branch Bicycle Trail during the week to finally stretch out her bike's legs a little bit. It was a relatively short and leisurely 13 mile bike ride. It meanders through a forest preserve which provides abundant shade, it stops at various clearings with lagoon access, and we had a couple close encounters with some deer grazing mere feet away around the corner. It's a paved path, so it's more suitable for road bikes and joggers, but it was such a nice day it didn't even matter. Get ready for lots of green:


Cathy practicing the mechanics behind low and high gear in this clearing.


Panning shot of Cathy on the path. All smiles.


Our bikes, the path, and Cathy. Halfway through, decided to take a break in this clearing to enjoy the weather.


And of course the custom pink bottle cage on Cathy's bike, complete with pink Nalgene bottle.

I've Seen This Before...

I almost forgot: I bought a new lens over the weekend. Expect to see some inane pictures as it give it a workout in the next couple weeks.

More interestingly, on my way back from buying the new lens, I saw a plume of smoke around where I normally park. I passed an alley and saw that a small garage was on fire, with no firemen in sight.

It was amazing how quickly the fire swallowed up the whole garage. When I first got there, not much fire was visible. Probably a minute later, the whole thing was up in flames. Seeing this brought back memories of when the garage in the house I grew up in somehow caught on fire, and I essentially watched it burn to the ground.


Setting up.


Still setting up.


Putting it out. You might have noticed that the flames started burning the electrical wires above it. This sent sparks flying while firemen were spraying water everywhere. I decided to step a little further away. Also, the firemen seemed to have trouble getting that hose going. And in fact, once it was going, the fireman holding it accidentally blasted two firemen with it (unfortunately I did not capture that priceless moment).


Parked right around the corner.

Lincoln's Birthday

I have the day off for Lincoln's Birthday. No really, I'm serious.

Taking something like this was pretty much impractical for me in the past unless I wanted to spend tons of money and time developing film and anxiously waiting, hoping one of the shots came out. Not so much anymore. I spent about 10 minutes getting the above photo.