Lake Tahoe--Finally

The weather and schedule came together today, so we took a cruise across Lake Tahoe on the M.S.Dixie II.
It's a "paddlewheel" made to look old-timey, but no smoke comes out of the stacks and there are some bonus screws underwater to augment the hydraulicly-driven stern wheel.

'Twas a fine time to be on the lake, and per our experience the weather changed constantly during the 2-hour tour.

A Sylvia pic of the two monkeys who lucked-out and got to fly to Tahoe.


Highway tunnels--supposedly the longest and shortest tunnels in Nevada.


I was hoping to see some of these clouds.
Seems like they are common in the Sierra Nevada mountains.


It was nice to be able to step back and shoot the snowy mountains from a distance.
Got a ton of these Views of Tahoe.


The bears and other critters are still hibernating, so the girls were excited to see a real wild bald eagle.
Lots of yelling and a quick lens change later...


These are the wild women with whom I've just spent a crazy week in Lake Tahoe:


All skiers and snowmobilers now.
Thanks for the great times, ladies.
I'll try to fill-in the blanks later.

More STYX

It's been two weeks since the rodeo and concert, and I'm still blogging about it?
Lots of other stuff has been happening, and I'm way behind.
Remind me of this when I'm complaining that I don't have any new pictures or stories.


Ricky has changed basses and Tommy's now playing a Les Paul, so you can tell that we've finally moved past the 1st song.
JY never changes guitars, and in fact has played this exact same Fender Stratocaster from the beginning.
A friend of his in college invented a distortion or booster circuit of some kind and installed it in the guitar. JY could never get the same sound out of any other gear, and got hooked on it. Forever friends, a boy and his Strat.




This guy sings almost exactly like Dennis DeYoung, the original keyboardist who sang some of the hits, but I think the new fella is less pretentious.
I explained to Sylvia that the other guys hated Mr. Roboto, Dennis's concept album that almost killed their career, and that they wouldn't play the title song. I was right.





Here Tommy is playing a 12 string electric that looks like someone took a saw to a Telecaster. Like me back in the day, he even played a solo on the 12 complete with bent notes. What a little stud.


I had just finished telling Syl about how the band was formed by the Panozza brothers, who played drums and bass, but who were now too old or too dead to tour.
Then who walks up onstage but Chuck Panozza! Ricky Phillips switched to a 6/12 doubleneck so Chuck could play some bass and feel like a star again.
After this song he sat behind the drummer and rested, then played the rest of the night. Two basses at once?
Very Spinal Tap at times, but they made it work.

Rodeo Concert 2011: STYX

What I like about the concerts after the rodeo is that you can take any camera and lens you desire into the ATT Center.
Also, they are only about an hour long which saves my ears.

In the case of bands like STYX, it means that there's no filler--100% Hits!


I wonder how many shows they've done where they arrived at the stage in the back of a pickup and had to walk through poopy dirt?



The only guys remaining from the '70s, James Young and Tommy Shaw:



Ricky Phillips on bass:



The only other time I saw STYX was around 1978-9 at the 3000 seat Palace Theater in Albany NY, front row balcony, on the Grand Illusion tour.
I knew their songs from the radio and was afraid of cheese, but was quickly converted. Tommy Shaw was an incredible performer, then and now.


You can Google the other guys.


Over a week later their songs keep popping into my head for hours at a time.

More to come...

That Rodeo Time Of Year

Yes my friends, the rodeo is back in town!
And for the 7th year in a row, San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo has won the large indoor rodeo of the year. Between this and the Spurs that's a lot of banners hanging from the ceiling of the ATT Center.

This year we weren't able to arrive early enough so I could walk around taking pictures, but I'm about out of ideas anyway.
Managed to find a man washing a cow before sundown, which is kinda kinky:

Then we ate.
Bacon-wrapped hotdog, chickenfried steak sandwich, Frito Pie...YUM!


We hit the doors just before the Star Spangled Banner started, and the staff closed the doors until it was over so we waited with mucho respect.


There was some of the usual rodeo stuff which you've all seen before, so let's skip ahead to my favorite event, the Mutton Bustin' :




Nothing better than seeing a 4 year old clinging for dear life to an angry sheep.

Got some cowboy action photos up next.

And after that, I'll go on and on about how great STYX was.

A Fine Hawk

Getting the mail yesterday I somehow spotted this hawk lurking in the big tree in our back yard:


It eyeballed me as I took 2 photos, then took off:
I was lucky to get this shot before it was blocked by the neighbor's house and trees.


* * * * * * * *
Does anyone remember that funny movie from the '80s where all the high school boys were horny?
OK, narrowing it down, they had a peep hole in the girls gym shower.
Kim Cattrall (pre-Mannequin) was nicknamed Lassie and the smell of gym socks made her howl?
Well, there's now a 2nd restaurant in SA named after that movie located in the old Red Lobster at 410 & Callaghan. (I think the original is on Culebra near downtown).

Don't go there!
Trust me.

We broke our rule about giving a new place a month to get their act together, and are now back to rigid enforcement.
2 burgers with fries/onion rings and sodas = over $16 = ouch + it better be really good.
Nope--the fries were soggy and the rings tasted like fish.
Tilapia, to be exact.
And when a burger is supposed to have onions, there should be more than 1 small circle.

But what sucked the most was waiting over 45 minutes for disappointing and overpriced food.
With no apology.
It's like they were driving to HEB for more meat and potatos after each order, as if the idea of needing to churn them out on a Friday night was a big surprise.

Our polite email giving them a heads-up got a reply that struck us as a lot of excuses.
Here are some gems, copied verbatim, leaving out the parts that had crazy bad syntax or made no sense:
"...we are a gourmet restaurant.

We prepare everything fresh and hand patty meat.

We are not a fast food restaurant."
(Got THAT right!)

I suggest you "hand patty meat" a little faster and some day you can work your way up to a slow food restaurant.
I grilled steaks with rice and corn for dinner tonight and it took less time, despite starting with a cold stove and frozen BBQ.

And for the record, fishy onion rings are unacceptable.
Fish gets it's own fryer--every idiot knows that.
I'll have to disagree with the use of the word gourmet.

SuperBowl Sunday

Lots of food and drinks, plus relaxing and quiet Hill Country views.
A great game, even though our team lost.



I wasn't consciously trying to shoot prickly-pear cactii, it just happened that they were in my favorite shots.

Playing In The Yard

Except for the band I haven't gone anywhere this past week or taken any pictures.
Spent my time building some photography gear but haven't gotten around to shooting those, either.


So I thought I would take some pics in my yard, and finally get around to using my polarizing filter seeing as how I've been able to put it on my new lenses for months but never have.


The dark corners are less about the CP filter and more about my lens--I have noticed it before, and really don't care much.
So it darkens edges and corners--big deal.




With 10.2 megapixels, you have some room to crop dark corners if they bother you.

La Luna

Proof that the moon is brighter than you think, I shot this in the daytime and used a tripod and very fast shutter speed to preserve detail.
My longest lens isn't really up to the task (only 300mm-e) so there was enlarging and noise-reduction and extensive levels tweaks involved, but it's not too bad for all that.

I was surprised that manually focusing to infinity blurred the moon rather a lot.
You would think that 250,000+ miles away would qualify as infinity, but what do I know?
Need to check again at night to see if stars are in-focus at that setting--if not, there is something wrong with my lens that I should know about.
If stars aren't 'infinity' I don't want to know what is.

In general usage I have no complaints with this lens--nothing that costs less than a used car will ever be as sharp and precise as what I'm used to, but this is 2009 and I have to run with what I have.
Camera System money is better spent on flash equipment and file path technology.
Spending too much on "better" lenses is what people with more money than brains do, and their mistakes never result in better pictures.

2008 Christmas Ornament Post

This has become an annual event here at V'sOfTX, and I'm sure everyone with a heart can relate.


When Hallmark marks their awesome ornaments down 70% in mid-January we're all over it.
Sylvia's Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots was the one most eagerly awaited, and it didn't disappoint. Freaking awesome.
I received the real deal back in....1966 was it?....at my grandmother's apartment over her late husband's downtown brownstone tavern, Iggy's Place. We had just lost my father in VietNam and then our grandfather and I'll never forget the way the lights of the "big city" (Buffalo NY) looked shining through the window as I tried to play with it by myself while everyone else slept.

My score from Hallmark last January was this ALCO PA-1 locomotive done up in the Freedom Train paint from right after WWII. A hugely historic engine, built in Schenectady NY near where we used to live, and in 1976 I saw another Freedom Train in the same city but pulled by a steam engine.

Electric guitars from Restoration Hardware are becoming a tradition for us, along with other instruments.
The saxophone they have this year was a bit pricey so we're waiting for some savings.

The SPURS--what can I say?
Who knew that Matt Bonner (we got him from Toronto--his nickname is Red Rocket from their transit system which he would ride to games) would become a valuable starter and one of the best 3-point shooters in the NBA?

Sylvia's new fave that was a perfect gift from Lisa P--a pinata donkey that is not only super-cute but also SO San Antonio.
Next year my plan is to make it so we can raise and lower him just like a real pinata on a rope.

Happy New Year!!!

The Rest Of The Marathon

Finish Line Action.

The coveted Media Pass means you get to sit on top of a ladder for 8 hours. I would have loved it but climbed down after 30 minutes.

Part of the centerpiece on our table in the VIP area.

Car dealer Rick Cavender's band plays on the main stage.

Makes me glad I cut my long hair in the '90s. Beyond a certain age it just looks dumb on most men.

A tear-stained face in the crowd.

San Antonio's First Rock & Roll Marathon

The last marathon in SA only brought out around 5000 athletes.
Adding dozens of bands along the route (and more national and international advertising and organization) made our very first Rock and Roll Marathon a huge success with 30,000 entries purchased (Sold Out!) although realistically only 20-25,000 actually ran.


If you are going to an event like this, having a set of "gold" passes is worth every penny.
I got mine for free because I'm uber-cool and hang with some awesome people, although I'm sure they like Sylvia more than they like me. (Thanks, Rikk!!)
Free parking in the closest lot to all the action, free food and drinks served by a slick black-tie staff, private bleachers ON the finish line, free The CULT concert admission and backstage VIP access.
Sweet!
On top is the medal each finisher is awarded, and I've been witness to the fact that the one in the photo was earned with hours/days/weeks/months of hard work and discipline.

"The Gladiator" (as the crowd around me named him) was going back and forth in the finish area, urging others on and getting maximum camera time.

Less than 100 yards before the finish line a runner collapsed and died right in front of me.
They defribbed and got a pulse before wheeling him through the time-chipped finish line, which was a major concern in the crowd.
I assume he survived since there was no mention of deaths on the TV news.
It's the second time this year that someone has dropped dead in my presence.

The most important shot(s) of the day and I screwed the pooch with serious focus issues.
Not happy at all, but I think I know what went wrong.

Sylvia finished the 13.1 mile half-marathon in 2 hours 30 minutes, and it's very sweet that she and her friend/running partner Meredith stayed together from beginning to end.
It's the farthest Syl has ever run, and I'm very proud of her!

If you visit the marathon's website and find video of noisy fans with a guy pointing a black Sony back at the videographer, this is the opposite view.

UPS loaned the event a fleet of brown trucks and volunteers to carry everyone's personal effects from the park and ride at ATT Center to the race finish area. It was tortureously disorganized and slow at truck #4, but by cutting the line and doing some strategic winking we got Sylvia's stuff before going postal.

It was a lot of fun and very inspiring.
The many runners and fans from outside San Antonio were naturally charmed by our city and it's great people.
A nice side-effect is that all of the clothing the runners peeled-off and threw away while the temps quickly climbed from 34 to 60-ish will benefit homeless shelters and/or other worthy causes. (Un-Confirmed Assumption Alert!)

Operating on three hours of sleep after working my butt off the night before, I was stiff and sore and not as effective as I could have been. Still, it was a great experience that I wouldn't have missed for anything.

I got a sunburn and am pinker than I let myself get after 3 days at South Padre.

More photos soon.