After a long and jittery day taking care of stuff with Tye we are finally on the plane and headed to Las Vegas. The day has been full of anticipation and some such, but without too much of particular note so far. After a quick trip up to Kenmore Camera (where I got a new extension tube for my lens collection), Tye and I went to the Center for Wooden Boats to shoot some pictures and take advantage of the bright sunny day. I'll probably post at least one of those pictures, but as most of my readers have noticed I've been slacking on the photo posting of late. Typepad does make it easy to upload and sort them, but giving each one a description can be a pain in the ass.
After the photos Tye and I headed down the airport early because we were both excited to get going, and sitting around my condo was getting old fast. Upon reaching the airport and checking our baggage I was delighted to discover that Tye had been selected for the "less than completely invasive" search while I was able to whisk through security with nothing but a walk through the metal detector. After waiting for him to get done having his life inspected and shoes checked for explosives we headed down the concourse to wait for our plane. Being early to the airport means one thing and one thing only - drinking... A few drinks in one of the airport bars helped pass the time - mostly spent reading an interesting new book on using Photoshop CS for digital photo retouching and color correction. I'm already fairly comfortable with Photoshop, but reading a book like that is a great way to learn new techniques and ways to use tools that I had not considered.
So here I sit on a plane bound for Sacramento for a brief layover then off to the city of glitz and glitter for a weekend of fun. Cramped, tight, and bored - sounds like another day at plant!
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After we got in we went to our hotel after a quick drive down the strip. I have to comment of what an experience it was to drive down a 2 mile stretch of road that exists solely to stimulate and excite the human mind and body. Bright flashing lights at exciting tempos flare from every direction, and loud happy noises penetrate the senses.
Our hotel was in the old downtown off Fremont Street. The photo gallery from Vegas has a panoramic view from our hotel room. Once we had settled in we went out to grab some food then passed out.
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Morning came and off we went to a day of bustling activity. We grabbed breakfast from a buffet and headed down to the convention center to check out PMA. The PMA tradeshow was a bewildering event. One would imagine (or at least I would have) a room full of booths showing off new technology. PMA was that, only on an amazingly grand scale. Mile after mile of walking through splendid setups, large companies taking setting up temporarily structures more than twice the size of my condo proclaiming their products on high! The Epson booth had a contortionist in skin-tight clothing, the Kodak booth with its crazy French painter act, and Canon with its massive marketing displays and setups. Just as with the strip there were exciting noises erupting from every little booth, and eager friendly people vying for my attention to tell me about this amazing new product, or that new gadget.
There was some excellent new technology – Tye and I spent a decent amount of time hanging out around the Canon booth looking at their new bodies and lenses. I really like the new 1Ds Mark II, as well as the 28-300mmL IS USM lens. Someday I will have both of them, but not for some time as their combined price is several times higher than that of my car.
After wandering around for several hours we decided to head back to the strip for some food and to start shooting photos. We headed down to the Stratosphere and went up in the tower to take pictures of the strip from above. Unfortunately they (for no apparent reason) would not let us take our tripods up to the top, and after dealing with that hassle we did not get up until after dusk had settled into darkness. This made it very difficult to shoot with telephoto lenses given the long exposure times needed. Luckily we got a few good images to come out.
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Saturday was a long day indeed. Tye and I spent most of it lugging heavy photography equipment on our backs (more my back if you ask me) up and down the strip shooting. We got to get fairly in depth with Cesar’s Palace, Bellagio, and the Luxor. The grand casinos on the strip really manage to boggle the mind. The excess, the bright color, the sounds, sights, and highly oxygenated air – it all adds up to one incredible experience. Looking back I should have taken it a little easier on myself, but I seemed drawn to experience it all and take every last detail in. We barely got to see 25% of the strip in detail, and it leaves me eager to come back again another year with a little bit more time and really get to know the strip. I would love to go around doing character studies on some of the homeless people who live around the strip.
Flying home was a minor nightmare in of itself. We got to the airport in plenty of time, but being valentines weekend there was a dreadful collection of people there all intent on journeying home. We barely made it through the security in time (literally 2 minutes before the plane taxied off the runway) and ended up getting no choice in seats. Tye got a decent one at the back of the plane, but I ended up at the very front of the plane stuck between two absolutely rotund women. By all rights they should have each paid for a second seat, and had to have the armrests up to even fit in their chairs. I was squeezed between them into a frighteningly small space. Luckily it was only a couple of hours and I managed to survive the flight back to Seattle.
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This has been a long week – I wore myself out too much in Las Vegas and got fairly sick. I think it was a mild bronchitis but I’m not sure. I sit here on Sunday for the first time in 4 days feeling halfway healthy. I managed to keep up at work on Tuesday and Wednesday, but after a couple of meetings on Thursday I ended up going home to cough in peace on my couch. Friday was spent curled up into a ball drenched in DXM cough syrup waiting for my fever to break. After a peaceful Saturday I think I’m going to spend today quietly sitting around the house watching movies and working on photos from the last couple of weeks.