I'd like to say it was planned because of my wonderful sense of lighting and all that, but I was watching two of the kids swim one night, got bored and decided to try taking some pictures.  I just happened to be lucky that the lighting was about perfect as the sun was setting.

     Another night, the fishing at the wharf was really poor and the sun set, so we tried some fun stuff in the dark.  First, we shot some time lapses and had one of the kids fire off a flash a couple times from the side.  Just for fun.  The flash died after several tries, but we have an idea that bears further investigation.

I took some pics of the opposite shoreline, too, but the real winner was the one Sam took after we all got off the dock and stopped shaking it.  There was what we call heat lightning illuminating the backs of the clouds so she got a good shot in what was by then total darkness.  First mine:

Then hers:

And a couple more just for fun.

A homemade swing using overhead bars and a Daddy.

Rebekah, hiding under the playground equipment at the zoo.

A shot by Samantha (the 15 y/o) of one of Sandra's (Sandra's the 18 year old) sunflowers that finally bloomed.

And a jellyfish

A snake

and a crab, all taken by Sam at Easton Point.

That's all for tonight.  I got home a little early from work and the wife will be home soon, so I need to be off the computer.  We'll head out to the county fair, conveniently located two miles from the house, and then I'll be off to bed b/c I need to be at work again tomorrow at 3 am.  I'll have Sunday off, even though I'll probably drag in just before dawn, and then Monday I'm doing a contract job, running a fire command center down to Charlotte, NC, flying back Tuesday morning just in time to have the afternoon off and be back to the regular job Wed., again at 3 am.  I'm sure I'll check in sometime between now and then, but if not, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Went to Salisbury to pick up my daughter at the airport today. There is an airline that flies Thursday and Saturday only for 60 bucks each way from Maryland to Orlando, so my oldest was flying back from a visit with her grandmother and other relations down there.  Guess where we stopped on the way home? 

I'll give you a hint:  Salisbury has a very nice, if small, zoo. Here are a couple of the better shots.

...and one not so good, but it tells a good story.  We got to watch the jaguars fight like kittens.  When one got knocked down, you could hear a heavy "whoomp" and I swear the ground shook.

By the time we were finished the kids were tired...

...and Daddy was feeling a bit nutty.

I have to work in a few hours, but I may upload more sometime next week if my bosses cut me a little slack and don't work me to death.

I'm trying to find a way to share my pictures without losing a lot of quality, so I'm trying this to see if I can share them through Flickr.

This is a time lapse taken in the complete darkness with lightning from a distant storm illuminating the clouds every so often. I guess I should admit that it was taken by Sam, my fifteen year old.  I had taken several, but the kids were on the dock and their footsteps were causing a slight movement so mine were blurry.  When all the rest of us went to the car, Samantha said she was gonna try one or two more shots and came up with this.

A bird across the street from our house.  

My Gracie at sunset in the pool.

 I have to say, I'm liking the quality so far.  I think I'll be much more satisfied posting this way.

    It has been a while since I've been around to post, but we've had somewhat of the perfect storm at work, with several guys quitting and a lot on vacation, so I've been covering extra runs which means I end up working 3 or 4 days and either sleeping in preparation for a run or recovering from the previous night's run on the day's I'm off.  I have a post or two in the works, but I have computer issues and my oldest daughter and her computer are on vacation to see grandparents on both sides of the family in Texas and then Florida, so I can't get the new pics off the camera 'til I either get my issues resolved or she gets home. Meanwhile, I sneak on here every now and again to read a few posts and generally snoop around for a few minutes.  Since I can't post any new pics, I dug around the hard drive and found one or two of interest, taken by my eight year old during a walking trip her class did around our town.

     This is the statue of Queen Anne, our county's namesake.  The statue was dedicated when I was a child, and one of the royal family (Princess Anne, I believe) attended the dedication as guest of honor.  The building to the left is the county courthouse, the oldest continuously used courthouse in the state of Maryland.

Apparently Queen Anne had a fondness for her dog, so the sculptor included a likeness of her puppy, hiding under her chair.

Our local Catholic church designed by an architect who also designed several other buildings of note, one in particular being the Empire State Building.

                                                                                  The interior of the Catholic church from the choir loft.

Now that I've checked in and dug around to find these pics, I have some inspiration to go around town and actually do some shooting.  It's easy to forget the interesting things that can be found right in our own back yards.

   You thought I was gonna blog about today's Supreme Court decision, eh?  I can't remember if I've already blogged about it, but this summer, I found a snapping turtle on the road and after moving him out of harm's way, I put my cheapest lens on my camera, got so close he could have bitten the lens if he'd stuck his neck out and snapped, and I took some pictures. That, I suppose, wasn't the wisest of decisions, but it did get me a pretty good shot. Above is what I believe is the best shot of the bunch.  What's different is, it seems the quality of the shot is much better having imported the picture from Flickr than it typically is when I directly upload.  Is this true, or am I just imagining things?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/easternshorephotography/7096792537/" title="DSC04584_1943 by EasternShorePhotography, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7120/7096792537_c168c990e8_c.jpg" width="800" height="534" alt="DSC04584_1943"></a>

     Several months ago my boss asked if I'd represent the company at the Maryland Truck Driving Championships.  It meant an unpaid day off, but it also meant a Saturday off with the family at a fun event, so I agreed to go compete in the flatbed division, since I had owned and operated a flatbed for 10 years before I took this job.  There would be a written test for all the contestants, then each of us would have to inspect the type of equipment on which we were competing, and finally we'd each have to drive our chosen equipment through an obstacle course and try to complete certain driving skills tests while on the course.  I went intending to familiarize myself with the competition so that next year (assuming I get no tickets and have no chargeable accidents) I could go back and be competitive.  We ended up having company up from Texas, it was forecast to be blistering hot and the air conditioning was out on our big car, so my wife and our company stayed home and my brother, the kids and I headed out bright and early for the Maryland State Fairgrounds up on the other side of Baltimore.  The boss had shirts made for the bosses and competitors. The five of us in the middle were the drivers and the two guys at the left and right are our managers.

I went off to take the written test and my brother and the kids went off looking for a Krispy Kreme (which to their disappointment was boarded up, out of business).  Shortly after I finished the test my cheering section showed back up.

Gracie was rockin' the Dominos driver's uniform shirt and a floppy hat.

Then while I went off to do the equipment inspection (where no pictures were allowed) Danny, who has really good luck with a camera when we can get him to pick one up, found some wildflowers and took some pictures.

I finished my inspection, finding six of eight defects on the truck I inspected, and then it was off to wait for the driving portion.

Yep, despite the confusion, it was really a Dominos driver in a Giant Foods truck with a Bowman trailer.  Looking at the video, I can see how easily I could have scored more points, but from the driver's seat, not being allowed to stick my head out the window, the perspective was much different. Samantha, my 14 year old, took the pictures of me driving.

The "tennis ball thing" was especially disappointing, but apparently only two drivers out of all the competitors in all the different classes of competition were able even to score on that particular obstacle. 

The stop just past the line in the next video was especially tricky, because you scored for stopping close to the line, but if you were still over the line when you stopped, you scored nothing.  It looks easy until you're 60 feet in front of the line trying to judge distance in the two dimensional view through the mirror. I scored, but got 35 out of a possible 50, which meant I stopped between 13 and 18 inches from the line.

After finishing my competition, I got to sit and watch a lot of the other guys compete and eat some of the great food provided by the Maryland Motor Truck Association and the various companies who had sent their best drivers to the competition.  Our new manager didn't know the lay of the land, so our company hadn't set up a tent like the other ones and we were stuck sitting on the bleachers out in the scorching sun.  Finally, around 2:00pm, with another 2 hours or so of competition left, we wimped out and jumped in the car headed for home.  A couple hours later, I got the phone call from my big boss, Marlon.  "Congratulations!  You took 3rd in the flatbed class!"  That call made for a very good ending to a day which had already been filled with fun, companionship, new friends and good food.  I'm already looking forward to next year's competition. Yes, it took a little luck, but in a field stacked with drivers who have been driving up to 30 years and who all had safe driving records, it was still a tough competition and I'm tickled that I even placed third.

     Some of you know I'm training drivers these days.   With the brand new rookies, I have to plan my day well, because I have to stay on duty even after they start driving, so if I bring them out of the sleeper too soon, we can end up stuck out on the road for ten hours in order to remain compliant with the hours of service laws.  You know, the best laid plans...  I was with a brand new guy and making good time last Saturday, when I counted our remaining product and found out I had a whole stack of dough balls that should already have been delivered. (That's over 200 lbs. of dough.) I went back through my paperwork, found my error and we had to backtrack from Luray, VA across the mountain to New Market and down to Harrisonburg to deliver the dough.  It was about 35 minutes each way, and I had only left a cushion of about an hour. After we got back on track, delivered our last stop and picked up empty trays in Stephens City, it was apparent we'd be a few minutes short of the time we needed to get back, so I had him park at the last place I knew would have truck parking.  It's a little diner with a big parking lot in Rippon, WV about halfway between Winchester, Va and Harpers Ferry, WV on route 340.  We had 10 hours to kill, so we bunked down for the night, I in the top bunk and he below and were asleep (or at least I was) as soon as our heads hit the pillows. 

     About 6 hours later I woke and with so much time to kill, even though I was well rested, I rolled over and went back to sleep.  As soon as the sun came up, though, it was a different story.  The temperature inside the cab must have risen 15 degrees in a half hour, so with 2 hours 'til we could drive off, I woke up my partner and we headed into the Rainbow Diner.  This is one of my favorite stop-offs.  It's a tiny old place and the walls and ceiling are plastered with stickers of trucking companies and related businesses.  The food is plain but cheap and good.  I ordered eggs over medium with bacon, hash browns (cooked in real bacon cracklins) and toast, and my partner ordered his food.

     Looking out the window into a field of foot high, new corn, I saw something out of place, and momentarily it moved toward us...a mother and baby groundhog.  Something I had never seen. I pointed it out to my partner and we watched them for another few minutes 'til they ran into a brush pile and disappeared.  Not a minute later, the front door opened, and in walked a lady carrying a vase with two carnations, followed closely by a thin man in a US Navy veteran hat and a trucking company shirt.  "That's weird," I thought, but she immediately explained to the waitress (who she obviously knew), "Our anniversary was two days ago, but it was a bad day, so we're celebrating it today."  It struck me as odd, but when they sat at the table behind me, it didn't take long before I understood.   He was talking lucidly, but about events which were current several years ago.  It was an instant flashback to the long battle my aunt had with Alzheimers before she died.  To the unitiated, the conversation would have sounded perfectly normal if just a bit out of time.  To someone who has been close to a person suffering from this disease,  (we visited my great aunt several times a week in the nursing home down the block after she could no longer live on her own, even with her sister [my grandmother] in the house) the hints were unmistakable.  I sat listening to his accounting of new laws affecting truckers and the equipment they drive.  Laws which went into effect 10 years ago, but which he spoke of as recent.  His wife hung on his every word and responded when he paused, as if it were the first time she had ever heard the conversation.  It was all I could do to keep dry eyes.  Here was love.  True love in spite of the worst possible interpretation of  "for worse".  This man (I can only assume) is losing his memory and knows it.  His wife is powerless to do anything but be there and care for him as she watches his life fade away like steam rising from a pot of boiling water.  First there was a man, obviously capable and attractive to her.  She married him and they raised their children.  Then he began to forget little things, and then more and more.  The memories turn to vapor and he can, if he concentrates bring them back into focus, but more and more silently slip away while he watches, knowing there's only a certain amount of water in the pot and it's quickly disappearing.  She sees her man losing his manliness and becoming again a child.  It is an awful and emotionally wrenching process which has haunted her every waking moment for four or five years if my guess is correct, and yet she waits for a day when he is not combative, when there are enough memories for him to appear normal enough to go out and celebrate an anniversary he may or may not recall. 

    We finished our breakfast. I paid, since my inattention had cost my partner an extra 10 hours away from home.  I walked out to the truck, shaken.  Death had walked in with the couple who sat less than a foot from my shoulder.  He had a firm grip and was patiently waiting out the horrible course of the man's disease.  In the midst of the ugliness of his interminable trip to the grave sat a woman who had decided that for better or for worse, this was her man and she was going to be there with him 'til the end.  This Sunday morning, I was witness to greatness. 

I was picked as a chaperone for my daughter's trip to visit historic Chestertown, MD.  As we stepped off the bus, we got our first glimpse of the ship upon which we would sail, the Sultana, a replica of a ship built in the late 1700s and used in the king's service to ensure collection of customs duties on the Chesapeake Bay.

A model of the Sultana at the visitor's center.

Our tour guide around Chestertown would be the man who had been general contractor on the project to build the new ship.  Some days he captains the ship and other days he gets to play tour guide.

Facing the river are several old houses which together have the honor of forming the block with houses of the oldest average age in our entire state.

Bricks, at that time, could be used as status symbols, and on the houses above, as on the customs house below, regular red bricks were interspersed with very expensive smaller bricks which were glazed with a shiny finish (like you might see on pottery today).   With centuries of wear, the beautiful finish has faded and the bricks appear rather ordinary, if discolored.

The building on the far right corner, by the white station wagon stands on the site of Worrel's Tavern, where a guy named George Washington rested in 1791 on his return trip from Philadelphia to his home in Mt. Vernon.

In the 1700s kids would have played games very different than what they play today.  Our kids got to try out a couple.

We got to watch a slide show about the construction of the new ship.  Here, they are searching for wood for the keel.

We then made our way to the Sultana's Visitor's Center where the kids got to handle some turtles native to our area.  Here, a baby snapping turtle.

and a terrapin, made famous as our state mascot by the University of Maryland's sports teams the Terrapins.  Go Terps!

Then it was off to lunch, where I screwed up what would have been a really cool shot by not using a quick enough shutter speed, and Rebekah got to hand feed a mallard duck.

I've been practicing taking pictures of people in public and got a few shots in while we were waiting for the pickup truck with all the lunches to arrive at the park.  It's funny, because it makes you really self conscious, even with a big zoom lens.  I really liked this one, though, because it captured her motion and her  dog sitting still, his attention captured by something out of view.

Then, after lunch, the main event!  What we'd all been waiting for. Time to sail!

Rebekah, through the rigging, standing in line waiting to hoist a sail.

...and we're away, sailing the beautiful Chester River!

Rebekah was with the first group of kids to get to try their hand at steering the ship.  The woman in the picture was the ship's captain that day.

Rebekah taking instruction on how to perform an oxygenation test on a sample of water from the river.

The captain's cabin was very small, but kingly compared to the small six foot cabinets in which the crew slept. Here are two views of the cabin.

Back on deck, the kids got to drag a net and then learn about some of the fish they caught.  Rebekah thought it was neat she got a chance to kiss a carp.  Yuck!

Her friend got a hogchoker (a fish that looks similar to the more common flounder) to stick to her cheek.

One of the crew lashing a sail.

After a long, day we relaxed in the park for a little while to wait for the other group to finish their walking tour and the buses to arrive.

It had been a good, long day.

My kids, Danny and Grace played in their friend's history project.  I bet this is the first time you've ever seen history this way.

This is one of my favorite pictures.  It is terrible quality, even though it was taken with a film camera, but it was a really happy, peaceful moment on a very stressful work/holiday trip to Guatemala.  I'll throw some other pics in throughout the story, b/c I figured if I was gonna scan one, I'd scan the whole stack my wife had laid out for me to scan about a month ago.

I played with it a little in Lightroom and ended up with mixed results, but I'm learning still.

Anyway, here's a little of the story.  In 1987 I went to Guatemala to work at an orphanage for the summer.  I loved it, so I went back the next summer as well.  Several years later, I got a letter from the guy who ran the orphanage, and since I was in the military,stationed close to home, with 30 days a year of leave to burn, I volunteered to go "suffer" in the lush jungles of northern Guatemala again (or maybe it was just a chance to go catch up with old friends with a little work thrown in so the trip wouldn't be a total waste.  

Here are a couple of me with various other of my babies.

Anyway, I ended up traveling back many times, sometimes just for a vacation and sometimes with work teams.  I mean how can you go wrong when your lodging (lakefront, I might add) is free, a dugout canoe cost about $.60 a day to rent and all the gear to go fishing cost another $10, then the promise that you'd leave the gear with whoever would be your guide would get you a kid or two to help paddle and share in the fun and the day's catch.  Meanwhile you're visiting old friends and (most of the time, at least) doing something useful.  This went on for several years and then I got out of the military, and began the struggle to survive as an adult in the real world and thought my Guatemala trips were over.  I got married, had several children, started my own trucking business and lost, then regained contact with Papi Bo, the man who had run the orphanage, but who was now back stateside.  We began to use his house as a stopping point on our yearly, month-long trips to Texas and again on our way home.  My children had found a new grandfather, and my wife and I had some new, or renewed in my case, friends.  During this time, we had had our fifth child and were expecting our sixth, and we got a phone call one day from Bo, "Hey Dan,  wanna come down and help us build a church?"  Turns out one of the kids who had grown up in the orphanage had grown up to become one of the leaders in a church in his community, and they had grown to the point that they needed an actual building to meet in.  We were going to raise the money to help buy the materials, then a bunch of us from all over the country who had previously worked at the orphanage, would meet in Atlanta and fly down to actually help build the church.  Time flew and before we knew it we were in the airport seeing old friends for the first time in years and meeting new ones as well.  

Playing with Danny. His whole face would light up when he smiled.

Tina, by this point, was very pregnant with Isa and suffering from a very difficult case of gestational diabetes.  We all cleared security and grabbed breakfast to go before proceeding to the boarding gate.  Tina took her insulin (she was up to 5 shots a day at this point) and then in the rush, forgot to eat her sandwich, so just as our flight was called and we were proceeding down the boarding ramp, she fell and began to lose consciousness. I, hoping against all hope, that it was just her sugar, forced a sugar cube under her tongue and as soon as she began to come around, grabbed her under the shoulder, Rebekah (just under 2 at the time) with the other hand and proceeded to board.  As luck would have it, I was right, and before the plane backed away from the terminal, she was fine.  

Danny and Samantha having fun at Subway.  It's hard to believe they were ever that small.

The work was hard, and 3 days in, I got some sort of respiratory inflammation, the only symptoms of which were slight difficulty breathing and an inability to keep my normal hard charging pace out on the jobsite.  I was extremely frustrated, because I had no pain, I just would get increasingy weak as the morning progressed and by lunchtime I'd feel short of breath and without energy.  I'd take my inhaler, get relief from the breathing difficulty, but have no energy until the next morning.  I hated this because it turned out we had brought down a few real slackers who would do anything they could to avoid the hard work of carpentry and masonry, and our numbers were limited. I absolutely didn't want to be grouped in with the slackers, but I could work like a man for a couple hours, half a man 'til lunch, and then I was completely useless after lunch.  I finally worked it out, where I would work hard in the morning with the other guys, then help supervise guys who needed it 'til lunch, then be the "go get it" guy after lunch.  

My Dad and my oldest, Sandra, making ice cream in the kitchen of the old farmhouse.

The picture was taken at my friend's restaurant during siesta time after lunch one day.  After I got a schedule worked out, I felt somewhat useful again.  It was a really good trip, if a little frustrating.  Tina ended up working in the kitchen with Bo's wife, Jeannie and a couple local girls, and they pushed out some phenomenal chow.  Tina and Jeannie worked harder at the kitchen work than some of the guys did on the jobsite and Tina was pregnant and Jeannie was pushing 70.  Funny thing is, the picture above is the only one I can find from the whole trip.  I would imagine my wife has the other ones around somewhere.  During this whole trip, Rebekah who was a year and a half old and had never seen black beans (the staple food in Guatemala) would eat nothing but refried black beans on corn tortillas.  First she'd lick all the beans off the tortilla and then she'd eat the wonderfully fresh tortilla. They were made every morning by grinding corn that had been boiled with a little lime and then forming them and cooking them on a big flat heating surface.  Writing this is bringing back more memories than will fit in this story.  I suppose I have the rest of my life to tell them, so I'll leave off here and just say that after a bus ride across Belize and an eventful couple days in Belize City it was time to board our flight back to the states and a wonderful, frustrating, fun and difficult week was over just like that.   I don't think Rebekah even remembers the trip.

Here are a few more of the old film pictures I scanned for my wife.

Taking a nap with a newborn Danny in the old trailer house in Wilmer, TX.

Samantha has always been a diva.

More fun at Subway.

At Grandma's house.  Tina used to hate that I'd take pics in black and white, but we both like them, now.

Samantha, a month old out at the old Wesleyan Camp meeting grounds in Denton, MD with my Dad.

Samantha, holding her new baby brother.