a night of amazing

I must expand upon what last night became. The weather up here has been less than perfect. As Tim put it, "We plan to climb or do other things when the weather's supposed to be good, and it's not. When we think the weather's going to be bad, we don't plan anything, and it turns out marvelous."

Or something like that. Anyhow, yesterday was one of those days. Forecasted rain all day long. Ruined my plans to ride my bike around the city and photosafari. Spent the day on a long overdue cleaning of the apartment. I must say, it looks pretty good. By the time I finished, the rain started. Go figure.

I'd wanted to go play with my new(ish) tripod and take some night shots of the monuments. With the rain, I didn't think that was going to be much fun. Turns out, the weather gods allowed me a little more freedom than originally expected.

First off, decided to go to Old Town. For you non-local readers, Old Town is a neighborhood in Alexandria. There's shops and food and bars and lots of people. If you make it as far as the waterfront, there's street performers and sidewalk musicians and boats and sketch artists of all stripes. It's generally a pretty good time in good weather.

So, the camera didn't mount right to the tripod shoe, so I left it in the car. Left me with a little more room for creativity on how to steady the camera for my pictures. I'm going to sort through them shortly. Look for them over on the photo blog this week. Successful shooting evening. I hope.

Amazing number one. I got to tour a pirate ship. Ok, so there wasn't a Jolly Roger flying on it's yard arms, nor was there an eye patch in sight, but I got to talk like a pirate for the rest of the evening. It wasn't even Talk Like a Pirate Day. Good times.

Amazing number two. It started pouring. Not so much fun, but we had to run for cover. A lot more fun in warm weather rain than cold. In the sheltered cove we found, there was a quartet called King Street Bluegrass playing, you guessed it, bluegrass music. Second song in, a little ditty by Old Crow Medicine Show. I take a few pictures of the crowd and the band. The fiddler asked me to email them to him whenever I get through them. Alright then!

Amazing number three & four. There's a little joint at the corner of King St. and Washington called Eamonn's Dublin Chipper. 'Twas a lovely night for a Guinness.

And a deep-fried Milky Way bar rolled in cinnamon sugar. It's a good thing that I don't live close to that place. I'd probably eat those far more often than the Surgeon General would advise. Which is to say more often than once. It was incredible. Kinda like the rest of the night.

Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show