A Very Unexpected Turn of Events

Interesting day—it began yesterday morning around 8am. I have been hunkered down avoiding going out into the cold for three days but Alcy had tickets to the Mason Jennings concert at House of Blues and I agreed to go along. Mason is the son of a friend that Alcy worked with in Pittsburgh. Greatly enjoyed the concert in spite of the fact that I could only understand a portion of the lyrics. The guitar was outstanding and I’m sure the rest was also.

After Alcy got off work we met for a quick bite before the concert. Dress was very casual  but I figured she would rather that I not show up looking, as I usually do, like a reject from redneck land so I put on a pair of slacks and got out my dress shoes. At dinner she asked if I would like to drive down to Galveston to photograph the sunrise after the concert—which was over before 10pm. She didn’t mention what was to occur between 10am and 6 something when the sun came up but I figured it was okay and said yeah. On the way downtown we ran by the house and I picked up a pair of jeans and a change of shoes.

We took the scenic route down—mostly in the fog so we didn’t see much. I thought we could kill a little time at Walmart because I really need some new (less than five year old) jeans but Walmart was closed. Texas Department of Highways very generously gave us a private cruise across Bolivar Roads and back then we hit Denny’s around 2 something. The WiFi wasn’t great but workable so we researched the relationship between Robert Maplethorpe and Pattie Smith. I knew that Maplethorpe had photographed Pattie extensively but was not aware that they had a ‘relationship.’ Mason wrote a song about the relationship but I couldn’t hear everything that he said. In the process we researched his flower photographs and Alcy loved them. McDonald’s opened at 5am and we figured we had overstayed our welcome at Denny’s so we moved to McDonald’s to use their WiFi until nearly sunrise. Moved over to Stewert Beach, shot the sunrise as the fog started rolling in to add atmosphere then went for another ride on the ferry.

Drove down to the Strand, caught a cup of café mocha at Starbuck then walked around the Strand for an hour or so. By this time we were both beginning to drag so we decided to head for Houston with a stop at IHOP in League City for lunch. In all it was a very interesting and although I haven’t yet processed any of the photograph—I hope productive--day. Being old is great, and yes, old people can stay up all night. Now I have got to process. Can’t go to bed until I finish.

Got a few processed.