_ _ Aulding Factory

Taken 10/19/2013
Grinnel, IA

The abandoned Spaulding factory - the "S" and the "P" fell off the smokestack at some point. Click here to see the sagging front entrance.

Cola Wars

Taken 6/8/2013
Ottumwa, IA

Diamond "C" Soap

Taken 6/8/2013
Ottumwa, IA

(At least that's what I think it says...)

Brooklyn Police Rear Entrance

Taken 10/19/2013
Brooklyn IA

Spaulding Front Entrance

Taken 10/19/2013
Grinnel IA

This is the sagging front entrance of the abandoned Spaulding Carriage and Automotive Works, where they made "horseless carriages" for a brief period in the early 20th century, being held up by huge pink braces. Yes, they once made cars in Iowa.

Silo 42

Taken 11/3/13
Perry, IA

The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything... in silo form.

Let's Go Bowling

Taken 10/19/2013
Grinnel, IA

It's Sunday... so Let's Go Bowling!

Man & Monkey

Taken 10/13/2013

Separated at birth?

(Yes, the light is far too harsh, but when you just happen upon a cool little bit of chimp graffiti you take advantage of the situation.)

Public Market

Taken 8/30/2013

One of my first stops on my Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip '013 was Seattle's famous Pike Place Market. Even though I was doing Seattle in a single afternoon I had to get a shot of the iconic "Public Market" sign.

Mom with Zenias

Taken 9/5/2013

A continuation of Sundays With Mom & Dad. Took some shots of my mother picking zenias out of the narrow flower garden my parents have on a strip of land between their and the neighbor's driveways. My dad likes them because his grandmother grew them behind her house when he was younger. It was at about this point I knelt down to get a better angle, had my knee/leg twist funny on some uneven ground and pulled a hamstring. Never in my life have I used the F-word in front of my parents with such reckless abandon. Maybe I'm too old to be a photographer...

 

A Rusty Bridge (with Jordan On It)

Taken 10/13/2013
East of Carlisle, IA

One of the major drawbacks to having a friend that's taken up photography as a hobby is you just might find yourself spending several hours of your Sunday morning or afternoon posing on a bridge while he figures out how to adjust the aperture setting on his new lens. Just ask Jordan. 

For my first "location shoot" with an actual human subject I took Jordan (who was nice enough to agree to this) to the rusty bridge I'd previously photographed. Figured I'd put people in front of things I was already comfortable photographing and see how that worked out.

The tasteful nudes taken on the bridge will follow at a later time.

A Rusty Bridge

Taken 6/8/2013
East of Carlisle, IA

The Iowa countryside is lousy with old rusty truss bridges like this one found on a gravel road east of Carlisle.

Self Portrait Through the Garage Door

 Taken 9/29/2013

The assignment for this week's photography class was to do a self-portrait. This is what I came up with...

The Martin Motel

Taken 7/4/2012
Rockwell City, IA

Looks like there's plenty of vacancies. And maybe a homicidal mother obsessed proprietor to help you in and out of the shower...

Sundays With Mom & Dad

For the first time pictures that feature... people! No doors, signs, windows or undersides of bridges here. Instead, an in depth look at what my parents do with their Sundays.

Taken  9/15/2013

Day 9: That's A Wrap

NOT the OC

So I've been re-corrected. Apparently almost none of yesterday was in the OC. Oh well. I'd mistakenly referred to the city as "the LA area" previously and was told it was called the OC. But not all of it I guess. I'm from out of town and though I'm sure it's vitally important to the locals to differentiate the two (just try telling someone living in Windsor Heights, West Des Moines or Clive it's "all Des Moines" back home) but I must admit it doesn't really matter to me. Sorry LA and OC-ers. I'm going back to calling it all "the LA area."

They're On a Mission From God

In 1983 I visited southern California on a family roadtrip. Visited family in "the LA area" and also some family in San Diego. And while I don't remember stopping at the Mission San Juan Capistrano when traveling between the two cities, I had indeed been there before. I confirmed that by texting my parents and asking if we'd stopped there way back then. Because I recognized something. Not the mission itself. I don't remember a thing about that. (Not surprising, I'm sure a 13 year old couldn't have been less interested). What I did recognize was the tacky Capistrano Trading Post souvenir store across the street... which apparently hasn't changed in at least 30 years.

Hasn't changed in 30 years!

Leapin' Lizards!

I'm from the Midwest. Whenever I travel anywhere that has lizards just running around like we have squirrels or chipmunks back home, I get a charge out of that. I wonder if 13-year-old me tried to catch any lizards while getting drug through the Mission back in 1983? I appreciated it a bit more this time through.

Land Ho! (Who You Callin' a Ho?)

I've passed through many towns and of those towns, many have their own special festivals at one time of year or another. I've seen signs for things like Strawberry Days, Clam Festivals and Artichoke Festivals. The Tall Ships Festival (brought to you by Toshiba. Because when you think of Toshiba you think of old style tall mast sailing ships, right?) in Dana Point happened to actually coincide with my trip though. Unfortunately the shuttle and parking situation turned what I was hoping would be a quick hour or so stop into a three hour ordeal. Still, seeing the ships and walking on their decks was very cool, and not something I'll ever get the chance to do back home. Not a lot of tall mast pirate ships on Saylorville Lake.

Literally Tons of Fun

OK, I'm going to admit something right off the bat - when I arrived at Sea World it was fucking miserable. Nearly 90, not a cloud in the sky and horribly crowded. Can I just say children are a plaque? Like locusts but worse. And the shows were somewhat disappointing. The dolphin show consisted mostly of some sort of bizarre parrot themed Cirque de Soleil knock-off (I actually left it early, was miserable in the direct sun), and the Shamu show seemed to exist only so the killer whales could splash the first 15 rows. Where was the dramatic jump out of the water with a trainer balanced on the nose of one of the killer whales?!?! 

Things got better as the families started leaving around 5:00 and things cooled off. I got the chance to see the animals I wanted to, cool off in the penguin experience, find out that Wild Arctic is still a fun ride (though not the mind-blowing experience it was when I first rode it back in the late 90s, they need to update the ride/technology), got to enjoy sea otters play wrestling each other with almost nobody else around watching, watch the beluga whales and sea turles, and go through the shark tube.

*nudge nudge*

During the aforementioned family roadtrip to San Diego we visited Sea World. The walrus viewing area was much different then than it is now. The the walruses (Why is it "walruses" but "cacti?" Why isn't it "walri"?) were in an open air habitat surround by a wall, and you looked down into the pool to see them playing in the water below you. On this occasion the big bull walrus was just rolling over and over in the water. While watching him play my father gave me an elbow nudge, pointed to the walrus below and said "Check out the size of the wang on him." And yes, it was quite large. Very proportional to the size of the animal. Heck, I'd even say he was well hung.

Years later I told my dad that memory and he said "Of all the stuff we did that day you remember THAT?"






My Future As a Mexican Wrestler

Just when I thought my day was over and I could lay down, I end up at a hotel just two blocks from Old Town. And there's an old car show! Which, unfortunately, I was about 10 minutes too late for. Oh well. There were still a few cars around. And I spotted some Mexican wrestler masks in one of the shops and it has me rethinking my career. From now on please refer to me as El Mike-o.

Day 8: Welcome to the OC

Oxnard & Malibu

The day started by heading south out of Santa Barbara. Highway 1 split off from being conjoined with the 101 in Oxnard. My entire association with Oxnard is a Louis Black quote from Big Bang Theory. 

"I can identify every insect and arachnid on the planet. Not that that's going to keep me from having to move in with my daughter in Oxnard. And we're not talking Oxnard at the beach. No! We're talking Oxnard in the onion fields."

I did drive by some fields, but not sure they were onions. Everything was covered in big sheets of white plastic. Entire fields. maybe there were onion under there.

Then on around the bend of the Santa Monica Mountains and through the long narrow city of Malibu. This was the stereotypical southern California ocean drive - mountains on one side of the road, ocean on the other. 

This Place Smells Like Asphalt

When I was a kid I had two dream jobs. Being a marine biologist (see Day 4 and Day 5 for my aquarium visit, and the culmination of my trip will be Sea World in San Diego tomorrow) or a paleontologist. I've always been particularly interested in Ice Age animals. This may explain why an adult male with no children has seen all the Ice Age movies. How lousy was that last one, huh? Anyway, I've always wanted to visit the La Brea Tarpits. (That's Spanish for "the brea tarpits.") Mammoth skeletons, the "Fishbowl" where work on fossils is actually done, an animatronic sabertooth attacking a giant sloth, a wall of over 400 dire wolf skulls, plus a view of the active tarpit out in the park actually still be excavated... the little paleontologist that lives inside me was very happy today.

The Freeways

When you think of LA you think of freeways. And the traffic. The city and the entire OC are crisscrossed with them. From the tarpits to my next destination I hopped on the 110. Not Interstate 110. Not I-110. Not *A* 110. But THE 110. As if you'd get it mixed up with another 101. When I get home I'm going to start calling 235 "the 235" and see if it catches on. I must say drivng the LA freeways wasn't quite the paved hellscape I expected it to be. Granted, it was 2 in the afternoon, not exactly peak time. But overall I found I got used to it.  The traffic everywhere seems to have a certain rhythm to it - seems chaotic at first, but it comes to make sense. Eventually. Just don't fight it and give in. 

Bring Out the Big Guns

Off the 110 and onto the decks of the USS Iowa. Where I got in for free! Because I'm from Iowa and the state of Iowa donated $3M (I was told this several times) for the ship's restoration. A donation on the condition anyone from the state gets to tour the ship for free. Iowa visitors are a regular occurrence, as one of the volunteers was very well versed in the Hawks vs the Cyclones rivalry (I was wearing a Cyclones shirt).

Try not to imagine Cher straddling these guns in a thong.

Luckily the men serving on the USS Iowa had easy access to Coke products and refreshing Desani bottled water.

Under the Boardwalk

I'm not sure why of all the beachfront towns in LA I picked Venice Beach to visit. Maybe because anytime any movie or TV needs to an "offbeat" beach setting, it's Venice Beach. Typical boardwalk - T-Shirt shops, ice cream, tattoo places, artists, live musicians, pizza by the slice... and medical marijuana! At regular intervals I was offered the chance to see if I would qualify for medical marijuana. My feet were a little sore from all the walking... so I'm betting I would've qualified. Nothing makes you forget your sore feet like getting high. Not typical boardwalk however was the complete and total lack of an actual boardwalk. All paved... to quote Bruce Willis in Die Hard... "Fuckin' California."

I wonder if there's anywhere I can get a souvenir T-Shirt? Or maybe some medical marijuana? 

Venice Beach also has the curved sidewalk beach adjacent the is featured in any movie or TV show where a cop needs to chase down a skateboarding or rollerblading suspect. They're chased down the curving sidewalk and invariably tackled in sand.

Ahhhhh... Venice

I would absolutely love to live on the canals of Venice Beach. Hard to believe this quiet idyllic setting was just a couple blocks from the insanity and weirdness of the boardwalk. I happened upon the canal walk by accident, because I missed the parking lot, didn't want to deal with driving back down Pacific Avenue so just parked several blocks off the beach. The parking was free (instead of $9) and I got to enjoy strolling along these canals.

There were several house for sale along the canal... is there such a thing as a 300-year fixed rate mortgage?

And Get Off My Lawn!

Time to make myself sound like an old fogie. How is the extreme baggy look still in? It's been around for 20 years now. Shouldn't things have cycled back to tight by now? Heck, it should probably have gone back and forth several times by now. But that really isn't the point of this photo... I don't understand how guys that wear their pants this loose keep them from falling completely off their ass. I've been having trouble keeping my pants up (I need a smaller belt) and have to keep pulling them up. How do they do it with shorts like that? I want to know!