Project Sesame Street

It has been a whirlwind the last two weeks, but now I’m pleased to say we finally made it back home.  Linda and I were actually off on vacation to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton areas and caught a number of entertaining places on our drive out there and on the way back.  This is the main reason last month’s posts were a little more burden than usual.  In fact, the last 5 posts for that month were all done on the road (literally) or late nights in hotel rooms.  Luckily I was able to get all the pre-work done on the images and then uploaded before heading out – no trivial matter since the bit into the packing time and prepping for the Chase Race.  All is good now, the kids are back and finally getting some sleep thanks to being through with crappy hotel beds.  The next couple of posts are actually cleanup from last month’s prep work.  Not knowing what mood I’d be in for posting topics, I worked up a few extras.  Tonight’s had a slight time lag since the trip also involved delivering a project to our friends Dr. G and David.  We had the pleasure of meeting up with them on our way out to Yellowstone and were able to spend a few days catching up and checking out all the animals in the park.  (By the way, thanks again for letting us stay over at your house)

Turns out we were able to explore Yellowstone with David and Dr. Giselle a few years back (link here).   To complete a project idea, we gave ourselves a mission – Seek out and photograph naturally (er or in some cases man made) occurrences of the letters W Y S T O L E N. When I chose to accept this mission I didn’t have very high hopes of actually being able to pull it off but this kid is no stranger to a challenge.  It took some effort, but with the help of the team we located every one of those letters somewhere in the park (er.. at least close to it if not in it).  Each was expertly photographed, transferred in triplicate to the storage drives and then … left to wallow in the darkness until there was enough time to kick-start the official project.  That point in time did not make itself available until last December – just before Christmas to be exact.  When possible I like to give Linda creative gifts for special occasions .. something she can’t just go out and buy which directly translates to something handmade.  To be honest, she probably could go out and buy much better versions of the stuff I give her, but part of the gift is really the blood sweat, tears and too often frustration that go into making it.  Good thing I waited until nearly Christmas Eve to working on this project ’cause nothing like putting yourself in a corner to keep you focused.

I’m going to skip ahead a bit on the project since the real meat of any photography project is the matte creation.  So just assume the all the typical effort of pouring through thousands of photographs to find the best letter composition, post processing those, sending them out to get printed in both color and black and white and locating a frame and corresponding matte blank were tediously completed.  with that out of the way, the matte cutter was dragged out along with the tools that would be needed.

We do a LOT of photography framing etc. so we opted to purchase our own matte cutter (on the left of the image).  Based on the prices local framing retailers charge this has more than paid for itself over the years.  After an extended period of time in Jeffery Alans I decided on the choice of mattes – a textured white front with a black backing.  This would give a nice black border on the images with the bevel cuts.  The shot above was taken a little late in the process since you can see the layout had already been drawn out on the backing of the frame I purchased.  Let’s go a little closer on that since this is the loooongest part of the process.

Hit the jump to see how this project turns out

Continue reading Project Sesame Street

No One Bites Back as Hard

No one knows what it’s like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

I saved the best for last which is quite fitting since this is the last post of the month and the last in the three part Wolf series. Continuing on with the shoot at Wildlife Prairie Park, this particular entry brings closure on the after treatment study.  If you recall, the first post in this series was the traditional color version with some amped up contrast (link here). The resulting benefit of that is the conversion to Black and White was pretty impressive (link here). In fact at the time it was a definite candidate for this season’s contests. There was still one more effect to experiment with….

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That’s never free
No one knows what it’s like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

What do you think? Admittedly, I was very very pleased and ranking these series as my best yet. Granted the purists are going to have some hardship with the degree of post processing, but at this point I could care less. Whenever this particular argument comes up (purist vs processing) I always fall back to one simple question – “What is your impression of Ansel Adams’ work?”. I do not think there are many photographers out there that have a bad opinion of his work and some out there (as in Linda) consider the pinnacle of the business. Guess what folks, he did major manipulation in the darkroom – granted before the age of digital, but the concept of dodging and burning was in full use in his workflow. I am no where near the caliber of Ansel and the other greats in the photography world likely post processing their work (perhaps Mr. Lik falls into this category), but what is good enough for them is good enough for me. I tell no lies, I do use Lightroom and Photoshop… and why do I do that… because these are the results.

Hit the jump to read more about the treatment done on this set of pictures.

Continue reading No One Bites Back as Hard

One Fast Cuckoo

Another day, another post!  Guessing the doubters are starting to get a little concerned (hehehe).  I’m not out of the woods completely, but as each post rolls out through the publishing pipeline the stress ratchets down another notch.  The good news in all of this is I was able to get started on another vacation’s worth of shots from last year.  The great news is it looks like the topic hopper will be full for an extended period of time based on activities that has transpired as of late.  Of course, this does have the downside of erasing all the gains made on the already overflowing topic queue.  A very good problem to have when all your peeps have such high expectations.

Speaking of queues, next pop from the stack places us back in Henderson Nevada, home of the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve discussed a couple of posts back (link here).  If you recall, that post introduced a new bird to the blog.  Let’s continue that streak with still another new species.

Most people will recognize this bird thanks to the numerous references over the years.  If you are struggling, imagine it as a highly clever bird painted in blue and yellow.  No help?  How about Beep Beep?  If that didn’t trigger the name, then clearly you did not watch enough cartoons as a kid.  Just in case the suspense is too high, this is a Greater Roadrunner.  That day in Henderson officially marked the first time I’ve ever seen a live one of these and to say I was elated is an understatement.  After shooting the Green-Winged Teal, a blur of brown and white caught my eye dashing across the shoreline of an adjacent pond.  Intrigued,  I immediately headed over there and tried to get a decent shot.  Let it be known that the amazing speed of these birds is confirmed.  It could flat out move making focus tracking nearly impossible.  Left, right, under brush, out of brush, to the water, back to the shore – it never seemed to stop.  To get the shots here required some high shutter speeds combined with just a smidgen of luck.  Tracking brown colored birds against a brown backdrop makes for interesting times with the Beast, but when you get it… you generally get it.

Hit the jump to read more about this runner’s friend

Continue reading One Fast Cuckoo

Concert Recollection – Spring Fling Pipes Fest

Hopefully to no one’s surprised I’m back at it.  Tonight I am going with another recollection.  One of the reasons for that is it is still fresh in my head LITERALLY.  Specifically I am talking about a concert some friends and I attended a few weeks ago sponsored by 105X, the local hard rockish yet still playing Nickelback crap station.  They were holding their annual Spring Fling Concert which typically is a multi-band mashup.  They had a decent lineup this year consisting of two bands I really like (Papa Roach and Sick Puppies), a band I wanted to see (Stone Sour) and two bands that intrigued me enough to consider seeing (In This Moment and All That Remains).  Not a bad night of entertainment and more importantly, the price was right at $42.  Ironically, I’m at a point financially where I can afford concert prices but old enough to not appreciate being gouged by greedy promoters and bands – think Rolling Stones if you need an example.

The first band of the night was All That Remains.  There are no pictures to show you being that my arrival came in the middle of their set and the remaining of their two songs was spent trying to figure out who they were and being very unimpressed.  This could have been due to some distractions having to kick some people out of our seats.  The others were still on their way but since I was already dealing with my seat went ahead and told the squaters in those seats to find another place.  They responded with annoyed faces but honestly was beyond caring – we purposely chose seats so we did not have to deal with the general admission crowd… definitely getting old(er).  There was one noted band observation – they had a female bassist.

Once they were done, the roadies took to the stage and started building an elaborate set.  Out came a bag of skulls, a pikes full of skulls, a platform, a large fan, some dumb looking trellises that looked like wedding props and a few more knickknacks scattered about.  Eventually they uncovered the drum which had a barely readable In This Moment logo.  Ah, time for the screacher!  Based on a few samplings it was apparent they had a front woman that could belt it out.  Turns out she was pretty pleasing to the eyes no small part due to the fact she came out in a one piece number giving proper attention to her assets.  Of course, for some strange reason, she chose to stand in the middle of a dry ice jet stream which made it difficult to see her most of the time.  No stranger to a stripper pole, she gyrated her way through her incredibly long FOUR or FIVE song set accented by her walking off stage after each song and attempting to add some form of dramatic flair to her re-entrance.  Summary – she can indeed belt out some notes and at least one of her songs was halfway decent, but her constant gesturing to have the fog blower fiddled with degraded the overall impression – you are trying to watch the “artist” perform yet constantly having to be distracted by a roadie continually coming on stage to jerk around with the fan to fine tune a gimmick that wasn’t adding any real value.

With those two bands out of the way it was time to get into the part I really paid the money for.  Sick Puppies came out and to my surprise it was only a three person band.  Drummer, guitarist singer and surprise surprise another female bassist.  3 for 3 with women as an integral part of the band (translated.. not simply eye candy as witnessed in the past Crue concerts).  The puppies did not let me down.  They played with a lot of energy, interacted with the crowd and most importantly played all the songs I came to hear.  Kudos to the female bassist pounding away on the strings.  They bring a LOT of bass to their songs which is why she surprised me at first, but looked like she had an interesting claw like style which delivered a lot of power.  Additionally, there is new found appreciation for their singer’s ability to hold his old against the power voices in the industry.  If you have not heard of this band before I highly recommend checking out Long Time Coming – could be my all time favorite bass beat.

Hit the jump to read about the rest of the bands that night.

Continue reading Concert Recollection – Spring Fling Pipes Fest

Hitting Jackpot in Henderson

Having finally made my way through the Indy Zoo photo shoot, I can finally switch my attention to another photo trip that has been lingering out there way too long. Last November Linda and I headed out to our home away from home in the plains of Nevada. As in the previous time we hauled out our camera equipment with the primary intent of heading out into Red Rock. Turns out one of employees that works for Linda had lived out there. When she heard I was into bird photography she highly recommended we popped over to Henderson and make a visit to their Bird Viewing Preserve. Without hesitation this spot was added to the agenda figuring we could drop by on a late morning before packing up and moving out to the Red Rock staging area (translated.. one of our casino “finds” from a previous trip). The day we went was somewhat of an emotional roller coaster. There was high anticipation on the ride out, but as we neared the location (per the GPS) that started to taper quickly. Spoiled from the preserves around us in Illinois, I expected a mini forest – on hind sight there was no basis for that assumption seeing as how we were in a … DESERT. The GPS kept telling us we were headed in the right direction, but all that really stood out was industrial type buildings and a water treatment plant. You would think there would be a large lake or something if they had any hopes of pulling in waterfowl. Linda eventually found a small sign pointing to a road that wrapped back behind the industrial complexes. This brought us to a small building with exactly one other car in the parking lot. The coaster had just bottomed out.

With subdued enthusiasm we got all the gear ready and headed into the building where we were greeted by a gentleman who instructed us to sign in. Additionally we were required to sign a special form indicating we understood the rules and wouldn’t harm anything. Hmmmm – that at seemed a little odd. That form was basically good for one year before you had to fill it out again. This slight annoyance was forgotten soon enough when we discovered that the Preserve was FREE. In this day and age that is becoming rare. With the paperwork out of the way, we headed out back to see what this was all about. Remember that coaster comment? well it took a massive ride up a few minutes later. There were approximately 140 acres (according to their website) dedicated to the facility with a series of ponds carved around a nice walking path. Oh, and they did have some trees. I was floored, not sure my shutter finger ever left the camera for more than 10 minutes as we moved from pond to pond. That place was packed with birds I’ve never seen before and according to someone we met there, a current stopping point for some rare migrating birds. A personal jackpot in the land of excess. As with the Indy posts, these will take some time to get through, but as before I’ll sprinkle in some other topics to keep the non-bird enthusiasts entertained.

Starting out this series is another new entry to the Blog:

That would be the Geen-Winged Teal. From the maps I have (Audubon) it looks like their permanent residence extends down into Nevada, however, preferring the Canada regions during the summer breeding and the bottom half of the states during the Winter months. It does show that it migrates through Illinois but do not think I’ve encountered one to date.

Hit the jump to read more about this sharply colored bird

Continue reading Hitting Jackpot in Henderson

Operation M O Y

No time to lose, some time freed up so back on the posts.  Tonight’s topic brings yet another project.  Unlike most of my projects, this one had a short execution time.  Not by choice mind you, this was a direct result of losing track of the time.  You would think with the relatively low amount of sleep these days I would be on top of things a little better but alas, not the case.  To give myself a little credit I had been thinking about it for a couple of months trying to figure out the right medium to use for the build.  Options included wood, plexiglass, patio bricks, drywall (trust me, I have PLENTY of that laying around these days), but all of those had an extended prep time.  Time that was not in the budget.  Then the shower moment hit me – matting would be perfect and provide an additional compositional element to the project.   With that big decision over, all I needed to do was get the shampoo out of the hair and get to work… well later that day after work while Linda was at the dog club.  That was actually another factor in the delay – she needed to be gone for awhile and I needed access to her boys.

The best part of this is I already had the materials.  With all the photography projects over the years we have a good stock of mattes.  A quick rifle through the pile found the perfect sheet.  Linda was suppose to be gone for about 1.5 hrs which forced some design decisions on its own.  I needed some letters I could freehand cut on the board.  10 minutes on Paint Shop Pro found a smooth cornered font that would do the trick.  A few prints and the patterns were ready.  For ease I just cut the letters out and traced them on the the back of the matte.  With my favorite knife in hand I spent the next 20 minutes slicing through the matte.

There was also a need to have the letters stand on their own.  A lunch brainstorming session came to the conclusion that electrical wiring would do the trick.. and yes, there just happens to be plenty of that laying around the house as well.  The window of opportunity was slipping away, so a quick cut of the wire and some duct tape would have to do.

Hit the jump to see where this is all going

Continue reading Operation M O Y

More Power

Apparently the loyal readers are getting restless based on the emails hitting the inbox as of late.  For those that were concerned I have not fallen off the face of the earth and for those expressing a complete loss in faith I’ll miss my quota this month … you may be right, but what is life without a few challenges every once in awhile.  We have a few photo shoots coming up in the not to distant future which translates to devoting more time to getting in flight projects to a point where they can be put on hold.  This is hard enough, but May brings with it a start of a new season.  This month involves donning the orange and hitting the racing circuit!  As in previous years, the first race of the season was the Caterpillar Power Race.  This relatively flat 5K allows me to ease into the season and make sure the off season training regiment properly prepared me.   This year brought with it a little more optimism and conversely a concern standard with the previous 5 or so years.  First of all I opted to keep the road endurance higher than usual, committing to at least one long run a week outside through the winter months.. BUURRRRRR.  The second change was a little more dramatic… here goes.. Hi, my name is Brian and I partook in Performance Enhancement procedures.  Whew, what  a load off.  On the road work side of things, I can attest to how much of a pain that was especially in the sub 20 weather (sub teen windchill) runs but the treadmill just doesn’t prepare you for the stress of the pavement.  Pretty comforting I am already at 1/2 marathon endurance levels this early in the season.  With regards to the enhancing component… well, before you call the governing committees, these were all legit and didn’t involve any forms of illegal substances or transfusions. Truth is I grew tired of always running in beyond normal levels of pain and literally damaging myself during every race.  Runners can be stubborn and hard headed but I could argue that is probably a pro when it comes to running.  It does take some commitment to the discomfort of training and the annoyance of nutrition regiments.  But there is a time when  you have to let your guard down and admit something is wrong.  For me, that moment was during a conversation with my chiro attempting to once again calm down an aggravated left hamstring.  Ever since experiencing a nasty injury in the middle of a Bix and “stubbornly” refusing to fail the race and pounding through it, I’ve been fighting continual tears in that region and worrying about it during every race.  Enough was enough and decided it was time for full on gait analysis.

After questioning a number of fellow runners and talking to my local running store, I decided on Accelerated Performance.  Wanting to make sure this was the right fit, I opted for their free fitness assessment.  This is a 20 minute test of your physical capabilities – balance, stretching, strength etc.  Piece of cake, I consider myself fit and work pretty hard to keep myself in that condition.  Wrong!  it didn’t take long and they had pinpointed deficiencies on my left side…I purposely didn’t say anything about my problems there not wanting to bias the test.  By the end of that assessment I was committed to enrolling.  Next up was a follow up session where they dived deeper into each of the areas they tested previously as well as doing a detailed assessment on the rest of the joint and muscle groups.  Definite issue with the left side and easily recognized the issue with the hamstring.  For one thing there was 3.5 inches of scar tissue embedded right in the middle of it.  Add to that flexibility restrictions and you have the recipe for problems.  From there I was scheduled twice a week for deep therapy message to break up the tissue followed immediately by isolated strength training.  I won’t go into it, but for those who have not have the pleasure of deep therapy message let me sum it up in a sentence.  The entire time I repeatedly tell my inner self not to cry.  I’ve learned to snowboard, broken ribs during martial arts, hell even had my arm ripped out of my socket during a black belt test, but nothing … and I mean nothing compares to the pain I’ve had to endure during this process.  Good news is that scar tissue is practically gone now.  While all this was going on I was also doing gait analysis.  They utilize the Dartfish process involving videotaping you from all angles on a treadmill and then creating an interactive DVD highlighting problem areas.  To my relief, there were plenty of problems.  Sparing you the details, here are the highlight:

  • Not enough forward lean
  • Arms too high
  • Arms swinging too much forward and not enough backwards
  • Arms crossing body
  • Cadence too slow

I was basically braking on every stride with a full on heel strike sending massive jolts into the hamstring and back.  Not good.  For the last four months I’ve been breaking my form down and adopting the new style.  This is not an easy project and immediately highlighted the muscles that were not pulling their fair share of the load (like the ankles).  My weeks have been spent on the road changing behavior, on the table getting brutalized  and in the gym strengthening up.  All of this in an attempt to get better.. and better I did.  On all out days I was able to bring my pace from 8 to 6.30’s however holding that was difficult over 2 or 3 miles.  The cadence (180/min) means your legs are working very hard.  The best news of all is my hamstrings felt great after every run.

Last Saturday it was time to put this all to the test.  The gun went off and I ticked off the internal checklist and got to work.  One mile done .. feeling good.   Two miles done feeling okay.  Third mile and getting winded and the high humidity wasn’t helping.  The clock stopped at 23:06.  A personal best but 6 seconds over my ultimate goal.  No need to feel disappointed, I had just ran the first race faster than ever without injuring myself!  The retooling was complete – a new foundation to build upon.

There was another reason to be happy that day.  Turns out my time was good enough to take second in my age group (by the way, first in my group had a 19 so something to shoot for next year).  This is the first time I’ve ever won anything in a race.  Now, some of the runners had opted out of this race for another being held the next day, but I was there and ran to the best of my abilities and therefore not going to let that put an asterisk on the record books.  A little bummed they gave money prizes instead of trophies (as you get older your perspective changes hehehe).  My loving wife actually made me a little trophy to commemorate the accomplishment.  That little trophy now stands tall next to my other medals.  Yes, I needed a performance enhancement but I wish I’d done it years ago!

See ya’ on the road my friends!

Serenity Survives, Long Live Serenity

It’s day two of groundhog day err agility showing.  More dogs, more jumping and a lot  more sitting around.  None the less, yesterday actually turned out fairly productive with each of our dogs going 4 for 4, made a blog post and even got some photo shoots in at Chain O Lakes and Lake of Geneva.  Regarding the latter, it is now very obvious where the Chicago discretionary money is heading – straight to Wisconsin.  Good lord those houses around that lake are HUGE.  Also had an entertaining conversation with a Spring Grove Dairy Queen employee who thought the green Arctic Rush flavor jar was apple and not lemon lime.  DQ probably owes me a free blizzard for training their staff.

While digging around the Internet for some details for this post I stumbled on this quote.

Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm.. anonymous

This seemed a perfect intro to today’s post.  This is actually a pretty popular quote on the net but none of the references attributed it to anyone in particular.  A shame since it is a pretty insightful quote – ESPECIALLY if you own a bridge named Serenity.  Note, I was really looking for relevant quotes from the movie Serenity when the one above came up.  If you recall, Serenity was a project to give access to the back of our lot (link here).  When it was designed consideration was given to how high to make it to account for the seasonal flooding that had occurred in the past.  Since building it, our Springs were pretty tame and as far as recollection serves, the stream stayed in the banks.  That was then.. this is now!

Welcome to the record flood of 2013.  The shot above is actually a few days after the water started to recede.  Still high, still displaying the awesome power associated with unbridled water.  The weather heads were calling for flash flood warnings but based on their accuracy over the last couple of years there was not a lot of concern given.  Well, at least until I headed off to work that morning and saw the massive flooding – Peoria was under attack by the Kracken.  All I could think of is whether Serenity was going to survive or not.  It was engineered for the worst… but maybe not for record amounts of waterfall.

Eventually Linda and I headed down to assess the situation.  Apprehension abounds.  Feelings were not getting any better at the first view of the stream.  What you couldn’t tell from that shot is the missing trees that used to be along the banks (now middle of the water path).  A quick look to the left revealed that my “debris” buffer was GONE.  There was a tangle of trees that was serving as insurance if anything decided to break away upstream.  It had already caught some large branches etc. during the smaller expansions.  That area was now free of all tangles – hell, even the bank had eroded significantly.

One of the trees was found shortly after…

SAVED.  the roots were tangled up in another bank tree which prevented it from harming Serenity.  Hopes were building especially when a hesitant glance downstream revealed she still standing tall.

Hit the jump to see more details of Serenity’s battle

Continue reading Serenity Survives, Long Live Serenity

Aftertreatment Sweetness

Here I sit at another dog show trying to figure out how to pass the abundance of downtime that comes with these agility events.  Working in my favor, for a change, is I still need to get some posts in to close out the month.  Knowing the show was coming up gave some security that as long as the post processing was done on the images and the upload to the Smugmug gallery went without a hitch only thing left to do was find time to spew out some words – maybe even in readable sentences!  Processing done – check, upload successful – check – some free time … crap loads.

Keeping with the theme of all the barking dogs crated around me, today’s post returns us to the ancestry of the domestic dog.  Not sure if it was mentioned in the previous Wolf post (link here), but that post was really a three parter. A trifecta if you will since that specific shot resulted in three very distinct post processing opportunities.  The previous shot was the standard color treatment, but likely unnoticed by you, there were some subtle differences in the final processing of those.  Specifically the contrast was amped a little more than usual to darken the background.  This provided better separation between the wolf and the foliage in the background.  Although it does make a slightly better image in terms of color, where it really makes an impact is when you convert it to …

Welcome to my new favorite set of photographs.  Although there were a few sample tests during the color processing I wasn’t entirely sure how it was going to turn out.  Admittedly a very biased opinion, but I really really like them.  My favorite shots are the one above and below (and one a little further down) – can’t decide between these two which I like more for sure, but leaning to the first one due to the more symmetrical ears.. at the cost of the wolf staring directly at the viewer in the one below.  Hit the comments section and give me your thoughts.. which as always are valuable input into the upcoming competition season – Linda’s already beginning to worry but the Yellowstone trip is coming up and that is a rich environment for her preferred subjects.  Some photobombing may be in order hehehehe.

Hit the link to see more of these B&W wolf shots!

Continue reading Aftertreatment Sweetness

Two Soles to Support the Soul of Boston

A week ago yesterday two cretins from Chechnya decided carry out the message of hatred and violence spewing out from the mouths of insecure people cowering behind the cloak of a perverted ideology. What was the target of these bold and tough warriors of a faith… the innocent and defenseless bystanders at the Boston Marathon who took the extra effort to go out and cheer on participants of the most revered events in the running world. I can only hope there is a special place in the afterlife reserved for the dark of heart. A place that will provide rightful punishment for a pair of cowards that took pleasure in placing and detonating a bomb next to an 8 year old. I personally extend my sympathies To all whose lives were cut short or forever altered by the actions of these terrorists. By definition terrorists derive pleasure by instilling fear in the minds of others. I imagine they achieve satisfaction by the mere thought of someone opting out of a once pleasurable event due to uncertainty and concern for danger. Needless to say this could be the case for millions of running enthusiast around the world. Is someone else going to trying something similar at another race? Do I want to put myself at risk and stand with fellow runners in the starting chutes? Will I be concentrating on picking suspicious people out along the race route instead of watching my splits? Will I be able to feel the pride of conquering a difficult race or too paralyzed at what might happen at the finish line?

The answer to these questions is quite simply: HELL NO!

Terrorists tried to take my sport from me but last night my fellow runners and I TOOK IT BACK!

Our local specialty running store – Running Central – in Peoria Heights put out the call to show  our support and unity for our colleagues and the victims and families of Boston. In their honor running stores across the country were holding fund raisers and fun-runs. Running Central was offering tribute shirts with 100% of donations being forwarded to One Fund Boston, the charity endorsed by the Boston Athletic Association (and the mayor of Boston) to aid bombing victims.

The word went out to their running clientele, Facebook and local news agencies that the shirts would be available for purchase starting at 5:00pm with a fun run beginning at 5:30. Without question I was going to be there and hoped my fellow runners would be doing the same. Immediately after work Linda and I headed down there arriving just before the 5:00 hour. What I saw made me very proud to be a member of the running community.

The community had responded with a generous outpouring of support!  All types had taken up the call, casual runners, distance runners, speed runners, beginners to veterans, young to old were there to show their support for Boston.  By the time we made it to the area the line had nearly wrapped all the way around the courtyard.  I saw the owner of the store surveying the situation and noticed he headed back into the store to pull out a couple more tables.  Once placed he grabbed the microphone and greeted all the supporters thanking us for taking the time to honor the victims of Boston.  He then said something that caught me by surprise – actually disappointed me at first.  An apology came for not having ordered enough shirts – only 160 of them to be exact.  My disappointment wasn’t that I might not get a shirt (far from it), but rather his initial assumption of a low turnout.  Hopefully the turnout that night will forever change that for future events.

Hit the jump to read more about this special event!

Continue reading Two Soles to Support the Soul of Boston