Amazing Grace!

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch; like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed!

The Lord hath promised good to me,

His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be

As long as life endures.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we first begun.

Quad City Air Show, Part 1

The Quad City Air Show was a blast this year and my dad and brother Dave joined me. We got there early enough to get seats right up at the fence closest to the runway and then we walked around and looked at the static displays. Some of the larger aircraft were open and we walked through them. I was surprised at how much space there is inside a twin-rotor Chinook.

Dave struck a ridiculous pose in front of the toothy grin of a Vietnam-era fighter jet so that I could take his picture so he could send it to his fiancee. I'd like to post that series of photos, but I took them with his camera and I don't think he's going to send them to me, ha.

I talked to some of the pilots as we walked near the runway entrance and ran across a guy who goes to our church! Did not know he was a pilot. It's weird to run across someone you know in a place you don't expect.

Dave is surprisingly adept at avoiding getting his picture taken, but I am surprisingly adept at taking people's pictures...

We took a lot of photos during the air show and Dave used his new Samsung Galaxy to take pictures. After 3.5 hours of taking pictures, he decided to review his shots and discovered that he had taken selfies the whole time! He had a gazillion priceless shots of himself squinting at the sky and some great close-ups of his sunburnt nose. Apparently he had the wrong camera selected and it was so bright out that he could not see the display, so he just kept shooting and hoped for the best.

More photos in the next post...

Geocache

Geocaching! Tonight we downloaded geocache apps onto our phones and set out into the wild CR looking for... whatever a geocache might be. The first one was a bust, but then on the next one we struck gold:

A mini cache! Emily was not impressed, but she's not impressed by most things. Sign the log and set out for the next one...

Against a Painted Sky

While we were staying at the cabin, low clouds rolled in and the sky looked very weird. The weather stayed calm and it made for some cool night pictures. It was completely dark out, but I used a long exposure (15 sec.) to lighten it up a lot.

I recently discovered that my portrait lens takes the sharpest pictures with an F-stop of 4. Any less or much higher and I have to chase the focus a little bit, but 4 is dead on every time. Weird, huh?

Flying II

The yellow RTF Champ met an untimely death when it went out of transmitter range and plummeted at full speed into a parking lot, smashing into a million pieces against the pavement. All the king's horses and all the king's men... there was no fixing that mess. That was a bad day.

It's been replaced with a V-tail twin-engine plane that I carefully keep within range, heh. This plane actually flies better and is more maneuverable. After only a few flights I had figured out how to fly loops, figure 8s, and how to give Emily a haircut! Oops.

Yup, flying straight up.

Ok, that's all for now, but I'll post more boring airplane pictures when I get a chance.

The River

On Saturday we went to the White Star downtown and then we went to our favorite pier along the river and watched a storm come in.

Ominous! Boiling, angry-looking clouds blew in while we watched and the wind picked up as the air cooled off quickly. I under exposed this shot a little to darken the clouds and give 'em some definition.

Put the hammer down! They barely got off the river fast enough.

As soon as it started raining, we went and met up with some friends at the Irish Democrat to celebrate a birthday, but we came back to the river a couple hours later and I took some long exposures across from Quaker Oats. Or Quaker "Oars" as Emily calls it because the "t" looks a lot like an "r." She's got a point; look closely and you can see for yourself.

The Fourth!

We spent our Independence Day in... where else? Independence, IA. Cuz if you're gonna be patriotic, might as well do it right. A town with a name like that is pretty much obligated to give you all the stars and stripes you can handle every July the 4th and they didn't disappoint this year.

In the morning, we went to the parade and they even had planes flying over in formation down the main street of town. There were bands playing throughout the day and in the evening there was fireworks along the Wapsi.

Fun with sparklers while waiting for the fireworks...

Fireworks!