Tag: night
The Late Train
I haven’t really kept up with the photoblog since moving a few months ago. I’ll try to get back on track with a new post each week.
This is Aviation Station along the Los Angeles Metro Green Line, the closest station to LAX. (It doesn’t actually stop at the airport, but you can take a shuttle bus.) It’s also the nearest stop to my office. Before I moved, I’d sometimes take the train up to this point and a bus the rest of the way to work.
One night I was working late and missed the bus. Somehow convinced that the next one wouldn’t be by for an hour, I decided rather than sit and wait, I’d walk the mile and a half to the station. Three or four buses passed me, so it didn’t save me any time, but it was interesting to watch the planes line up for landing, and I caught this view of a train leaving the station as I was arriving.
Venus and Mercury!?
At the age of 34, I’ve finally seen the planet Mercury.* It’s notoriously difficult to spot, but when I read that it was going to be very close to Venus for the next few days, I had to try.
As it turns out, I was able to see it from a local grocery store parking lot. I left the car just as Venus was becoming visible, concerned by the clouds starting to drift past, and left the store to a clear twilight sky and a “star” below and to the right of Venus…exactly where Mercury should be!
*Of course I’ve seen photos, but I’d never seen the planet directly with my own eyes — or if I have, I didn’t recognize it.
Pillar Moon
While driving from Newport Beach to Lake Forest, we watched the full moon rise through a layer of haze and clouds.
For much of the drive it was surrounded by a bright yellow glow, light reflecting off the haze. A few minutes in, we noticed a light pillar shooting straight up from the moon. I seriously considered pulling over to the side of the freeway to take a photo, and probably should have, because it was almost faded by the time we reached our destination. The moon may have risen too high, or the ice crystals drifted away or evaporated, or perhaps it was simply drowned out by the city lights. A lot of the 405 runs past residential areas with lots of trees, so there aren’t too many lights visible from the freeway. You can just barely see the remnant of it in this photo.
I did manage to get one picture of the moon rising behind a cloud layer at the beginning of the drive:
Yes, it’s digital zoom. On one hand, at times like this I wish I had a better camera. On the other hand, if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to capture this while sitting at an intersection waiting to turn!
Comic-Con Triathlon: Running Through Downtown San Diego at Night
Friday night at Comic-Con. After walking around all day in costumes, we returned to our hotel, got cleaned up, had dinner at the hotel restaurant and got in line for the shuttle back to the convention center to catch “The Worst Cartoons Ever” at 9:00.
Except only one of us made it onto the bus.
Missing the Bus
We’d thought about going back to the restaurant for dessert later (they had Bailey’s cheesecake), so I did something stupid and went back to check the hours. (If they were going to be closed, we’d go somewhere in the Gaslamp area like Ghirardelli.) This took longer than expected, and the shuttle arrived in the meantime.
The shuttles only run every 20-30 minutes at night, and we had barely 30 minutes to the screening. Chances were if I didn’t catch this one, I wasn’t going to make it.
I fought my way upstream through the crowd that had just gotten off the bus, saw that Katie wasn’t at the stop, and ran halfway down the block as the shuttle pulled away…and immediately stopped at a red light.
I ran to the front of the bus and knocked on the door. The driver gestured toward the back of the bus. I looked back to see if there was another door. Nothing. I knocked again. He glared at me and pointed toward the back of the bus again. It became clear he was not opening that door for anything.
Words Exchanged
So I pulled out my cell phone and called Katie, who was in the process of calling me to ask where the hell I was. Whichever call connected, I started out with something like “The &@^#*& driver wouldn’t let me on the bus!” We each fumed a bit, the light turned green, and the bus pulled away.
I wasted a precious minute trying to decide whether it was worth trying to catch a trolley or something. I figured their schedule was about as bad. Driving didn’t even cross my mind — it probably would have taken me long enough to park that it wouldn’t have helped anyway. If I’d really been thinking I would have walked around to the front of the hotel and hailed a taxi.
Maybe it was that I’d spent the day dressed as the Flash. I decided to run.