Cotton Candy

This is a larger view of a storm cloud that rolled through here over the summer.

My 4 Daily Photo Favorites:
Selma, Alabama
Menton, France
Kansas City, Missouri
Chicago, Illinois

Sugar And Spice

From my archives. Taken this past Christmas at the Mall Of America in the worlds largest gingerbread house.

Engineering Hydropower

Powered Sunset

It's a strange occurrence when the sun sets into the power lines. The lights flicker, the power surges, but once it passes through the power lines, all returns to normal.

My 3 Daily Photo Favorites:
Ocean Township, New Jersey
Mexico City, Mexico
Jakarta, Indonesia

It's Still There

If you've ever driven on Robert Street in West St Paul, you've most likely passed JT's Hamburgers. Now if you blinked when you passed, I can understand if you missed it. The place is very small, but they have been here ever since I can remember. I grew up fairly close to this area, but drove and biked on this road often. Just the other day I took a drive down Robert Street and couldn't believe my eyes. EVERYTHING has changed, except for JT's hamburgers. Now I'm sure there are a couple of places that were still in business from ten years ago, but I cannot remember them from my childhood. If the business is still in place from my childhood, it's been torn down and rebuilt with a brand new building. It's quite a turn over in businesses and buildings. Now this may sound odd, as long as JT's Hamburgers has been in business, I have never eaten there. Somebody is keeping this place in business and perhaps I should stop in there help the cause.

My 3 Daily Photo Favorites:

The Road To Nowhere

I've always being amazed when there is heavy fog. It doesn't happen too often around here. I've tried in the past to take photos of it, but I've never been happy with the results as it usually doesn't capture the depth and density of the fog. This photo however I believe captures it pretty decent. Perhaps the secret to a photo of the fog is to have objects close and far disappear. That is what we all like about the fog isn't it? You know what's ahead, but you're not able to see it in the fog.

Let me paint the picture for you: Up ahead is the entrance to connect with Highway 494 that crosses the river, it's rush hour traffic and there are hundreds of cars ahead. There are trees to the left that rise up a cliff, on the other side of 494 is another cliff with houses on top of them. There are very tall street lights that shoot up about 75 feet and cast their light during the dark hours. There is also road constructions on the east bound lanes of 494 where they are building a new bridge. Among the construction are mounds of dirt, trucks, a crane and lots of metal rebar. To the left and continues straight north is highway 61 with more cars on their way to work.

Now can you picture what is not seen?

My 3 Daily Photo Favorites:
Orlando, Florida
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Dubai, UAE

For Your Protection

It is advised that you stay behind the yellow line. For the record, I was behind the yellow line when I snapped this photo, despite there being no cars on the track. I will be making a return visit in September, hopefully mother nature will cooperate and allow the race to go on.

I've changed my mind about yesterday being my favorite shot from Elko Speedway. After looking at this capture, this is the shot of the day in my opinion.

My 3 Daily Photo Favorites:
Ithaca, New York - moving away
Riga, Latvia
Joensuu, Finland

Up Close On Car 31

We had a first hand look at the race car we sponsor. The car is a Chevy Caprice, 355 engine. I was amazed at home much fabrication goes into preparing the car to meet the specs for the type of race it's involved in. The outer shell is original [except for a few crash repairs], but virtually everything else must be removed down to the frame. The less weight, the better. Much of the car is self created to make everything that is left in the car working with each other. There is the obvious safety equipment needed to keep the driver safe, but beyond that, there are no luxuries.

This is my favorite shot of the day. The low angle, the soft focus, and I was under the safety of tarp to keep the rain off of my camera.

My 3 Daily Photo Favorites:
Greenville, South Carolina
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Paderborn, Germany

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

So this past weekend I made a visit to Elko, Minnesota. There they have the Elko Speedway racing track. Where I work, we sponsor one of the Thunder Cars, the #31 car in particular, driven by Mike Hanson. Saturday was a gathering of the employees to watch the car in action, see it up close. The rain put a halt to that very quickly. I did manage to get a few photos of the track during a light moment of rain. We all received rain checks for the race and will return at a later date when the weather is more cooperative.

My 3 Daily Photo Favorites:
Montreal, Canada
Torino, Italy
Zurich, Switzerland

Calling Inspector Gadget

There has been a lot of rain over the past three days, including the place where I was Saturday. The event was called due to rain, but where could I possibly be? Should be fairly easy to guess. Also, if you look closely at the photo, you can see some rain drops streaking down.