T. F. Green Airport

Foreward in 2021

These photos in this post are from 2018; long before SARS-CoV-2 was a concern or worldwide problem.

As with the photos I recently posted from my 2017 trip to Rhode Island, the following is a collection of photos shot in 2018 which I’ve had in my personal backlog to edit and write about for several years.  I only recently finished editing and composing this post alongside others from the same trip due to the sheer volume of images.

T. F. Green Airport

In 2018, I went on a roadtrip to visit with my friend Alyssa and explore more of her home state of Rhode Island.  Normally I’d fly, but due to variable timing it made more sense to drive, and it allowed me more freedom to change plans on the fly.  As it would happen, my chance meeting with a firefighter based at T. F. Green Airport would benefit from this flexibility.

Early in my trip, after a morning of exploring downtown Woonsocket and introducing me to some Rhode Island staple cuisine, I spotted an antique fire truck parked in front of a fire station while driving back to Alyssa’s; I had to stop and get some photos.  While checking it out, the owner came out of the fire station; turns out this fire truck is privately owned - it’s not owned by the fire department.  The owner is a firefighter who bought and restored the 1972 Maxim F ladder truck, which is an especially unusual sight today with its open cab.  In talking with the owner, it turns out he is stationed at T. F. Green Airport (PVD), so we had lots of aviation stuff to talk about.  As it became clear we could easily kill half a day chatting, we traded contact information and talked over the next few days.

During my chance meeting the firefighter, we’d discussed my connections to IAD and DCA, such as my multimedia roles, and interfacing with the airport police and fire departments for various projects.  Since then, we’d arranged time to meet up once again, while he was on-duty at PVD’s airfield rescue and firefighting station so he could give me a proper airfield tour from airside.  I love airports, and I love airport people!

I arrived at the ARFF station and met up with my new firefighter friend who was very eager to see me again.  Unfortunately part of our plan fell through, because due to other duties going on that day he was left without a service vehicle (beyond an ARFF truck, which you can’t exactly take out without a full crew in case there’s a call).  But no biggie; we still hung out airside for a few hours trading stories and watching aircraft taxi and take off.

T. F. Green’s airfield is interesting because its ATC tower and ARFF station are located on the opposite side of the passenger terminals; this is common (and normally necessitated by response time requirements) for ARFF stations, but although not unheard of for ATC, less common.  This location opposite the passenger terminals gave a much wider, different perspective of the airfield than one would normally get while simply catching their flight.

At mid-day, this was a slow time between banks, when most aircraft were in the sky between destinations; this was on purpose so the likelihood of a call was lowest.  Just after I arrived, one of the New England Patriots’ private aircraft landed after performing practice maneuvers in preparation for an upcoming aerial display; you can see it taxiing back to its hardstand.

Rhode Island: Summer 2017

Foreward in 2021

This is a blog post and collection of photos from my first-ever visit to Rhode Island that I’ve had in my personal backlog to edit and write about for several years; the photos have been done and waiting to be posted for almost three years, and I even completed the entire photo layout design and part of the copy on a flight two years ago… since then, it’s all just been sitting, sadly collecting dust.

The reason this happened is for several reasons; I put all personal work on the backburner until paid work is done, and by time these photos were done being edited, I had already gone back to Rhode Island to visit Alyssa once again, with an even larger batch of photos to edit, post, and blog about. The intention was to get those photos done as well, and post both blogs and photosets back-to-back.

Well, that’s essentially what’s happening now - I just recently, two solid years later, finished editing the last of my Rhode Island photos from 2018 (it was a much larger, more daunting set - I might be breaking it into multiple blog posts - you’ll why see, in time), and now I’m circling back to compose posts, and do what I should have done years ago, but sticking with the original plan of posting both sets at the same time.

Most of this post was composed in 2020; you’ll see the time of writing denoted in the post itself to account for any changes in context or subject matter resulting from the time passed.

So, it’s 2021, but these photos are all from 2017, long before COVID-19 was ever a worry.  And this 2017 trip had long-term impacts on me that still affect me to this day, so perhaps it’s good I’m writing about it so much later (read about it below).

So, after many years of anticipation, here is my 2017 trip to Rhode Island, which includes airports, islands, scooters, and boats.

DCA - PVD

NOTE: Everything from this point until denoted below was written in 2018.

For the last several years, Alyssa has come down from Rhode Island to visit with me, typically during my birthday week, but the opportunity to visit her hadn’t conveniently presented itself until this year - naturally I chose her birthday week, since it was becoming an unofficial tradition.

The last time I flew out of DCA the A Concourse was strictly JetBlue, which should tell you how many years it had been since I flew out of DCA.  Now it is exclusively Southwest; this would by my first trip on WN.  I’d always heard Southwest is either love / hate, so I wanted to try it for myself.  Anytime I fly I like to arrive early enough to grab a meal, a coffee, and catch up on emails in a relaxed timeframe.  It just happened that my travel date unfortunately had some of the worst weather the East coast had seen that Summer.  A severe thunderstorm spanning the entire length of the coast was rolling through the region, causing ground-stops at multiple airports including DCA.  My flight out was delayed by over 4 hours.  Not a big deal given how good Page’s (DCA Concourse A) food is.

Once the storm had finally passed through, flights boarded and began departing normally again.

Upon entering PVD’s airspace, I could see during our approach they were doing some night work on one of their runways.  I ended up getting a pretty good nighttime aerial view of T. F. Green International Airport because this also turned out to be my first go-around flight.  Our aircraft had to go-around when a departing flight on our arrival runway failed to depart when cleared.  This added about 5min to our flight time to climb back to altitude while turning sharply, and rejoin the approach pattern.

It made for a long and interesting day of travel.

Newport Winery

NOTE: Everything from this point forward was written in 2020, despite being photographed in 2017.

Alyssa had taken the entire week off for birthday festivities, and although we didn’t have a plan for every single day I’d be in town, we did have some plans in mind.

First up was wine tasting in Newport; anytime Alyssa comes to DC I take her to a new winery, since we have a lot of them.  Now it was her turn, and she chose Rhode Island’s largest vineyard which is also widely regarded as its most elegant.  I found it very similar to Virginia’s Stone Tower Winery, which is about as near to a Napa Valley vineyard you can get without leaving the DC region.

We had booked a reservation for a winery tour, to learn about the vineyard’s history, see its winemaking operations, and taste a selection of the 32 wines Newport Winery makes.

You’ll also notice in all photos of me that I’m wearing a knee brace - this trip was three months after my patellar dislocation, and two months before undergoing MPFL Reconstruction surgery, so the knee brace was there to help prevent another excruciating dislocation, and provide at least some stability until I got my knee fixed.  I’m happy to report, today, that my surgery was totally successful, and after a 6 month recovery, I’ve now been running half-marathon distances problem-free and in respectable times for two years, an endurance milestone I had never reached before the initial injury.

A fog rolled in while we were outside enjoying glasses of wine we’d ordered after the tour and two rounds of tastings; beside the people I hold dear in Rhode Island, the coastal fog is possibly my favorite thing about the Ocean State.

Block Island

The next day, Alyssa’s family had planned out an overnight trip to Block Island to celebrate her birthday on the beach.  I didn’t know what Block Island was except for “it’s like Martha’s Vineyard, but smaller;” having never been to Martha’s Vineyard, that description didn’t help me one bit.

Just after sunrise, we headed to Galilee, Narragansett to catch the high-speed ferry to Block Island; about a 30min ride on a hot rod boat with 4 engines and 4,400 horsepower.  Unbeknownst and unfortunately for everyone, the ocean offshore had become very choppy, with waves in excess of 10 feet, which for a cruise ship is jostling but fine, but for a 99ft catamaran, it’s a bucking bronco.  I’ve only felt motionsickness twice in my life, and this was one of those times; somehow, unlike most passengers aboard, I somehow managed to not vomit.  The ride was so rough you had to hold onto your seat to keep from being lifted from it, and anything not sitting on the floor at the start of the journey had been thrown to it by time we reached the island.  Even the crew was caught by surprise how much it picked up since their last run an hour earlier.  The few pictures I have while on the water are from by the shore when it was stable enough to stand - my stomach was still spinning an hour after disembarking.

We’d originally planned on eating upon arrival, but that was out of the question for obvious reasons.  Instead we decompressed on the beach for a little, and then head into town to pick up scooters Alyssa had reserved once the ground didn’t feel like it was spinning anymore.

So here’s the part that still affects me to this day.  Each of us driving a scooter had to demonstrate competency driving the scooter before being allowed to take off on one.  Alyssa… was given a hesitant pass after her wobbly solo demonstration; we were sharing a scooter, and the staffer said, “ehhh, why don’t you let him drive you around as a passenger on it for a while first.”  So off we went, Alyssa riding along behind me as our pack of 3 scooters explored the island’s twisting, foggy roads.  After a while of riding, stopping here and there to check out views of the cliffs and shoreline, Alyssa decided it was her turn; “it’s my birthday, it’s my turn!”  So after reminding her how to start the thing (which should have been red flag number two), I hopped on back behind her, grabbing onto the bar very firmly, as I was scared of somehow reinjuring my knee.  Alyssa gave the scooter some gas to creep up the shoulder to the road, but gave it a too much, lurching the scooter forward.  She panicked and mixed up the throttle and the brake, pinning the gas; I yelled “ALYSSA,” but it was too late - I got thrown off the back, landing on my tailbone and crashing my head on the ground, and she launched herself and the scooter into a ditch dense with bushes.

The helmet did its job and I didn’t feel a thing up top - I laid on my back for a few minutes gathering my self from the shock and the wind that was knocked out of me, though my tailbone was sore for weeks afterward.  What wasn’t evident until much later was what happened to my neck.  Several weeks after this incident, once back home, I started experiencing an ongoing pinched nerve down my left arm; it kept happening - it would slightly improve, then overnight blow up again.  This started in the week before my knee surgery, so I wasn’t allowed to take anything for it, and I wasn’t about to delay the surgery any longer.  I successfully had my knee surgery and made a full recovery, but this problem kept getting worse and worse while rehabbing post-op.

Without going into an even lengthier amount of detail, this incident created a recurring slipped disc and subsequent trigger points for the last 3 years since it has happened, and landed me in physical therapy twice now.  The slipped disc seems to be healed, and it’s been a slow battle against chronic trigger points for about a year now.  I have a really good PT, and the goal is to get my neck and shoulder totally under control so it doesn’t keep spiraling into severely seized muscle spasm; we’re pretty close as of this writing.

I don’t blame Alyssa one bit; it was an accident, and I didn’t even tell her the cause of my shoulder pains until she was in town two months ago as of this writing - she’s one of my best friends, and I knew she’d have felt too guilty until now.

So, I got knocked off a scooter, Alyssa launched herself into some bushes, and her birthday wasn’t really off to a good start.  Oh, and now the scooter wouldn’t start once her family dug it out of the bushes - we think it was just oil pressure or something from being flipped over, because after letting it sit upright for about 10min it finally started back up.  Once it was clear I was okay, everyone, especially Alyssa, agreed she wasn’t driving it at all, and I’d drive it the rest of the day.  The small crowd of concerned onlookers that had gathered dispersed when Alyssa and I hopped on and slowly got back on the road - I drove us probably not even a mile, just regathering my bearings, and then we stopped to check out a lighthouse.  But first, we got a picture of Alyssa with the scooter since it’s what she’d been looking forward to all week - if you look closely, there is actually blood on the side of it from where she scraped her ankle.

I told Alyssa she wasn’t supposed to take “you’re a pain in the ass” so literally as we gingerly walked to the foggy lighthouse; my tailbone throbbing, her ankles skinned.

Interestingly, there was a September 11th memorial bench nearby the lighthouse; one of two 9/11 memorials on the island.  There is no information about the memorial on the island beyond the memorial’s own engraving, but this bench is dedicated to Catherine Carmen Gorayeb who moved from Boston to New York and perished in the World Trade Center collapse where she worked.

At this point, our group of six broke off our own directions in pairs.  Alyssa and I’s next stop was nearby Mohegan Bluffs to stretch our legs a bit, although we didn’t hike all the way down to the beach; the rough surf we’d endured to arrive on the island was starting to roll in, and we had reserved a beachfront spot on a calmer, more protected section of shore on the other side of the island - later.

One more stop with the scooter; I found out Block Island has a small airport, Block Island State Airport (BID), and I wanted to check it out.  It’s a GA airport, but does have some commercial aviation.  It had been, quite clearly, a VERY long morning, and our stomachs were finally stable and starving, so it was time to return the scooter and grab some lunch.  I never turn down a lobstah roll, so naturally:

While we were eating, some bikers parked their choppers out front.

It had been a long morning, and we still hadn’t done anything on the beach yet.  It was time for a drink… or a few.  This was my first time drinking from a fruit, and just relaxing with a drink(s) on the beach!  Not many pictures of the beach since we kept the pineapple Long Islands flowing and went swimming a few times with the cameras safe from the sand.

It was getting late, and we weren’t staying on the island, so it was time to catch the ferry back - no high-speed ferry amplifying the surf this time; hell no.  Even-though the morning’s high-speed experience was an outlier according to everyone (including the crew, and Alyssa and her family who all go to Block Island several times a year), we weren’t in any mood for that chance again, so we took the much larger, regular speed ferry back to Narragansett.  Not a good sign: we spotted vomit on the deck when we boarded, but the 1 hour ride back was just fine.

There’s little reason I would have known about the project on my own, but the return trip gave a fantastic view of the Block Island Wind Farm; a five turbine offshore wind-farm that serves as a demonstration of oceanic wind power generation, and became the first commercial off-shore wind farm in the United States when it became operational in 2016.

Neither Alyssa nor I made the hotel reservation, but we stayed at the diviest hotel I’ve ever been to in my life.  I only have a photo of the parking lot, which had a small (read: Hitchcock-esque) seagull problem mirroring the rest of the motel.

The room keys were punch-hole keycards which I don’t remember ever seeing except maybe once as a young child in the early 90s.  The faded room number was Sharpied onto the card, indicating the motel reused the easily duplicated keycards.

This motel permanently shut down a few months after our stay.  Like most beach hotels, we used it as a place to wash the sand off and crash after spending all day out, but still, wow.

Everyone got back together at night to get some Rhode Island specialties for Alyssa’s birthday dinner: Rhode Island clam chowdah, clam cakes, and fried whole-belly clams.  New England hands-down has the best seafood; Maine is for lobster - go to Rhode Island for clam (I also got raw oysters; yay!).

Afterwards, some of us went barhopping until the wee-hours of the morning and every bar in Galilee closed down.

Narraganset

The next morning Alyssa and I had a lazy, no-plan day exploring Narraganset, stopping by Point Judith Lighthouse and the rocky shoreline.

Of course, lunchtime came around, and I never turn down a lobstah roll; I got another helping of Rhode Island clam chowder too.  Monahan's Clam Shack happens to be rated the second-best lobster roll in the Ocean State by Buzzfeed, and makes their Top 25 list in the country.

Stopping by Sunset Farms’ farmer’s market, we said hi to their goats and gave some love to the owners’ elderly Irish Wolfhound sheepdog (who has sadly since passed away).

While there, I happened to catch a rare car spot.  At under 100 examples ever produced, I caught the WaterCar Panther as it pulled in to load up - I *think* it was the farm’s owner’s(?).  This amphibious Jeep conversion is WaterCar’s more practical successor to its Corvette-powered Python, capable of launching itself and reaching speeds of 85mph on land and 45mph on water.

PVD - DCA

The next morning, this trip was at an end on a cool, drizzly morning that lended for some aerial views of the bays and rivers that only appeared as inky-black splotches beneath the low cloud cover on my nighttime flight into PVD.

Stay tuned several more posts including photos from my 2018 trip to Rhode Island.  My stay in 2018 was longer and more involved, and really makes most logical sense broken into separate posts given some of the places I went and things I did.

DCA Planespotting - May 16th, 2019

Last week after a photoshoot at DCA, I dropped by Gravelly Point for a few minutes since I was feeling up to it (I am recovering from a shoulder injury). I didn’t stay long, but couldn’t resist the beautiful weather. I snapped some photos, but really wanted to try the EOS R shooting 4K through a 400mm lens, which equates to 700mm with the EOS R’s 4K crop. In short, 700mm handheld makes for great photos, but is really hard for video (duh).

Alitalia at IAD

Washington Dulles International Airport - Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport

This past Thursday, May 2nd, 2019, Washington Dulles International Airport welcomed Alitalia’s A330-200, formally beginning non-stop service to Rome. Fabio Lazzerini, Alitalia CBO, and Armando Varricchio, Italy’s ambassador to the United States, spoke to guests and passengers at the gate preceding a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially mark the beginning of service from IAD to FCO.

Embassy of Italy

Later in the evening, guests within the aviation and Italian / United States economic and cultural fields gathered at the Embassy of Italy in Washington, DC to celebrate the new link formed by Alitalia’s newly launched flight service. Guests enjoyed a fashion show featuring every Alitalia cabin crew uniform since the airline’s inception in 1946 while sampling Italian dishes and cocktails.

And here I am!

Huge thank you to Ryan Ewing of AirlineGeeks.com for capturing me in my element.

Chicago • Milwaukee: February, 2019

This February brought another travel photo assignment; my third assignment in Chicago. Some extraordinary circumstances were leading up to my travels this time around; namely, the 35 day long government shutdown, and the January–February 2019 North American cold wave which sent the Polar Vortex plunging into the midwest - both were impacting air-travel in the weeks preceding my scheduled trip to one of the cities most severely impacted by these events.

Both the government shutdown and polar vortex ended the same week, just one week prior to my travel dates. Because of the government shutdown, I wasn’t able to complete my interview for Global Entry (and more importantly to me, TSA Pre✓; the real goal since I’m currently only flying domestic, and have been well-versed in air-travel since 2005), despite having my pre-clearance for a while. I actually still haven’t my interview yet because I’ve been anticipating another government shutdown on February 15th (although today’s news indicates another shutdown may be averted).

Seeing the images out of Chicago during the worst of the Polar Vortex, I was glad to be home during the fierce cold, which at its worst reached a wind chill in the -50ºFs… but a tiny part of me wished I was there to witness temperatures colder than the Arctic.

IAD - ORD

As always, I schedule my travel days to be as relaxing as possible - the goal is to get there and get settled, along with some good food. In fact I have the IAD - ORD - IAD route down to a science now, taking the exact same departure and return flights, and staying at the same business hotel in nearby Rosemont.

Chicago O'Hare International Airport Safety Fair

The next morning was my scheduled photoshoot. Unfortunately, due to a paperwork technicality beyond my control, the photoshoot wasn’t able to happen; I’ll have to reschedule for next month. Sometimes things just don’t work out as planned; all you can do is your best.

As I was retreating back to the hotel after a long morning trying to find a solution, I came across a curious gathering in O’Hare’s Terminal 2; as it turned out, I was there the same day as ORD’s annual Safety Fair. Or Faire as this should be called!

I introduced myself to one of the organizers and was invited to participate since I was wearing my airport credentials. O’Hare has a safety fair annually, which has a different theme each year. This year’s was medieval times… but given the Polar Vortex, I think they should have just called it “Winter is Coming,” or “Winter is Here!”

Stations included airport security, wheelchair safety, and first aid, among others. Quite cleverly, the blood / spill cleanup practice station was a CPR dummy in a guillotine - Halloween, be still my heart!

A Day in Milwaukee

At this point, I’ve seen the majority of attractions Chicago is known for, outside of a Cubs game and its museums such as the Museum of Science and Industry and Adler Planetarium, all of which are on my list for future visits. This time around I wanted to do something different. My original plan was to rent a car to have it for dinner at Pequod's Pizza after my photoshoot (Pequod's isn’t feasibly accessible by train). The mishap with the photoshoot threw a wrench into that plan, because our Hail Mary plan was to try and get the required paperwork filed for the next morning - that plan of course didn’t work out either.

I spent my Friday morning assessing my options, forming a plan to get the pictures I needed, and finally talk with my client (who is based in London, by the way) about the situation and how to proceed. Work is always first priority. Exhausted of options to get the pictures I needed for this trip, there was no other option but to begin organizing a reshoot upon returning home.

Now I had the remainder of this day free, which meant I had the rest of the day to go for my plan to go explore nearby Milwaukee. Given the changes to my plans, this meant I had to rent the car that morning, rather than already have it and just be able to hit the road 1hr 20min North to Brewery City. No big deal; I just wouldn’t have as much time in the city as I’d originally expected.

Mercedes-Benz CLA Mini-Review

Seeing my options for rentals, I settled on a Mercedes-Benz CLA. The CLA has a reputation for being driven aggressively by… jerks… and although I’ve never liked the car from an outside perspective, I wanted to see if it there was a reason it caused this behavior to earn its reputation. First stop, however, was O’Hare’s new rental car facility, which was interesting because I’d already been to it in October, but without renting a car.

My review of the CLA requires no more than a paragraph: I didn't like it. Not one bit. It felt cheap and plasticky, and the fact it was a baseline with only a panoramic roof that I couldn’t even use (because it was, ya know, 13ºF out, which incidentally is warmer than it was when I was here in December) didn’t help. The seats were comfortable, but were sport-styled single-piece-backed buckets that would be more at home in a boy-racer sport coupe than a car billed as entry-level luxury. Beyond the logo on the wheel and infotainment display, I honestly felt like I was in a glossy mid-2000s economy car; modern offerings from Mazda and Honda are simply nicer. Furthermore, I find it very interesting that Mercedes doesn’t list an MPG rating for the car on their website - I only drove the car from Chicago, to Milwaukee, and back, and had used over half the tank with interstate driving only. Remember, the CLA has a 208hp 2L I4 (with a 7 speed DCT that was very nice, I’ll add); I’m not sure where that much fuel went - my suspicion is its range suffers from its 13 gallon fuel tank. In conclusion, the body looks nice, but it’s poseur-luxury, that gets its impolite reputation from the owners, not any characteristic the car lends to the driver.

I hope the Volvo is available next time.

Downtown Milwaukee

I may have missed the Polar Vortex by a week, but the effects were still there. Milwaukee River was now the Milwaukee Ice Rink, and all main roads had burns of not snow, but solid ice like curbs on each side. It was warmer this time than my last jaunt along Lake Michigan, but there was still a windchill of -7ºF.

First stop was lunch. I had no plan for the day except find some local food for lunch, find some breweries to tour, and maybe find some cheese if I can. Arriving in the heart of downtown, I looked up some nearby restaurants to see what would appeal - Milwaukee Brat House sounded amazing, and I wasn’t wrong. Later in the day I’d find out my instincts were more than right - it’s a very highly-regarded German pub known of all over the city, with connections to the Milwaukee Brewers. 10/10 would recommend and return to.

After lunch, I found a cheese boutique with samples of many of their offerings. Most of the selection was from Wisconsin, with some from other well known cheese regions including England and Italy. After sampling about half the cheeses on display that day, I picked up several Wisconsin cheeses, making sure one of them was cheese curds. Since getting back home, I’ve been asked if there is such thing as a cheese tasting, like a wine tasting. There actually is, and I’ve done it here in Virginia - I think it should be more common though. Pairings are just fascinating to me. And seriously; who doesn’t like cheese?

Miller Brewery

Next stop was the MillerCoors Brewery. Unfortunately the last tour went out around the time I was arriving to Milwaukee about 2 hours prior, but they still gave me a beer tasting. Those of you who know me know I’m much more of a wine person. As for beer, I don’t dislike it, but I have to be in the right mood for it, and I generally only like dark beers such as porters or stouts, or smooth and balanced beers like red ales and lagers. I do not like IPAs, and don’t understand their popularity. Coors is known for their light beers, which just taste like water to me, but the beertender did give me a Leinenkugel’s Snowdrift Vanilla Porter that I liked (didn’t I just say I like porters?).

It’s a real shame I didn’t get to go on the tour, because I’ve been on the Anheuser-Busch brewery tour in St. Louis, and it was underwhelming; they only walk you around outside and point to buildings and pipes - you see none of the actual production. The Miller tour is reportedly much more comprehensive, and shows guests each step in their actual operating production line.

Lakefront Brewery

Since Miller brewery didn’t work out like I’d hoped, next stop was a microbrewery that at least five people I’d met that day had recommended (including a few at Miller!). Over I went to Lakefront Brewery, with a ticket to the brewery tour already loaded in my Apple Wallet before I even got there.

Now I got the tour of a lifetime. The brewery itself is quite small, but the personalities of the staff are huge - don’t miss this brewery if you ever go to Wisconsin! I won’t spoil it for you, but you’re in for some entertainment and audience participation on this tour. Even better if it’s your birthday!

The brewery has a full-service restaurant specializing in German food and fish-fry, so naturally it was dinner time with some brews. There was a polka band scheduled to play that night, but they never took the stage for whatever reason.

What was fascinating to me was that there were barrels from Catoctin Creek distillery all over the tasting room - I’ve been toCatoctin Creek; it’s just 30min from home for me. Speaking with the beertender about it, he told me that the owners use those barrels for small batches of owner-only beer. Very fascinating!

I had a hankering for cheesecake, but the brewery only offered cookies and chocolates for desert - that just won’t do. On the recommendation of several brewery staff, I walked across the river to a local favorite pizza place. It was nothing like I expected - this place was more upscale (wine) tasting room than takeout pizza joint it seemed like from the outside. I wish I’d known about it before dinner at the brewery, because I would have preferred to go here for dinner instead. They were playing downtempo lounge and EDM tracks I have on my iPhone while I ate my tiramisu.

ORD - IAD

The next morning was my flight - it felt really, really strange leaving a city 700 miles from home without the pictures I needed, the only reason I was there in the first place. It was a lot of fun and I got a lot of great pictures, but not the pictures I needed, which left me feeling empty as I waited for my plane to push back.

I did make a friend though. My flight was half empty, and the person in the aisle seat was bringing a Mew home to a little girl. I made sure Mew was safely buckled in for departure.

Chicago, from the air, at night, is just magical, as I expounded on in this previous post. In daylight I don’t expect such a display from this city, however this time I was in for a surprise. I’d seen the pictures of Chicago during the Polar Vortex the week prior; it looked like scenes straight from The Day After Tomorrow. It hadn’t registered, however, that I’d see some of it for myself. Temperatures were a much more livable 20ºF, but there was still a staggering amount of ice on the lake. When it finally registered what I was seeing below me, my jaw actually dropped. The pictures can give you some sense of scale, but they simply don’t do the size of the expanse of ice justice. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.

This flight also gave me a new view of Dulles’ airfield, and some of the nearby quarries, thanks to the approach we’d been placed on.

Now that I’m back, it’s time to start planning when I’ll be going back!