My trip home took an hour longer than the trip to GFM. 200 miles of 30mph uphill and 60mph downhill sucked pretty hard.
I had never been to the Blue Ridge Mountains before Saturday. I do believe this is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places on earth. Grandfather Mountain might be the crown. I had the pleasure of meeting several PDMLers. Doug regaled us with a rather, um, detailed history of the list. He also made it very clear that I should never, ever let anyone with tracoma use my camera. Doug's a hell of a guy. Plus he's good for comic relief. Cesar did, in fact, have a smile on his face the whole weekend. Not sure how he pulled that off, what with his tongue dragging the ground. Can't say that I blame him for that, though. A most giving individual, Cesar started handing me Pentax goodies to fondle almost immediately after our introduction. And he let me run a roll through his 67. I feel an enablement coming on. Nico and his son were gracious enough to give me a ride from the bridge down to the trail head parking lot. It seems that I didn't spend enough time with the map, assumed that I had to hike up to the bridge, and then stupidly packed myself, the hard case containing the C220 and paraphernalia, and a tripod up the side of the mountain. Nico is right up there near the top of my "favorite persons" list about now. His son, on the other hand, had lots of questions for me on the way down: "You didn't know there was a parking lot at the bridge? Couldn't you see that the road continued past the trail head? Why'd you carry all that stuff?" Ah, children. Patrick's a good kid. I hope to see them both again. Charles Braswell is quite possibly the finest gentleman I've ever met. For those of you who have never met him, in addition to being a wonderful photographer, he's also great conversationalist. I'm only sorry I wasn't able to spend more time with him. I am most certainly looking forward to his presentation next June. I also had the pleasure of meeting Bill and Phyllis Owens. Unfortunately, they had to leave a bit early on Saturday. But Bill, rather matter-of-factly, assured me that everything would be in order by next June. Tom Reese actually shot some chrome this weekend. He also let me shoot a few frames with his 300/2.8. WOW! That's a hell of a nice lens. I've never experienced anything quite like the way that lens just lights up when the subject is in focus. Thanks, Tom! Plus, Tom let me caress his, err, MZ-S. I feel another enablement coming on. I suppose that makes up for his snoring. More details about the weekend's presentations and lots of photos to come. I'm off to soup some film. -- Scott Loveless http://www.twosixteen.com -- "You have to hold the button down" -Arnold Newman
