I-10

After a 3 day weekend in Louisiana for my cousin's wedding and a small family get together, I headed west on I-10 towards Austin. About 40 miles outside of Houston, the traffic on the interstate came to a halt and didn't appear to that it would be clearing quickly. I turned to the navi system to try and find another route. The only way around the mess that I could find was to detour about 17 miles north of I-10 to meet up with US-90 and then head west into the 610 loop in Houston. This detour took about 90 minutes but it did the trick and soon we were back on I-10.
I finally found a radio station with an update to the Houston traffic problem that mentioned a haz-mat spill. Traffic probably backed up for more than 50 miles by the time they started diverting the drivers. I'm just glad we were able to get around it and not have to spend the night in my car on the side of the road.
Further along as we're heading up TX-71 towards Austin and the last 90 miles of the 400 mile journey, we came across another bizarre scene. I was driving in the left of the 2 lanes and about 1/4 mile ahead in the oncoming traffic I saw one car turn into the median and then back onto the road. Another car followed closely behind him. My first reaction was that I was witnessing a police chase but as I scanned the area and didn't see any flashing lights, I ruled that out. As I was passing the scene I was able to see the problem. Lying on it's right side and covering both lanes of traffic and extending onto the shoulders was an 18-wheeler rig and trailer with it's belly exposed to the oncoming cars. The two vehicles I had seen had obviously not been able to stop and were forced to drive into the median to avoid collision. Several cars were already stopped but the incident must have just happened as there were no police or firemen on scene yet and there was no traffic backed up. It was a tanker truck carrying 7000 gallons of gasoline. No one ran into it and there were no big leaks. I'm glad it was on the other side of the road though.
We finally made it down to San Antonio after picking up some clothes at my house. We had to drive through the rain storm that had moved in and this added about 40 minutes to the normal 1:15 drive from my house to Martha's. I was asleep by 2am and at work by 8am ready for a new week.

Digital Photography

Well it was Christmas in February for me as I decided to upgrade my camera equipment. I decided to sell my old Canon EOS 20D camera body and get the new Canon EOS-1D Mark II N. My new Canon arrived on Wednesday and within an hour or so of getting the package at work I received an email from one of the companies that I shoot pics for asking me to cover an event this evening. I spent about 5 hours last night going through all the buttons and menus and making sure I knew my way around the camera so that I didn't show up at the event and not know how to use my camera.

The event was at the home of a lady named Nona Niland who is associated with the People's Community Clinic. Her home was gorgeous with a small pool laid out in the middle of a very large deck that surrounded most of the front of the home. They were holding a thank you event for their donors and I was asked to shoot candids and some posed shots of the guests.

Camera, flash and all worked flawlessly and pictures came out great. I even got to snack on some yummy roast and spinach tucked into a small roll.
When I got home, it was time to open the rest of my photography toys. I also treated myself to a Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 IS USM lens. I rounded out my purchases with a Custom Brackets flash bracket and some other minor accessories. The new camera and lens are gorgeous, I can't wait to get out and snap some pictures.