Monthly Archives: March 2012

Beautiful Sunrise Behind Me

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It used to be a rare occasion for me to be up at sunrise or before, unless I was paged out for a fire call or I was getting an early start on a trip. These days, specially during spring and fall times when daylight savings time meshes well with my departure time from work, though, I can be coming out the door at work or on the highway headed home when the sun rises behind me, and sometimes it can be quite beautiful as it was one day last week. Unfortunately I didnt have my camera with me, so I used my phone that has a pretty good camera inside it. As I crossed the Meramac River at Fenton, I looked left and noticed pink fluffy edges around the clouds and thought to myself that this might be a nice sunrise coming on…funny thing is, it was raining to the west and not too far away either, as I had checked the radar before leaving work a few minutes earlier. I didnt get a mile down the road, when I looked in my rearview mirror and was pleasantly surprised to see that the sunrise was now absolutely gorgeous…I crossed over three lanes of traffic to the shoulder by Maritz and walked to the back of my truck to snap a few photos with the phone camera….

 

Deepening Sunrise Fenton 0323

 

 

I then drove on west and about a mile later, again I looked in the rearview mirror and liked what I saw, so again I pulled to the shoulder just past the entrance ramp from Hwy 141 and walked to the back of the truck to shoot a few photos…only this time it started raining, so I snapped just a few photos this time…

 

Deep and Stunning 0323 WB 44

 

 

…this one above just as it started to rain and the next one as its starting to come down harder….

Deepened Sunrise Fenton I-44 WB 0323

 

 

…and believe me, I no sooner got back into my truck and headed west until it came down in gullywasher fashion…as I drove up Antire Hill, it was still pretty behind me but there was no more getting out to shoot photos by this time…however on the way up the hill, I noticed a split rainbow…now I really wished I had my camera with me because I could have captured it as a split, but my camera phone didn’t pan out wide enough to capture it. Here is the north end, sorry for the fuzziness……

 

Rainbow 0323 Fuzzy

 

 

…and the south end near Eureka….

 

Rainbow at Sunrise Eureka

Water Polo Game

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Boy I had my work cut out for me yesterday…got up early on my day off and rode with my mom and dad down to Eureka High School….talk about a huge complex…several buildings spread out in the valley on the north side of town….one of them contains a nice sized pool and aquatic center…my sister asked me to come down and shoot some photos of my nephew Zach, before and during his water polo game. I have never even seen a water polo game so didnt really know what to expect, but it was def interesting. Mom wanted to get down there early enough to watch them warming up, thinking Zach`s game started at 4:30 pm, so we arrived at 4:15 pm and found out the JV team plays at 4:30 and the Varsity team, which Zach is on, plays after that…one thing they were right on about, it was like a sauna in there…if the air conditioning was on, we never felt it. I didnt take any photos during the JV game, just sat and watched the game and tried to figure it out…looked like a basketball game in terms of fouls and trying to take the ball away, and a little lopsided since one end of the pool is obviously shallow and the other deep, so there is a lot of treading water involved, specially for one of the goalies at all times, and swimming for those players in the middle of the pool on offense and defense. Def a strenuous game four quarters of six minutes each on JV and seven minutes each on Varsity and much easier to figure out than hockey.

Now mind you, most guys don’t like to have their photo taken right before a game, but Zach said to me, I like having my picture taken…so I took him down to the goal post to shoot some photos of him for his mom…she came down shortly after to tell him that she wanted him in a different pose…so we shot some of his idea and some of hers.

 

Before The Game 3

 

 

Before The Game 6

 

 

Close Up 4

 

 

…after taking a few of him like this, I let him go warm up so he could get his hair wet….

 

Swimming 1

 

 

…that’s what the orders were, to take photos of him before the warm up, so his hair would be dry and show off his new hair cut. 🙂

During the game, I joined my youngest niece Courtney, on the front row of the bleachers and we both photographed Zach during the game…Courtney is an aspiring photographer and planning to attend college for photojournalism…we compared notes and screens while shooting, she was getting some good photos as well as some blurry ones, same as me…we couldn’t set our speed up as high as  wanted to stop the action, and not have the grain show up in the image…I did like the water reflections though…

 

About to Block A Throw

 

 

…by the way…they were playing Clayton High School….

 

About to Launch The Ball

 

 

Action

 

 

…it was a great game, very hard fought game, both teams playing aggressively and Eureka at one time was up by many goals, many scored by Zach, I can see now why they were passing the ball to him alot…never did see any of his baseball games but always heard how he was a fast and hard throwing pitcher…they went into double overtime and lost during sudden death playoff…the officials seemed to be  a bit one sided and against Eureka…and the Clayton coach seemed to pick up on that and take advantage of it…he kept coming down the side of the pool to talk to them and you never once saw the officials get onto any of the Clayton players…..I told the lady I was sitting next to, had that happened in a baseball game, he would have been tossed ten minutes ago…that’s what makes it such a disappointing loss, if coaches would simply coach and let the officials handle the officiating without any interference from the coaches, it would make the game alot more enjoyable not only from the spectators side of things, but from the players as well.

Eureka definately has good teams though as well as a good coaching staff.

House, Sheds, and Tires Fire

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I slept in Saturday morning after putting in a good, long workout Friday evening, and had just woke up at 9 am and was debating about whether to get up and head south to go rockhunting now, or snooze another 30 minutes, when my fire pager decided the issue for me. We were dispatched to a house fire not far from me, so I got up and started getting dressed, while Missy went to the sunroom door and waited as she normally does. I had turned my pager to open monitor and as I did, I heard one of the ambulance crews report heavy smoke down Hwy WW, which was where the fire was located…I moved faster…grabbed my camera and headed to the truck. As I pulled out of my driveway on to the street, I saw heavy black smoke billowing up from the direction of Hwy WW myself…here is what it looked like as I crossed over the Elmont Road Bridge…

 

00 Heavy Smoke From Elmont Bridge

 

 

..as I turned on to the Service Road going west, I could see our ladder truck coming down the road half a mile behind me…it was traffic city getting to the scene, seemed like everyone in town had seen the smoke and decided to come see where it was coming from…I parked in a nearby drive so as not to block the entrance drive and ran down to the scene, finding the ambulance crew of Jesse and Danny pulling hose from the top of Pumper 854 to prepare for the tanker when it arrived….

 

01 On Arrival, Heavily Involved

 

 

 …Damon and Nolan were operating a hoseline at the front of the trailer while Cody was manning the pump controls on 854…the middle of the trailer was gone and they were alternating the hose stream on both exposed middle sides of the  trailer…. 

 

02 Damon and Nolan Lay Down The Stream

 

 

…it soon became evident to Damon that they werent getting enough water where it needed to be, so he and Nolan got up and moved in to get a better spot and I walked around the right side more…..

 

04 Trailer and 3 Sheds Well Involved

 

 

….as you can see, there was heavy fire in the east end of the remains of the trailer as well as heavy intense fire from a large steel shed behind the trailer, and the heavy black smoke was from a stack of tires behind the steel shed…

 

06 Transformer Baked

 

 

…and then to top it all off, the electric pole, located just a few feet from the trailer, started sparking and arcing, looked like the fourth of July again….

 

07 Transformer Lines Pop

 

 

 More help soon arrived in the form of firefighters and tankers, and Bourbon and St Clair were sending trucks and manpower as well, so firefighters stretched additional hoselines and repositioned to get a better grip on the trailer fire first, starting at the west end where heavy flames were shooting out the end window….

 

09 Heavy Fire West End of Trailer

 

 

…firefighters soon had a plan in mind and prepared to attack the west end fires….

12 Team Approaches West End

 

 

…and began their attack….

 

13 Attacking West End of Trailer

 

 

14 Attacking West End of Trailer

 

 

16 Kyle Joins The Team

 

 

..and the flames were persistant…..

 

19 Still Attacking West End

 

 

…and finally the flames were replaced with heavy white and yellow smoke….

 

22 Heavy Smoke Banks Down

 

 

..Damon came back over to give some instructions to the hose team and keep them updated to the rest of the scene…

 

25 Damon Checks Their Progress

 

 

…and to check on their progress as well….

 

27 Damon Gives Advice

 

 

28 Damon Gives Advice

 

 

…firefighters then tried to remove the siding from the south side of the trailer with a pike pole hook, however this didnt work and firefighters had to get a K-12 saw to do the trick…

 

30 Trying to Punch Through Wall

 

 

…firefighters then made their way over to the flames coming out of the large metal shed….

 

33 Casey Does Little To the Fire

 

 

…Casey ran out of hoseline so Jimmy stretched another line and added an extra hundred feet to the line to enable him to get around to the pile of tires on fire as well…

 

35 Jimmy Pulls 2nd Line for Tire Fire

 

36 Tires on Fire Behind Shed

 

 

…by this time the fire in the large steel shed was gaining in intensity and strength….due to a heavy load of fuels inside, as well as acetylene bottles….

 

37 Tires and Shed on Fire

 

 

38 Tires and Shed on Fire

 

 

Jimmy approached and began spraying the flames from the tires first….

 

40 Jimmy Attacks Tires

 

 

…then began working toward the shed….

 

43 Jimmy Attacks Shed Fire

 

 

…and pretty soon he moves closer to the stack of tires….

 

47 Jimmy Hits The Tires

 

 

…and he then hit the stack of tires again…

 

49 Jimmy Attacks The Tires

 

 

 

…but he was having little effect on the tires, so he instead turned his attention to the shed once more…crews were on the other side working their way in from the east entrance toward the back wall where Jimmy was positioned…

 

52 Jimmy Stretches Line to Shed Again

 

 

…within minutes firefighters had the scene under control, with only the tire pile left to extinguish….electric crews showed up from Crawford and disconnected the power to the pole and requested fire crews to extinguish the pole itself, so St Clair`s young crew were assigned the task of wetting down the pole with a stream of water….

 

53 St Clair Cools Electric Pole

…and I soon left the scene and headed south to go rockhunting….

Beautiful Sunset on My Way to Work…

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I was driving into work a week ago tonight and noticed the clouds forming up to a potentially good sunset with some nice colors and shapes forming up by the time I drove through the Highway 50 interchange…looking at my clock, I decided I had a few extra minutes since I left a little earlier than normal. I decided to stop off at the Shaws Arboretum in Gray Summit since there is a pretty lake there that would give me great reflections if the clouds indeed did produce a nice sunset….as I exited near Mr Fuel and slowed at the top of the ramp, I looked west and saw this….

 

0223 Gray Summit 2

…and knew I had just a few minutes to get over to the Arboretum and find a good spot…once there, I found out the gates would shut at dark and knew this one would hang up in the sky for awhile, so I drove down to the lake and crossed the bridge, and looked back to see some nice reflections…

0223 Shaws Arboretum Lake 2

 

0223 Shaws Arboretum Lake 3

 

 

0223 Shaws Arboretum Lake 4

 

 

0223 Shaws Arboretum Lake 6

 

0223 Shaws Arboretum Lake 7