Action. #1

I think you get the idea what this series is about. On another note I literally just finished pouring about two weeks of little sleep and hustle into a single article about what I've been posting so many shots from lately. Working as media for this past Labor Day's Baltimore Grand Prix has been an extremely enriching learning experience for me. I've come out of that three day grind and ongoing editing (still going might I add) stronger than I went in. I know exactly what my plan of action is for the next race I attend and for that I'm grateful. In the end, I think that's all life is really; you work towards your goals and then set new ones above where you just were. Rinse and repeat and excel in your field(s). Of course kids fall in there somewhere too, but yea. Back to the point though, I thought about cross posting this article, but I decided against it to keep these two content projects of mine separate. That said, you can read my full editorial on the BGP here. I hope you enjoy it.

Eurotrip 2011: If the boat's a rockin'...it's moving.

When we last left off we just finished a local wandering day in Sicily, returning to the ship with some forbidden fruit. After dinner and a couple nightcaps, we returned to our room to see a bat hanging from a clothes hanger! I took this opportunity to sleep for a long time. Turns out I didn't have the ability to sleep as long as I wanted to though; since getting to Europe I'd been waking up much earlier than normal. A night owl at home, I get up at noon on a good day, but our here I'd been waking up no later than about 9am without an alarm clock. I'm sure my internal clock was screwed up, being ahead six hours for the past five days. On this day I woke up around 10:30am which was ok, but I had went to bed around 2am so it wasn't the rejuvenating magic I expected. I was much fresher though and I went about getting some things done after morning rituals were complete.

The boat had internet access so I wanted to get on and check some balances (dollar/euro conversions sneak up on ya), check email and pay a couple bills. Maybe even upload a picture or two if I had the time. The computers in the 'internet cafe' were horribly slow as expected and after 4 minutes of getting the pages to load and 6 minutes of trying to get two emails out, I had spent $14 bucks. The fleecing I felt while on the ship was a tangible fog that was all around me, much like a storybook conceived Halloween night, with a harvest moon and scarecrows. Everywhere I looked my wallet was being a la carted and it was quite annoying. There was login credential option to use your own computer with the ships 'good enough for the open sea' internet bandwidth and I would use my own laptop going forward.

For lunch we headed to the no-frills cafe downstairs for some glorified snacks. Got a few small sandwiches and took advantage of the Italian produce from yesterday; the pears were awesome. While eating I noticed something pretty interesting with my U.S. only networked cellphone; I was roaming while on international waters. I started getting back-logged text messages and missed calls. I would've used the opportunity to text with friends, but I was worried what kind of bill was going to arrive when I got home (no fees appeared on the next bill btw).



I never got tired of shooting off the balcony.

Later that afternoon we picked out our excursion of Athens. We picked a reasonably priced trip called 'Taste of Athens'. It included a trip to the Acropolis, the Parthenon and Plaka. The rest of this day was pretty laid back as a vacation should be; wandering around the ship, and getting a little bit of sun on the deck near the pool; hanging out on our balcony, which got easier to do as the constant motion visual became more normal to see. We had a nice dinner and got to sleep. We had to be up at 7:30 the following morning.

Monochrome. #19

Monochrome. #18

Monochrome. #17

Monochrome. #16

Monochrome. #15

It was a great weekend in Baltimore.

Monochrome. #14

Even the lamp posts are stylish in Italy.