photos – Page 2 – Cynthia D'Angelo

fire hydrants

I really like fire hydrants. I think they’re really interesting. If you pay attention to fire hydrants you can learn a lot about a town’s character (or lack of it). And once I started paying attention to fire hydrants I noticed just how different they were. There is a lot of variation in design, including structure and color.

A pretty standard fire hydrant (from Puerto Rico):

If you Google fire hydrants, you get a whole bunch of your standard red (and sometimes yellow) fire hydrants. According to Wikipedia, the coloring of the caps are supposed to tell firefighters how much water pressure is available. The non-standard ones are the ones that I mostly notice now, but sometimes standard ones in unusual locations stand out also. Here are some of my favorite fire hydrants I’ve found and photographed.
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Camping in Henry Coe State Park

Henry Coe State Park is the largest state park in California, clocking in around 87,000 acres. It’s also relatively close to where I live (in that big open space east of the 101 and north of the 152). We didn’t see any mountain lions, but did encounter some inquisitive gophers, beautiful wildflowers, and had a great time camping.

I went camping with the Hatfields and the Bagleys and my trusty dog sidekick Laika. Here are a few selected photos from the trip. The rest of the set is on Flickr.

Here are we at the campsite with our tents up.
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My Year in Review: 2013

This post is meant to serve as my non-existent holiday card for interested friends and relatives, as well as a completely biased recounting of my year.

Travel

Well, I traveled a lot this year. More than usual. I flew 46,601 miles, going to about 22 different cities. I went to North Carolina twice, Puerto Rico, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Madison, Chicago, Chile, and a bunch of places in Southern California. Most of those trips were either work-related or family-related (my brother got married this summer!). But I did finally take an actual vacation – two weeks in Chile (I promise a post about this is going to happen).
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Whale Watching in SF

This past weekend my dad and I went whale watching off of San Francisco. We went with San Francisco Whale Tours on a six hour long boat ride that went all the way to the Farallon Islands and beyond.

Saturday morning was extremely foggy. And when I say extremely foggy, I mean it. When we were directly beneath the Golden Gate Bridge we could barely see it:

Foggy Golden Gate Bridge Buoy 2

We saw a harbor porpoise and lots of birds and some sea lions on our way out of the Bay. It was still very foggy by the time we got to the Farallon Islands.

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Snail in the grass

I found this slimy friend outside my apartment this morning.

The Bay Lights

On Friday I went up to San Francisco with a few friends (Shane, Matt, and Drew) to go see the new LED light installation that is on the west span of the Bay Bridge. It was kind of a windy and chilly night, but it was worth it to see the bridge. We got a good view from the pier next to the Ferry Building. Here are some of the pictures I took (and a video below).

Ferry Building

And here’s a video of the bridge so you can see the lights in action!

Tilden Park

Yesterday, before (and during the beginning of) the Super Bowl, I went over to Tilden Regional Park with some friends and their children. It is a large park, and we spent most of our time at the Little Farm (which the kids loved – they could chase chickens and pet cows) and the short trail to Jewel Lake. Here are my favorite pictures from the trip.

overlooking Little Farm

it’s a chicken!

cows like celery, apparently

path to Jewel Lake

Jewel Lake

Bird of Paradise (in Elizabeth’s yard, not the park)

The Moon and Jupiter

Today, Jupiter made a close appearance near the Moon (from our vantage point, anyway). They won’t be this close again until 2026. I snapped this picture from my patio. Here’s some more info on the astronomical event.

frosty morning

I got a new camera!

It was a combination partial early Christmas present and very long awaited personal purchase. It’s a shiny new DSLR. A Canon T4i to be exact. And so far, I love it. I took some pictures with it over the weekend to test it out a bit, using my favorite (and mostly willing) subject, Laika. For some reason, if I try to take a picture of her with my iPhone she basically hides, but with “regular” cameras, she is curious and/or indifferent. So that’s great. Once it stops raining, I’ll take some pictures with it outside.