Have A Happy Retirement Lieutenant

I always wonder what it would be like to retire and then I realize I'm just wishing my life away doing that. I thought when I joined the railway in England at 16 that I would retire from there 49 years later like a lot of the older drivers I worked with had done. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be living here in the USA and working towards retiring at 55 instead. Mind you that date is only 16 years away for me, so it'll be here sooner than I can imagine.

Anyway today's photograph is to celebrate the retirement of someone I have worked with for the past 2 and a bit years. So after I'm not sure how many years but 30 must be a close number Lieutenant Tim McCauly (the one on the right) gets to retire. I've worked with Tim for the past 2 years on the PSEC project, the new radio system project here at the County of Riverside. Tim and his two colleagues seen here (Sgt. Eric Briddick and Dispatch Supervisor Dawn Lopez) were the original three Sheriff staff members assigned to the project when it started 4 years ago. It's been a fun couple of years too and I haven't always agreed with Tim, but we've always found a consensus. So Lieutenant best wishes for the future and have a very Happy Retirement.

A Great Day at Work

There are some days when you're at work when everything falls into place and you realize that today is a great day at work. In fact since I took a demotion from supervisor and moved over to the the new County of Riverside radio system project as a Data Network Engineer just about every day is a great day at work. I won't say there aren't frustrations, because even the most perfect job has them, but when you're not going home every day and wanting to kick the cat you know you're in a better place. What really makes a great day at work for me is some of the people I get to meet and the places I get to go. Since one of my former colleagues left the County I took on some of his work. So I am now in charge of the existing site upgrades, bringing the current County radio sites up to date. This involves heading out to these sites with our contractors and one such site is Santiago Peak. It's about a 90 minute drive to the radio sites on top of Santiago Peak and when you get there the view is spectacular. On one side you look easterly into Riverside County, on the other side you look west over Orange County and the Pacific Ocean. This photograph is the view to the east with one of my fellow engineers, David and one of the Construction Managers from Motorola, Scott taking a look at the site we plan to build on.

A Warmer Evening

I'm sitting here in the living room on the couch amazed that in the space of a couple of days we can go from hot and needing to take cloths off, to cold and needing a blanket and a fire. I got up this morning to play golf, got in the car, drove to the golf course and discovered it was 55°F and windy. Then the realization hit me that I didn't bring a jacket or wind shirt to play golf in. So a cold day at the golf course was to follow. So when I was looking through my photos for today's posting I decided that something to make everyone feel warm again was needed, so this is what you got.

On our way out of Death Valley I had fallen asleep in the back of the car while Janet was driving. She woke me up about 5 miles from Baker on the 15 freeway to tell me that I needed to drive. As I looked around to try and figure out where we were, this sunset was staring me in the face. I told Janet to pull over as quick as possible and I jumped out of the car with camera ready and took this photo. It was a beautiful evening and the end to a great trip through Death Valley with my mum, dad, aunt and Janet. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Parallel Lines

Photographs can inspire, tell a story or bring back memories. I took this photograph because I thought it would look good and be interesting, but as I sat and looked at it to come up with a title I realized it told a story and brought back memories. The story it tells of the pioneers who built these railways through some of the most inhospitable land ever imagined with their bare hands. It also brought back memories for me and at the time I took it I didn't know why I was taking it off center and now I know why. It's because for 13 years of my life this was the view I had from the cab of a train that I was driving. Of course I would be a few feet higher off the ground but other than that this was it, my working life and what I saw everyday of it. The photograph was taken on the railway lines running through Rice in Eastern California.

The Badlands of America

Can you believe it's October 1st already? I know I cannot, this year has just flown by. Anyway when we visited Death Valley it was a very spontaneous visit. I did a quick look online to find places to go but had no real plan or even a clue on how long it would take to drive through there. So as we were driving I saw the signs with names of places I saw online and told Janet to follow that sign not knowing what we would expect to see. So that's how I came across this photograph. It's a photograph of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. It was named after Christian Brevoort Zabriskie who was the Vice President of the Pacific Coast Borax Company. This is the company that made the 20 mule teams famous. These teams of 18 mules and 2 horses pulled multiple large wagons (with 9 tonnes of borax in each one) to the nearest railroad from their mines in Death Valley. Borax is used in all sorts of household items such as detergents and cosmetics. Zabriskie Point is known as a Badlands, which is a type of terrain that has been extensively eroded by wind and water and creates some spectacular scenery. Click on the photo for a larger version, it looks even better.

The Strip by Night

After Janet and I watched the Jersey Boys I wanted to head outside to The Strip and take some photographs at night. It's amazing the looks you get from people when you head out to the sidewalk and set up a tripod and start taking photographs. In fact at time it can be downright scary in Las Vegas and this is in the good part of town. I had groups of drunk people come up to me three times wanting their photos taken. Anyway this is the view looking South down Las Vegas Boulevard from outside the Palazzo Hotel, which is just across the street from Treasure Island. The very large hotel you can see on the right side is Caesars Palace. Las Vegas to me is like a grown ups adventure land. It's a great place to visit, but even better when you're heading home. Click on the photo for a larger version.

Hard to Starboard

This is the view from the bridge of the Queen Mary that is now berthed in Long Beach, California. As I stood here looking towards the bow of this magnificent ocean liner I wondered how many people had walked across the decking below me during their journeys across the North Atlantic Ocean. This ship was launched and christened 75 years ago and entered service in 1936 for the Cunard Line. She was in service for 31 years before being retired in 1967 at which point the City of Long Beach purchased her to become a hotel and tourist attraction. I cannot imagine what it would have been like for the 2100 passengers and the 1100 crew members to sail on one of those journeys to America, but it must have been pretty amazing sailing into the New York harbor.

An Artistic Drive

My mum, dad and aunt went home last night, so hopefully I can get back to the posting of a photograph a day. So I will begin with this one from Death Valley taken in a very beautiful location along a one way loop road called Artist's Drive. The mountains are known as Artist's Palette because of the different color of the rock formations in the mountains. Death Valley really did surprise me how beautiful it was and I cannot wait to go back there to explore more of it to share with you. I'm also working on creating some galleries of all my photographs including the ones that do not always make it on to here. I'll let you know when that is up and available. Click on the image for a larger version.

A Golden Hotel

Las Vegas is a pretty amazing place and changes every time I go there. The last time I was there was November 2008 and the recession hadn't really kicked in, this year it's a different story. The rooms we stayed in cost $150 last year, this year $39. On top of that there are less people travelling there so it's not so crowded and a whole lot nicer to go to. One thing that we did while we were there was go to see the show The Jersey Boys. What a wonderful show! I had no idea what it was about and just went because Janet wanted to go. In case you don't know either it's the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and their rise to fame and stardom and the troubles along the way. Of course the music is all Frankie Valli and the performers gave amazing performances.

The photograph is of the Palazzo Hotel where The Jersey Boys is playing. It's an amazing hotel and just so beautiful and ornat inside. The photograph was taken from The Strip where the hotel looked like it was made of gold.

A Silver Spoon

I want to ask you a question, Do you ever see something or go somewhere that evokes very powerful childhood memories? For me that happened this week and that memory was of a silver spoon. When I was young I remember my grandmother having a silver tea spoon in a little blue box. The spoon had an engraved top that was of the Queen Mary cruise ship. It was a souvenier spoon of when she had visited the Queen Mary at Southampton when the famous liner had been retired from service. This was back in 1967 and not long before the Queen Mary sailed to Long Beach, California to become a permanent fixture in the port as a hotel and convention center. I remember that spoon because eventually it got used to stir tea with and whenever I could that would be the one I used for my tea. Truth be known it probably reminded me of my grandmother who had passed away when I was 9 years old. Well finally after 10 years of living with an hours drive of the QM I made the trip to go and visit it and guess what I found? I know you guessed it a spoon. In one of the shops they had a display of things from the passed and there in that display was that exact spoon, talk about taking you back in time.

The Queen Mary is an interesting place to visit especially to learn the history of how people travelled before jet liners. This photograph was taken of the controls in the Bridge of the ship. It all seems kind of basic now compared with ships of today, but this once great ocean liner was launched 75 years ago in 1934 so I guess basic would be the norm back then.