Sunrise, Thursday

I had about 24 hours of technical difficulties, trying to add pictures to Saturday's post. I managed to ignore it all for a day then last night, when I was ready to crash, I checked and found everything was working fine.

So, these pictures below were all taken Thursday from downtown Austin on the aforementioned pedestrian bridge. I suppose I could've wandered around and taken more pictures but, having captured the last space shuttle I'm likely ever to see, I was anxious to get home and see exactly what it was I had. 

I moved back to Austin in 1979 to attend the University of Texas. We lived in a small house on the east edge of town and I remember sitting on the back step one afternoon in 1981 and watching the space shuttle Columbia on the back of its 747 carrier aircraft circling to land at Bergstrom Air Force Base southeast of town. It may have been before the first shuttle flight (STS-1) or, since the first several flights landed at Edwards AFB, it could also have been returning from Edwards to Cape Kennedy after one of the first two flight. In either case, I didn't have my camera ready. But here, last week, I got a surprise second chance to shoot it and only had to wait 31 years.

If I'd known ahead of time it was coming, I would have been down on Congress Avenue to get the shot of Endeavor passing over the state capitol. But nooooooo... I just happened to be on the pedestrian bridge to shoot the sunrise. So, you do what you can with what you've got. Above, you can see the glow of the sunrise on Endeavor's tale cone and, below, you can see it and its carrier disappearing into the west. And, just above the bird at the same altitude as the shuttle - is that bird really attacking the pigeons on the left lamppost? - you can just make out the T-38 "chase" aircraft.

With Endeavor now fading into Austin's history, I had time to focus on a small subset of her daily visitors. I already mentioned the joggers, who peacefully coexist with the cyclists - and I try hard to keep both those groups out of my pictures or anonymously small. The ones I planned all along to shoot were the kayakers and those sculling on the river (or Ladybird Lake as it's known locally).

There are far fewer of them, but they're "scenic" and the temporary patterns they leave in their wake add detail to the shots. Oh! And I was a sailor - boats are cool. . .

This last one is about the best view I could get of the Frost Bank building from the bridge. The sunrise is about as big as it can get; part of the foreground's in shadow and part of it's well-lit; and it's got lens flare up the wazoo. It may not be a great picture, but it's definitely Sunrise, Thursday.