As I sat on the front porch making campaign calls, I couldn’t help but feel that I was halfway between the seasons of summer and fall.
Meanwhile, I’m definitely at the height of campaign season! 51 Days!
Looking forward to visiting your blogs today 🙂
Some of you are college football fans, and if you are a devoted one like I am, the anticipation of the season and that first game is crazy fun!
Even when the outcome is not great (like when your quarterback gets injured and it all goes down hill from there).
This game offered time to campaign, to visit with friends, and to pull out the camera.
The colors of Virginia Tech are the colors of fall, and are perfect for football season.
The best part was hanging out with the very enthusiastic, oh so much fun Virginia Tech Young Democrats.
Our quarterback is pending surgery and the team suffered a loss, yet the season stretches out before us. There are 11 more games in this season, and 56 days until Election Day!!
My good friends, Tim and Joe (who is probably also your good friend) are helping me to find some new glass.
In my previous post, I commented that I needed some more zoom, and those who know Joe will not be surprised to learn that he generously took time out of his busy life to do some research for me. Knowing that the campaign is offering me precious few free moments, I’m so grateful to Joe!
Like Joe, my long time dear friend Tim, has started using a mirrorless camera, and he offered to let me play around with one of his Canon lenses. How cool is that? What an incredible guy!
I’ll be participating in a couple campaign events this weekend and I look forward to continuing to try out this new lens.
How fortunate am I to have such great friends?
The five days spent on the Outer Banks was, as you might expect, perfectly wonderful! For those not familiar, the Outer Banks is a 200-mile (320-km) long string of narrow barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Each year, the GOAs (Girls of August) reunite for food, fun, and fabulous times, and this year our destination was Nags Head.
The 420 mile ride to the beach took me through the small town of Warrenton, NC, where, once they recovered from the shock of “it’s a girl under that helmet”, they pumped my gas for me.
I rode through rain for some of the trip (check out this blog post to read about riding in the dark), but it felt so good to be on the bike for a good, long ride that I didn’t even care. It also felt great to be able to have time to use my camera once I arrived.
One of the reasons that I have always loved the Outer Banks is because it is a more low key, less developed beach community. It is more about the ocean, the wildlife, and nature, and less about shopping and dining out (although you can find that, too, no doubt!)
Clearly, I need to purchase another lens (AFTER the election), but I very much enjoyed seeing this pod of dophins.
Each morning, after coffee and breakfast, we’d load up the cooler and head to the beach. What a treat to put my chair right in the surf, and read my book (the first since starting the campaign!) with cold beverage in hand.
It wasn’t until the last day that we saw a few drops of rain, which of course allowed us to have fun playing Rummy and Charades.
The view of the sunset over the Roanoke Sound was pretty even with the power line.
Despite starting for home in the rain, once the sun came out I enjoyed the colors along the way.
After 30 weeks on the campaign trail, this short visit with dear friends was just the breather that I needed.
I’m so glad that I was able to find a moment to write a post. With any spare time that I have this week, my goal is to visit all of you!
While on the campaign trail this past weekend, I arrived at the Prices Fork Fair just in time to see the Bubble Gum Blowing Contest.
I hope to be back here later this week to finally share some photos from the beach, and to pay a visit to you!
My contribution to Monochromia this week.
The Roanoke Sound
This was the sky that met me as I left the beach on the bike a couple weeks ago. Even though the rain threatened (and eventually soaked me), I could not resist stopping to take the shot.
I’ve so many beach photos to work through, yet I’ve been challenged to find the time to get it done.
Rather than go much longer without posting, I thought I’d share a few random shots.
Things that drew my eye,
reminded me of summer,
and lovely times at the beach.
Thanks for visiting today! I appreciate you continuing to drop by even though I don’t post as much as I used to.
I’ll be visiting your blogs soon. If there is a post you are particularly proud of, please include the link in the comment section!
Have you met Joe yet? He interviews friends and photographers on one of his blogs and I was honored to be the subject for this post. Joe is an incredible photographer, a good friend, and someone I cannot wait to meet one day!
This woman is on vacation! Woop Woop!!
The 420 mile ride to Nags Head, NC included
*wonderful views and roads,
*a downpour that thankfully lasted only 15 minutes,
* riding in the dark with my way illuminated by lightning (which also illuminated the “Bear Crossing” signs – I SO want to see a bear!),
and as always, a cold beer at the end of the ride.
I wish I was better able to express myself with words so that you would understand what it felt like to ride across the Intracoastal Waterway in the dark, to smell the water, and to see the lights in the distance, but not see the water. To see the huge orange moon and not be able to stop and capture it with my camera. To know that somehow I had to share the glory of that ride in words instead of photographs.
You’ll just have to trust me.
100 Days To Go! **
In that you have all been so supportive of my run for the House of Delegates, I thought I’d give you a look inside the campaign. The best part? The staff, organizers, interns, and volunteers! Their enthusiasm keeps me energized!
They knock doors!
They make calls!
They are organized!
Then there are the folks I get to meet along the way,
the friends who volunteer to canvass for me,
and meeting the Lieutenant Governor was pretty great, too!
And of course, you already know about the beauty of the 12th District.
All in all, the positives far outweigh the challenges! Thanks for your words of encouragement and support!
** You probably know that I am a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner, and when providing care for pregnant women, we calculate their gestational age based on their last menses, which gives us their EDC (their “due date”). At the beginning of this campaign, I decided to consider Election Day, November 3rd, my due date! Based on that, I am 26 weeks into my campaign gestation! Hee hee! Gotta have a little humor, right? **
🙂
Life on the Bike and other Fab Things 