Turning the "Double Nickel" -- 55 and STILL ALIVE!

I'm going to break down my thought process on this one for you.

I was thinking about turning 55 years old and how that's a number we often associate with a speed limit which made me think about how fast time seems to go now, which made me think about how for me one year represents only 1/55th of my life, while for a child who is two years old, one year represents 50% of his or her life, or actually some less if you hold the belief that life begins at conception, but still a very large portion of their existence, and so it must seem like a relatively long period of time to them, which reminded me of how a young child on a trip will often say, "Are we there, yet?" over and over driving his or her parents "over the edge" and how that's because for the parents that time period doesn't represent nearly as large of a portion of their life and so for them it's no big deal, but for the kid, it's HUGE and so that's why time seems to go by faster as we get older, kind of like how if you're driving a car at one mile per hour, it's going to take you a much longer time to get there, but as you increase that speed, it take less and less time, which makes me wonder what it's like for my Dad who is going down the road of life at 86 miles per hour, and at his age I think that's entirely too fast for him to be driving, which makes me think about life after death which must eventually be like traveling faster than the speed of life. (I was going to say faster than the speed of light, but my fingers typed "life" which says it much better!)

Kind of scary! By that, I mean the creative process of my mind.

Flying High in a Bright Blue Sky

Have you ever snapped a picture and been pleasantly surprised with the resulting image that you captured?




Last weekend, my wife and I made another trip to the beach--this time on the "Gulf of Mexico side" of the state. It was perfect beach weather. I had taken my Canon Power Shot camera with me and as we relaxed on the beach, I tried to take some pictures of the seagulls that were pestering some neighboring beach goers for food.


Because the sun was bright and my eyes are advanced in age, I wasn't sure that I had anything worth keeping, but that is one of the nice things about digital photography. You can push the shutter as often as you like without incurring a great deal of expense, and then just delete those shots you don't want to claim as your own!


I clicked off five shots before the seagulls went off to find more willing patrons, not realizing until I got home that in my last attempt I had captured the image that I had been going for.


It reminded me of a time when my college roommate (the now famous photographer, Gary S. Chapman) and I went to the beach and tried to capture photographs of seagulls back lit by the sun. (If I remember correctly, he got the shot he wanted and published it in a supplement to the university newspaper.)


No award winning shot here, but a nice reminder for my wife and myself of how perfect the day was for "beach going."


And even more amazing--the photograph was captured without either one of us getting pooped on!