Detour on a college visit tour. Non-Texan Mannequins.

 

In March of 2013 we left our humble home in backwater Austin and took our only child on a lightning tour of colleges and universities in the American Northeast. We saw the sites in the Boston area and toured the schools in which he was interested. He had the test scores and grades he needed to get in just about anywhere and, as it turns out, I think he was really just shopping for who would offer the most financial aid (besides his parents) and whose cafeterias turned out the best food. 

We visited Brandeis, Harvard, Boston College, Boston University and several other candidates. B. booked us great rooms at the Langham Hotel in Boston and we did all of our travel on the very good public transportation. With a few cabs tossed in. How very different from every big city in Texas... 

The trip was fun and a nice preview of what the logistics would eventually be like when Ben left the safety of his rural home town for the perilous and sophisticated enclaves of the ultra-liberal part of the country. He would eventually wind up, four years later in Seoul, S. Korea at the prestigious Yonsei University. An even longer commute for anxious parents. 

The trip to Boston was fun and productive. But for me the high point was, of course, finding and photographing these fabulous mannequins on the one day that B&B designated for me to have free rein to haphazardly roam around snapping photographs with small cameras. They picked the coldest day of our visit to indulge me but what are you going to do?

Steeling myself against the brutal cold with extra coffee I ventured forth on the day with a Sony Nex7 APS-C camera and a couple of lenses. The 50mm Sony lens, the 60mm Sigma lens for that format, and also the 19mm Sigma lens--- which I used here.

So, mission accomplished. Child educated. Several times over --- but in upstate NY and not MA. The trip went off without a hitch and I came home with a treasure trove of much more upscale mannequin photographs than I have ever found in Austin, Texas. 

On a totally unconnected note, the weather forecast this morning stated plainly that the next ten days  here would have no rainfall and that temperatures would top out at a little over 100° for those ten days. I went grocery shopping with the boy this afternoon. All hot and sticky when we went in to the HEB grocery store at Burnet Rd. and Koenig Lane. But when we pushed the cart back outside it was pouring down rain. Not a gentle shower but a full-on gullywasher. Almost Biblical. We waited with a dozen or so other moisture averse shoppers under an alcove figuring the rain would stop shortly. 20 minutes later, with no sign of the rain slowing down we made a run for the car. We're busy men. We've got things to do and places to go. And it was past my usual nap time. The shiny new car with its many computers told me, upon starting up, that it was 73° outside at that moment. Odd. Unusual. Welcome. Nice drought busting weather....

It's Sunday! Here, enjoy the mannequins.