Playing close to the Thunder

On the way to the game, I saw these kids playing basketball close to the Thunder.


Trenton Thunder, that is. They live across the street from Mercer County Waterfront Park where the Trenton Thunder were hosting the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.



The weirdest thing was while I was photographing the action, one of the young man's shots did that thing where the ball gets lodged between the rim and backboard. He scurried up the pole as fast as a squirrel and used his body weight to tip the backboard over and he rode it down to ground level where he pushed the ball free and then let the backboard spring back up into position!

Let the games continue!

Crouton, where is thy crunch?

Now the storms are getting tricky. They just pop up in discreet little cells, drop torrential rains and then disappear so your friends in a neighboring town go "What are you talking about? It didn't even rain here!" Everything is soggy.

When the Rain Comes...

It's been a couple of days without a violent thunderstorm, so I'll have to go back to to the end of last month when I got on my poncho and went out in a downpour to get a couple of photos around the Trenton NJ Transit station.

Can you ever see a photo like this and not think of Abbey Road?

A Mighty Wind

"Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." - Charles Dudley Warner, collaborator with Mark Twain

Civil Air Patrol Major Michael Carter sifts throught the wreckage of two CAP trailers at the Trenton-Mercer Airport rolled over and destroyed by the morning's storms.

Emergency personnel prepare to remove a small aircraft that was blown off its moorings and wedged in a corner leaning against a building and a gate by a storm that swept through the area at the Trenton-Mercer Airport.

Going back earlier in the week, a similar storm wreaked havoc in the Yardville section of Hamilton Township. Uprooting massive, mature trees and dropping them on homes.

Under two hours

I had a physically demanding day, how about you, couch potato? I did a triathlon in the morning, a softball game at noon followed by a tennis match later in the day and I'm still not tired. OK, when I say "did" I mean I kind of watched other people "do". I simply documented. The New Jersey State Triathlon was held at Mercer County Park and consisted of the usual, swim, cycle and run. This one also featured the unusual - Martin Weinapple, 74,of Princeton, New Jersey, finishing the Sprint Division (500m swim, 11.5 mile bike, 5K run) in under two hours. Fine for him, but he's making the rest of us look pretty bad ;)

After midnight

Trenton Police escort youths into the community center at Triumphant Life Community Church in the city's east ward during a joint effort with the mercer County Sheriff's Department to enforce a midnight curfew and get kids off the streets. While inside waiting for an adult guardian to pick them up, a DVD of The Passion of the Christ movie plays on the television.

Just Ducky

Okay. Everybody into the pool! He meant people, not ducks. A resident of The Island section of Trenton, New Jersey called that a paddling of ducklings had taken up residence in her & her husband's pool, so off I went! I've been to similar assignments before where animals refuse to respect the boundaries of human constructs ;)


It's not a fossil. He's swimming underwater.

And here's the photograph that was the most trouble. The little buggers would move to the opposite direction of the slightest movement of a human at poolside so there was no way to get a close-up photo. That's where I proved that I'm smarter than the average bear...or duck, in this case. I clamped my camera to the pool's ladder with a wireless remote switch. It still took the owner and I about five minutes to maneuver them into position where I could get the wide angle close-up photograph I wanted.