My dad was the first one up as usual, he was watching the news and I was just out like a light. I eventually woke up to the sound of the TV but I was fine with that. I sat up and just watched the TV and said good morning to my dad. My mom was even up before me which is very surprising to me. We sat there and watched TV until my dad said we need to get motivated and get going. We headed out to a French pastry restaurant and I got a croissant and hot chocolate, my mom got a chocolate filled croissant, hot chocolate. We got my dad a blueberry muffin. It was so warm inside the shop, but we had to head back into the freezing weather, it was so cold, that it froze anything that was exposed. We made the treacherous trek back to the hotel against the blowing wind. When we got back we let my dad eat his breakfast, then we talked about what we were going to do today. We talked it over and we decided that we would go down the track where the Red Bull Crashed Ice was going to be held. We planned to walk the whole course and take photos of it. I got a photo of my mom taking a picture, she had her glove off so I thought it would be kind of cold. This is to prove how cold it actually was, even the parking meters were frozen.
It was a very cold and tiring walk just to get to the beginning of the track. We didn't head directly to the track, we went in a lot of stores to see what they had. We first went into this medieval type store, where my mom tried some stuff on and while we were waiting, my dad and I looked at some metal figures on a glass shelf, I tried some macro photography. Right outside that door was a Red Bull truck, so I took a picture of it. My dad found this big tiki head looking thing and my dad wanted me to take a picture of it with him and my mom.
When we were finished with that store, we went out and found a couple of sport stores. We went in those to just see what they had, we didn’t buy anything though. After awhile we finally made it to the beginning to the track. The contestants were practicing and I tried some photography of them skating down the track.
I was still new at this kind of photography so I had to try a lot of different settings and I had to wait to see how well they came out. We got a 1/4th of the way down, then we decided we needed to get some lunch. So we took a shortcut down to the bottom where a lot of restaurants were and shops right by the harbor. The restaurant we went to was called Le Petite Pig. It’s where you ordered what you wanted, paid then went upstairs and ate it, I think we all got soup except my mom, which got a sandwich. It was actually pretty good, and a little messy. We waited in there for awhile where it was warm. After lunch we went out and walked a little bit more until we were actually really tired, but we still went in shops when were heading back in the direction of the hotel. We went a different way up than we took down, so we found a little more. While walking my dad pushed my mom into some snow and she started to make a snow angel. I bet it was cold. A little later down the road my dad found this ice sculpture as a throne and I got a picture of my dad sitting in it. He looks good doesn't he???
The Red Bull Crashed Ice contestants were still practicing. So I took a little bit more pictures of them then headed back to the hotel. I decided to go out skating after warming up a little bit in the hotel. I got my skates after awhile and headed down to the rink, which was right outside the front of the hotel. I had to be skating for an hour, and I was already getting tired, I’ve been doing lacrosse but still I was tired. My dad came out and watched me and he told me to practice some other skating's stuff and it was hard, because I was still working on it. He wanted me to stop, which I was getting better at, then he told me to do it the other way and I couldn’t do it. My crossovers were getting way better and I think he was very happy with my effort to listen and learn. I went inside and took my skates off and got my shoes on and then my dad and I left to go back to the hotel. We got back and I just wanted to relax because I was really tired. We watched TV until it was time to head out to dinner. We walked down again to a restaurant called Portofino where I got the most humongous calzone I have ever seen.
It was so good when I was eating it, I wanted to save it for later but I was really hungry. After that we headed down to the track because they were holding qualifiers tonight and I wanted to try to get some pictures and see the setting I need for the race night. I took quite a lot of pictures, but my parents didn’t want to stay there all night, so they went back to the hotel and I stayed at the track taking pictures. I walked all the way down the course by myself and took tons of pictures. I got all the way to the bottom where I found a red bull crashed Ice car. I took a lot of pictures of it because I wanted different exposures of it.
At that time, I was getting a little cold, so I started to head back up to the hotel, and let me tell you, it was a long steep icy climb. I eventually made it up there with still some energy left. And the whole time I was outside that night, it was snowing actually pretty hard, and made for some good creative photography. I tried to get some nice picture of the start point of the race with a really old building behind it. It actually came out really nice. I walked from there back to the hotel. I made it and my parents were already in bed. So I had to get ready for bed, and get in bed, while I was lying in bed I just looked at my pictures from the day. Then it was off to sleep.
February 22, 2009
February 24, 2009