Cat Comes To Town

The past week I've been offline and visiting with my friend Cat from Spokane.  During my travels, I spent quite a bit of time with her in Washington during the summer and last week she came down to Los Angeles for some business and stayed longer to hang out with me.  We toured Venice beach,  saw some movies, had some nice meals and did a photo shoot on the beach.  Since I spend most of my time alone, it was nice to have a house guest for a few days.

The best part about our photo shoot was that she was game to do about anything.  When I was in Cape Cod a few years ago, I took a bunch of timed jumpie pics as the sun was setting.  If you need an activity to look crazy in front of people and laugh at yourself, this is a good one to try.  It is stupid and is great for a good laugh and some fun photographs. Also, Cat is not as fond as birds as I am.  She was even willing to walk around a flock of birds and run towards them to try and get a shot of them surrounding her.  The one where she is standing still is a moment of her thinking, "Really? You want me to do what with the birds?" to the shot where she casually jogged through them, not missing a beat. Some of the best times you can have with a friend is being silly with a camera.

I haven't made the time to take my camera out to take photographs lately so it was a nice change of pace to do that again while we toured around.  Here are some photographs from our time last week.

 

El Paso, Texas

On my way out of Austin, I stopped at a hole in the wall restaurant for breakfast.  I told the server that I didn't want meat with my meal.  Before he left, he confirmed, "no meat?" I nodded.  When my meal came, I looked at it then looked at the waiter and said, "there's meat on my plate."  He looked at my plate and back to me and said, "That's not meat, that's bacon."  At that moment I was reminded that yes, I was in Texas.

There wasn't much I knew about El Paso except for the Pace salsa commercials from long ago.  For some reason, I was drawn to the area.  I didn't stay long but long enough to tour around the city for a while, which was empty for the most part.  There were a few locals browsing around at shops, feeding the birds in the park and waiting for the bus.  It seems to be a sleepy town.

I walked around the downtown streets and after a while, I drove around to nearby areas to see if I could find some locals sitting outside of their home.  I noticed a tree decorated with beer cans so I thought I would stop to take a look.  I approached the house taking photographs as the owner walked out.  I asked him about his hand made creation and he said that he's been working on it for years and that the local paper has done a story on it.  He said he's been adding to it "every now and then" and mentioned that he is pretty proud of his creation. Who wouldn't be proud of their beer can tree?

I asked him what to see while I was in the area and he pointed me to the downtown plaza.  I mentioned that I just came from there.  He asked if I saw the workers putting up the Christmas lights in the downtown square trees.  I said, "yes" while he replied, "Look at my beer tree...I beat them to it."

El Paso is as close to the Mexican border as you can get while still being in Texas.  Because of that, you will see a Mexican restaurant at nearly every corner and mixed culture throughout the area.  I love traveling to Mexico but haven't been in a while.  This was a nice reminder that I need to go back soon.