Images from Columbus

Here are some last images from my visit in the summer to Columbus:

A pedaling bar vehicle downtown.  I think the cyclists are pedaling away their inebriation.  I hope the driver is the designated non-drinker.

The Orthodox Christian Church downtown.

A bridge over the Scioto.

Hangin' with my nephews.

Sundown downtown.

The Confederate Cemetery at Camp Chase.

The food truck festival downtown one evening.

St. James Episcopal Church in Upper Arlington, my sister's church.

Columbus

In Columbus, I hung out with my sister, her husband, and my nephews.  One of my sister's sons lives downtown while he attends classes to get a Master's degree, and I met them downtown.

We went to the location of the big POW camp in Columbus during the Civil War and in the Confederate cemetery there, I noted that the Rebel sentinel was standing guard over the graves again.  During the murderous Neo-Nazi riots in Charlottesville a couple of years ago, the sentry was vandalized and sent out for repair; I thought he might never return but he is back.

We attended a food truck festival downtown and enjoyed a beautiful sunset.  The city has created a river walk along the Scioto River in the heart of the city.

The next morning I went out early and tried to capture a beautiful sunup at a nearby park.  There is a lot to do in Columbus, Ohio's capital and its largest city.

A trip to a picturesque coastal town

Last month I took a trip to North Carolina to visit my college friend Jimmy for a few days, after visiting with my cousin overnight in southeast Virginia.  On the penultimate day of my trip, Jimmy and I went sightseeing in a picturesque seaport town on the North Carolina coast to see if Jimmy, who is considering moving to a more lively town than the one he currently lives in, would like to move there.

His girlfriend lives near there, and it is in that town where he presented her with a ring a year or so ago to represent the current state of their relationship.  Plus, he told me, there is a restaurant on the main drag in that town which has terrific loaded hotdogs for very cheap.

Disappointingly, the establishment was closed since it was a Monday.  I guess we should have checked the Internet about that, as many other places in town were also closed due to it being Monday, such as the restaurant on the water where he and his girlfriend went to have a drink to celebrate their relationship after he gave her a diamond ring at the local Episcopal church, which was also locked up tight when we went to visit.

So we spent the day walking about downtown residential streets to get a feel for the town after we perambulated its small business area and waterfront park.  Then we drove around town to look at houses one last time before we headed out to return to his house, since one of the bridges to nearby Oak Island, where his girlfriend lives (she was away taking care of her father's estate), was out due to hurricane Florence and we feared that driving there as we originally intended to would delay our return trip so much that it would cause us to get home long after sundown, since I was driving and my eyesight for driving after dark hasn't been tested satisfactorily yet after my spate of eye surgeries last year.

Down by the river.

In Buffalo last week after an exhausting day of work in DC followed by a six-hour layover at Dulles trying to get there, I arose at 6 am the next morning for a four-mile run, starting off in the dark by going down Main Street to the Buffalo River.

I ran by a Tim Horton's coffee shop, a Canadian Dunkin' Donuts knock-off, which I came back to to complete my run and grab an early morning coffee.

Buffalo is a mixture of old grand buildings, parking lots where buildings have been torn down and restored facades of older buildings with new tall buildings arising behind the facades.

It was daylight by the time I finished my ramble, another core downtown of a city best viewed by a sixty-minute run.