Remember the Alamo

I have blogged very little in the past week or so ... mainly because I have been tortured by the need to complete a slide deck for a presentation I am giving tomorrow, Wednesday at 3:10pm CST. I still have a half dozen to dozen slides to do, and a few to change as we had a really good morning in my submitter's group and our specifications appear to be headed for a smooth marriage.

Nuff said ... I slept perhaps 3 or 4 hours from Friday morning through Sunday night, and in there I had a 3 hour delay in Ottawa as Chicago socked in with fog ... then I missed my connection and was booked 8 hours later. Luckily, standby worked for me and I got to San Antonio only 5 hours late ... just enough to miss the Sunday meeting ... *sigh* ...

But I met with several people that evening and we walked the famous River Walk and even saw the Alamo lit up at night. Quite nice.

Monday I spent the day working on slides and reading the other submission, so I was reasonably well prepared going into today's meeting. But I was so wired by the end of that meeting that I got really annoyed that they didn't have sufficient seating for lunch and I went to Chaps, a restaurant inthe hotel with a great salad bar. The Tomato Basil Bisque was astounding.

After that, I wandered over to the Alamo and shot images all over the Alamo and the mission next door. The grounds are beautiful with some terrific old trees and lots of desert plants. The F70EXR shot some fantastic images, handling the harsh light very well as far as I can tell. The inside of the Alamo, which cannot be photographed, looks excatly how you would picture an old western mission. Tall, church-like ceiling with plaster, stone walls. It's very cold in there as no sun gets in and they condition the air.

The history of the place is remarkable ... the war with Mexico was quite brutal. The soldiers held out for two weeks but were eventually overwhelmed and then put to the sword. Read about it here. It's quite moving. (It is quite easy to see how the Americans developed such pride in their people ... the sort of honor of great sacrifice and courage is exactly how we Canadians feel about our soldiers' performance in the world wars.)

I then walked the river walk again, although I only went about a half mile each way ... the images will be nice memories. Finally, I crashed for an hour as I was completely out of gas.

I might have a chance to post some early images tomorrow ... if not, when I get back. I'm off to meet a customer and sometime later tonight I will be working my slides yet one more time ... :-)