Went out last night for a walk.
pray.
shoot.
think.



I only had one lens with me...and I forgot my tripod.



New tires after a blowout on Tuesday.









The air is so crisp and peaceful right now.





Solitude. Rest. Sabbath. God, speak to me.









Heading home.



My familiar loves. They are one with the fruit snacks right now. Maybe I shouldn't have bought the 48 pack.

Image by ucb411 on Flickr


My name is Ryan, and I love my city.

Cincinnati is a good place. I like it for many a reason. It's just over 2 million people, which is large, but it's not ginormous. Just right if you ask me.



Typically, I can find just about anything I would like to do within a 50 mile range. We've got rivers, lakes, beaches, mountains (okay, big hills), places to hike, places to ski, a giant aquarium, a great zoo, music venues, historical districts, quirky local foods, city life, world's greatest grocery stores, country fare, sports arenas (with terrible teams), art galleries, museums, markets, theater, parks galore...

Image by ucb411 on Flickr


...and the list could go on and on. We're one of the only places I know with an annual temperature swing of over 100 degrees. It usually gets over a hundred degrees several times a year and drops below zero degrees just as often. We will have weeks were it's 75 degrees on Monday and 28 degrees on Thursday. This is Cincinnati.

I just like it here.



Who are you, where are you living, and what do you like about your city?

They're calling the nearly rainless storm we had on Sunday a Class 1 hurricane. This is Cincinnati, Ohio. We don't have hurricanes. We don't know what to do in these situations. But, we made the most of it. Here are some pics of the happenings.

At first it was just windy out:


Then debris started falling:


Things started getting tossed around:


That's when I started hearing the snaps:


Here's my neighbor's tree on my driveway:


80mph winds are able to uproot even the healthy trees:




Huge trees down on both sides of the street:


This little baby missed some cars by about 2 feet:




Zoinks.




The cool thing was how it brought so many in the community together:


The other cool thing is that I'm getting some serious use out of my chainsaw:




Although the house is messy, it still looks cool all lit up with candles. I'm glad our electricity is back on, but there's something special seeing so many kids outside playing on a day where there is no TV, no video games, no computer. If it weren't for the tragedies involved, I'd probably say I enjoyed this last few days. We're some of the fortunate who have had power restored to us. There are still around 500,000 throughout the greater Cincinnati area without power.



This may have been a once in a lifetime situation to be involved in. The remnants of Hurricane Ike and a cold front came together in such a way that we were hit harder than any time in Duke Energy's history for this area. Pretty crazy stuff.

This is the food I picked from our garden yesterday. This was just from yesterday! Our first year doing a fruit/vegetable garden has been extremely successful considering the fact that we've never done this before. I've got produce coming out my ears!



It's been so awesome to have such fresh ingredients available to feed our friends and family with. I'm going to miss it when the stuff is all gone...which is rapidly approaching. We pulled off a 32ft. x 32ft. garden this year and I believe next year's garden will be double that size.



We had success with:

- Corn
- Green Beans
- Lettuces
- Swiss Chard
- Tomatoes (at least 8 varieties)
- Green/Red Peppers
- Habenero / Serrano / Banana Peppers
- Cantaloupe
- Cucumber
- Butternut Squash
- Radishes
- Lots of Herbs
- Zucchini

It's been amazing. I truly have to credit Carrie, our currently MIA housemate (hiking the Appalachian Trail) for the success for this food mine. Her diligence in keeping it up daily made it seem super "easy" to the rest of us.

Next year I think we'll try our hand at:

- Shallots
- Garlic
- Asparagus
- Eggplant

Anyone got any other suggestions? Remember, this is Ohio.

What a great zoo we have here in Cincy. You should check it out. Anyone got any good zoo stories?

You gotta love a snow day...

Here are some views from this afternoon:

















You can find the full-size images on my flickr page.