Irene - During and Aftermath

First I want to send my thoughts and prayers to those who lost a great deal in this storm. We lucked out, we had the minor inconvenience of no power for a couple days, able to experience the storm in the safety of our home with almost no damage to our rural neighborhood. In fact I took the day to listen to the winds and rain, to go out to capture the ferocity of the weather getting soaked head to toe. Yesterday I traveled to the family camp at Hadlock to see if it was damaged. You hope for the best, then as you travel farther north you start to see more and more destruction. Lets be honest, despite all the damage it pales in comparison to the flooding in Lake George, Granville, Schenectady, the Catskills and especially most of Vermont.

Again we lucked out. We couldn't get to our camp by car, there were power lines down everywhere, and both of the neighbors had some sort of structure damage because of the downed tree. The worst we suffered was that our raft was missing as we can only assume it had blown towards the dam during the storm. Once we assessed the situation we tried to drive around to Buttermilk Falls Road only to be blocked by a big pine in the middle of the road. We then turned around to Copeland Pond Road to see the damage on the other side of the lake. Looking at all the folks cleaning up, visibly frustrated, watching them trying to figure out where to start... it gave me that sinking feeling.
 

That wind reaching the 35-40mph mark, perhaps faster, did not have a speedometer on me

The rain was coming down in sheets!

Flooding in a near by pasture

Cones mark the creek overflow

The tall grass in our field never stood a chance

This was a little creek only inches deep, on Sunday it was turning into a river rising above a five foot hill

The water usually flows under that bridge

Only an hour before this the water was up over that bridge

At one point the water was up to the top of the window of that play house

These pictures were on Sunday and below are the images from the aftermath around Hadlock

A line down, clean up started

Neighbor all rights reserved PJN Photography, LLC

This was the access road to the camp

A quarter of the dock under water, not bad, probably worse Sunday

Poor Trailer

This was the culprit that knocked the lines down that snapped that telephone pole in half

Firing up the chainsaws

No pass through heading towards buttermilk falls road

Another blocked road

It certainly gives you a greater respect for the storms of the past like Katrina or any of the tornadoes over this past summer. In fact this was the lighter end of what was once Hurricane Irene, yet it caused so much heartache for so many and who knows the impact for the future of not only day to day life but also the states who already are scrapped for money. The government has to be given credit for the lives saved, the preparation was excellent throughout the coast and the power companies for being on top of getting extra crews to work on the power situation. Yet as you can see it can only help so much. There was a lot of history made and lost on Sunday, Vermont alone can make a person re-think the meaning of land-locked.

Making Whoopie...Pie

Pete and I committed to spending this weekend at home.  With my work during the week and much of his work (weddings) on weekends it's rare that we get a weekend together without work, family, or social commitments.

Last night, in hopes of starting off the weekend right, we saw Crazy, Stupid, Love.  I highly recommend it.

We then went grocery shopping so that we wouldn't have to leave the house until Sunday morning for church.

Here are the highlights from breakfast and dessert today. All photography was taken by me, except for the instagram images.  Those are Pete's.

Omelets with goat cheese and polenta for breakfast. Mind you, we slept in today so we ate breakfast after 1pm.

After dinner (pizza on homemade dough - thank you Pete- and salad), we used the Whoopie Pie mix from the Double H Hole in the Woods Gala at The Great Escape this year.

My favorites from the past month

A busy month it has been! My wife and I celebrated our first anniversary and we were filled with photo shoots and weddings. I enjoyed everything from a Red Sox game, a lobster roll, fine art, fun families, excellent celebrations, toes in the sand, to ZOMBIES!!! There is so much to show it would easily fill up your average hard drive, but I will condense it in as few pictures as possible and keep it somewhat short.

Before I move on to the pictures, I have to mention one of my favorite holidays and my families biggest holiday (next to Christmas). Independence Day is just a few days away, so to wet the old appetite, here are a few images from last year's festivities.

 

Some of my favorites from this month!! Weddings will be featured in later posts.

Flash Mob!!!

I am sure many have seen the current AT&T commercial where a guy in a trench coat starts randomly dancing in the middle of a train station, it turns out he's the only one as he got his text too late about the flash mob being delayed. The funny ad is an example of a new trend of public exhibition. These seemingly spontaneous acts of public group dancing, acting, even weddings are planned in advance by very talented people. Just check YouTube for the hundreds of videos of these flash mobs all over the world.

Today I was caught in the middle of a different sort of flash mob. At first as we were taking a stroll there was an odd zombie here or there but then they appeared in droves and by the escalators it was a full blown invasion. My camera strapped tight to me and at first that is all I did was shoot from the hip; it wasn't until we were on the escalator that I brought the camera up to my eye.

Many were perfectly in character obviously craving our brains!

Even the Counter-Zombie forces showed up, including our friends from Umbrella Corp.

I was pretty impressed with the hundreds of zombies and I was glad I had my camera handy... It was confusing as heck at first but a ton of fun to see it happen. Now I am a little worried that if there ever is an invasion of zombies in the future I might just assume it's a flash mob.

All Images © PJN Photography, LLC 2011



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