| Traditional walk of the whole Freedom Trail, more or less, for the most part done without shoes because it's fun! There are always one or two opportunities to educate the public about barefooting benefits during these, as it's still unusual around an almost entirely shod urban population. We're working on that... |
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Smallish group gathered in front of the State House. It was a beautiful day for a stroll, a little on the warm side. |
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Playing with the fountains at North End Park is obligatory, and no
worries about getting our shoes wet.
(The woman and her daughter at the table [pink arrow] are also barefoot,
heh.
Just out enjoying life.)
I'm also playing with a new camera here -- a new-generation point&shoot with a one-inch sensor as opposed to the typical tiny ones in this class. I'm already totally sold on these, because not only is the image quality flawless by comparison, it can suck in so much more light at a time even at modest ISO settings -- in this case, requiring such a fast shutter in the full sunlight that all the flying droplets got frozen with almost zero blur! I have a feeling I'm going to be using the ND filter on this one more than I did on previous units when outside. | |
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For some reason, Filippo's restaurant in the North End has had this old
machinist's vise mounted on the front of their building for years.
It's not even hopelessly rusted solid yet; the screw still turns.
Our winding way to this point contained many different stretches of the old cobblestone throughout the North End streets, another interesting batch of underfoot textures. Plenty of glass and detritus down in between the pavers, too, but not any problem for well-conditioned feet. |
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The drawbridge part of the Charles Street bridge has open steel mesh decking, but it's pretty flat and not really a type to challenge the sole significantly. Some other drainage or ventilation grating types are much rougher, like the stuff with all the little grippy points sticking up. |
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It's tradition to huff it on up to the top of the Bunker Hill monument if it's open. In we go! |
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View down from the Monument: it's easy and amusing to see how people
have built rooftop decks to hang out on.
This is a crop of less than a quarter of the original image; even in this there are *none* of the annoying processing artifacts found in the output of many other cameras -- oversharpening, over-zealous "plasticky" noise reduction, whatever. This is just clean and faithful, which one wants to start with even when reducing for web-page shots. |
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All told I didn't get that many pictures -- we were too busy walking and
exchanging barefoot war-stories and figuring out which way to head back.
We returned across the Locks walkway, which is always fun with its big
ol' greasy works to look at.
Somewhere near North Station we stopped so one of our newer folks could
duck into a 7-11 for a drink -- apparently that was the first time he'd
ever gone into a store barefoot!
No hassles here, which is always encouraging.
The community generally believes that 7-11 doesn't have any discriminatory
policies about it at the corporate level, but I don't know if that's been
confirmed.
Anyway, while waiting outside I played with shooting the construction across the way, with things high in the air against the beautiful crisp sky. The crane looks like a fun climb for its operator every morning... ladder after ladder inside the truss, no lazy-man elevator. |
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