my trip, my friend, and my pictures
January 20, 2008
After a long week of not very hard work, I decided to treat myself to a day of extremely touristy activities here in Philadelphia. So Saturday morning I threw some essentials in my messenger bag, strung my camera (thank you parents!!!) around my neck and walked approximately 1.6 miles down to Independence Historical National Park, home of the Liberty Bell (pictured above… behind my head…). I looked more touristy than I ever have in my life.
There was a time when the thought of being perceived as a tourist or a clearly-not-from-around-here guy would have made me cringe. You know that feeling: you go on a trip with your youth group and you’re in a cool new city (or at Six Flags) and you’re walking around with a group of 50 loud people all wearing the same shirt you are… Yeah, you know it. However for this trip, I embraced that feeling.
If you don’t believe me, please go back and look at that picture again. The only other people getting their picture taken standing next to the bell are little kids. Kids who don’t even have to stand to the side of the bell because they are short enough that the bell can be seen over them. Meanwhile, I’m taking a picture of myself, with a big fancy camera, while the park ranger was asking me if I wanted her to take it for me. I politely declined as I basked in the awkwardness of the moment.
After joining the ranks of Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama by taking my picture with the Liberty Bell — which, if you haven’t seen it in person before, really is pretty lame — I went on to take a tour of Independence Hall where I had the pleasure of taking a tour led by Larry, the baddest park ranger the NPS has ever seen. Larry taught me all about the two rooms on the bottom floor of Independence Hall, and he taught the rest of the group about the upstairs room, but I was slow getting up there because I, being the Grade-A tourist I am, was still downstairs taking pictures.
There is much, much more to the story of my adventures in historic-land, but in the interest of not abusing your time or boring you, I’ll leave it at that. If you’d like to see more pictures from my touristy endeavors, I added them to my Philly set on my flickr site. Please feel free to check them out, and pretend like Larry’s reading the captions beneath the pictures. It’ll make your visit more enjoyable, I promise. And you won’t have to worry about seeing repeats of me and the Bell or of Larry, as these pictures are odfm exclusives. Only my faithful readers are treated with the luxury of viewing these portraits. Now you’ve got bragging rights.
I’m so proud of you!!!
We need to talk about this new camera of yours, Mr. D.O. Your pictures are phenominal (which could have something to do with skill, I suppose).
Also we need to talk about how to make the link from six chick blog to d.o. blog more accurate. And we need to talk about making the six chick blog more pleasing to the eye.
Can you help with these things?
support that post.
these are nice.
way to get out there.
enter into tourist land.
as long as you didn’t wear a fanny pack, you’re good in my book.
oh, and i second jessica’s plea for help on the chicks’ sad little blog.
maybe if it was prettier, we’d post more….
i read, and i like…
embrace the inner tourist in you d.o.
oh, your beard is looking nice.
hey there derrick! : o ) so i was finally catching up on your happenings when ryan decided to get fussy. so when i picked him up and sat back down he looked at the screen which was displaying your smiling face. he then stopped fussing and started smiling and talking to your picture. it was pretty cute. so i thought i would say thanks for making my little one happy and tell you that he likes you – it must be the beard – it made him laugh (unlike my other one – he thinks it is fun).