So I totally messed up tonight.  Here we are on Maui for crying out loud on the west side of the island in the Grand Wailea Resort, so you’d think a great sunset picture was a pretty safe bet!  Well it is if you don’t fall asleep on your bed after coming back from the pool all day!

Lisa pointed out that the sun was going down so I grabbed my camera and headed down to the beach.  On my way I could see the sun just going down and missed a beautiful sunset – what an idiot!  Fortunately, this is only day one so I have plenty of time to make amends and capture a few beautiful evenings.

So I had to ask myself, what should I post?  I was walking back to the hotel feeling pretty dejected and when I saw this scene.   The sun still had a little orange and yellow and the trees were silhouetted against the dark blue sky, and I thought, Palm Trees, that’s very “Hawaiian”.  So this is tonight’s posting (I know, very imaginative – but you try staying awake after 4 hours of a nine year old dunking you under water).

This is one of the walks from the hotel down to the beach.  The hotel is absolutely amazing and I’ll take some shots of the building and grounds over the next few days and post them too.  Clearly I can’t leave this as an afterthought and expect to get a great image in 5 minutes  at the end of the day – so much for paradise!

The Halo guys were having fun in the pool today, but they were blatantly ignoring the “no diving” rules.

So here I am sitting at SeaTac airport waiting to fly out to Maui.  We got here a little early (Lisa never likes to have to rush when we’re here – which is probably a good thing) so I decided to capture a picture at the airport for today.  So while the kids are tucking into some lunch at the food court, I walked off looking for something to shoot.

While wandering down Terminal B I looked out the windows and watched these guys, working on a plane.  A number of passengers who were taking the plane looked on too, all of them I would guess feeling a combination of frustration because they were delayed, and fear as the last thing you want to see is someone working on your plane before you take off!

So I walk up to the window all cocky and take a few shots.  Smile at the delayed passengers and walk off to find Lisa.  All the time I’m thinking, bloody hell glad that’s not me, but it will make an interesting picture.  So I find Lisa and we walk to the gate.  I get 10 minutes to process the image and post it, write something really quick saying “I’m posting now as I’m about to get on my plane – I’ll write more tonight when I land and reach my hotel…” and go to the gate to get on the plane.

Guess what?  Now we are delayed for about an hour.  I mean talk about bad karma!  I shouldn’t have laughed at the other passengers.  At least there’s nobody with wrenches standing on our plane – yet!

So I walked back to my chair and typed this up.  Hopefully we will get away this evening and get to Maui.  If not expect a series of images of the airport, as I’m not leaving.  Just think of me as Tom Hanks in “The Terminal” – I’m moving in…

While waiting for our flight at SeaTac airport the guys couldn’t resist a Wendy’s Baconator!

I figured that as I went to the Redmond Exotic’s Car show and the theme was British cars, I should post something from the UK.  Ironically most of my favorite British cars weren’t there (no idea why), but there were a few interesting models.  For example there was this MG J2.

The J2 was a two-seater roadster that came out in 1933.  It had a top speed of 65 miles an hour (and that was a lot for a commercial car) and cost a whopping £199 (that’s around $310).  The car had no roof and was pretty open to the elements – tiny doors and a little windscreen.  But it looked cool – especially the front of the car as it had a lot of chrome on the car.

I wanted to get a good composition but there were loads of people walking behind the car and were in shot.  The car was partially in shade and it was the front of the car with the yellow grill that caught my attention.  So I thought I’d try to capture a picture of that.  So I went to the front of the car and lied down on the floor and took the shot below.  My friend Chris who was there with me taking pictures thought I was nuts, people were walking round me as I laid in front of the car.  But I’m kind of immune to funny looks these days, so I don’t care.

Anyway considering the conditions I’m pretty pleased with the shot, I think the car came out well and there aren’t too many distractions around the car.

Tonight the guys started packing for tomorrows trip to Maui.

So tonight we have a great American plane, the Mustang P-51D.  The Mustang came into service early on in the Second World War and saw service over Germany and later in Korea.  Interestingly the Mustang was commissioned by the British and was designed and built in just 117 days.

Another (useless) fact is that the Ford Mustang car was actually named after this plane.  Executive stylist John Najjar at Ford was a fan of the P-51 and suggested the name.  Later Ford added the Mustang horse as the cars emblem.

This particular plane saw action over German in the hands of Captain Harrison Tordoff and participated in many air-to-air combats and shot down a German Me 262 jet fighter.  After the war the plane served with the Royal Swedish Air Force and after that was sold to the Dominican Republic.  After 30 years in the Caribbean the aircraft came back to US when it was purchased by the Flying Heritage Collection.

This plane was really cool and was almost polished steel.  The checkered nose and black and yellow propellers really set the plane off.  Just under the cockpit there were nine swastika’s showing how many German planes Harrison shot down.  A small plaque in front of the plane stated that Harrison Tordoff was reunited with his plane back in 2003 and stated it hadn’t changed since 1945.

This composition isn’t the best in the world, but as I’ve said before in other postings the planes were very close together and you don’t really have a lot of options.  But I really like this plane and think under the circumstances the picture came out well.

Master Chief learnt an important lesson today, Gorilla Glue is very sticky – and you shouldn’t play with it!

On Saturday I went back to the Redmond Exotic Car show and saw this red Shelby Cobra.  I’ve taken a picture of one of these before but I really like the curvy lines on this car and couldn’t resist shooting one again.   Last time I posted a Cobra I got down on the ground really low and just captured front grill (or air intake) and near-side wheel.  So I didn’t think it was cheating posting this picture.

I know these are basically kit cars (although you can find some originals) but I love them.  They look fun, fast and really sexy.

If you read my posting a few nights ago you will know that this show was British Car Week and here is another American car!  I did shoot some British cars honest and promise I’ll post some soon.

I know this again isn’t a complete car shot but I like the shape of the cars side and the red polished finish looked really nice.  One day I’ll capture a compete Cobra so you know what they look like, but for now you’ll just have to trust me that they look REALLY cool.

The guys joined me at work today for a very long day – we got home at 9:45pm and were in at 7:30am.  Anyway, they were bored while at work and found the most complex desk puzzle ever made!