Could they add a few words to the name of this bridge? Like antidisestablishmentarianism. This is a great word. It should be in all names of bridges.

As an aside, Bob Graham as a politician is one of my favorites. He spit on Washington Post doyenne Katharine Graham when he was a small boy and has written down everything he has done for the last 50 plus years. A true original.

Or the beginning?:

The answer to that question is no, but sometimes I can give it a shot:

Life without a telephoto is hard.  Really, really, really hard:

I like these two last ones though.  By the way, these are from the St. Petersburg first night activities:

They say war is hell. Here is proof:

What? Flamingos? How does that have to do with war? OK, stay with me. The picture is silent, but I will describe the experience of photographing these creatures.

I heard the flamingos before I even saw them and they were screaming their tiny heads off. They were just kind of hanging out by the edge of the water and you could just walk into the middle of them. They didn’t really love people going out into the middle of them, but people and by that I mean me, went into the middle of them. They would nip at each other and into the photographing fools into their little group.

However, it was pretty hilarious. They are pretty gentle animals, if incredibly noisy. Let’s enjoy a few more pictures:

Well, they can be vicious too. Check this out:

Here he is, getting ready for battle:

OK, so for a second, this blog will go into slight travel writing over here, but I am going to guess that a lot of the blog’s readers have never been to the place I am about to describe, so I hope this is useful to everyone.

John Ringling, as his name would indicate, was one of the Ringling brothers who was the founder of the American circus. There were seven Ringling brothers and they were all involved with the circus. John Ringling made an insane amount of money in the circus and he knew how to spend it.

Mr Ringling and his wife Mabel did a lot of traveling to Europe and fell in love with Venice. As frequent visitors to this blog know, that isn’t exactly hard to do. However, Mr Ringling was filthy stinking rich, so unlike me, he could actually do something about it.

Now there is the Ringling museum which features the usual assortment of impressionist painting and art things I have seen many times before. Impressionism is my least favorite period of in art, so I skipped over those paintings. However, the museum featured a few things I had not seen before at your usual museum. For example:

They look a bit like Italian art some of these, don’t they? Well, they are smaller photos I took from Ringling’s circus vehicles.

Not that Ringling wasn’t fascinated by Italian art. I was going to post these up here and say that I went to Florence, but then I thought no one would be believe me. Well, these two, it could very well be Florence:

But then these couple, they don’t exactly look like Florence. That is, it isn’t full of people and it is almost always sunny:

Mind you, this was part of Mr Ringling’s property. Notice I didn’t say house. I said property.

Like all ballers, Mr Ringling had to have a really nice ride. He died in 1936, so he obviously couldn’t have a private plane. But as a lot of other ballers in his day, he had his own train car to criss cross America with his circus. And who wouldn’t want to ride in a train like this one, even now:

One could get tired of this level of luxury, so one has to go home to some place. Ringling got to go home to this dump:

OK I was totally kidding. Like I said, Mr Ringling loved Venice so that he built himself his own little replica of the houses on the Grand Canal. Well, big replica. The inside isn’t too shabby either:

The view from the outside wasn’t too bad either:

Well, you can go to Venice or you can go see Mr Ringling, the showman. Once the showman, always the showman.

kapow! (in other words, a preview to a larger entry that is coming, trust me):

For the new year:

Florida is made of awesome, but these things are the awesomest, I’d say.  The close ups are great as well:

I keep wondering why everyone around here is so happy.  People smile, they talk to you and even say thank you.  I can’t get over how weird that is.

Then, I thought — darn, it is sunny here.  All the time, even now.  And then there are these bright, white washed buildings that look like wedding cakes: