The flight out was fairly un eventful other  than TAS cutting the lock off one of my bags to see what was inside it! Of course it was my small tripod that had them concerned as  I’m figuring with it collapsed it looked very concerning to them on the x-rays of the bag. In the past before 911 it would have never raised concern, but times are different.

My good friend Jose picked me up from the Ontario Airport and I spent the next 10 days staying and traveling with him around southern California and had a great time! He lives up around Crestline, California up in the mountains and it was a great jumping off spot to all the places we wanted to visit. While Jose isn’t as much of a railfan as me, he does enjoy photographing trains and other types of landscape photography. My visit also gave him a good excuse to get away from his volunteer work with the local water company, which takes way too much of his time (his words) and I gave him a good excuse to get out and take pictures!! Now he plans to take a week or two off every few months as the result of my latest visit. I hope he sticks to it and get out to do more of what he loves! Jose and I pretty much followed each other around the world on assignments while we were both photojournalists with Combat Camera.

It was a great visit and I’ll add some pictures here from the trip. I did goof up and let my drone takeoff without setting the home point on a flight, which resulted in loosing it somewhere out in the Cajon Pass when it dropped behind a rocky point and I lost contact with it from the controller. By not setting the home point, the drone landed somewhere out there and after a two hour search we gave up on finding it. Not a mistake I’ll make again!!

Our Combat Camera reunion was held in Studio City, CA at our past boss’s and good friend’s home, Ken Hackman. We used to have big versions of these reunions that went over a weekend, but since COVID we’ve been doing mini versions where we’ve been gathering at Ken’s home for a day of fellowship and good food. It’s great seeing everyone and we had probably around 30-40 people or more attend! I’ll add a few pictures from that part of the trip as well!

Here’s a few more from the train part of the trip…

A few from the Combat Camera Reunion