One rainy day my Assistant and I were out taking pictures. Okay, I was taking pictures and he was humoring me. We made a round and Mingo Park, and he asked where I wanted to go next. We talked about this while driving down RT 43 in his truck in the pouring rain. We were debating Coopers Rock State Forest in West Virginia and Ohiopyle in Pennsylvania. Time to get there wasn't a factor, because google said 50 minutes for Ohiopyle and 51 minutes for Coopers Rock. So we're weighing our options when we pass a sign for Brownsville, and my Assistant goes, "There is a shut down coal power plant around Brownsville some where."
Does that man know me. He knows I would love to explore and photograph abandon places. However, being picked up for trespassing, or worse breaking and entering would not go over well for me. We decide to check the place out, but not to go anywhere that would get us in trouble. (Seriously, though if anyone owns an abandon place and would permit me to explore and photograph you would make my life.)
So we end up at the abandon power plant on an access road that leads under a bridge. The bridge cover was awesome, because it was still pouring. I had my handy dandy baggies and electrical team to make my ghetto camera cover, but it such a pain to work with. I hopped out of the truck, and began my outside the fence exploration and photography.
I am walking off the beaten path, in the weeds under the bridge when I noticed these guys. I had to take a picture of them. They are the most horrible evil things you can get stuck to your hair, clothes, boots, socks, mittens, cat, or anything else that you can think of. They immediately took me back to being 7 years old, right before third grade.
*Hey Vanessa third graders are 8.* Not in my day. As long as you were 5 at some point during Kindergarten you could go to school, and boy was my mom ready for me to go to school.
Anyway... back to right before third grade. I had just moved to a new neighborhood, and my best friend, Shelly, happened to live in that neighborhood. We were out together so she could show me the ropes and all the awesome places in to hang out in our neighborhood. We were in "woods" that was mostly grass and weeds taller than we were, at the bottom of our hill. We were kind of stuck in a tangled mess, and trying to make our way back out. Shelly, my BFF, was picking her way out carefully. She knew about those sticky bastards and how evil they were. I knew nothing. Anyway, I've never been one to carefully pick through anything. That is not how I am wired. If the problem requires that I jump head first into a 23 degree river, then you know I do. I smash through everything like the Kool-Aid man, and that is how I handled our grass/weeds predicament. She caution me, but also saw my progress and followed suit.
In the end poor Shelly's hair had about 100 of those evil evil bastards in them. Her mom could not do much for her and she had to cut her long, long, beautiful hair. I know I apologized when I was 7, and she said it was okay, but seriously, I am super sorry you had to cut your hair.
