Chicago Willis(Sears) Stairclimb

After spending a wonderful Friday night and then a lovely Saturday with sweet wife Cindy, the two of us got up bright and early and marched over to the Willis Tower so that I could take the stairs up to the 103rd floor where the observation deck.

I left my camera with Cindy and....




There were bananas and other snacks for the finishers.



Finishers and more bananas



The lobby and its art



The lobby and its flags

My Pics

I had to run up 103 flights of stairs to get them, but they are well worth it.



Amazing view




A picture from the plexiglas landing floor.

MY OFFICIAL TIME

Bib Number	First Name	Last Name	Overall Place	City	Gender	Division	Time

1419	JON	DANNIELLS	301	MDR	M	M4049			23:36

301 out of 2462, not so bad. Best time of day was 13 min 49 sec worst 2 hrs 4 min 9 secs, quite a range

I love this photo.

And then as the freezing wind blew threw us we did these couple shots from the bottom looking up.

Self-portrait

Maybe video is the only way to really capture the magnitude of the building's height and how tiny I am.

The Inaugural Rock 'n' Roll Los Angeles 1/2 Marathon

A few weeks back I found out my nephew was running the Rock n Roll Los Angeles 1/2 Marathon and so as a show of support I decided to run it with him.

True I hadn't been training, but I was in decent shape and it was only 13 miles, plus it was an inaugural event so why not?




I forgot how early these events start. I do love those early mornings.

I had no idea how I would find nephew, Adam among the thousands of runners and just like.....





Hey lil' nephew,



Once I did find him, there were still the thousands of runners. In fact, it took around 15 minutes just to get to the starting line. It's gotta be up there some where.




Around mile 3 I started feeling pretty good and then at around mile 7 I thought I might be able to finish under 2 hours. I don't whether it was the promise of a free beer or that it was mostly downhill or.... but something got me inspired and I decided to go for it.

Check out the stats:

OvrPl	SexPl	DivPl	Bib	First Name	Last Name	City	State	Chip Time
2154	1476	244	9571	Jon	Danniells	Marina Del Rey	CA	01:59:33

Made it under the 2 hour mark by less than 30 seconds. That was close.





Not the best pic so I'm certainly not going to pay for a larger size of it.







There was some fun entertainment at the end, but it was in a different area than the beer garden and then the food was in a third area. It didn't make a lot of sense. But all in all it was a really fun race.

Belated Halloweenies

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. But not this year.

This year, wife out of state, child a pre-teen, life confused and in transition

Too much going on to enjoy.....

But I rallied, sort of....

We made it to the home school ball


LATE and hanging figs on "trees" in the parking lot when we got there, me not able to snap a shot of my daughter cause she took off and was hangin' with friends 2 seconds into it and she the one she took one of me did not capture the "magic" of the le cirque experience I had thought I had created.



Yes, yes or creepier than I thought, no yes, yes

So the home school ball fun as it was, was a photo-0p bust.

but wait, what about the real Halloween.

Yeah, she bolted with her friends. I managed......




Attitude and out of focus and...



Now that's better, sort of

The day after we were able to reconstruct...



Dad's worm eating fancy






and my trick and treat for the children.

A Full Fall Day

Last week with little time between us and Halloween, I realized we still hadn't made it to the Spider Pavilion.

So off to spidey world....





When a picture is worth a 1000 words, I give you oodles and oodles of words....



































Beautiful wonderfully magic Arachnids.

And since we had a few minutes and were so close we took a trip over to the Science Center and the Ecosystems exhibit

.

And this was just the preview room





So many zones, so little time



So of course we go to the extremes

Tide pools and kelp forests.





photo-journalist in training





Amazing tunnels under the sea






"You lookin' at me" Corny but appropriate line, can you name the De Niro movie it's from?



Self-portrait



An illegal alien?



You missed a spot

And then to more familiar territory




Did someone say de-composition?











Hey look they actually labeled Baldwin Hills our humble abode, must have been an African American cartographer.


And now off to Aerial Arts

all in a day of Danniells' adventures