So I had to delete all of the pictures off of my camera today because
“This is D.C. We have the president. We need to protect the president.”

I spent the weekend in Great Falls at Steph’s house. This morning Steph and her father took me to the Greyhound station. We got off to a little bit of a late start, and were slowed in traffic by two pretty nasty accidents. We made it to the terminal at 8:45a.m. My plan was to catch the 9a.m. Greyhound bus to Philadelphia, arrive at 12:00 and catch the 12:30 Bieber bus home.

The 9:00 bus left at 8:50 without all of its passengers. The driver wouldn’t wait for me, as I was getting my bags. I had my ticket in hand, and was going to take about 30 seconds to retrieve my bags from the car, situated about fifty feet away, when the driver took off. This made me miss my connection to the Bieber bus for which I had already bought the ticket.

Another passenger had been on the bus from its beginning in Richmond and had stepped off the bus with the driver’s permission to buy a snack. Entering the snack line left him stranded until the next bus would depart at 10:45.

Steph, her father, and I went to Starbucks for some breakfast, and returned to wait in line. I had a brief discussion with a Peruvian photographer, which prompted me to take out my camera to show him. His bus left at 10:00, and I was left to stand in line. Thoroughly pissed off at Greyhound, I started taking some pictures of the bus station for my upcoming blog post about how terrible Greyhound is.

Three pictures later, a burly black man wearing a Greyhound uniform began a less-than-pleasant conversation with me:

“Come over here.”
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Where are you from?”
“Allentown”
“Where?”
“It’s in Pennsylvania.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, but there is a lot of photography going on right now.”
“Sorry, sir?”
“You can’t do that. Not since 9/11. I know you’ve heard of 9/11, haven’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well then you should know that you’re not allowed to take pictures.”
“Of a Greyhound station?”
“Of any mass-transit system. You do that in an airport and they’ll take your camera. This is D.C. It would be wise of you to delete those photos you took.”
“Would you like to see them?”
“No. If I were you, I’d delete them right now.”
“Why?”
“This is D.C. We have the president here. We have to protect the president.”

Oh my god. I can’t believe that I was given such a lame reason. How often does the president visit the Greyhound station anyway? Is that picture of the soda machine really a matter of national security? I can’t believe that he would use 9/11 as a reason to abuse his power and bully customers around. Greyhound really has terrible service.

After this, my bus arrived an hour late, drove off with the luggage bay doors open, pulled over on the side of a highway to close them, and when we finally arrived in Philadelphia, the luggage crew threw my bag into a large puddle.

Final Decision: Not going to ride Greyhound anymore unless I can help it.

So, during my last couple of weeks in Taiwan Steph came out to visit. She brought her new Canon Digital Rebel XTi along. It’s a really beautiful camera. I’ve been shooting on film with her Nikon FN-10 and my mom’s Pentax. We went together to the photography district of Taipei, which is near the main station, and I bought the japanese version of the XTi. My camera is called the Canon Kiss Digital X.

Boy does this thing take beautiful pictures. The colors, the resolution. It can get incredibly sharp, and because of the ability to change ISO speed, I can take pictures in really bright light and really dim light without the use of a flash. Steph and I spent the last two weeks running around Taiwan taking pictures. Now that we’ve got a significant number of beautiful pictures, we’re looking into Microstock photography. Currently we’re submitting pictures to ShutterStock. I’m also working on rebuilding my image gallery, so stay tuned for updates!