My last visit to NYC met me poorly prepared.  I left straight from work, wore poorly supporting shoes and crappy socks and walked around in a light mist.  After 20 blocks of walking I had proto-blisters and a week afterward I had deadskin snowflakes shedding from my feet.

This time I wore normal shoes and socks and resolved to walk the 35 blocks each way.  All went well inbound and I took a sequence of nice building pictures that look like clipart as the overcast of the day registered the sky as RGB #FFFFFF.  I brought my camera in backpack and the combo of t-shirt + oxford + fleece vest + backpack produced more back sweat than I would have liked.

Bringing the gorilla pod proved wise as NECSS was a low-light event.  I giggled as people tried to take pictures with cell phones and pocket point-and-shoots as I sat with my f/2.8 70-200mm on myAPC sensor.  My smile dropped when I saw the guy down the row from me with his camera on a steady-cam setup atop a monopod on his Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III with an L-series 28-300.  One day.

Each panel had a question and answer period after it and the queue quickly filled each time, except for the final presentation by Carl Zimmer.  I <3 Carl Zimmer as his book Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea led me to rework all of Environmental Science merit badge.  I was first to the mic and I choked like a chihuahua swallowing a hot dog.  I’ve asked probing questions of former heads of the military through FPRI, chewed out Scout leaders who probably could have gotten me fired and once called my boss’s boss’s boss and idiot.  But I proved physically incapable of asking a softball question of a blogger.  GHA…..  He was nice about it, my sentences may have properly included the correct parts of speech but bordered on “who do you want me to eat it?” territory.  He looked at me with that exceedingly polite “you could yell something at me in Magyar and I’ll still smile nicely, call you insightful and give you a response that reminds you why you think I’m amazing”.

As I made my way from the venue I received about a 1/2 dozen “you’re the tard that covered the keynote speaker’s face with language vomit” and paid my penance by walking back to the train station in the rain.  My feet are fine…