This weekend was another fun weekend spent at my parents house down in tropic coastal Myrtle Beach. You may not see beautiful rainbows or smell exotic flowers but when you arrive, you can sure tell when life’s a beach. (okey so that tourist phrase is over done) This weekend was spent with the appearance of my sister as well as my parents, 4 other friends of my mom’s (all women…poor dad) and last but not least Jen my girlfriend. Traffic wasn’t so bad since years past, but that could be due to conserving tourists. The fireworks on the other hand, were in no means cut back. It also gave me an opportunity to shoot moving objects at night with my D80, which proved to be a bit of a challenge. Read the rest of this entry »
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My Car hits 100,000 miles!!
July 6th, 2008 by 
Michael in Greensboro, NC
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Tags: auto, Myrtle Beach, traveling
Roadtrip to Maryland
June 8th, 2008 by Michael in New Windsor, MD
Throughout my life I have traveled many times though the state of Maryland but never have I needed to stop nor did I have relatives to stay with (imagine that!!). Now I do have a reason, with this trip planned for several weeks in the making, the plan was to entertain ourselves ( Jen and I) with a concert of Death Cab for Cutie but to also stay with Jen’s parents. They live in a very envyous town called New Windsor which is really in the middle of nowhere. For miles and miles there are rolling greens hills covered with parallel rows of corn littered with alternating squares of cow pastures which make a smelly delight when driving by.
Yesterday we did the 5 hour trip from Elon heading straight north with only a few stops to dilly dally. We arrived at Jen’s home home around 11:30pm but we knew sleep was well needed because tomorrow we would be walking all over the nations capitol.
After a bowl of cheerios and a yogurt snack (don’t you love the details) we headed to the Shady Grove Metro station to board the subway which would be taking us into the District of Columbia. That day was calling for another scorcher, with temperatures crawling into the upper 90’s it wasn’t spring anymore. Read the rest of this entry »
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Merry Christmas from New Orleans
December 25th, 2007 by Michael in New Orleans, LA
Well I can’t say too much for the cold. I came down to the south expecting warmer temperatures than my home state of NC but since last Sunday the temperature has dropped. On the day of cold upper 40 degree weather we decided to take a Steamboat ride. At 2:30pm we boarded the Natchez, one of 5 steamboats that are still operational in the US. The parents stayed inside the warm sweat smelling cabin riddled with smells of Louisiana style food while me and Katie ran around the sides and floors of the boat. The Engine room was pretty remarkable, seeing the piston’s slide back and forth creating tons of energy to power the wheel of paddles that cut through the water. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: christmas, New Orleans, traveling
The Big Easy
December 23rd, 2007 by Michael in New Orleans, LA
Selecting from a long list of cities already been visited, my family had to decide where we’d spend our Christmas holiday. San Francisco has been worn out like Firestone tires on a Ford Explorer, Hawaii was done for vacation too many times and all the large US cities (New York, Chicago, Seattle, L.A. etc) have been conquered by the fearless Shepherds. It all came down to a suggestion given by a friend to go visit New Orleans. The first mention of this gave my mom a sour look in her face, we assured her that yes, the touristy areas like the French Quarter were spared from Katrina’s devastation. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: New Orleans, traveling
Blame it on the rain…
May 14th, 2007 by Michael in Basel, Switzerland
Saturday was our final day in Holland so our host friends decided to take us north of Amsterdam to visit a small cheese shop and a clog museum. We packed all our things and the four of us crammed into a mini Daewoo large enough to fix two kegs of Heineken beer. On the way I was pretty excited to see the arena where the national team of Holland plays futbol but I would have to leave seeing a game for the next trip.
Going through the cheese room, the tour guide was very impressive as she kept changing languages on the fly to accommodate for all the people. She also reprimanded anyone who tried to come through the door into our showing. She just shooed them off and told them to wait until the next tour, one man kinda seemed insulted but she just carried on with her multilingual lines. The clog museum had a Dutchman explaining how it would take 3-4 hours to make one clog out of wood the old way but by using today’s machines it can be done in 5 minutes…wow. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Europe, family, Switzerland, traveling
New to the Netherlands
May 12th, 2007 by Michael in Leiden, Netherlands
Ahhh…so my craving for some travel has been fixed once again. On Wednesday I left with my sister bound for Europe. We both left from our respective homes, me from Greenboro and her from Raleigh where we would rendezvous in Newark, New Jersey. It was a stunning sight seeing the skyline of New York while on approach to the airport but at the same time the absence of the World Trade buildings reminded me of 9/11. Here in New Jersey we had about five hours to kill but as my sister manages our time well, we already had a challenge waiting before us… to find a Post office in the airport. Simple enough you think?? We scoured every corner of the airport asking five different people who worked there for a post office boxes. The answers we got were: go to the continental mail service which really was for employees, go to the Fedex station which you can’t get there by walking and lastly we heard that two weeks ago they just removed the post office throughout the airport so that really didn’t help us out much at all. Before I knew, it was time to board the plane. Now keep in mind this plane departed at 5:15PM and arrived in Amsterdam at 7:00am the next day. So sleeping on the plane was preferred but to my dismay I don’t sleep very well on planes especially when I’m too excited to get to my destination. Read the rest of this entry »
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City of Brotherly Love
March 28th, 2007 by Michael in
Its once in your life you get to celebrate your Golden Year. This year it was mine! I was about to embark on a cool trip with my sister to Philadelphia. I’ve never been there that I’ve recalled, but I was probably a baby the last I went through so that really doesn’t count. This trip had been planned weeks in advance but like the norm of the shepherd family, you don’t commit to a trip until the last minute. Being a family that has always flown standby where ever we went, traveling was pretty convenient and spontaneous.Leaving work after one o’clock, I swung by Raleigh to pick my sister up then we started the long journey down the endless black asphalt road of I-95. I think the number 95 actually suggested the speed limit that some follow in the state of Virginia. Knowing that we both were going to bring our iPods, we figured one of us brought a FM transmitter so we could listen to our music over the radio. Well….we were out of luck, neither of us had brought one. Super, we just started what would be a 8 hour trip and now we don’t have any music. So we had to delight ourselves in conversation and humming some tunes. Time had passed and we thought we’d give the radio a try, right as we turned on the radio whats being played?? SNOW PATROL This is the very band that I was going to Philadelphia to see. It was fate =) Yes it was going to be a good time…yes indeed! To speed things up, we made it to our hotel that had the temperature of a sauna. Being handy, I had to remove the window jam so the window could be opened from 2 ft to a whopping 6 feet to speed the process of letting hot air out. After seeing Carolina whip some tail we went to bed knowing tomorrow would be a long day…but fun.
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Tags: Birthday, Philadelphia, quaker, Snow Patrol, traveling