I believe I can fly

For the past 63 years, Door County has thrown a party every October to celebrate autumn. The Fall Festival takes place in Sister Bay and draws people from across the Midwest. The crazy thing is, I've been traveling to Door County for the better part of a decade and I had never heard of the Fall Fest until this year. And I only found out about it when the receptionist at the motel I booked mentioned it as the reason that rooms were particularly scarce.

I hung around the festivities on Saturday morning, which featured a parade, activities for the kids and all the bratwurst one could possibly want. I skipped the bratwurst, took some shots of the parade and hung out at the bungee trampoline.

Many kids enthusiastically got buckled in, then, when it was time to bounce, took a few timid hops, using most of their alloted time (at six bucks a pop) to get the feel of what they were doing. Not this girl. She got right down to business, soaring high into the air and performing a continuous string of back flips. It was fun to watch and photograph. It took several shots for me to get the timing right to catch the high point of one of her flips, but I finally caught one.

I lost my zest for being anything other than vertical with head above feet a long time ago. For a few moments, though, I was taken back to a time when I believed that anything was possible.



Update - I've been Polymeme'd: Tracking some of my photos via Flickr's stats feature and discovered a couple on the news aggregator site Polymeme. Glad they like.


I'll soon be Smashing: Was contacted by a writer for SmashingMagazine.com. Three of my photos will accompany a future article on winter photography.

Click on this post's headline to see image EXIF data. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.