Just another day at the "office." A shot from the pits at the Austin F1 Grand Prix.

Walking through the pits with a Nikon D750+24-120mm f4.0. Though I had on a rain coat and was holding an umbrella the rain was a 360 degree, immersive experience and I was soaked to the bone when I got back to our suite at the Paddock Club. The camera and lens were both thoroughly soaked but worked fine and continue to work. The weatherproofing that camera makers have been implementing really does seem to work.

The preliminary rounds of the F1 were canceled on Saturday but the rain finally broke on Sunday and the race scheduled the prelims and finals on the same day. I was not there to photograph the cars or the race but to support a corporate clients whose sales event was partially wrapped around F1 festivities.

As the photographer for the business event I worked four very long days and evenings. On Saturday night I was making prints until 4 am for a next morning delivery. But I got to see lots of fast Porsche races before the main event, had a spot just over the finish line from which to see the race and had dinners in some of Austin's finest restaurants --- always with my camera right next to me.

A fun and entertaining weekend of "work." Now we're back to normal life. I've vacated my provided room at the Four Seasons and have made it back to my own neighborhood and, more importantly, our swimming pool.

The pool area was dark this morning when we arrived. We pulled off the insulating covers and watched the steam, backlit by the pool lights, rise into the air. I was swimming some backstroke as the sun came up over the horizon and turned the sky pink and then blue. Our coach, Kristen, wrote a beautiful, almost lyrical workout that had a main set that looked like this:

4 x100 yard freestyle (fast)  on 1:35
50 freestyle (recovery) on :60
3x 100 freestyle + 1x 100 individual medley (fly, back, breast, free by 25s)
50 freestyle
2x 100 freestyle + 2x 100 individual medley
50 freestyle
1X 100 freestyle + 3X 100 individual medley
50 freestyle
4X 100 yard individual medley
50 freestyle

It was beautiful. With the warm up and some other sets we managed to plow through 3100 yards this morning before most people had their coffee in hand. Nice feeling. I missed that over the weekend. I had the coffee; no problem, but the swims were nowhere to be found.

Back in the groove and happy about it.