Belly Flop

The lousy, unforgiving weather sure made the weekend a damp affair, but I guess it was waiting to give us a grand finale during the last hour of the entire trip.

Heavy winds => huge waves => playful dolphins

The rain-soaked bunch on our boat couldn’t resist a delighted “Woo Hoo!” when this young fellow decided to perform a somersault over his mommy’s back.

(Click that right arrow for more)

Bottle-Nose-Dive

If only patience wasn’t such an easy thing to lose, I would have put up at least a dozen frames showing the elaborate stunt this guy performed, not more than ten feet away from where we stood – shooting up to the surface, thrashing the water with his tail fin a couple of times and finally disappearing slowly like a graceful Titanic (sorry, couldn’t help the corny analogy)

Too bad, you’ll have to make do with just these four shots

Biting Yet?

I’m really proud of myself for this one. Clicked at 65mph

The Birds

Hitchcock would have loved this shot

This flock of gulls (and a few pelicans among them) chased our vessel for the entire cruise. If the guide had not mentioned this as an everyday occurence, I would have gladly freaked out

Surfer Dudes

Probably the only bunch of people who loved the lousy weather that weekend.

Magnificent waves, no casual swimmers to get in their way… these guys made the most of it. Just when the rest of us thought we couldn’t get any more jealous, they started surfing alongside dolphins (coming up; a few more left arrows to go)

That 'Ghost' Moved!

One of the coolest buildings I’ve seen. The doormen are a couple of decaying corpses. And the door knob is a disembodied, gnarled hand. Too bad I didn’t get to go inside (why are women scared of everything?

Rock On!

Another cool feature of the Neptune Festival was the multiple concerts happening at different locations on the same beach. Although I have never heard of any of the performing bands (it’s not like I’ve heard of many anyway), some of the folks were really talented and drew unbelievably large crowds (not shown in the picture)

That’s one thing I like about this place. You could be just an average garage band, yet there are tons of opportunities to make it big. Right place, right time. That’s all there is to it.

Pink Hummer Limousine

Built for a tough, VIP who came out of the closet perhaps?

This was the highlight of the parade this year, drawing ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the crowd.

After reading the sign on the limo and hearing the ladies yelling, “Check them out! Every month!”, you better realize what the pink stands for, unless you want to end up making a very wrong guess.

Neptune Grand Parade

Though the weather played spoilsport with a lot of events, the Grand Parade fortunately went off without a hitch. Over 100 floats roll down the length of Atlantic Avenue, which runs parallel to the shore.

The parade included everything – marching bands from local schools, the city’s Special Olympics team, the Mayor, the Armed Forces, the service departments like Fire Squads and Surf Rescue Teams, theatre groups, Miss Virginia Beach and a monster truck which runs on natural gas!

One small lesson learnt from the parade: when you click a picture like the one on the bottom right and your wife/girlfriend later asks why, the correct answer is NOT “Umm… err… you like it?”

Accessing the Waterworld

Honestly, we saw the mermaid kiss and thought that was all of it. It was by mere chance that we walked back on the other side of the sculptures and only then noticed the other half of this winning entry. Cool stuff, indeed!