rose bowl

Today's pictures were taken at the Rose Bowl... I was there for a running race, and I was hoping to take some nice pictures for the challenge. However, there was this to deal with:

Water drops on the roof of my car (through the sun roof)

 Outside was decidedly unpleasant:

Where did the hills go?

Here is the obligatory picture of the rose bowl sign:

Perhaps if I cared more about college football, this would be more exciting...

 There weren't very many roses to be found in late January, but a couple brave ones still had some blooms, heavily weighed down with water from the rain.

The picture at the bottom right is the rose bushes in the front, all pruned back

 I do always like the palm trees. Here is one clump, just right of the entrance:

They look like they've recently been trimmed

 But these really tall ones are really cool. Look how curvy they are! This is looking straight up:

weird!

 There are also eucalyptus trees, with interesting bark patterns, adding some evergreen color:

trees

 Meanwhile, the rain was filling up the drainage ditches, but the race was about to start!

later, a man was riding his bike in this channel...

 The finish line for the race was at the 50 yard line, inside the stadium. It drizzled the entire race, and got worse after I finished:


Finish line

 And for the football fans, a panoramic of the inside, standing in the end zone on the far end. I've seen a couple of games in this stadium, they're always fun (usually less wet though):

touchdown? The field was mostly unpainted, but the grass was really nice and healthy. (real grass, too)

And now for a funny story/lesson learned: I initially thought the race was on Saturday, and I got up early to drive down. There was this amazing-looking fog all along the mountains and desert, but when I realized that I could sleep more, I didn't take a picture of it, figuring I'd get one on Sunday. I woke up Sunday morning and - no fog. So the lesson: always take a picture of the cool stuff when you see it....