Last night started out all sorts of bad. Immediately after work I went to the gas station to fill up. I checked my tires, and needed to add some air, so after filling up I pulled over to the air hose. Got the fronts... and crap. The hose wasn't extending, so I couldn't get to the rears. Moved the car so that I could top them off. Time to go home. Jumped in, turned the key, nothing.

Tried again and again. I have plenty of power, but nothing was happening. I gave Eric a ring to see if he had any ideas. Recommended I try starting in Neutral.. No good. Looked and didn't see any fuses for the starter or such. Then while poking around under the hood I noticed my fluid had leaked out far too much. Ran into the station, no distilled water. So I walked over to Smiths to get some. My car requires special G12 antifreeze which is pretty much only available at Audi/VW dealers. No gas stations or auto parts stores carry it. So I added a bit of distilled water, to see if a dry sensor was causing it. Nope. Still nothing.

I called Eric again, and he was going to stop by on the way home to see if he could see anything. I got out my phone and started searching online. Eventually I found a post that mentioned the transmission multifunction switch. The recommended trying in park, the neutral, then park, and so on. So I kept moving the transmission between the two, each time trying to start it. Suddenly it started! Yay! Rather than risk anything I immediately started going home. Once in the garage I stopped the car, and tried to restart it, no problem. Reversed out, and back in and tried it again, still good. Ok.

At about 7:15 I started loading up my car to take pictures of the Perseid Meteors. But first I went over to Eric's to have cake and ice cream for Whitnee's birthday. I hung out there, helped Eric try to get his xbox playing nice with his router, and headed off to get a spot at about 9:30. A quick run to Dan's to get some Dew and snacks, and I was off.

I reached the top of Emigration Canyon at 10:00. It was packed! I found a place to park, and set stuff up. I started playing with settings to try to find something that worked well. As the night went on cars kept coming up and down. It was very hard to include some horizon in the shot for a cool point of reference. Finally I said screw it, loaded up my gear, and hiked up the mountain on the north side of the road. No more headlights! I sat there and tried several different angles, exposures, etc... At 1:30 AM I packed up and headed back to the car. It did start immediately, so I headed back home, and to bed an hour later.

I looked over my shots... Not one turned out. I think it was a combination of things. A darker sky would have greatly helped. (Going camping away from everything next year!) I did a poor job of focusing the camera. Very difficult using just the small LCD to figure it out. And finally I'm going to say I was using the wrong lens. I need a lens with a much larger aperture (1.4-2.8). The meteors were so faint that with the brief amount of time they are visible, not enough light can get into the camera from them. So next time I try sky or even just meteor photography, I'll first rent a lens that gives me that larger aperture.