I haven’t really done much updating since my iPhone took a swan drive onto the pavement on my second fishing trip. There is not much going on. This is the weekend that Tony and I were planning to go camping. I don’t know where that went wrong. Somewhere a long the line I realized that I was not able to afford it. I think it is partially because of a certain other plan that was hatched one Wednesday night on the very porch on which I sit. I have the entire weekend off. I am 8 hours into my weekend and I have run out of things to do. I went for a bike ride (two), I went thrifting (all over 3 towns), I bought some bread, I made food, I washed dishes, I took a shower, I read a couple of articles in old editions of the New Yorker that we got a while back, I cut out advertisements from National Geographics, I went to the post office (3 times), I packaged internet sales. It’s 6:20pm. I’m blogging after this I have nothing. I’m sorta poor so going out is out of the question. I’m getting a headache from sitting on the porch and listening to traffic. Traffic- that reminds me that Red Bank needs an established series of bike lanes. The sidewalks throughout town are incredibly uneven and sub par and all of the roads are busy during normal hours of the day. A set of bike lanes would be greatly appreciated. Who do I talk to about this?
LikeOver the years I have compiled quite a collection of old cameras because, lets face it, I’m a bit of a hoarder. Anyway, inspired by something from an episode of The Neistat Brothers on HBO I decided that we would take a polaroid photo of everyone that visited our house, let them sign it, and hang them all on the wall. The goal was to one day fill the entire wall with photos of our friends, family, and randoms. I had been throwing this idea around for a while and decided today that it was time to get the project started. The first step was to get all of my cameras from the Freehold house and move them into Red Bank. I managed to do this while still on the clock at work. (SUCCESS!) That was the easy part- obviously. The second step was to go out and get film for these cameras. Several internet searches brought back disheartening results. eBay was even letting me down. Most film packs listed on eBay had expiration dates 40+ years old. I was shocked and disappointed but had to get to the bottom of this mystery. After about an hour of wording and re-wording searches of google to include camera model numbers, film type numbers and any last detail I thought might bring me some positive results I was about to give up. Then it came back to me. A news story I had heard a year prior to beginning this project. A story that I only heard in passing and still managed to recall with vivid detail after two hours of wasting my time searching with no positive results to show. The story that suddenly came back to me was that Polaroid had discontinued production on ALL types of instant film. You would think anyone with some internet savy would have come across this earlier. And you would be wrong in thinking that. My advanced ability to produce google results bounced me around the topic for nearly two hours. It was time to adapt a different approach so I surfed back to Google with one last search attempt. ”Polaroid 108 and 600 film alternatives” was what I typed and finally I received positive results! I found that 600 film or integral film had been discontinued completely. This meant that anyone who had purchased your run of the mill polaroid camera from about 1980 – 1999 was out of luck. I was, however, pleased to discover that the Polaroid 100 series Land Camera that I bought for $8 at a thrift store in Freehold was still usable. When Polaroid decided to stop production of film they sold the rights to produce instant film to Fujifilm. The Fujifilm replacement for my Polaroid 100 series Land Camera was available for $10 for a 10 pack. This project might happen after all. Now that you’ve read this story I am going to list below the replacement film types for the Polaroid 100 series Land Camera in case anyone who found this on article are as lost as I was.
- Polaroid 107 Series (B&W Instant Film) = Fujifilm FP 3000B (available here for $9.89 / pack)
- Polaroid 108 Series (Color Instant Film) = Fujifilm FP 100C (available here for $11.99 / pack)
Also, just for fun here are photos and links to information about the two Polaroids that I was trying to buy film for.
Polaroid 100 Series Land Camera (Produced from 1963-1966)
Polaroid One Step Flash
Compared to years passed I have accomplished quite a bit so far in 2010 but it wouldn’t be like me to be satisfied with a certain level of accomplishment so I have a few things that I would like to do in the upcoming months. I also have a few places I want to go in the upcoming year but I might save that list for another time. These are not in any particular order just jumbled together as I think and type so deal with it.
- Bearfort Ridge Hike in North Jersey is close to the top of my to-do list for 2010. I have to get this out of the way before the weather gets to icy and snowy. It is an 8 mile hike over “strenuous terrain”. I found it in a NJ Hikes book that I bought at Salvation Army. Supposedly it takes 5 hours to complete because there is a 1,000 foot vertical rise. Most hikes in NJ don’t exceed a 4-500 ft. vertical rise because we don’t live in the most mountainous of states.
- San Diego Hostel Trip – I’ve been all over the Northwest part of the country but I haven’t really taken much time to experience life in the Pacific Southwest. I want to spend no less than 5 days, 4 nights in San Diego and I plan to do it in the most cost affective way possible. I didn’t totally hate the hostel situation that I was in when visiting Portland, OR in February so I am contemplating giving that another try.
- Camping White Mountain National Forest in Autumn – The amount that I have to work to be able to afford rent, phone, and credit card bills is severely cutting into the free time that I’ve had to go camping this season. I have every intention of packing up the Mini Cruiser and heading up to White Mountain National Forest before the camping season is completely over and it gets too cold to tolerate.
There are a few smaller accomplishments I have lined up but these are things I can do on a single late night or long weekend. I guess I should list them for all my concerned readers. (Getting rid of Facebook and Twitter has left me with very few ways to stay occupied for long periods of time on the computer…)
- T-Shirt Screen Printing @ Five Points
- Make the attic a livable space for the Fall/Winter (It’s too big not too..)
- Finish covering the bathroom in National Geographic Photos
I guess thats it for this edition of stuff you probably don’t care about. For all 3 people that will eventually read this just because they check this website occasionally out of habit thanks for making it this far. And of course feel free to tag along on any of the trips outlined above.
