The sky/cloud pics will wait another day: something better came along. Today is the second day of Penn Relays, which takes place at Franklin Field right around the corner from my office. Most years I see this as a congestive nightmare of swarming high-school students and chaperones who have never been to a big city before and are itching to be stupid. This year I decided that instead of being annoyed at how they affected my work life, I’d let it be a positive part of my non-work life. I spent a half hour down at Franklin Field taking pictures of the high school womens’ (girls’, I guess) relays and pole vaults. This is probably my favorite shot of the day. Yes, she cleared the crossbar. In this shot it looks like her vaulting pole is hitting the crossbar, but a follow-up shot in the series shows that it’s falling off to the side, out of harm’s way.

One thing I never realized: the crossbar isn’t held in place by anything other than gravity. It’s on two horizontal pegs and is free to roll off the side away from the vaulter (that is, the right side of this shot). As hard as pole vaulting seemed to me before, it seems even harder now.