Bridges of Madison’s Courting

Peak Fall Foliage, in the greater New England area, will be the first week of October this year, and while you’ll likely be playing video games, or thirsting after some IG stripper, or Fk Boy on a dating app that beds different chicks weekly with the app, instead of getting off your sad rumps to get out and see the foliage that can help bring healing to your wretched souls and ignore those idiots who don’t even acknowledge you exist and don’t even respect you and will trash you as soon as they get what they need. Stop doing that, instead, get out and go see some fall foliage! That first link is the current mapping of the colors changing, pick the weak you want to go by using the slider in the interactive map. What I want you to do though, this year, is to map out some covered bridges and integrate them into your fall foliage quests this year, even add it as part of your GAME to get a nice partner, or retain the current one for one more year. I recently went to look at some covered bridges and realized that I really like them. I mean, I liked them before, but I didn’t really think to photograph them much in the past because they were so common when I was out in New England, in my past. They didn’t see that special because we took them for granted in the scenery they had. So, they really come to life in the fall, and it’s only after not seeing more more than 20 years that I realized how excellently many of them fit into the foliage experience. I had only started photographing them in maybe 2019, when I was in upstate New York and Vermont (mainly). I had seen so many of them, in my youth, but the problem was, as I realized after 2019, was that I was not visiting them in the right times, or I wasn’t considering them under the right circumstances. I had always seen them, or grown up seeing them, and I saw them in completely different context, which I’ll go into later, but with knowledge I have now about them, and how others react to covered bridges, I realized they have multiple streams of significance to Americans. I thought about this topic after watching a movie with someone who is coming with me to do more foliage moves this year and I explained something I’ll explain here, to this person, to put content to the name of the movie and the mood covered bridges create for Americans. I always liked covered bridges for the architectural feats, I hadn’t really been considering them for the spectacular views they help present and the emotion they can elicit from people. I’ve seen plenty of wooden bridges, but those are not the same as covered bridges, and there is even a reason for them being covered, which I’ll also get into later. I bet you didn’t know that covered bridges can elicit emotional response from humans. Well, you may be thinking like this because you are not from areas that contain these bridges, and great foliage, which is a common experience for people from big cities who don’t get out to the countryside or go see states with great foliage because you don’t go do foliage road trips. Yes, you can also get these feelings subconsciously implanted in your head from watching famous Hollywood movies, and even if you see the covered bridges but have never been to them. The coloring (color grading) done by the video editors, and the composition of the director, they are trying to tap into your emotions, and this is flying over the head of uncultured people, such as those who don’t care about fall foliage or people not from these areas containing the bridges. So, as things started clicking in my head, as I was started doing “street photography” on people at near these bridges during fall times, I noticed a common theme and I’m sure that movies is what brought these people out to experience sentiments they felt while watching movies with covered bridges. I saw a lady looking a little annoyed that her dude wasn’t really putting his attention on his lady, and how she was wrapped up in the scenery. He wasn’t letting her play pretend princess, or rather wasn’t playing his part in it, as her designated photographer for her IG page and Tiktok videos. She complain/yelled at him, after he took some pics/video inside of one of the covered bridges, where it was dark, and she said a key thing that was “I want it to look like in a movie!” That’s when I realized that people who don’t get out to these areas only know covered bridges from movies, and of course ladies love scenery that are related to covered bridges, the colors that the video creators enhance to make the scenery “warm,” that is the selling point that the best directors hit on, and guys, you should be in tune with this for your ladies – provided you’re not with one of those female rapper chicks talking about they ‘booty hooo brown and their … is pink‘ – you know, the kind of lady only wants to see ‘green,’ as in MONEY. 🤣 or the kind of lady is currently locked up in a jail cell in Dubai for acting like she normally acts in the USA (she hit an official), or like that one here from earlier in the summer who also got locked up for being herself overseas (the prior was Latina and the former Black) who then claims Dubai is “racist and sexist towards Americans” 🤣 when the only people getting locked up are entitled, minority chicks who fight government security service workers and disrespect Arab/Muslim cultures. They asked the Latina to take off a body fooling device she had on that makes women look less obese to the eye, but looks like a bomb strapped to her body to security, a waist trainer, she lied and said it was doctor mandated, and they asked her to take that off, as any airport security tells one to do, and she refused! Oh and hey, this guy is locked up over there, yet he is a male and not a minority so there goes that crybaby excuse, plus the security agents were female, not male! Say it with me class, “EVERYBODY CAN’T GO!” Leave them BEHIND.

Rather than risk your freedom because of uncouth morons, why don’t you go visit some Covered Bridges, this fall? Covered bridges have been featured in many films, and they were used in many literary pieces of art, to set a tone and backdrop for the storylines- although nobody young reads books today anyway, at least they have movies for this group. If you don’t think covered bridges and foliage are important to the USA, well then why do we keep the records of their precise locations, why do we have tours centered around them, and why does Google maps ensure that if you type in “covered bridges,” that they’re mapped out for you automatically? Open up Google maps and wherever you are, just type in “covered bridges near me” and then save that map. Other people have also mapped out whole routes for you to drive to in order to view them if you decide you want to take a road trip to see a bunch in a row, in the shortest timespan. That link will produce multiple Google Maps that were created by various users and you can import them into your map. You can then, put this in your Garmin equipment if you wish to map out courses in that, but you can just use Google Maps with your phone, if you’re using your phone to navigate, like most drivers do. I put them in my Garmin SmartDrive device, because I have a lot of services but I’ve done a few of these with Google Maps alone. You can the same search in Garmin and they will be mapped there too. Their locations are important for people looking at the foliage, but many of them you cannot drive over them with cars, they’ve been designated as tourist attractions in that case. Even though, you’ll see them all mapped and many of the maps will tell you where to park so you can go walk to see the bridges. If you want to important a pre-made Google map into a system like Garmin, you can use one of the sites in this search here, to convert the Google KML and get it to GPX geo location format, which Garmin will accept in Garmin Basecamp to map exact locations in your Garmin devices (e.g., SmartDrive, Garmin watches). Some people will not want to pay $100 to Garmin to get all of their maps, so in this case, you can import Google mapped scenic drives to see the bridges, or other user-created GPX plots that you can map in Garmin Basecamp. Either way, you have a Google and Garmin backup of your routes if you take our advice and use integrate Google into your mapping strategy. However you wish to map them out, you have many tools available to you. That’s how I was finding the ones I went to see, when I was in an certain area and wanted to break away to see some covered bridges with the foliage backdrop. I would search for road trips that someone else already Google mapped out to go see the bridges (I posted it earlier in this piece for you to use). After I saw THOUSANDS of user-created maps, most of which were not even the same bridges, and it was clear that many people go to see covered bridges, and judging by the creation dates, a lot of them were created in recent times. That’s when I became convinced that going to see these bridges was bigger than I thought, just not popular with my people back in NYC because they never read any books containing covered bridges, didn’t watch movies that contained the bridges and the scenery, and it wouldn’t resonate with this lot. It makes sense though, they’re only interested in going to twerk in the club, or get plastic surgery in their butts and breast so their IG can get lit and they can get pregnant by a start-up rapper. I have another crowd of NY people who wish they were WYPIPO but they don’t like foliage because they don’t know that WYPIPO love to do that. I showed them pictures of WYPIPO at the scenes I’m talking about, and they were taken aback and were surprised that WYPIPO were out there viewing covered bridges and foliage. I told a wannabe WYPIPO set of friends and they instantly became interested, so I pointed them in the right direction, but it was very funny that they weren’t interested in it until I told them that WYPIPO do it. 🤣

City folks are DUMB! I’ll also share that someone I took to see the bridges, she wasn’t feeling them, until she saw other couples enjoying and noticed that I took her to things that ordinary people do. She was actually complaining about how boring they were, and she felt to share that- until we got to bridges more populated and as saw families taking pictures, husbands, wives and kids, then she started to act right. Then she was suddenly happy, then she got the picture, then she… I was so done with her, I couldn’t wait to get back to the city so I could ghost her! It wasn’t ‘her thing’ as she said until she saw all those WYPIPO females smiling with their men and then she wanted to play the part. That same lady still hits me up asking if I still go, and to let her know because she will go too. 🤦🏽‍♀️ Another lady, we went with other friends, she didn’t like them. We watched some movies a particular movie I’ll get into later, and she suddenly said “we should go back, I just wasn’t feeling right then.” 🤦🏾 uhh You can take them out the ghetto, you just can’t TAKE THEM out of the the ghetto! And this was a college educated chick who grew up in Long Island, to upper middle class parents Problem is, she was after those fk boys and thugs, and this was not what they do, and all she knows is how THEY do. Still, if I’m going to head out, I’ll give them a chance to go, with a “hint” in a talk that I may go “up north” and then hope they never ask to come, because they when they ask where I went, I can say I offered but they didn’t have any interest. 🤣 I try to motivate them to get out to see these scenes during peak foliage. I had one chick call me and tell me some dude she made a new dude take her up there, and it didn’t hit the way way as when I did it. That’s that call that “wants that old thing back” and I don’t play that. You get a 1-way ticket to kick it! Now, I don’t even bother to invite love interests, I just tell other couples and folks needing to take a break from life, to go up and enjoy the time seeing covered bridges. It’s been working, lately, I’ve been getting my people to go out and do things that are non-stereotypical for us, and they came back fully fulfilled from the trips, and something so simple and CHEAP/FREE to do! Actually, everyone who did go were either from the midwest or Long Island, NY, so they were open to it because they’re used to the foliage, just not with any covered bridges. My people need to get with the program! We’re missing out on great things! Most of the people I met, while out looking at bridges, were curious about me taking 360 photos of the bridges. While conversing with them, I found out they were coming from all over the USA, Canada and UK to see these bridges, and that many foreigners come to the USA specifically to see the foliage and the bridges. They too cited many movies with covered bridges, and these didn’t exist where they lived, and all of the people were COUPLES, mostly over 40 years of age, I’d say. That was WILD to me, to think that people would come to the USA to see bridges, but then again, I noted previously that people from all around the world come to the USA to experience seeing the fjords of Alaska! Just like our fjords, the covered bridges are another highlight of the USA that most Americans don’t even know about and have never even seen with their own eyes. The USA has many hidden gems and we will expose them here, to make sure you too become CULTURED in what is real America. A lot of times, it’s what foreigners lead with when the talk to me, on vacations. Some of the things I learn are from foreigners, then I go see for myself. I was talking to one couple and the husband was very happy with the foliage scenery, as we stood looking out of a cut out window frame on a bridge, sipping some ciders in bottles. He mentioned that it reminds you to slow down in life and learn to enjoy the scenery, rather than rushing to play your role in society, your family, your job. He said the scenery gave him a new perspective, and he had been at the bridge for 1 hour, watching the water below, wondering if anyone was going to go fishing- which would have made his year if he saw it. I could tell that guy was a stressed guy in his personal life, but he used the scene to cool himself down. When his wife came, she was curious to go down to the water, so I showed them where to go, because I just came from a little walking path to get there. His wife was very happy over something as simple as a bridge! She mentioned she saw many painting and she was trying to see if the bridge was the one she saw in a painting, so she wanted to get down to the water front to look up at the bridge, to see if it’s the one the painter used as the source for the painting. I looked back at my photo and realized that I may have seen the same photo, or something close to it. Sure enough, there were many paintings that looked exactly like the scenery we were in, so a lot of art work is centered around these covered bridges in fall and winter.

I immediately could relate, that happened to be 2 times, in a row! He got me on that one, you can’t take minority chicks to such things! He told me he was getting his “Jeezy” on, which mean he was like a former drug dealer named Young Jeezy, who got with some old Asian woman and started acting like a changed man who went to nice places he never went before, and dressed in normal clothing that people in the rest of society wear, rather than gangsta-wear and cleaning-maid bandanas on his head. He’s saying he felt he can’t do things that are not the stereotypical Black guy and Black people things to do because his ladies wouldn’t let hm and they didn’t like such things, therefore HE DIDN’T go do those things, even by himself- that last part is his failure, personally. This guy was admitting the he went to date as he dated, so that he could do things like go see covered bridges. He told me about boating trips he took, we yapped about a few ideas in Alaska that he put me on to, solid dude we then I realized that he really came to talk to me to find out why I was out there with not chick with me! This was his real intent of coming over, while he was bored from being excluded from his lady’s conversation with her WYPIPO that cut him out and made him feel like he didn’t belong in that conversation. He didn’t feel comfortable going to do things he liked, by himself? Who does this? MEN, THAT’S WHO! 🤦🏾 I simply asked “well, why didn’t you go see and do all the things you likes, by yourself, if you wanted to see them so much?” Dude had no answer other than, after a long pause “I dunno,” as he laughed uncomfortably, his right arm crossed his sternum, grabbing his left arm at the elbow (uncomfortable posture). He went back to the point of the bridges being a nice part of GAME to get or keep a chick and then fired off “ok, so you agree but I don’t see you out here doing the same, you should enjoy life.” I simply said “that’s why I’m here by myself, I don’t date like that and don’t want people ruining my time out here!” He looked back at his lady, still yapping away, and that was more than 30 minutes at the point, so he said “let me go bust that up!” He and I talked about this very topic, quite a bit, and it is a shame that you can’t just feel that, as a guy, you can some out to see something as nice as covered bridges, without some woman with you, or at least just by yourself. Yeah, I could see why couples went to see covered bridges and it was clear it’s a “throw back” vibe to them, a simply time, a slow paced time. At one point, I couldn’t even get the pics I wanted, too many old people were on the bridge, but that was a great feeling of them talking and sharing stories of the construction of the bridges and how it was possible for the beams to be placed where they were. It was really cool to see them get excited about bridges! Everyone seemed to hint at a the scenery given them the vibe to chill out. It’s a softer, kinder, relaxed time, not so complicated life, no high tech machinery around, just laid back life. The periods of time these older people were referring to, I was certainly too young to know exactly how they felt back when those older people were young, so this is a major disconnect for people from cities who didn’t see these scenes coming up. I only got to see them when I first was sent to Maine for a summer, when I was around 10, and then when I went to boarding school at 13. I was all over New England, so it brought ME back to those times. While I wasn’t part of those people’s laid back lives, I was a child then, so I had no pressures in life, I just remembered me and buddies throwing rocks at bridges, or jumping out of the window slots into the waters below some of them- I almost broke my knee once, I remember this because I couldn’t play soccer right for 2 weeks straight after hours of jumping from the covered bridges- so dumb back then. I sucked in my key game against Northfield Mount Hermon, my right knee kept buckling and it was all after doing those bridge jumps, and we lost to them, for the first time since I had been at my school, so this is why this came back to mind- pissed me off. 🤦🏾

All of this came back to my brain when I was recently looking out of the cut out windows of a bridge that had wood design blocking the passage and I thought about how those times jumping out of the window slots and wondered if they built the blockage so that a human (BOYS) could not jump out of the windows of the bridge, down to the water or whatever surface below and break their legs. I had those flashbacks of jumping from the windows and remembered that time as I looked at the height of the drops of the covered bridges I saw as an adult, I realized me and the boys were NUTS back in the days to do that. Wow! So, I could draw from those experiences and memories of “good times,” I went to those areas and I got to get away from gunshots and family members dying- that was my version of the simpler times. We could spend HOURS at these bridges chilling and they were not so popular then because most didn’t know where they were so they didn’t get a lot of traction- a certain audience did know though, I’ll address that as part of the theme later. So, I get it, it’s not for everyone from a city, but I think it can be a gateway to opening up people’s minds to make a connect to nature and just anything not ghetto and concrete. If people can see different they do different, this is why I’m always getting on my people’s cases to break away from city hustle and to get away to process thought. Fall is my time to really do that. The more I looked around, I started to notice, like I always do but try not to, that my peoples were not out in force, or if they were, they were out there getting their interracial on, trying to sound like WYPIPO when they talked. I saw one brotha, he was forcing his voice to be nasal so he didn’t startle any WYPIPO. I can TELL when a brotha is trying to present like a non-threatening Black male. He was a tall, muscular dude, dark skinned, so he has to drop his act down a few levels to not frighten people and not get stares from the WYPIPO. He came and said “WUSSUP??” to me though, quizzed about the 360 camera and long selfie stick I had (PAUSE) and got my opinion about the scenery. I could hear his WYPIPO act drop suddenly, he had more bass in his voice, not so nasally now that no WYPIPO were around. 🤣 His lady was across the other side of the bridge yapping with a bunch of women she met, so he walked and saw me and was curious what another brotha would be out checking covered bridges. We had a good chat, actually, I let him see some of the things I seeing, and instructed him on taking some pics, and gave ideas to place her to get shots, that she will like when she finally stopped yapping. He made a good point to me, that if he wasn’t with his girl (WYPIPO female), he wouldn’t go see bridges, and he saw a lot of bridges but never went because he dated our ladies and they weren’t into these things, when he took them. He said that after he would take them to foliage, they’d break up some time after, like foliage was a curse. The fact that he agreed that our ladies from our people aren’t into something like this, unless they’re with WYPIPO, was more confirmation- and no, I did not bring that point up, HE DID. I told him, you just have to bring our ladies and see how they do. I told him that GAME would include having her pose for your in some of these pictures, where she looks like she’s all alone (I know, but they love looking like they’re alone yet none of them can stand 5 minutes being alone with themselves) in the woods, in these warm settings. Let her see those pics, real time, and that is a way to warm a chick like that up to these kinds of scenes. If they are too ‘city’ then she’ll go away, because they see your flow and don’t want anything to do with that.

I have had that happen with chicks who claimed the work out and hike and rollerblade, so I took them to such place and I almost had to do CPR on these broad because they were really unhealthy and they lied about activities the claim were hobbies. Seriously, this lady had to catch her breath, in the woods, I thought she was going to die. He, ultimately, was trying to justify his pick in lady, or trying to convince me to swirl like he was doing, and was admitting that he likes to do things like see covered bridges in fall, WITH A WOMAN SPECIFICALLY by his side. What he was saying was that he likes to be romantic and it is part of his game, which he didn’t realize was game until we talked through the strategies, the scenes he could plan to take pics of her in that we were looking at, and the fact that he WASN’T satiating her narcissistic tendencies so far (solo pics) or even couples pics, was a hole in his game. I pointed out the 1 guy who looked like he was a hired photographer by some lady, just over at the entry to the bridge and told him that that dude was the lady’s boyfriend or husband. We watched the interaction and the kiss she gave him in acknowledgement of the great photos he took and showed her, and she was happy and clapping in joy (he can import LUTS into his camera so it was color graded when he showed her on the screen). That guy with the camera, he had game and knew how to feel that narcissist in his lady. 🧏🏿‍♀️ Dude agreed after I pointed that out! If more dudes knew better, they’d do the same. Most of the dudes I saw out there, they looked like they were being dragged along against their will to see great scenery. As we reflected on the demographics coming to see the bridges, I knew what races would be viewing these bridges, but I didn’t realize that age was also a factor in who was coming to these bridges. I failed to understand that earlier in life, when I was out taking pics of bridges only for their great architecture but I get it now, there is a lot more than just architecture to these bridges, and every year I get out to look at the bridges, I see more and more of couples out there trying to get their romance one, visiting these bridges. When that Brotha went back to reclaim his snowbunny from her mob, some old dude was listening and he said I had some really good ideas. We chatted for a bit and he was giving me a history lesson. He used to come out to the bridges with is wife, whom had passed prior to covid, so he was out by himself viewing the bridges. He said he thought I was fishing off of the bridge (I have a 3 meter/ 9 foot selfie stick) and came to tell me there are no fish in the water below. 🤣 He confirmed that none of his grandkids are into bridges or anything foliage related, it’s boring to them. I told him that if he doesn’t have ladies around to the girls know that this is “soft” and something they can enjoy, of course they’re not going to be drawn to it. They’re not reading nor watching those classic movies, so how would they know that it’s something nice they should do? Same issue my peoples have, no one showed them they way. I told him that he has a responsibility to take them out and show them. Sure enough, no like, there was an old dude with 4 ladies coming at me, he was leading them. That was their father or granddad, making them get out and enjoy! So this was something I also saw, if the family came out, you would see the grandparents out there with the groups of family, doing the strolls, so you can see that these people know that this bridges are a throw back for the grandparents, so they learned that is a nod to the older people’s time. One day, if the younger family members mature, they’ll remember their grandparents and bridges and such. These are the links that get it started for a lot of people. One lady was telling other people that they brought their grandparents out to see the bridges, in their anniversary, so that explained why they were all out there. That was really cool, and that let me know that the lady who was telling the another lady that, she is a romantic one and that is someone who would appreciate if it a dude out there would apply pressure and take her to scenes like this. She may be a little too thick for the WYPIPO where she’s from, but someone’s gonna wife that up. That’s going to be a keeper.

Looking at some stats on my pics that are viewed on various social media platforms, I noticed that a lot of people were clicking on some of the not-so-typical pictures of things I had up, and in particular, my covered bridges pictures, when fall came around. Things I shared even on Google Maps have millions of views. Right now, there is a huge uptick and I’m sure someone’s made a page and linked my Google Maps photo in it, because that’s normally how that works -which i why I took the better ones and put them on licensing sites. I use the stats from social media to find out which are more likely to get licensed. I also noticed that fall is when the number of people licensing photos for use have increased mostly, for these bridges. Some of the better bridges, with my spin on photographing them, they’ve already been put up for license use, and they get crazy downloads. I’m sure people are using them in videos and in blogs. Clearly, many different types of people like these structures and like fall foliage because the numbers don’t lie; although, when it comes to social media, we know that you’ll get 30k views, but most won’t hit the “like” for it- they’ll even re-share your work and still the likes won’t match the shares. The computers decided who gets to see your work, and you have to beat the systems to get your work to display. 🤦🏾 IG is terrible for photographers, seriously, just garbage so when one looks at the views, you’ll see that you’re going to get some good counts on views, that means someone took time to look at it and that is still a good marker that lets me know people are checking for that content, and I wonder if they even know what they’re looking at and if they are even connected to the vibe that comes with it. Still, it is good to know that others are equally interested in looking at these covered bridges as I am, and I learned this big time when I went to go check out a few covered bridges, this year. Instead of almost nobody being anywhere near covered bridges, as was normally the case when I was out shooting them a few years ago, there were MANY people all over the place, surrounding these covered bridges, at many of the places I went to this year, even if it was raining out- which makes it bad for photographers who just want to capture the scenes without people in them. However, I realized, after, I should switch up my mentality and do more with people IN the photos, especially if they connected to the scene and they’re playing their parts right. It’s been too many people out in the places though, so too many people makes it hard to get any good shots, but I’m happy regardless. Despite the number of people getting all in my shots, it was still better to see that many people were out there looking at the beauty of the covered bridges and the beautiful scenes they help create. I didn’t like that there were no Black couples out there though, but we’ll have to work on this. Hell, the other day, I found an IG page of some FBA Black couple that hikes all the time, that’s the whole theme for their IG and the chick is a thick chick so there really isn’t any excuse for our ladies not getting off their lazy butts and hitting the trails! If they love colors so much, based on their weave preferences, the surely they can learn to love fall foliage to the backdrop of covered bridges, is what I figure. I get it, they want to go places they can TWERK their butt cheeks at to demonstrate their freedom in life. Ok, I’ll let you twerk in the woods, at the covered bridges, even film it with this new Sony AC7II that I have coming, whatever it takes to get you chicks out to see this great life, I’ll budge a little! Seriously, lady was twerking for votes in a government position, you can’t stop it, you just have to contain your lady to an isolated place and let her twerk! There’s almost nobody around some of these places, so it’s ok fellas, let them get their habits off as long as they go with you- maybe you can change them? 🤣🤦🏾 Twerk-n-Twigs, let’s start this movement to get Black chicks to come out and enjoy nature. What you think?

As for the other couples I saw out there, various ages mostly over their mid-30s where they were more numerous, I’d estimate. These people were in the moments and connected to the scenes and they were taking pictures of each other making sure to get angles that had the whole scene around them in the photos and videos. They were hyper, and happy, and like “oh me next me next” in the photos. They were interacting with the bridge in cool ways. Young couples, in their 20s, were out there doing mainly social media posts, but it’s all good as long as they get out. I saw one lady go change clothes to do a photoshoot with a guy I figure was her boyfriend or husband, but she was taking pictures like she went there herself, alone. 😳 She wanted to do most of her photos down near the river under one bridge, but it wasn’t a good scene because the water has started to dry out. By the way, that’s a really good time to view covered bridges, to get a good view of the scenery surrounding them, when the rivers are flowing strong with water movement. She had some great ideas though, her dude couldn’t keep up with her so he was getting screamed at. 🤦🏾 She was trying to make epic shots and had really good ideas to be truthful, the vision she was barking out to him they were pretty good. She was seeing visions from fantasy of the scene at least, can’t hate on that part. The thing is that it’s harder and harder to find a good stream of water under these types of bridges, and they’re at their lowest in the foliage time too (September-October) in the USA. A lot of places get their water flow from melting snow, and in the spring there is a lot of water flow, but they’re almost running on empty in fall. Unfortunately, due to Global Warming, a lot of the rivers all over the USA have been somewhat depleted, as of late. I’ve revisited some rivers and seen that they are lowering each time I go. So some of the visual effects are not there with regards to using raging rivers as part of the backdrops, but luckily, we still have the fall foliage to help accent the covered bridges. I was told, by someone who chatted me up recently, that Oregon has flowing rivers under a lot of their bridges, so I should go on a hunt out there for covered bridges. The only thing bad about the rivers depleting is that, well, that’s kind of the purpose of having a bridge there in the first place, to provide passage over the water from one point to another. I think the water flowing under bridges brings the a great element to the scene and is important, so I started keep track of the bridges that have water flowing under them. This is why Jay Bridge, in Jay, New York, is my favorite bridge. It has great water flow, with rock formations that let you walk out on the river, in certain places, and raging water flow right in front of you- all of which flows right under you- but if you go to far or slip, you’re going to drown between some rocks. The other great part, almost nobody is out there admiring it! When people head to the Adirondacks they never take the direction nor that would put them on the path to Jay so it’s always missed by people who take trips up there. Despite the rivers depleting in the northeast USA, most are still surrounded by beautiful foliage, and I have to agree with older couples I spoke to, they are a callback to old times, and although the water levels may be low, covered bridges do still serve as passage over the hollowed-out area the rivers occupy. You can always just drive down the road and find another street or road to get over bodies of water now, covered bridges are largely obsolete, but back in the days, that meant the world to use those bridges since there were not the number of highways you see now. Most of the ones I’ve seen, so far, are all tourist attractions today, but the ones in New England can still in use by humans and by cars. You can’t help wondering if the bridges will break mid traffic or something, and that’s where my curiosity for the marvels that they are comes in. Normally, rich towns have maintained bridges, and those are the ones that cars still pass over. The rich towns draw people to the bridges, where the people will buy food and shop in town, and many people vacation in such towns, so hotels are filled in these times. This is what messes up road trips, trying to plan road trips using these small towns and you can’t get a room in a hotel! You’ve quite a drive to do to some of these if you don’t have hotels lined up or you don’t pick a good basecamp.

I do receive a lot of questions about the covered bridges because most people have never seen them in person, and don’t know why they even existed. Most people today only know of bridges in the modern form, all solid steel, in metropolitan areas, so they look at the structure of the bridges, mostly being made purely of wood, and they don’t believe bridges can handle weight of cars. Well, that’s why they’re amazing, they’re great feats of human engineering! If you know me, from the multiple pieces I’ve dropped on this site, like this and this, I love to see engineering wonders, especially the ones before the modern times, because the engineers were doing more with less, and didn’t necessarily have the fanciness of modern software modeling and such. That’s why these covered bridges are truly throw backs to the old time. Good old math/architecture/engineering was used to make all these bridges and craftsmanship that dates back centuries 780 BC in Babylon. In Europe, covered bridges were spotted first in 1400s Switzerland, where there were bridges built from wood formed into trusses that provides strong support for weight distribution. These trusses are the triangular structures you are looking at when you examine the roofs of the covered bridges, and the pillars and supporting beams surrounding them. This design was used heavily by Germans as well, who were also known to use covered bridges since the 18^th century. Most of the covered bridges in the USA, and Canada, were made in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, by the Settlers in the countries, most of whom were coming from Europe with bridge building skills. The first covered bridge, in the USA, was made in 1804, in the state of Connecticut. To this day, most people head over to New England (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine), during fall, to go see the covered bridges, but if they went to Pennsylvania, they’d see the most bridges in the country because 219 covered bridges are there. New York once had 300 bridges, but now only have 23 covered bridges. At one point, there were 12,000 covered bridges in the USA, on the east coast, in Ohio, down south, and even Oregon. Building these bridges started to spike after the European settlers came to the USA, when they took areas from Native Americans, especially between 1820s-1870s. Well, back then, there was nothing but earth and trees everywhere, and there were seemingly unlimited amounts of timber, which was primarily used to build these covered bridges. The reason people don’t believe that the bridges are strong enough is because the covered bridges are made almost exclusively of wood (some cheat today and there is steel where you can’t see, re-enforcing really old bridges. Lots of covered bridges disappeared because the towns didn’t want to maintain them and didn’t see the sense of maintaining them as tourist attractions. The towns that did maintain the bridges were maintaining their ties to history, structures their forefathers built, so they have pride in many of them, to the point where they’re serious about their bridges. In New York, if a bridge is not with its original truss support structure, and it is replaced by some other method to support it, then it is no longer “authentic,” it is then called a “Historic Stringer.”

Kissing Bridge @ Bicentennnial Park, Ticonderoga, New York

We have bridge-snobs, over here in NY, if it’s altered in any way, other than simple repair-replace, the covered bridges have lost its luster to some folks. I got this info from an old guy I spoke to at one of the bridges once. I looked it up, and sure enough, he was telling the truth. The great engineering he was also accurate on and you don’t have to be scared to walk over the ones in the USA and Europe. While out and about, I heard people say they were scared to walk on these bridges because the covered bridges were made of wood, because people don’t know they’re well maintained when made to be tourist attractions or when cars pass over them. The bridges were made for people to walk across, for the animals in the area to walk across and for wagons/vehicles to go across, bodies of water and I know Americans are mostly fat today, but no one should be scared to walk over them. The bridges are always maintained by the towns folks because the bridges are throwbacks to history of the towns they belong to. It’s no different than maintaining some statue from the earlier centuries, it’s history that you can interact with, and most bridges have lasted for almost full centuries. Most of them are landmarks. The point of them being covered is mainly to keep the weather from destroying the crossable bridge portion, and the roof helps against rain, and worse SUN, which will dry out the wood and break apart the fibers. That cover, believe it or not, makes it so the bridge can last from multiple decades, up to a century! So, you see, covered bridges are not just therefore the aesthetic look, the roofs are protection to keep the bridge in place, where they are, for long periods of time. The original engineers had the foresight to do this, which is the engineering part I love. Without the cover, the bridges can’t last more than a decade, 2 decades max. Funny enough, despite all that I’ve shared here, most people still haven’t even seen a covered bridge, although we have about 600 covered bridges in the USA still, but end of 19^th century, the USA had 1500 covered bridges. Canada didn’t care to maintain their covered bridges, so they went from 1400 bridges by end of 19^th century, to only have 140 today. We would have more but many of the towns that have these bridged didn’t care to provide funding to continuously maintain them or have replaced them with steel because there is high traffic in cars and trucks today. Since they are vanishing by the year, that is also what makes them special, and that is why many people who are older, love to go see covered bridges. There is another reason older people love covered bridges though. Your grandmama ‘n’ them were out there doing their version of twerk work back in the days, just like these women today. Your grandmama was a bad lady back in them days. 🤣

I would show 2-D and 360 photos/videos of the covered bridges to people back in NYC, nobody cared to see them and didn’t think they were so special – they’re city slickers. I knew I couldn’t convince them to see the beauty unless I would show them the pictures of the backdrops along with the bridges and it was only then that I got them to show some emotion finally, just like ladies I was trying get to be less boring or less of 1 trick ponies. I knew they didn’t care about the engineering of the bridges, but I knew that if I could get their brains to see the connection with the images if they had seen them in movies, see how women respond to such scenery with covered bridges, then I could get a cheat code unlocked and I could get people to want to see the places the bridges were in. I learned to do that after 911, when people first saw the planes hit the towers but didn’t know that they should cry until the news told them that this was what they should be crying about- and then people cried. Seriously, you give a shock to the brain and people don’t know how to process what they are seeing, so you have to nudge them to learn how most people should think or feel, it’s the core of social media too. I was successful in this when a woman asked me “oh did you go to the place of the ‘Bridges of Madison County’?” When I said “no” that person said, “well they all look the same anyway, so I guess when you’ve seen 1 you’ve seen them all.” I’ve heard people say that the bridges are boring, and have heard that line before, mind you. These bridges are each unique, but you’d have to know their backstories to fully understand why they are unique. It was funny to hear a couple of people reference the movie, the Bridges of Madison County, and that is what makes it sexy to women. I came to know the Bridges of Madison County by the actual book by Rob Waller (school reading), which is clearly better, but the movie did an amazing job of tying in the bridges with romance. Who was the target? Your mama, and grandma thots. Seriously. The hot man of the time of the movie was Clint Eastwood. The movie was about a woman cheating on her husband with a photographer Robert Kincaid, who had swag and had his photographs in National Geographic. Dude, your girl is gonna get sniped by a lowly photographer on Instagram, you better not underestimate the power of these bridges and these ladies into romance novels or pining for the old boyfriend who hit it right! 😉 The bridges are a reminder of when life wasn’t so complicated, and the siblings in the movie each have bad marriages, and they discovered their mother being an Alpha Widow to Kincaid, who wanted her ashes spread at the Roseman Covered Bridge, in Iowa, in honor of her hot and steamy moments with Kincaid, the whole time cheating on her real husband. She was even going to desert who whole family for Clint Eastwood’s swag, after just 4 days with him! Yes, lots of auntie, mommy and granny thotting is associated with these covered bridges. Ask your old broads you know about that movie, they celebrate the cheating like they celebrate getting punched in the face during seggs in 50 shades of Gray- a book by and old auntie, granny, mommy chick! 🧐 All of those chicks know the power of covered bridges in their brains. The irony of the movie is she’d ruin her entire life for seggs with a guy who has swag, which is a modern woman flow and clearly Waller was on to something about marriage back then. 🤦🏽‍♀️ Spoiler alert! Don’t get pissed at me for ruining the plot of the movie, it came out in 1995, and you’ve had plenty of time to see it since. 🤡  

Those bridges, man! For a good chunk of the country, these bridges are a call back to romantic scenes many of these people also had, getting some warmth poured into them by some dude. Old people know the deal with these bridges. Those greatest generation and baby boomers are the ones who are really into scenery like this. At a recent trip to the bridges, I was making jokes with an older guy and he made a joke about his wife of 40+ years, when they were young. She hit him with a BIG shove hit, so she didn’t want him to continue that story. 🤣 He was indicated that it changed his life because they got down and dirty in a covered bridge and haven’t split since – except the way he said it, though, he made his wife sound like a modern woman falling for his GAME of those days, on using the covered bridge to get some booty, thus the joke. We all laughed but it resonated with me as he said that all the boys used to sneak to the bridges, and under the bridges, and get busy with their then girlfriends, back in the days. The wife cosigned it and said she could name about 10 different couples who “met” on the covered bridges. She pointed out that it’s like when you see movies about a couple going the highest cliff in that was the “lookout” spot overlooking the moon, quite, and you could drive your droptop up to it with your lady and “neck.” She was right, that’s another one, making out on top of a mountain top or cliff overlooking town and the moon! We have a lot of these little scenes and the covered bridge is the equivalent in towns that are flat, and have the rivers running through them! That lady was putting me on to GAME of the day and I could relate to each of those types of scenes, from watching those older movies or reading books. These are places that we know as “lover’s lane” type places, and if you’re from the city, what would you know of these romantic spots to get away to get busy? Lover’s lane is from the 1850s, this isn’t modern times terminology, this is when those European Settlers were taking the lands from Native America. They’d roll up on their horses and wagons and get busy in the bushes or something. It is most normally known today for a place you drove a chick in the car and had car seggs at. See, your granny, auntie and mamas were were there thotting it up back then in the back of cars. Covered bridges were places they were pulling up to for this! That’s why chicks from the mid-west have a completely different soft view than city chicks, environment does a lot. So that old dude’s wife was saying things and then laughing to herself, telling him that she caught some people back in the days and some people’s moms under the covered bridges. She spilled that women love that, cheaters and all, dudes would offer up a long walk to the bridges and if the lady agree, they knew it was going down! I laughed so hard because that was TRUE (hi, “Madison” 😘) even when I was in New England at the start of my teen years, coming up, and was around these bridges. I took some road trips and that’s exactly what kids were still doing, even in my time, because these bridges weren’t tourist attractions then. There was no Google Maps or Garmin, you’d have to open up a Rand McNally map book to find your way around.

Man, if you were around when people had to do this, holy crap, it was amazing to take those road trips. My grandfather, my aunt and cousin drove me from NY to Berkshires, each separate trips, but only my grandfather didn’t need a map, for some reason. Lol I still don’t know how my grandfather did that when he had never been up there before. Maybe he was out there doing some covered bridge pimpin’ too, on the low? I’m sure he had a broad up there, he was too quick to get there, knew many shortcuts. I’m seriously curious about how he did that and made it there in record time, mind you. 🤔 The reason all those baby boomers, and generations before, when they were teens, could secretly sneak off to do the nasty in those bridges was because most covered bridges are mainly in remote locations, and didn’t have a lot of pathways in and out to them. Today they’re tourist attractions so they are easily accessible and also easily mapped, when back then, you’d have to likely be from the two to know the locations as common knowledge. In my youth, I remember us doing road trips to have picnics and I can confirm that people did go take their girls there to go “necking.” It was a romantic thing to do and not many people were around except those kids doing the same thing as yourself. And yeah, my grandfather knew all the lookout locations to take ladies to. He was also a fisherman and knew every place to chill and knew all the places you couldn’t get to easily back then, but could pull up in the boat, and hike to such locations. That’s why these directors of the past were so good, they didn’t need CGI effects, they knew scenery, mood and composition to get people hooked. This is missing from our movies and TV today, there is a huge disconnect so people don’t make the proper associations. You’ve seen this scene in movies too, but the covered bridge was the guaranteed score location! You’d have the bridges scenes in fall, and you’d also have the nice night sky with full moon as the backdrop too, if you took someone to one of those bridges on a night like that? Whew, she’s never leave back then. Any lady you introduced to that scene; she was in love with you from then on, back then, that’s what all the old dudes swore was the truth. If some guys did that to your girl, back in the days, your grandmama was his! You do know that many of those ladies from the past were thots, right? US has a very high rate of paternity fraud, and that’s only because men historically don’t want to find out if those kids are theirs, but 30% of paternity claims are fraudulent, always has been. Your grandmamas were out in those streets… towns… or meadows? They weren’t so overrun by image porn you see all day overloading your sensors on social media with overly saturated pictures and mood music to accompany it, but they weren’t so innocent back then either, which is why YOU are here today! Today, they’re destroyed and aren’t easily inspired by such places and need a little nudge. You’d think that people who live on top of each other in crowded cities would appreciate getting away from other other people and would enjoy such scenes, but it’s just not so. Today, all this old school programming is lost on women my age and younger, but on a recent trip, I saw quite a few young people out there, even if all the attention was only on the woman of the couple. The older people though, they were out there enjoying the bridges as they would walk through the bridges, holding hands or the old lady would grasp the arm of her man, and that would inspire the younger people to take cues from the older folks. The really old people would pack up and would tell stories of old times, people who passed, old scenery that has changes in recent times, etc. It is also what people recall from productions like Anne of Green Gables, which I’m sure is the first place I saw them in film. I even remember seeing covered bridges in Christmas type scenery too, covered in snow, which is another really cool view I need to get around to doing, but snow isn’t so consistent anymore. All of this is a callback to simpler, relaxed times of the yesteryears.

Nobody young is looking at the engineering so clearly they’re there looking at the warm and cozy feel of the fall, the fallen leaves that changed color, and that general rustic look. I met a recent lottery winner in Norway and he was telling me about how he wanted to take his kids to go the covered bridges of the USA on a tour through mountains and such. I didn’t know he even knew of that stuff, but he showed me pictures of him teaching his kids hunting and fishing, so that’s something his kids will grow up liking, and they were learning how to build cabins, so the rustic thing is is what he was really big on. So when I try to take pics of those scenes, I’m trying to capture those feelings, and I just peep what people say about this. Also, when out and about, I see when couples want me to take pictures for them, of themselves together. I do them, willingly because they are both seeing that they like the scenes and would like to both be in the shots together. I lent my cheap tripod with the phone clamp to one of couple once, and they didn’t come back for 7 hours! I thought they stole my tripod (they were on my tour so they couldn’t get away but still). It was an amazing couple building drill and when they were showing me the terrible pictures they took, I noticed that they had found a covered bridge, and although they didn’t know anything of the movies I mentioned that help make them a romantic thing, they discovered it themselves, naturally. That was good to hear and see. The composition was not on point but the woman was taking a lot of photos of the guy too, had him in the water below the bridge, sotting rocks, doing fake fishing with a long twig and some string they had, which they tied to a rock and made a picture that looked like he was catching a fish with the covered bridge as a backdrop, blurred slightly. That was a really good shot that lady took. Some people are natural hopeless romantics, and that lady couldn’t stop talking about the shots she took, they had a kit lens and they were getting busy with that and the iPhone, thanks to using my tripod, they took a lot of shots together by setting the timer and getting into the shot. They spent all that time doing that and I was very happy for them. They sent the pics to everyone in the tour and everyone loved them. I’m sure that lady had the ideas from some past history of romance novels and shows and things like this. This is like part of female programming for those women are are “soft” and feminine. That’s the other problem with this new breed of chicks, they’re not feminine and not dudes are even thinking of doing these soft things for ladies because if she doesn’t like it, and she’s not that feminine, she’s going to think you’re a soft man and she is going to dump you. We’re at a point in society where you can’t even be ROMANTIC for a chick, that’s a weak man to do that. This is the same lady who said men don’t talk, meanwhile they don’t like it if you set up romantic scenes with covered bridges and such? Their ideas of romance is buying them a $10k Hermes Birkin bag on Valentine’s day. These are garbage bag women, don’t bother with these “strong” personality chicks, it’s not worth it, they don’t ever understand the efforts of a man to please them and can’t process any of it, because they don’t have any interest in these soft things you do for a woman. These women who have no idea of romance, ditch them, don’t even bother, they’re not up for this kind of activity. That’s the problem with city chicks, they make you feel like you’re dating the personality of another male! Who wants this? They’re not open to things like covered bridges, and this is something that I learned, a few year ago. I had my people telling me that I was doing “WYPIPO” things, and that’s not even true because many Blacks from the south are from small towns and not everyone is from a modern city, so these kinds of people would hit me up and tell me they liked the pics I took. Any time someone Black told me they liked pics of the bridges and such, I knew they were from in the south of the USA, or from the midwest like in Ohio. East coast? Nope!

So be careful if you take one of those chicks from the east coast out there to see foliage and covered bridges, they’ll dump you soon after, they’re NOT info soft life for real, soft life is buying things from stores. Then they complain real men don’t want them. Real men love rustic scenes! 👏🏼 And those city chicks are ghetto, they only know fast paced city garbage, subway trains, loud noise blasting from every 1 bedroom apartment that houses 10 humans in the projects, eating dirty chicken fried rice from Chinese restaurants with meat pieces that have texture that doesn’t match chicken- it’s just a lost cause, leave them be. If you’re going to take a Latina, don’t take a Caribbean latina, take one who is from the campo (the country side) because they would like such things, they’re from the mountains and laid back scenes. I saw a bunch couples from in South America (e.g., Colombians, Ecuadorians) and some Mexicans out there, no Blacks except the ones with WYPIPO. I showed my friends from Colombia, they loved it, why? They’re from the country side, and they’re not ghetto programmed. Find people looking to experience life, not someone struggling for their place in a concrete jungle, they’ll never love the country side and covered bridges. If you did get one of those chicks to see it as romantic, it’s not going to be good enough then. If she is not at least even a romance novel reader, never watched romantic tv shows/movies or if they never even lived in areas with these bridges, don’t bother. She is someone obsessed with her job, and taking expensive trips that she reads on sisterhood propaganda sites to try to pretend to have status in this society. Don’t get involved with them. Can you imagine you take the love of your life to covered bridges, you have a full moon in sight, you hear the light wind blow by you, you hear the crickets and night birds chirping, but this chick pulls out a cell phone and gets on Instagram? That’s the scratch in the record that I imagine taking uncultured chicks to things like this, we don’t relate. So you dudes who say that covered bridges aren’t part of game, you’re wrong, you’re just messing with the wrong women. I’ve taken women who pretended they weren’t ghetto, and after a trip like that, they got exposed for being ghetto. They talk a good game though, this is how you flush them out. I mentioned that night scene because I wanted to photograph a night sky with a covered bridges. In the right light, you can get that earlier-mentioned night-time scene to be romantic, but also at night-time, it can look kind of frightening. I’ve never been at a bridge with good enough nighttime lighting, so I don’t bother to take a camera and tripod to a covered bridge, at nighttime. I have seen some cool photos of this, but the photographers brought artificial lights in staged scenes, because I went to see some of those bridges in the day and didn’t see the lighting systems these photographers had set up. Then when I went to one of these bridges, at night, thinking the lighting would be there, there wasn’t any lighting at all! I wasn’t trying to stay around there either, I heard something sounding like an animal dying on the other side of the bridge, on inside of the bridge, and I did NOT continue to go through it, turned right back around and got the hell out of there. 🤣 Now that I think about it, it might be that the younger generation is using the bridge just like the rest of us did, when we were younger- or it’s some old lady living out her cheating fantasies with some young boy sneaky link. I once showed another person covered bridges and they told me that the covered bridged looked creepy and not pleasant. That person was referring to their association with these covered bridges and scary scenes from movies they watched. I remember this being a thing too. That person is correct, although that was not the vibe I was going for with the shot.

The scary vibe associated with covered bridges is also something we’ve seen in many movies such as Beetlejuice, Steven King’s IT, Walking Dead (TV) and Sleepy Hallow so they were right, it can be used in a way to convey a scary scenery. Most of those are in reference to locations in the North East of USA. Beetlejuice’s scene was a made-up bridge that doesn’t exist, in East Corinth, Vermont, which is rated one of the creepiest looking towns. Also, Steven King lives in Maine, he knows these creepy scenes in and out from living in such places. I’ll have to be on the lookout for that, but I want that romantic moonlit shot if that is possible, one day. This is why I started to bring the 360 camera with me, to get people to kind of see what it is like to go through one of these, and to view them in contrast to the scenery. Obviously, it’s not the same as going to the locations but at least I can translate the feeling from 2-D to 360. After that last trip, seeing the older couples enjoying the scenes so much as couples, I decided I would start convincing more people to get out to see these covered bridges using video, so I’m trying to get my video skills up because people were asking me all kinds of questions that if I use the 360 camera with a selfie stick, I can show them the things they were curious about, which pictures can’t properly convey in 2-D. It really is relaxing, and even if you don’t have a romantic interest, you should go to these places to take in the tranquility of the area, to de-stress. Still, I’m trying to get people to see the romanticism of the bridges, kind of what the older married people were flirting with. One should stop and smell the roses while the air is fresh, I suggest that everyone go see some of these bridges as an aid to see if you can experience some of those same feelings with the scene. Yes, you’re failing with modern chicks but that’s because they think if you don’t spend money on them, then you don’t think they’re worth anything. Of course it’s not effective on city-bred masculine women of today, but fellas, if you have a romantic lady, or you’re trying to get some points in with a new woman who isn’t ghetto, the covered bridges are a great way to get the vibes flowing. If that lady hasn’t seen anything but Dubai, Bali, and expensive vacation things, she is likely not the candidate to enjoy this kind of scenery. If you have the kind of lady who can’t brag to her friends about the romantic places you went to, then know this is not the lady you should take to something like this. Ladies don’t get “likes” in her friend group if you take them to places like this with bridges, in most cases, so of course this is not going to work for you and you think it’s a corny idea. That lady is someone who pays a lot of money to try to feel less empty inside, every day, no, she doesn’t like this kind of vibe. Hopefully, these are not the kinds of ladies that you men are seeking, because you’re setting yourself up for financial ruin and failed return on investment. If you’re a hopeless romantic, and have a lady to match, you will fare much better because they’re easy to impress with easy things such as trips to see these covered bridges. This is the key to longer relationships, something that the old people taught me. With that high maintenance, fancy pants lady, these scenes do not excite her, so don’t even bother to entertain her with it. You can set up a test by watching the Bridges of Madison County, on Netflix, and if she likes that movie a lot, you could go take her to the see bridge, but your ‘A’ game better be on point to her fantasy, or you’re GONE! And if you’re dating any of my old work, and they have you going to the woods and covered bridges and such, know I’m imprinted on her forever, she got that all from me and is doing callback to our time, like those old thots I saw fantasizing about romantic times they had on those bridges – I’ve seen yall photos, homie, she got your locations yall went due to me! 🤣 You’re welcome! 👍🏼

As always, the finished products can be found on the main site of www.drunkphotography.com.