The Vector Pipe

So...I'm taking a class that leads unwary students into the wilds that are Adobe Illustrator. And Indesign. And Photoshop, but that one's less unexplored than the others. But I digress. 
This was our final Illustrator project, meant to be a time for us to show off everything that we'd learned. 
Learning Adobe Illustrator was interesting. Especially when I discovered that my copy is just over the 'too old' mark to easily swap files with the lab computers. And when I discovered that there wasn't really an easy 'add a splash of highly translucent color there' option. It was all using the pen tool to make a shape, perfect the shape, then place the shape and rinse/repeat. Near the end of this project, I really began to feel that Illustrator was something that I could see myself loving.
Vector art, for lack of a better word, had become fun. 

Credit for the photography I blatantly copied belongs to  
You can find the original image here:  
The vectorization of said image is all my work though. 

((P.S. I got full marks for this work!))