Titled, simply, “Being a Baby in Portland.”
It showed up in a search for Peacock Lane photos and gave me much more joy than what I had originally sought. :)
Late Night Cravings
Someone should write a song made up entirely of misheard lyrics.
Left Eye/Right Eye
Why having two perspectives is a good thing:
Oh, isn’t this a lovely weather photo with the ice and the rainbow?
OH MY GOD THE CABLE IS GOING TO SNAP.
Actually, the cable isn’t going to snap, the reporter that posted that said so. Plus, if you figure the gondolas can hold 4 people each (at least), and if you go for the heavy (or light, I guess, depending) estimate of 300 pounds each, that’s 3*4*300 = 3600 pounds at least.
There was a lot of ice on them, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even close to being over a ton and a half of frozen water.
In a fit of nostalgia I had to go look up the old rattle traps that pre-dated these dangling plums (here they are!). I rode these blue ones way back when as a kid. There was a severe draft, they swung around like hell, and it was pretty much the scariest thing I’d done up until I step foot onto the aerial tram at the Royal Gorge. And immediately step back off.
Achievement Unlocked!
One day, a long long time ago, way back in 1999, I was a college freshman enrolled in Honors courses at my local university (EWU). The Honors Program puts together a trip each spring for its students and this year was headed to Ireland and England. The course we were just finishing up was co-taught by two of the Honors professors. The Honors classes themselves were long, four hour ordeals that really blew me away.
One teacher hit the art aspect of the times we were flying through, and then tag-teamed with the other teacher who showed us what stories were being written during the same period as the art we were studying.
The group that ended up going was a really fun bunch, and we didn’t mind in the least cramming into our hostel rooms together and watching out for one another and generally making sure no one got eaten by foreign transportation (this almost happened to me in the Tube doors).
Aside: hostels pretty much mirror exactly my camping experiences at Camp Wooten when I was wee, except that boys AND girls share one room. And y’know, the people in the room next to you will apparently open the door to your room and peek in during the middle of the night…
So! We make it through a week in Ireland, and I talk a friend into going to see the Book of Kells with me. As an adult, it would blow my mind, so a fresh off of the farm kid? ASPLOSION!
In England we are wandering around London and decide to try out the Tate Modern, but it was closed or sold out…basically it was a no-go. Not lacking in options obviously, we decide to head to the National Gallery.
Whatever was left of my head? Gone. All the pieces we’d just studied in books were right there in front of us. The detail we’d examined in books was crammed into an 8X10 canvas (practically).
We never did make it through even 1/4 of that place.
Why the game “Angry Sheep” never took off…
I can’t remember James’ last name, but he was an Engineering student at EWU and we shared a Physics course one quarter. Him and his crew bounced around campus like this (I can’t imagine that story at all compares to doing this in a freaking CASTLE, however…)
Still Curious
So the Google says that sinkholes are typically filled with either a layer of rocks (this process I’m used to as it’s how we fill dirt potholes on gravel roads) or plugged with cement.
The cement plug causes a problem because in instances like Guatemala’s sinkhole, it doesn’t address the problem of drainage, and just makes the water divert elsewhere and create a sinkhole under someone else’s business.
But the problem with the Guatemalan sinkhole is that it wasn’t just a few feet deep, it was 100. A 10 story building.
I’ve yet to find something on how they’re going about fixing it, but at least Slate had some pointers on the two techniques touched upon up above.
Did I mention they cover a Scorpions song? No?
Full speed ahead.
Another example of their handiwork. I have no idea how he didn’t pop a blood vessel on some of those notes.
