Robert Pence

Not so bad, actually; it has the 4.3L V6 and it's rated 17/21, and I'm a conservative driver and usually can beat those highway mileage estimates by a little bit. Besides, I'm keeping my Focus station wagon (30mpg overall and 34mpg highway) as my primary driver. It's just difficult or impossible to bring home sheets of drywall or plywood or haul a 200-pound engine part with the Focus, and pulling a 4,500-pound tractor on a trailer is just out of the question, even for a few miles. I need to do all these things from time to time, and I can't always count on finding someone to do them for me. Actually, it's used. It's a 2001 model with 88,000 miles, built at the GM plant in Fort Wayne. The dealer provides a Carfax button for each vehicle on his web site, so I checked it and it doesn't show any evidence of damage or of going to an auction or rebuilder. It's had three owners, all in the Columbus, Ohio area, but I don't think it's ever been driven in winter; it's not Ziebarted, and there's no evidence of corrosion on the frame or in the fender wells. Exterior and interior are pristine except for a small dent at the bottom of the tailgate and some scuffing on the driver's arm rest, and at first I suspected a repaint but I can't find any evidence of that. At that mileage, I expect some minor issues that will need attention, but for the overall value I can afford to take care of them as they arise. I've been looking for this truck for almost a year; I wanted a Chevy, GMC, or Ford half-ton, regular cab, 8-foot bed, towing package, auto, air, minimum gadgets (basic am/fm radio, maybe a cd) and no power windows or locks (those are maintenance liabilities on work trucks). At the bottom of the priorities list was, "It would be nice if it was red." I haven't even come close; all the ones I saw with specs like those were beaten-down shop trucks or stanky farm trucks. The used-truck market is saturated with 4X4s, big V8s, crew cabs, fiberglas add-ons, high-tech audio, etc. and all that stuff makes them harder to handle, harder on gas, and more expensive. I saw this one in Sunday morning's paper, and after lunch I drove up to look. As I was leaving, someone else pulled into the lot to look at it, and when I went back first thing Monday morning, as I was getting ready to take a test drive a couple more guys showed up who were interested in it. I knew if I tried to stall and lowball the price it would be sold while I was waiting, so I jumped on it and brought it home that day.

Nice shots. You should have demanded that the cop whose horse defecated be cited for littering by the other cop. I've seen some mounted patrols using diapers for their horses, just bags that are somehow attached so that they catch that material. They do sort of detract from the image, though. Our weather here has been spotty. I don't know if we broke sixty yesterday, but we came close with periods of warm sun but mostly light overcast. Last Sunday afternoon we had broken into the low 40's with occasional sun, and I drove about thirty miles north to get a look at a truck I saw advertised in the Sunday paper. By the time I got about ten miles north of the city, I was in near-whiteout conditions, with at least a couple of inches of accumulated snow and high winds picking it up and blowing it across the pavement, where traffic was packing it into slick spots.

Me with my belated Christmas present. I haven't seriously indulged myself in a few years, and I deserve it. I've been without a truck since 2006, and there are times when that has seriously impaired my productivity on some projects. I remedied that situation yesterday.

The trolleybus photos I took in 1991 were in response to news items that indicated the end of the system was imminent. I drove to Dayton and spent an afternoon photographing the ETBs and other downtown scenes. If you'd like to see those photos from 1991, click here.

That there oughta' learn 'im!

its hideous along with the carpet and wall color. Maybe the best thing for them is to have the house burn down, with no loss of life. Jeez mts you sound like my landlord. She constantly rips on me for my failures at interior design... or "lack of any design," but just "a few scattered pieces of showroom floor models". I told her if she comments again I will paint the apartment all black and choose ugly granite for the counters. A few design concepts to use to threaten your landlord, from what I inherited when I bought my first house: - In the kitchen, orange walls and a yellow ceiling with an orange sunburst radiating out from the light fixture. I can't remember what they called those 1960s floors, but they'd put down a layer of color chips and then pour a thin layer of clear acrylic over them for a cheap, fake terrazzo look Carefully done and used in a dim, low traffic area it didn't look too awful when new, but this was color-keyed to the orange walls and yellow ceiling, with some glittery bits among the chips. - On the bathroom floor, a red-and-black checkerboard pattern of carpet-tile squares. There was lots of carpet tile throughout the house, some of it glued down over oak floors.

Seattle ranks high among my favorite vacations ever! I had the good fortune to be there in early August, when skies were blue and the air was clear the whole time. Wonderful place!

I kept looking at that photo and thinking, "I know I've seen that." It just now hit me; it's the sail and mast on the Calatrava Wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Neat angle. A photo of the structure, taken during an SSP forum meet on a cold, wet day in March, 2005:

I missed this earlier ... I won't call this a pet peeve, but this is definitely something I wish more restaurants would do. On second thought, maybe it actually is a pet peeve, because I can recall several instances where I did not order a burger precisely because I knew that the lower bun would fall apart quickly. So just turn it over already, and eat it that way. You probably won't be arrested for it, and your stomach won't know the difference.

Excellent tour. In the mid-1960s while stationed at Dover AFB, just a couple of hours south, I chose Philadelphia for many of my weekend getaways, especially when winter dulled the appeal of southern Delaware beaches. I could find photography and darkroom supplies there that I would have had to order through a drug store in Dover, and would have had to wait for. I spent a lot of time in the Art Museum. That city is saturated in history and historic character.

I think it's time for an UrbanOhio potluck. Roast 'Possum, sweet potatoes, and collard greens. For dessert, sugar cream pie.

The last I heard, which was at least a year ago, that proposal is dormant for now because of a lack of funding. Governor Mitch Daniels' continued antipathy toward passenger rail, and that of any possible Republican successor, are certain. The current direction in Indiana is to continue promoting and building expressways and Interstate highways at taxpayer expense in direct competition with existing privately-owned rail freight routes while extolling the virtues of market-driven solutions to all the state's current problems. I remember when the Valpo Dummies operated over PRR and Penn Central; I saw them often at Valparaiso when passing through on the early-Amtrak Broadway Limited en route to and from Chicago on weekends. They continued to operate for a while under Amtrak, but I think they ended even before the severing of the line that brought the end of Amtrak service over the former PRR/Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago line. Valpo's V-Line public transit system now runs a shuttle bus Friday afternoons and weekends between the Valparaiso University Student Center and The South Shore's Dune Park station but that's of no use to commuters, who still must drive to Dune Park to board a train. On a couple of occasions In the past year I went to Portage/Ogden Dunes station to photograph rush-hour South Shore trains, and saw Amtrak trains on the NS main just over the fence, sitting and waiting, and them moving up a little, and then sitting and waiting some more. Sometimes they're queued up along with NS freight and sometimes there are switch jobs from the steel mills in the mix. It's a congested mess.

Them is good eatin': http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1827,145171-241207,00.html

It's not like the station is in a wooded area. First, you need to move upward from street level, then there is an intermediate level from the pay area to a second set of stairs that leads to the the train platforms. I think the possum got on the train near one of the Prospect Park stops or near the CI rail yard since there are some protected park/wetlands near it. The critter could have crawled up onto one of the nearby platform and boarded as the train was going toward CI. Since late a night most people sit in the middle of the train. Nobody noticed it until the train was heading back toward Manhattan. it got on the train at Coney Island. Maybe he was just coming back from Nathan's Well lets be thankful it wasn't ground up into something and sold at Nathan's! Yeah. It was one of the lucky ones that got away.

South Shore plans to install free Wi-Fi for riders By Keith Benman [email protected], (219) 933-3326 | Posted: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 10:00 am | (21) Comments South Shore riders should be able to connect to free Wi-Fi on trains in 2012, with the commuter railroad now wiring cars in preparation for installing the necessary hardware. South Shore operator Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District has contracted with Blueweb Mobile Media PLC to supply the Wi-Fi hardware, according to NICTD Planning and Marketing Director John Parsons. The company will coordinate ad sales with current South Shore ad broker Q Rail LLC. Read more: http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/south-shore-plans-to-install-free-wi-fi-for-riders/article_7cd07334-d4eb-523f-9bfb-3779d3e7b95f.html#ixzz1jsyrEtyS

INDOT maintains an online catalog of surplus bridges that are available for relocation for trail or other light-duty applications. The last I knew, the city of Bluffton was considering an 1887 Whipple through-truss 150-footer across the Wabash River at Vera Cruz, a tiny village just a few miles away. That bridge stands beside its replacement on Indiana 316, isolated on its piers with its earth-fill approaches long-since bulldozed away. One has to climb a moderate rubble heap to get to the deck.

The ceiling-fan video reminded me of another stupid trick that ended on a more sombre note years ago when I was a teenager. Some teen wizard came up with a theory that if you blew through a stop sign at an intersection going at least fifty miles per hour, it was impossible to collide with another vehicle. One night with three of his friends in his car he set out to prove it. On a country road with cornfields on each side that obscured the views at an intersection with a state highway, he got up to at least sixty miles per hour and shot into the intersection. Six people died; the boy genius, his three gullible friends, and the couple in the car that was going down the highway. The cause of the crash was known only because he had tried to convince other classmates of the validity of his theory. What will never be known is whether the crash occurred the first time he tried it, or if he had just been lucky until that time.

... but soon to be proven by the looming consequences of the ascendancy of Christian and Islamic extremism at home and abroad and the proliferation of terrible weapons. Some things just take more time than you've come to expect; patience, grasshopper.

Perhaps that will be fixed by the time you get old.

Beautiful photo set! I first visited Washington in 1963 on a day trip from Dover, Delaware, and my last visit was in Winter, 1991 during a layover en route to Florida on Amtrak . Aside from one trip in the early sixties, I don't think I ever ventured beyond Union Station, the Capitol, Smithsonian, and other attractions in that immediate area. Thanks for sharing the very pleasant-looking parts of the city where everyday people live and work.

Excellent. Philadelphia is one of America's most photogenic cities, and the whole complex including and surrounding 30th Street Station is an amazing work of engineering and architecture.

Interesting photos, and the camera is money well spent. It gives you more flexibility in composition, and the photos are more dense, saturated, and crisp than your old one was delivering. Nice job.

I haven't needed to do that yet, but I saw a kit for headlight restoration in the Eastwood catalog. I've bought quite a few things from them over the years, mainly sandblasting and welding supplies, and found all my purchases to be good quality. I would expect their headlight kit would be good too. http://search.eastwood.com/search?w=headlight+restoration&asug=headlight+

I kept hearing water running – turning on intermittently and running for short periods, and then turning off. I suspected the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. I checked, and sure enough, the tank flapper was causing the problem. When I turned off the water and took out the flapper, the rubber wasn’t pliable any more; it was stiff and looked bleached around the edges. I use those Clorox toilet tabs to prevent stains and rings in the bowl, and the rubber flapper didn’t stand up well to the chlorine. So what it all came down to; the clorox zapped the flapper in my crapper.