Robert Pence

Reminds me of the story I posted elsewhere, from the 1960s, of a lady who, when she got the impulse to take photos, had her driver take her to a camera shop in Bloomington to have the shop owner load her top-of-the-line Leica with a roll of Kodachrome. :roll: Or the attorney friend of my aunt, who bought a new telephone and asked me if I could install it in her apartment. I arrived with my toolbox, expecting to have to run some wire and install a jack. The new phone was sitting in its box on an end table, with a wall jack just above the baseboard and directly behind the table. Installation consisted of taking the phone out of the box and plugging in the cable. Got a dial tone. Good to go. :-) Hmm. I haven't had a set of Presta valves since the early 70s, on the sewups that came with my Peugeot PX-10. There was a lot more debris on Fort Wayne's streets then and flats were frequent and a PITA to fix, so I changed to clincher rims and went to regular 27" road tires. The tubes came with Schrader valves, and being a creature of habit, that's what I've had ever since. I acknowledge that Presta is better, especially with high-pressure tires.

Wonderful pic, seicer. Thanks for an effort to bring this thread back on-topic.

Congrats on diagnosing and fixing the problem. It sounds like you possibly averted a terrible crash, as the stem might have failed altogether at the worst time, like riding fast or powering up a hill. While you're on that quest, why don't you get an interview with sasquatch and bring back a couple of unicorns, too? With a couple of rare exceptions, most of the mechanics in local bike shops are hyperjock off-road riders who look with disdain on old farts like me and on our old road bikes. I went into a local bike shop looking for fenders for my road bike. The bike is old, but I built it carefully using a custom frame and all very good components more than 20 years ago. A good bike shop in Dayton (now closed, AFAIK) appraised it at $1,200 for insurance purposes. It rides very nicely. One of those whippersnappers tried to tell me that an old bike like that wasn't worth spending money on, and tried to sell me a $300 bike that he said was better. It was a POS compared with the one I already had. Get a good book (mine is old, but applies OK to my bikes) and order your parts on line; Harris Cyclery has been great for me. Bike repair doesn't take much space, and as you've apparently already learned, can be a gratifying pastime. R.I.P. Sheldon Brown. He contributed a lot to cycling and cyclists in all their many variations, and was a strong friend of all civilized humanity.

I've been insured with GEICO since 1991. Last December I had an experience made me feel lucky to be alive; I drive a Ford Focus station wagon, and I tangled with a semi and walked away without a scratch. GEICO let me choose one of the best repair shops in town without chasing multiple estimates, and the adjuster made sure it was done right. I can't tell the car was ever hurt, either in the way it looks or the way it drives. And they didn't raise my rates. I'm impressed. BTW, rockandroller has given a ton of good advice. Get an experienced person to coach you on driving a manual transmission. With a high-performance car you may have to stay in lower gears in 25mph zones to maintain good control and avoid lugging the engine. If it jerks, you need to be in a lower gear to keep the rpm up.

Fun bridge! I take it that's a real, flowing creek and not a fabricated, pumped water feature?

Nice. I like the streetlights.

Ewww! Breeders ... :weird:

Neat! I love 4x5, but I've lost my local lab that gave same-day turnaround on E-6 processing and had an Imacon drum scanner. Having experienced that service, I've lost my desire to spend time on a cement floor in a dark, chilly, damp, smelly basement room. Actually, I like the smell of a darkroom. It's the physical discomfort that gets old.

My figures are several years old, from before 9/11/2001. I recall reading that FAA operating expense associated with the air traffic control system alone was more than $3 billion/year, and that federal statute capped the amount of FAA operating expense that could be paid from ticket tax revenue at 27%, requiring more than $2 billion/year subsidy from the General Fund just for air traffic control. The General Fund is made up largely of the taxes you and I pay on Form 1040. If I understand correctly, the added cost of security since 9/11/2001 is paid entirely from General Fund revenue by the federal government. The bulk of ticket tax revenue was reserved for capital improvements, primarily construction and expansion of airports. The consequence of building and expanding airports is to remove real estate from local tax bases and increase maintenance expense, shifting more burden onto taxpayers at various levels of government. So far as airport authorities' recovery of operating costs from airlines' landing and takeoff fees and terminal space rental, I think that ranged from a typical 10 percent to a high of around 50 percent in a small number of exemplary cases. Since the time that I read that info, federal law has been changed to allow local airport authorities to levy boarding surcharges to fund some local capital improvement projects. As time permits I'll try to research this further and come up with some current figures. I'm still pretty sure, though, that a large chunk of the cost of commercial aviation still comes from taxpayers pockets. The passenger transport mode that receives the least public subsidy is the intercity motorcoach industry. The intercity bus lines benefit from the use of local, state and federal highways just as you and I do when we drive our cars, but any passenger stations they use are in almost all cases paid for with their own money, and in the few small towns that still have bus connections with bigger cities there are no stations or sheltered waiting areas; you buy your ticket at a gas station, pharmacy or card-and-gift shop during business hours and hope the bus is running close to schedule as you wait in the rain, snow, or sweltering heat. If you're lucky, there might be a bench that hasn't been destroyed by skateboarders or other vandals.

Great-looking building, and a nice space that looks like it has good natural light.

Where did you get your education? Have you considered demanding a refund?

BuckeyeB, as I started to read your post I felt an impulse to chime in, "But the railroads built their grand stations with their own money. The taxpayers bought extravagant facilities for the airlines to use." But I see you covered that. Not only did the taxpayers pay for the airports and terminals, either through local general obligation bonds or through FAA grants that came in part from the General Fund (your and my income taxes), but most, if not all, airports hosting scheduled intercity service, are municipal facilities and are exempt from local property taxes. Because the airports are exempt from local property taxes, the burden for making up the revenue from real estate they occupy falls upon local homeowners and businesses, who also foot the bill for the access roads and other infrastructure needed to accomodate the increased traffic. If commercial aviation had to pay the full cost of FAA programs like air traffic control, build their own airports and terminals, and pay taxes on them, the need to recover costs and turn an annual profit would have inhibited them from overexpanding and overextending themselves into the situation they've created for themselves. If municipalities, instead of cutting each other's throats competing for service, had required airlines to buy into the capital costs of their airports and pay an ongoing allocation of airport and terminal maintenance expenses, the industry would now be more stable and might be closer to operating on an economically-sustainable scale. Deregulation without the counterbalancing effect of fiscal accountability is the equivalent of giving someone a charge card with no limit and telling them, "Here. Do whatever you like, and don't worry about paying for it."

Cycling enthusiasts may recognize the city's name from the Ashtabula Crank, invented there. It's the one-piece forged crank that preceded the three-piece assemblies of various types used on most modern bikes. The old heavyweights and later low-priced ten-speeds used it, and it still shows up on budget-priced "mountain bikes" and kids' bikes.

My great-uncle loved homemade ice cream made with the cream skimmed from the top of the ten-gallon milk cans, fresh from the cows. He trimmed the fat from pan-fried steaks while they were still sizzling and ate that first, and then soaked up the fryings from the pan with bread homemade with lard for shortening. His favorite breakfast was sausage from the hogs they butchered on the farm and eggs from their own hens, with toast from that homemade bread, slathered with real butter. Probably his habit of rolling his own cigarettes from Prince Albert tobacco that came in an orange tin can was what kept him from ever weighing more than about 140 pounds. He paid for all that self-indulgence, though. He died when he was only 94 years old. Had he eaten food that tasted like cardboard and abstained from the Prince Albert, who knows? He might still be farming, thirty years later. Everyone has the right to choose between a dour, possibly long, life of self-imposed deprivation, or a joyous, possibly shorter life indulging in the pleasures that are readily available. Oh, and I almost forgot - great pics of a charming-looking town. I love the historic buildings and the tidy appearance of the place.

That's so mature. I'm so proud of you. :roll: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Norfolk Southern has a major yard at Bellevue. Upon completion (1967) it covered 450 acres, was six miles long, and incorporated 81 miles of track. Since then it may have grown. There's also a museum at Bellevue (not affiliated with Norfolk Southern) with a collection of historic rolling stock, but its hours of operation are limited. I haven't been there in quite a while.

That's because there aren't that many of us old guys on the internet, at least with a bunch of hardware and a lot of old photos. I know of a few, though, who are ahead of me in the age category and do some good stuff. It's mainly in other subject-matter areas, though, like antique farm machinery and the technology relating to restoration, like turn-of-the-(20th)century ignition and fuel systems.

Sounds like a beautiful trip. Take photos!

It's good to see this post come 'round again. The Boeing Vertol cars were indeed dogs from the get-go, and I believe they were the last gasp of LRV manufacturing by any US-based firm. A friend in San Francisco related this story of the unveiling of those cars with the opening of the Muni Metro: One of the bigwigs - I don't recall if he was from Boeing or from Muni - was extolling the virtues of the cars' advanced design before TV cameras and a large crowd. To demonstrate the safety features of the pneumatic doors, he extended his arm into a doorway and instructed the operator to close the doors. He was promptly hustled off to a hospital with a broken arm.

The second county to the west of Allen County, Indiana (where Fort Wayne is located) is Kosciusko County. Not surprisingly, its county seat is Warsaw (approx. 14K population). Ironically, among the county's 74,000 residents there's no significant Polish-American presence, and only .6 percent of the residents are Black or African-American.

The biggest improvement in Saint Marys history was my little brother moving out almost thirty years ago. Recently it seems to have lost its momentum and stalled.

Taste of Tremont looks like a fun event, and Tremont just keeps looking better and better.

Beautiful shots. The Krohn Conservatory is on the list of things I must see, the next time I visit Cincinnati.

Amazing show, super photos :clap:

Good Lord! Hire the kid and let him work in the shop or dispatch until he's old enough for his public passengers license, and then put him on a route. I've ridden with too many drivers who seem to hate their jobs.