Robert Pence

120+ sounds just a little high, even for road tires, and like redbrick said, you might have gotten a pinched tube. That likely would have shown up sooner or later even at 40psi. Riding for a long time at 40psi might have weakened the tires because of excessive flexing. Most tires have the proper inflation pressure printed or stamped on them. If your tire went "pop", it probably was because of too much pressure. If it let down more gradually, it might have been a pinched tube. Check to make sure there's a rim tape between the tube and the rim, and that there are no spoke ends protruding beyond the ends of the ferrules that are threaded onto the ends. If it blew because of excessive pressure, the hole will have a shredded appearance and be very visible, and there may be a hole blown clear through the tube. If it's a pinch or a puncture, the hole will be tiny and only in the tube and you can find it by inflating the tube and submerging it in a dishpan full of water. Before you take the tire off, mark the valve stem location on the tire with a piece of chalk or bar of soap, and when you find the puncture you'll be able to associate it with the location on the tire and check for a sharp object. Another thing to check is a leaky valve stem. Especially if you've been riding without caps on the stems, dirt can get between the valve stem and its seat during inflation, and cause it to leak. Put a dab of spit or a drop of soapy water on the valve stem and see if a bubble forms. To minimize the likelihood of a pinch when disassembling or assembing the tire/tube/rim, go to a bike shop and get a set of tire levers; they're not expensive, and they make the whole process easier. Use a sponge to slop soapy water on the whole works. That plus tire levers makes it a piece of cake. Have someone teach you to patch/or change a tube. It only takes a few minutes to do it on the road if you carry a patch kit or spare tube, tire levers and a pump, and it'll save you those long walks and Saturday mornings waiting. I prefer a spare tube, because you'll need it if you have a blowout and in any event you can swap it out quickly and easily, and fix the leaking tube after you get home. </ :speech: > Ask me what time it is, and I'll tell you how to make a watch. :wink:

Beautiful Florida pics. My last visit was in January 1991 when my parents lived at Englewood. I only got brief glimpses of those places, and spent most of my time in midwestern retiree hangouts with Mom & Dad. Unfortunately, I had neglected to pack any golf shirts, pastel polyester slacks or white belt & matching shoes. I felt so out of place. :wink:

I have a friend who grew up in the Sunbury/Shamokin/Mt. Carmel area, not far from Williamsport. After living in Hoosierland for more than thirty years he still pronounces "water" like "wooder" and the "rad" in "radiator" like the "rad" in "radical." I spent almost three years at Dover, Delaware, and encountered accents from various parts of the state. There's a considerable variation for such a small state; go a few miles south of Dover, and some people's speech sounds very much like what Tidewater Virginia. Lord, did people in Philadelphia make fun of my Hoosier accent! I had almost forgotten about that. I even got asked if I was from West Virginia. I didn't realize at the time that that was intended as an insult.

After almost 100 years the concrete work was crumbling and the reflecting pools in Fort Wayne's Lakeside Park sunken garden area had deteriorated badly. Two or three years ago the city restored the gardens according to the original 1908 design.

60% General American English 15% Dixie 10% Yankee 5% Midwestern 5% Upper Midwestern I wonder how this would have turned out when I was a kid, before I shed a lot of the localisms from where I grew up in northeastern/north-central Indiana near the Ohio line. It's faded now, but among the one and two generations prior to mine (with some carryover to the kids) there were a lot of localisms that came from Pennsylvania, the ancestral home of many of the families. Some examples: Y'uns (You-uns), warsh (wash), rench (rinse), war (wire). You carried your groceries home in a poke, neither a bag nor a sack. Your automobile was your machine. Some of it was rooted in the German dialect used by the mostly Swiss families that moved into the area from Pennsylvania. My grandmother's parents rarely spoke English at home, and she called an umbrella a bumbershoot. There were other terms that I'd remember if I spent some time thinking about it. My dad didn't speak Pennsylvania Dutch, but he understood it pretty well. I blame the universal exposure to network television programming that originates in the coastal metro areas for erasing many of the old regional dialects. When I was a kid, much radio programming was of local origin and reflected local dialects.

My brother and I have a nice woods that's marshy in spots and grows gobs of wildflowers in some areas. We maintain a few paths through it, just mowing the weeds and cutting any brush that grows in them, but we don't go in there much during mosquito season because they're horrendous. A few years ago I took my first walk in a while, in the fall after things had cooled off. I discovered the paths all torn to hell and muddy, with quad tracks all over the place and up and down the creek bank. A little investigation turned up the culprits, a neighbor kid about 13 or 14 and his buddies. My brother wanted to call the sheriff and charge them with trespassing, but I just went over and had a nice, polite chat with the neighbor kid's mom about private property and habitat destruction, and we haven't had any more problems. The nature of the soil and native vegetation there isn't suited to any kind of transportation other than walking and an occasional pass with a small tractor for maintenance work. Even at that, I've gotten a tractor hellish stuck there in spring.

An interesting site, and some remarkable views.

That sort of thing has happened a lot. Probably there was a single-story porch there, with fancy wood trim. Lovely security light smack in the middle of the bay, above the first-floor window, too.

I was just trying to be context-sensitive. A friend/former co-worker relocated to Tennessee (Knoxville), and I was just going by what he told me, and occasional pictures he sent. :-D Actually, I've been to Nashville. It's a beautiful city. I went to Murfreesboro a couple of times on work assignments, and loved the history, old neighborhoods and genteel nature of the near-downtown areas.

I s'prised theys been no comments. Nashville, that's in Tennessee, aint' it? Hang sum car parts on the wall, get sum wood nail kegs to set on, and a big ol' cable reel for a table. Foam mattress on the floor is good enuff fer a bed. If y' got a yard, y' need a wore-out tractor tire to plant flowers in, and a pickup truck. It don't need to run, 'cause it sets on cement blocks, with no wheels. Y' can chain yer huntin' dog to it. Just kiddin' :wink:

Seems appropriate to me; often enough, life has come at me with a bludgeon. I've gotten pretty good at ducking, and pretty good at regrouping when I don't duck quickly enough. :-D

That should be "grass-fed free range meat. And I'm pretty sure there was already a thread about this.

More people switching from cars to bikes = more inconsiderate idiots riding bikes. After two encounters with sidewalk cyclists in a half-hour walk this evening, I'm thinking I might start carrying my cane again. I thought I was through with it, but it's still hanging on the coat hook inside the back door. Twice this evening I was passed from behind within a couple of inches at speeds too high for sidewalk riding, without any audible warning. The first one caught me entirely by suprise and I damned near p!ssed myself. I heard the second one coming, but not because he tried to make his presence known; he just hit a ridge in the sidewalk and I heard it. With a little practice I ought to be able to snag a rider right off his bike. A biker can ride faster than I can run, but I might get a head start while he's spitting out the cement. I wouldn't really do such a thing, but from now on I'll condition myself to scream at them in hopes of startling them as badly as they startle me. I may still carry my cane in case one of them wants to discuss it. Right now I'm still angry. :whip:

By the time the really popular gay clubs came along, I had pretty much given up on the bar scene. All I really wanted was a solid, true-blue boyfriend, and it took me far too long to figure out that I wasn't going to find him hanging out in a smoky, noisy dump full of drunks or a shadowy, stuffy hotel lounge frequented by closeted married men out of town on business and looking for some forbidden fruit (I've never been very good at being fruity, either). :-D Obviously, I still haven't figured out where he is hanging out. :roll:

It's all relative. For the moment, at least, I feel like a whippersnapper. I bought my first house in 1972, and the one next door, where I live now, five years later. I'm one of the tenured residents of the immediate neighborhood, but definitely not the most senior. A little while ago I was outside watching paving crews at work on Washington Street. I struck up a conversation with a fellow who lives a couple of blocks away. He bought his house in 1947, before Washington was a major arterial feeding southwest sprawl. Along Washington and Jefferson the neighborhood is mostly rentals now, some not so great, although there's been some movement toward renovations and restorations as the goodies on the side streets have gotten bought up. Roy pointed out several houses within a block of where we were standing that were owned by families whose names you see associated with prominent businesses in stories of the city's history. Despite his 90 years and using a cane to get around, Roy is pretty sharp. He did handyman work, including shoveling dirt and moving rocks, until he was pretty near 80. His property, an 1880s brick house, still looks spiffy. I don't know if he still has his dump truck, but I saw it sometime in the past year or two. I hope I hold up as well.

Quite nice; I love the big trees. A replacement door wouldn't be a problem. Coppa Woodworking has almost everything you could imagine, and more of that stuff was catalog material than you might expect.

One caveat about blinking rear lights, and it'll be brought to your attention by other cyclists quickly enough if you transgress. Actually it's just common sense. If you're riding with other people, don't put your rear light on blink unless you're at the tail end of the group. If someone is behind you and you have yours on blink, after a little while it annoys the crap out of them, especially if it's really bright. :oops:

That's Penn Station, designed by Daniel Burnham and built 1898 - 1903. It has been restored and the office tower now houses condos. Amtrak still uses the tracks, but the platforms have been changed from Burnham's original design. I think it's a testimonial to the PCC, the prototype of which was rolled out in Cleveland in 1937, that despite all the advances in mechanical and electrical/electronic technology, no one has yet built a light rail vehicle with a smoother, quieter ride than a PCC in good repair running on good track. Pittsburgh's PAT was going to keep some of theirs in service alongside the LRVs when the subway opened, but then one suffered an electrical failure that caused the electromagnetic brakes to malfunction, and it derailed coming out of the tunnel. I think it actually may have run into the Grand Concourse building. They determined that the cost of restoring the cars to a state of good repair couldn't be justified. A number of them are in the PA trolley museum at Washington PA. The ride on a PCC out to Library when the route still had wooden trestles was a trip back in time.

Someone should go there and pray for all those people and lay hands on them. They've fallen under the spell of the Great Satan that is Apple.

Fixed broken links and bumped Feb 3, 2011 Wooster to Pittsburgh – 1985 All Photographs Copyright © 2004 – 2011 by Robert E Pence In May 1985 I went along as a volunteer with 1944 Lima-built steam locomotive Nickel Plate 765 and a set of passenger coaches on a trip from Fort Wayne to Orrville, Ohio. We were slated to run a set of excursions between Orrville and Pittsburgh over Conrail's former Pennsylvania Railroad mainline. The trips were fund-raisers for the Mad River & NKP Railroad Historical Museum. The engine had undergone a major overhaul during the winter, and this was its first time out on the road. One of the new main rod journal bearings was running hot during the trip to Orrville, and we made frequent stops to shoot it full of grease. We hoped it would wear itself in and settle down in time for the excursions, because Conrail had stipulated that the train had to be able to maintain 70mph to avoid interfering with traffic on the busy mainline. I had planned to ride the Saturday trip to Pittsburgh, and then leave the train and spend a couple of days sightseeing before taking Amtrak back to Fort Wayne. We left Orrville approximately on time running at a good clip, but by the time we reached Massillon, the rod journal was heating up. Conrail had the steam engine taken off the train and continued the trip with a pair of their freight engines. I rode back to Orrville with the steam engine as my Pittsburgh plans started to fall apart. I phoned Greyhound and learned that I could catch a Pittsburgh bus at Wooster, so I bummed a ride in the back of a pickup truck. I took the first few pictures while cooling my heels at the Greyhound stop at Wooster. My Ride! I changed buses at Canton, and the driver of the new bus was friendly, a former railroader and something of a railfan. He recognized the logo on my shirt and asked, "Where's your steam engine?". There were only a few other passengers on the bus at that point, and that great front seat on the right side was vacant. The pretty small town is Lisbon. The Pennsylvania state line on US 30 – we rolled across open, mostly rural country for miles, and then entered a tunnel. When we emerged from the tunnel, we were on a bridge with Pittsburgh spread out in the sun dead ahead. For a first-time visitor, the sight was quite a thrill. At the Greyhound terminal in Pittsburgh, Paul, the driver, put my bags in his car and then drove me up to Mount Washington to introduce me to Pittsburgh's most spectacular vista before dropping me off at the William Penn Hotel. Some pictures from a Sunday walk about downtown I hoped to see the Sunday excursion arrive with the steam locomotive on the point, and get some pictures, so I walked up to Penn Station and picked a spot on the bridge approach where I could watch trains approach on the opposite side of the river. A couple of freight trains passed. When the excursion train arrived, there was no steam engine. Penn Station looked pretty dowdy in 1985. The Allegheny County Courthouse, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, himself, is the ultimate testament to Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. The opening of the PAT light rail subway was a few weeks away, and PCC streetcars were still running on street tracks downtown and crossing the Monongahela River on the Smithfield Street Bridge. The new PAT facility at Station Square stood ready for use. In 1985, most public fountains in the Midwest had signs prohibiting swimming or wading. It was great to see kids enjoying the beautiful fountain at the confluence of the rivers. On Sunday night I rode the Mon Incline up Mount Washington to take in the night views of downtown. On Monday I bought a day pass ($4.50, I think) and spent the remainder of my visit riding and photographing transit. The longest ride I took was the trolley to Library and back. It was wonderfully scenic, and the operator said he had run on that line since 1941, when it was an interurban line to Charleroi with speeds up to 60 mph. He was set to retire when the new subway opened.

Yeah. I've found some informative stuff on his site and I know of some people who think he wrote or at least edited the Holy Bible, but I've felt like in some cases he talks just to feel the wind blow through his head. I have only two accessories for the Mamiya 7. I bought the Mamiya polarizing filter from B&H for $200, and I got the remote battery case with the extension wire that lets me keep the battery inside my coat in cold weather. The polarizer's flip-up design makes it easy to set it for the effect I want, and then swivel it down over the lens while maintaining the setting. It's also a very good piece of glass that doesn't seem to cause any shift in color temperature. That's a problem I've experienced with some third-party polarizers, notably Hoya, which seems warm. I have a couple of other favorites, too. In 1967 I bought a used 2.8 Rollei TLR from a guy at work who had it for a backup camera in his wedding photography business and rarely used it. I looked up the serial number, and it was made in 1955. It has no meter or auto features whatever, meaning no battery to mess with. I paid $270 for it, and I suspect it's worth several times that, now. It still works perfectly and has given me some of the sharpest photos I've ever shot. A couple of years ago my aunt, now in her 90s, wheelchair-bound and content with a point-and-shoot, gave me her 3.5 Rollei TLR that she bought new in 1951. That was the first really high-quality camera I ever used, in 1962 before I bought my first SLR. Like the 2.8, it's very sharp and has stood the test of time. When she gave it to me it hadn't been used in probably thirty years, so I took it out and put it through its paces for a test. It still works perfectly. For those all-manual cameras, I carry a little Gossen digital meter. When shooting with a polarizing filter, I take the meter reading through the polarizing filter before I put the filter on the camera. I think that works better than trying to compute a filter factor. There's something gratifying about working with an all-manual medium- or large-format camera; it requires your full attention and can be close to a meditative experience in the right setting. And if you don't pay close attention, you can make really stupid mistakes and mess up once-in-a-lifetime shots!

I picked mine up used from a local camera shop in 2003 for $700, with the 65mm lens (which is moderately wide-angle in this format). Pretty good deal, I thought. I love the camera; in addition to excellent image quality, the aesthetics are nice. Because it doesn't have all the clunky SLR machinery, it's super-quiet.

Oh, My! Where has that one been hiding? I never knew about it, and it looks like one of the best small towns in the state.

Agreed. And I had thought that Nancy would have died of natural causes a few decades ago, but I saw her in some small-town paper not long ago.

Is that lightning bolt real? MayDay he can invoke lightning at will. So be nice.