Robert Pence

'nother great post!

A coworker who grew up in Minnesota described traditional old-school lutefisk: "It's cod preserved in Lye and stacked like cordwood outside to freeze-dry in winter. To prepare it, they wash it to get rid of the lye residue, and then bake it with butter and serve it on a board. You throw away the cod and eat the board."

Looks like an interesting downtown with well-kept buildings. Those Pennsylvania towns gain so much from the hills in the background, too.

I like!

Excellent photos. Wooster's courthouse has always puzzled me. The basic style (Second Empire?) is all about symmetry, and the tower is of appropriate design but belongs dead-center atop the building, and not stuck on a rear corner like an afterthought.

This Kodachrome is older than many forumers. I shot it from the Princess Marguerite, returning to Seattle from a day trip to Victoria, BC, in 1982

I love real steamboats! standing on an upper deck above the paddle wheel gives a real sense of how much power is being transmitted. Lots of water flying, and pretty noisy. I've ridden the Belle of Louisville on one of its afternoon cruises to New Albany and back. I probably spent half the trip at the bottom of the gangway that goes to the engine room, just watching the machinery. The faux steamboats with their diesel engines and a dummy paddle wheel dragging in the water are so lame by comparison. What's with all the smoke from the Delta Queen? I assumed it would have been converted to oil-fired boilers by now, but it's smoking like a coal burner. I guess even an oil burner can smoke a lot if you crowd it, though.

Looks great. I've only seen a little bit of Minneapolis, and barely a glimpse of St. Paul. Looks worth a visit.

Some interesting buildings, lots of character. Looks like way too much excitement for me, though. :wink:

Interesting mix of buildings. Looks like a good place to walk around with a camera.

I think we're quite a ways off from having renewable energy sources that will come anywhere close to replacing our consumption of oil or of coming anywhere close to the cost per btu that our economy has become dependent upon. If there were any economic advantage to biofuels, we'd have seen the energy companies trying to get in on the ground floor ten years ago. That hasn't happened. If the oil companies want ethanol plants, I'd wager they can wait three or four years and buy all the bankrupt plants they want at thirty cents on the dollar. People's memories are even shorter than their awareness is limited. Apparently not many people remember that just over ten years ago the entire northeast section of the country experienced drought that led to a complete failure of the corn crop over several states. There were no mature ears on any non-irrigated plants, and farmers tried to salvage what animal feed they could by harvesting the stover (stalks and leaves). Even that was a desperate measure; corn harvested for forage is cut when it's still somewhat green and full of moisture, with fully-developed ears and kernels. What they had was just a little bit better than nothing. I recall driving across Pennsylvania at Labor Day in 1995 and seeing nothing but brown, shriveled stalks and leaves. Wind and solar won't work just anywhere, either. It takes study and testing to locate suitable sites for wind farms and solar panels, and money and time to construct them and bring them on line. Wind farms are dependent on climate patterns and wind speeds can vary widely in some areas making those areas unsuitable for power production. Solar panels shut down at night and produced diminished output on cloudy/overcast days, and storage systems have to be built and maintained to counter those characteristics. It won't be easy and it won't be cheap to build renewable alternative energy sources, and we can't expect the same abundance of power at the cheap prices we're used to.

I've been working my way through Jared Diamond's "Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," cited above. I deliberately say "working" because it is hard work for me. The book is well written and a good read, but it's information-dense and it takes some effort for me to assimilate it and keep track of the linkages Diamond traces. I'm inclined to think that collapse is an intrinsic part of societies' life cycles because people have a basic tendency to seek ease, often without regard to future consequences or knowledge of historic precedent. Most often we use comparatively simple short-term solutions to create near-overwhelmingly difficult long-term problems. Uh-oh! Gotta Stop! Gotta Stop! Too Late. < :speech: > An example - Pandering politicians (tautology?) propose suspending sales taxes on motor fuels and halting purchases for the national petroleum reserve to help offset rising oil prices. They'll sacrifice the revenues needed to maintain transportation infrastructure that is already breaking down faster than it can be fixed, while suppressing fuel prices and promoting increased use, thereby accelerating resource depletion and advancing the date when shortages and staggering price increases will become inescapable. Instead of looking to the long term by investing in transportation alternatives, promoting responsible land-use policies and advocating discipline and restraint in fuel use, they seek popularity and reelection in the short term and increase the likelihood of collapse in our economic and food-supply systems and exacerbate the risk of global resource wars. < / :speech: > No, I'm not sorry about the rant. It's a bitter pill, but go ahead and swallow it. It might do y'all some good.

Literally pissing away the parents' tuition money. This makes me glad that I've always remained true to my inner nerd.

Simplicity. No cables or levers or twist grips, less machinery to get gunked up with road crap. If you ride in very cold weather, the more complex chain path makes it noticeably harder to pedal because the oil gets stiff. For ultimate simplicity in a single-speed setup, rig up a Bendix coaster brake and you can eliminate the rear caliper brake. The coaster brake doesn't lose its grip when the rims are wet, either. A geared hub is a nice compromise; the gears are all internal and protected from weather, and need no derailleurs. The old reliable is the 3-speed Sturmey-Archer AW hub; put a few drops of oil in it every year or so, and it'll run forever without any attention. It provides an adequate range for most city riding. New ones from Shimano have up to 7 speeds, but they're heavier and expensive. A three-speed doesn't like to shift in extreme cold, either, but when it warms up you still have the functionality. I'll second that. Weigh yourself and the bike and see how much difference a pound makes, percentage-wise. I doubt you'd notice it when riding.

I love that area. A friend used to own a place on the Ohio side of the river down near the Sistersville Ferry, and I drove through Woodsfield and Barnesville and various small villages fairly often going there. You can't be in a hurry on that drive. The Monroe County Fair at Woodsfield was a big area attraction back then.

Handsome downtown. The prospect of seeing the Keith=Albee returned to its proper status is exciting.

Interesting shots.

I was sad to hear of his death. Although I never met him in person, I did exchange a few emails with him and regarded him as the authority on English Roadsters and on custom-creating utilitarian bikes for everyday urban use. Harris Cyclery has been my source for tires and parts for my thirty-plus-year-old Raleigh DL-1 city bike for several years.

Murphy's Oil Soap, eh? Hmmmm. Thanks :wink:

I thought it was clever and witty! :-D Not every day one gets to see a dirigible. In all my long years, I think I've only seen two -- or maybe it was the same one twice. I'm easily confused, and easily amused.

Wow! Wonderful courthouse, and this little gem sent a shiver up my spine!

Good shots!

I've become accustomed to riding defensively and watching out for clueless drivers, but with rising gas prices a new menace has appeared on the streets -- clueless cyclists. They're people who haven't ridden on city streets before, and probably haven't ridden much anywhere since they got their driver licenses. Last week I was headed downtown on my bike when a half-dozen twenty-somethings on bikes came cruising through a stop sign from a cross street onto my street. Two of them nearly ran me down, and obviously were startled to see me. If they were looking for any traffic, they were looking only for cars and weren't even aware I was there. The members of the group were all over the street and riding erratically, more intent on chatting with each other than with paying attention to their surroundings. A lot of new cyclists ride on the sidewalks (illegal in the CBD), going too fast for safety and unaware of the dangers of cars pulling out of alleys or pedestrians entering the sidewalk from business doorways.

Damn! Those are outstanding! I think that's the best set of Cleveland grit I've seen.

Looks very classy!