Robert Pence

It's not just Metro Detroit; all over the Midwest, many cities and even small towns have extremely wide main streets. Before you head across the street in downtown South Bend, Indiana, you'd best pack a lunch and lace up your hiking boots -- typically four lanes of one-way traffic, with a lane of parking on each side. Indianapolis has wide streets downtown, and the automobile traffic has grown to fill them.

I think Joe Calabrese makes some valid points, and in any case, he doesn't sound anti-rail; he just sounds cautious about heavy financial commitment to it at the expense of other components of a system that provides an alternative to fly-drive. His concerns about the health of local transit are very relevant; Ohio's population centers aren't the only ones whose transit systems face operations funding crises (for example, Chicago & Pittsburgh), and he's spot-on with his statement about the importance of arriving intercity passengers being able to connect with transit that can take them to their local destinations. Local transit is a significant component of what makes the city-center to city-center capabilities of passenger trains so attractive.

Looks pretty healthy, good selection of vintage buildings that look mostly in good repair.

This is turning into a topic again already. There must be a half-dozen threads on sexual orientation and related topics already buried here. :roll: I'm pretty good at inane off-topic comments, but c'mon, guys, somebody else break this chain. :-D

Anybody got a recipe for squirrel or cat? Damn squirrel emptied one of my bird feeders again, and the neighbor's cat stakes out the other one. :whip: I guess the cat is doing what cats do naturally. Maybe what I need is a recipe for my neighbor, but I'm trying to stay on a low-fat diet. :x

Cute downtown. It looks like they've put some investment into their streetscape. West Liberty, the castles and Ohio Caverns are along the Top of Ohio Bikeway that's anchored in Bellefontaine. It's a beautiful, hilly loop.

An old prospector walks his tired old mule into a western town one day He'd been out in the desert for about six months without a drop of whiskey. He walked up to the first saloon he came to and tied his old mule to the hitch rail. As he stood there brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger walked out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, 'Hey old man, have you ever danced?' The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, 'No, I never did dance. I just never wanted to.' A crowd had gathered by then and the gunslinger said, 'Well, you old fool, you're gonna' dance now,' and started shooting at the old man's feet. The old prospector was hopping a round and everybody was laughing. When the gunslinger fired his last bullet, he holstered his gun and turned around to go back into the saloon. The old man reached up on the mule, drew his shotgun, and pulled both hammers back making a double clicking sound. The gunslinger heard the sound and everything got quiet. The crowd watched as the gunslinger slowly turned around looking down both barrels of the shotgun. The old man asked, 'Did you ever kiss a mule square on the ass?' The gunslinger swallowed hard and said, 'No. But I've always wanted to.' The lessons from this story are 1. Don't waste ammunition. 2. Don't mess with old guys.

Looks cozy & pleasant. I'm slightly familiar with the area just north of there, around Pearl/W25th just south of I-71. Next time I go back when the weather is nice, I hope to take my camera and walk around Riverside Cemetary some more. It's old and very beautiful.

One of Dad's friends, a handsome man, said he married a homely woman so he wouldn't have to worry about other guys trying to steal her. 'Twas true; she was homely, but she was a gem, smart, well-educated, sense of humor and a good cook on top of it all. They had a good thing going; I think they made their sixtieth anniversary before he passed away, and they were some of my favorites among Dad's friends when I was a kid.

Good photos! I'd be afraid the ground might open up and swallow me into hell.

Cute as a button! :-)

Ahh, but you see, there's a difference. If we're building a highway or an airport, we're <i>Investing</i> in America's Future. <wave flag> :clap: If we're trying to raise the quality of rail service above a third-world level, we're <i>subsidizing</i> choo-choos for railfans. <sneer or scowl> :x Sorry. I should go to bed now.

Jeff, I think I got to bed about 4:30 or 5, got up at 9, and now I'm ready for a nap. It's my lucky day. A little while ago I went out to check out the scene in daylight. I had seen the passenger make a couple of trips down the river bank before the cops arrived, and I thought he might have stashed some alcohol. but if that's what he was doing, he must have thrown it in the river. I did score 61 cents in change though; two quarters, a dime and penny lying on the ground next to a broken inside door handle. It must have been in the arm rest, and got spilled when somebody got out. I'll try not to go on a spending spree. It's never dull around here. I'll have to dig up the photos of the semi that ran off the curve and into the river some years back. It took them two days to clean up the hazmat spill and drag the truck back up to the road.

It would be imprudent to eliminate all my enemies. I need to keep a few around for practice, to keep me on top of my game and to avoid the onset of complacency. I've been feeling a little jittery lately; perhaps my aura has been expanding. Maybe I should go back onto my Prozac.

I have no idea what happened here. I just thought it interesting that immediately on the heels of the discovery of several cars in a retention pond in Indianapolis and one or two incidents here that revived memories of some fatal incidents in the past, this happened in my neighborhood. A year ago, this car simply would have gotten stuck in the mud; the pond had silted full and mostly dried up years ago. Last year, though, the park department did a major reconstruction, taking the pond to eight feet deep and restoring the overflow drain and fresh-water supply. On Saturday morning (March 22, 2008) I noticed police cars around the east end of the St. Marys River Bridge on West Jefferson. I wasn't inclined to go out in the unpleasant weather to check it out. They were there quite a while. Some time later I saw the flasher atop a tow truck, near the underpass that connects the tennis courts with East Swinney Park. Curiosity got the better of me. Temporary paper plate taped inside rear window: Went in here: Came out here: Missing trim pieces A Long and Winding Road ... The paved path in the foreground is part of the city greenway system.

Pics are up. I didn't stay around for the wrecker, because one of the cops was getting testy about my taking photos. I know I was within my rights (public right of way), but it's imprudent to argue with a cop when there's no one else around except other cops.

Fort Wayne March 23, 2008, 2:30a.m. I was at my computer when I heard an awful racket outside. I live beside the beginning of a curve on a major arterial heading out of town, where most drivers exceed the speed limit by at least 10mph, and it's Sunday 2:30 a.m., so it's a safe bet alcohol is involved, Cell phone in hand, I went out on my front stoop and saw a pickup truck straddling the guard rail and a couple of guys walking around. One of them got in and started it up and tried to drive it off the rail, making some real interesting sounds. I called the cops. Field sobriety test for the driver. He didn't pass. Driver in cuffs, escorted to the back seat of a police car.

On the rare occasion that I shoot film, I'll develop my own black and white because it's difficult to find a lab that will do it right. I send out E6 transparency film, although the lab I've used for years just went out of business. I've successfully processed E6 transparency film at home, but I don't recommend it unless you just want to try it for the experience. It's a long, arduous process, and temperature control is critical. We're way off topic :-o I gotta stop this; I just heard a hellacious bang outside, and at this time of night on a weekend you can bet it involved alcohol and too much speed and a curve in the road. I'm gonna check it out!

Yes. I can scan transparencies and negatives and then work with them in Photoshop to make whatever adjustments I want. I usually save my scanned images as TIF files, although it's possible to save them in any of the formats supported by Photoshop. The Epson 2200 printer makes archival prints, so I can go from negative to quality print while sitting in a comfortable chair in warm, not-smelly, dry room with the lights on. I have a nice darkroom in the basement, but I haven't used it in about 3 years. I've been shooting exclusively DSLR since 2004, but I still have several rolls of medium-format film I should probably shoot up before it dies of old age. It's in the freezer, so it will last a while. Scanning a 35mm color slide at 4000dpi takes a little more than 45 seconds, although if I use some of the scanner's extra features it can take quite a lot longer. Lower resolutions take less time. I shot some Cleveland scenes on Fuji Provia 100F (Color transparency) in 2003 or 2004 and scanned them with the Nikon 8000ED. I converted one to grayscale and had a 24x30-inch print made from it at a custom lab, and it's sharp as a tack.

Nikon finally released a Vista driver (Nikon Scan 4.03) for their film scanners, but the info on their site stipulates that it will only work with the 32-bit version. I wish they would open up their hardware so that third-party developers like Vuescan and Silverfast could develop a 64-bit driver. I think that the availability of higher and higher quality digital cameras has accelerated the demise of everything film-related, even in the pro and advanced amateur sectors that I thought would hold out for a while. Nikon has just about stopped releasing upgrades to their scanner software, and I wouldn't be suprised if they bail out of the scanner business very soon. That's why I've ordered the 9000ED; I was afraid that if I waited six months until I could afford it, it might be out of production. I'm considering replacing the 64-bit XP on my dual boot setup with 32-bit Vista, just so I can get used to working with it without putting my existing setup in jeopardy.

I broke my own car window once, right in my own driveway. That was a long time ago, though. :wink:

I don't think high-speed rail is the terminology for what's needed; that's high-dollar, high-tech equipment on a dedicated, grade-separated right of way, operating at speeds in the 125-150 mph range and above. For the distance involved, it would be severe overkill. Given suitable roadbed configuration and maintenance and appropriate crossing protection and signaling upgrades, existing commuter equipment can achieve speeds in the range of 80-90 mph on existing tracks. I'm sure many people, once they tried it, would be persuaded to park their cars. It's not necessarily the sheer speed or travel time that sells the service. Comfort and convenience and the ability to read or work or even <i>enjoy</i> a cup of good coffee while traveling are big selling points, and rising gasoline prices are likely to have more people looking for attractive alternatives to driving.

The desk doesn't usually look like that. I'd post a pic of it now, but somebody might turn me in to the health department. The silver & black thing is a Nikon LS8000ED film scanner. It can scan both 35mm and 120 roll film negatives and transparencies at up to 4000dpi. It does a great job. Before I got it, I had some 120 negs scanned at a custom lab on a high-dollar Imacon drum scanner. When I got the Nikon, I scanned the same negs. Blown up side-by-side on the screen, I couldn't see any difference in the image quality.

I agree. Even though there's a public fascination, maybe infatuation, with high speed rail, stemming largely from reports of what other countries have, I think the love affair would grow cold pretty abruptly if the taxpaying public were confronted with the cold reality of the price tag. I agree with the realistic thinkers who say that we need to start with something achievable with current infrastructure and technology, and grow it until there's a constituency that demands the dramatic, exciting technology. People are ready for alternatives to flying and driving, and they would embrace 90-110mph trains, or even 79mph trains if the trains ran frequently, on time and at useful times. Those are achievable goals that won't inflict paradigm shock on taxpayers. Rebuilding our passenger rail service could be have big benefits for efforts to rebuild America's industrial base, too. Even now there's a large equipment deficit that doesn't allow much room for breakdowns or accidental damage, and the construction of an expanded fleet of new equipment would provide a lot of high-quality jobs.

One short segment in the first video reveals how hellish loud that thing is. It's like a jetliner at ground level! That would be a major consideration in determining routes for high-speed rail; we have so much sprawl that except in sparsely-populated regions of the western U.S. there'd be a lot of NIMBY resistance most places. The 90-110mph trains, on the other hand, are comparatively quiet if run on welded rail with concrete ties and a good roadbed, and even quieter if electrified. They make a pretty good whoosh at close range, but not the jetliner roar that carries over distances.