Robert Pence

I haven't seen Cleveland's Rapid stations that crowded, but I remember some extremely packed trains years ago. In 1979 I went downtown with a then-new, now-longtime-ex bf to see the St. Patrick's Day parade. After the parade, the trains leaving Terminal Tower were more than packed; they were more like compressed. When we got to our stop at W. 117th Street, we couldn't get to the door, and we had to ride to Brookpark before we could get off the train and catch an inbound back to W. 117th.

Intriguing area!

If we had these in Fort Wayne, they would help drivers to know if they could wait for the light and still get the pedestrian, or if they had to jump it to score a kill.

Looks quite nice!

Looks pleasant, maybe just a little bit less gentrified than other areas of Ann Arbor that are usually seen on the forums?

Note that in the photo previous to the gigantic Odd Fellows' Hall, the nearer building appears to be the Odd Fellows' earlier digs. There's a stone engraved IOOF on the front, and above that, a date 1871. Most of these photos look like they predate the publication of the book by a few years; only in a couple of drawings do any automobiles appear, and by 1912 there were quite a few "motor cars" on the streets of major cities.

You may be right about this. Asperger's seems to occur in varying degrees of severity, though, and I've read that there's some controversy as to whether it's a manifestation of autism, or a distinct developmental disorder. Although there have been no clinical diagnoses in my Dad's family, I suspect that something like Asperger's shows up with some frequency across at least a couple of generations. I know that it was very hard for me to learn the protocols for social interaction (I still mess up when I fail to proofread what's in my head before it comes out of my mouth), and it's been mostly impossible for both of my younger brothers. Dad always had difficulty with it and his sister and one of her sons have even more problems. ADHD and dyslexia run rampant throughout the family. I don't think it's just trains that have strong appeal; there are people who show the same obsessive passion for various forms of technology; aviation, electronics, computers, auto mechanics ... People living with Asperger's often don't deal well with ambiguity, upredictability, or disruption of established routines. Trains are operated over railroads according to fairly consistent and logical rules, and machines and technical devices are very predictable; if they don't produce the designed response to a given input, then there's something wrong with them that can be diagnosed and fixed. People, unfortunately, don't conform very well to that paradigm, and can be just too confusing and troublesome to bother with. Some tend not to know when to shut up, too. </ :yap: >

Hah! The cat is out of the bag! You've been hanging out at these places, too. :-D That, too. :laugh:

A faucet? Or the Softsoap? /smartass The plastic knob off the faucet. Mine's broken. :roll:

Holy Smoke! Amazing shots!

His projection seems to fly in the face of several predictions that appear to have already come true. Even if he's right, it's folly to think of a quarter century as a long time and become complacent. Twenty-five years may look like a long time when you look forward, but when I look back, it doesn't seem like very long at all.

Nice-looking suburb. Rather upscale, I take it?

One of our tech support guys used a motorized wheelchair, and he drove that thing like a soccer mom drives an Escalade. All of us learned to listen for the whine of his motor before stepping into the corridor. :-o

Very pleasant-looking place!

Thanks for sharing the trip! Interesting photos, and you'll probably get used to Los Angeles; it looks almost as nice as Columbus. :wink:

I've read about this guy before. To call him a railfan does an injustice to railfans and even to rabid foamers. He's just a nutcase whose obsession happens to be transit. It's probably fortunate that he's not obsessed with aviation, or he'd be trying (possibly successfully) to steal airplanes. Edit: ... sort of like the guy a few years ago who stole a tank from a National Guard armory and drove it around for some time running over cars before they finally got him stopped.

Trolley buses are great. Fort Wayne lost the last of their routes in 1960; when I moved here in 1958 for my first time out on my own, the bus line that I rode to work was a trolley bus. My street, Columbia Avenue, was a quiet residential street before the city made it part of a one-way pair, and on snowy mornings the bus was almost noiseless as it came down the street. The only sound it made was the air compressor kicking on every couple of blocks to pump up the air brakes. The ride was quiet and smooth, and the acceleration was pretty fast; they could beat most cars of the era away from a stoplight, and if you weren't in a seat, you'd best hang on to the overhead bar.

Beautiful shots! I gotta come back and see more Cincinnati!

I thought "bisexual" meant guys like me ... No, wait. I got confused. I was thinking of "ambidextrous." :wink: :wink: :lol:

I'm offended by the word, "terminus." It sounds too much like "terminal," and that's insensitive. How about, "Bisexuality is just a stop at Belmont on the way to Boystown." :-)

I was gonna' say. My mental image of lesbians (and I've known quite a few, including family members) involves a farmhouse with overgrown grass and landscaping, furnished with stuff gay men threw out, and five dogs, at least a half-dozen cats, maybe a couple of goats and some peacocks, and a 4x4 pickup with bald tires. Either that, or a trailer.

The more I see, the more I want one of those!

I've done both.

Ditto. I love the detail and saturated colors in the conservatory photos, too, and the color of afternoon light this time of year makes for great overview photos.