Robert Pence

Almost post-apocalyptic!

Rainy days make for interesting atmosphere. Good shots!

No matter how much you invest in skin care, the day will come when men will stop stalking you and staring. Then, you'll be sorry! :x :wink:

I'm gonna' do my dangedest to be there.

Neat photos! From some of the views you posted, it looks like they've opened even more areas for the tour. The areas accessible to visitors keep expanding a little bit each year. The crossover tunnels under the tracks have been flooded as long as I can remember. I don't know if they have gravity drains that are clogged with debris from all the years that homeless people used to live in the tunnels, or if they were drained by sump pumps that are no longer operable. The bridge and its subway approaches are a magnificent piece of infrastructure. I hope that the interest continues to grow in reopening them for light rail and/or historic streetcars.

Good photos. I look forward to exploring Eden Park more thoroughly in the future. It looks like a beautiful place. Oooops! Gotta go! I'm sure what just rattled my windows was thunder, not a 21-gun salute. I always unplug my electronics during storms.

Yeah. Even when some moron drives his minivan around the gates and gets himself and his wife and kids emulsified, the headline invariably reads "Amtrak Train Kills Family of Four!"

One incident shuts down Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor, and the critics are all over Amtrak and the concept of subsidized passenger trains. Hardly a winter goes by that weather doesn't cause major disruptions in the region's air travel (often while the trains keep running), and those critics don't have anything to say about the flawed concept of depending upon heavily-subsidized airlines for short- and intermediate-distance travel in an area subject to severe winter weather.

Fascinating stuff.

Novelty shops are fun: Anyone who likes this stuff and finds themselves in Fort Wayne should check out Stoner's (It's the family name of the owners, not a description of the clientele), on Harrison Street between Main and Berry. They sell/rent costumes and carry a large selection of joke and gag gifts and novelties. It's a long-time family business; when I was in high school, the owner/founder used to do magic shows at area school convocations. He's still doing it.

An impressive, historic place. I always find veterans' memorials powerfully moving. Notwithstanding all the talk by pacifists across generations, violent conflict has been a part of human history since earliest times. All the signs indicate it's not going to stop, but only to become more widespread and more chaotic. The alliances and conflicts within and among factions and nations become increasingly tangled and confusing, and sometimes it's difficult to figure out who hates whom and for what reasons. Apparently combat is an unpleasant part of the intrinsic nature of at least a large part of humanity. :-(

Not just prices, availability. It was important to plan ahead, in some cases. I made a weekend trip to Cleveland, and didn't bother to fill up on Saturday. Sunday when I got ready to head home, I couldn't find an open gas station. I was quite a ways toward home and running on fumes when I finally found a station that was open. I experienced some anxiety on that trip.

Some writers refer to developments in the townships as communities; I don't think that's an appropriate or accurate use of the word. The developments lack focus and identity that defines a community. They're nothing more than clusters of houses. The residents cloister themselves in their 3,000 square foot homes with their their home theater systems and their own spas and pools behind privacy fences on large lots, and only interact with other residents to try to stop builders from creating more subdivisions like theirs and bringing in more residents like them. It's becoming more evident that suburban and exurban development will run out of gas in the not-so-distant future; the trend is already appearing in some metropolitan areas, and eventually it will reach flyover land. Younger people with good instincts for spotting redevelopment potential and with money to invest for the long term might do well to invest strategically in urban properties with depressed prices. They could find themselves sitting pretty when sprawl begins to implode.

They look pretty good to me. They make me look forward to the meet!

I remember seeing that building during the meet last Saturday. It's looking very good.

Neat Cleveland thread with a different feel, sort of intimate!

Neat. I didn't realize that there was a resurgence in Great Lakes cruises. They were a big thing in the era before cheap international air travel; maybe increasing energy costs will bring them back. Some Great Lakes cities had a considerable tourist industry built around them. I wonder if there are any budget-priced freighter trips available on the Great Lakes yet. To me visiting gritty industrial ports and seeing commerce and industry at work would be more interesting than a socializing-and-entertainment-based cruise.

Wonderful! Maybe the razor wire is to protect the meth lab.

Some boats are really gas hogs. About 1980, my aunt moved from Baltimore to Austin, Texas, and took her houseboat with her. It was pretty fair-sized, and had two Chrysler Marine V8 gasoline engines. They motored from the marina in Baltimore's Inner Harbor to St. Petersburg, Florida via the intracoastal waterway, and then had the boat trucked to Lake Travis. She said that on the water they averaged about 1 mpg. With today's prices, she probably would just sell the boat rather than spend that much.

Nice work! Judging by your pictures, I'd say San Francisco is probably more pleasant than Dallas?

Great photos! Those towns all look like more than I expected. I've heard Washington has a first-rate operating trolley museum; it's been on my list of places to visit for a long time.

Sounds promising. There are always NIMBYs who fear a bikeway will give the "lower classes" access to their private paradise and bring crime and graffiti. I don't know of any cases where that has happened, and in many cases it's those same NIMBYs whose property values increase the most after the trail becomes popular. Now and then I hear murmurings about a greenway along the Maumee Valley between Toledo and Fort Wayne. I've been as far as Defiance and Independence Dam via mostly back roads, and it would be wonderful to be able to make the trip on a safe, scenic, tree-shaded path.

At this point, it looks like a "go" for me.

I could prolly bite you on the ankle and be a block away 'fore you ever seen who done it! :evil:

Wooohooo! Is that ever good news! :clap: I'm gonna hurry out and buy me one o' them marked-down big Hummers before the word gets around and they raise the prices back to where they was. Then, when the gummint wises up to them A-rabs and oil-baron guys and makes 'em quit cheatin' us, and gas comes back down to $.85 a gallon, I'll be sittin' pretty and all them tree-huggers and urbanists in their puny Jap rice-burners can eat their bleedin' hearts out! :roll: And Canada's got all them there tar sands. I'm gonna' go right down and enlist for when we invade 'em! :shoot: