Robert Pence

Some new members posting on the forum! Welcome, all! Rick, I'm particularly glad to see your participation in the forum here. As a long-time antique engine collector (no big stuff, though) and enthusiast, I've been aware of the Tod Engine project for some years since I first saw photos linked on Smokstak or Harry's Old Engines. There are several Youngstown photo sets and discussion threads on Urbanohio.com, and I'm pretty sure I posted a link to your Tod Engine site either in a reply on one of those, or in my own set of Youngstown photos from 2008. You can find more of the Youngstown posts by using the "SEARCH" function from the menu bar at the top of the page. Although the majority of forumers here are more focused on architecture, urban planning and design, and transportation infrastructure, there's a small handful of us who love massive machines and historic technology in general, the functional bones of industries that made this a great country. Chadslink, you've displaced me as senior member here. I was born in 1939. Again, a few of us seniors in the midst of a big bunch of young guys, but its a diverse, smart, talented, welcoming crowd. Stick around and explore the forums.

And people would respond, "Columbus, Indiana? The town with the great architecture?"

I never even heard of that one. I guess I was too old at that point. Anyone remember 3-2-1 Contact? they used to make us watch it as homework back at PS 30. Heck yeah! It was on immediately after Square One in the afternoons in the late 80's. I was a really smart 5 year old. I don't know what happened to all that intelligence, lol....... It got lost somewhere. Too much education! I only got my bachelors so I still have plenty of smarts in reserve! I'm sure glad I got my education out of the way a long time ago, when there wasn't so much stuff to learn. :-)

NKP 765 is a magnificent machine. I volunteered with FWRHS in the 1980s, and although I was tied down by gainful employment at the time, I got to accompany it to a few excursion venues and took a lot of photos. I never did any of the glamorous stuff -- more like sweeping out cars, washing windows, occasionally serving as a car host, and hauling trash. I did get to ride in the cab and atop the tender for part of an equipment move between Bellevue and Orrville at 50mph around 1985, and it was a memorable experience. A whole big set of NKP 765 photos is here. The official FWRHS site is here.

I'm a victim (twice in a year) and I don't mess with prostitutes or stay in places they frequent. I blame the dad-burn U.S. Gummint, dang it! :whip:

Flint looks better in the photos than I expected, considering what has happened to the American auto industry in general. It does seem to lack density, but it has some attractive, quality recent construction and looks clean. Although Youngstown has lost a lot, it does have quite a few imposing buildings, some by prominent architects, in its core. I just searched out the thread that I posted a while back. It's here.

A worker cuts into a big cottonwood tree in the Saint Marys River in Fort Wayne with a chainsaw, while standing on a floating log steadied by a coworker with a hook. It's part of a riverbank stabilization and reconstruction project going on across the street by my house. More photos here.

Many handicap parking spaces, at least around here, are extra-width, in order to allow for extending wheelchair ramps from vans. Providing easier access to wheelchair-dependent shoppers is reasonable. What I see a lot, especially at places like Lowe's, are the morons who finish with a lumber cart or other oversized, heavy cart, and then shove it into one of the handicap spaces as if they're too stupid to tell the difference between that and a cart corral. A handicap space blocked by a cart is just as useless as one with a car parked in it. Store management will never address the issue with the offenders or ask the cops for enforcement, because they fear offending a customer. Once in a moment of cluelessness I said something to a guy who left a flatbed cart in a handicap space, and came near to getting punched.

Nice. Looks like a pretty good fairgrounds.

Yum! Cleveland in Summer > Cleveland in Winter.

All of You ...

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Wonderful narrative, David! You should post that as a review on whatever booking service you used to reserve your room.

Faaaab-you-lous thread, David. I think UO should proclaim you an honorary homo. Do we have a certificate for that? :wink:

I don't s'pose there's a TSC (Tractor Supply Co.) store near Shaker Square. Their stuff wears like iron and sometimes they have pretty good sales. Some stores carry nearly a full Carhartt line (all the folks who own horses love it), along with Dickie and Key jeans and overalls. They have flannel shirts and hooded sweatshirts in big and tall sizes, too.

Cory, 'nother thing to check - see if Adobe has an update for the Camera RAW file types on their site. I've updated in the past; I think I had to download an update to CS3 when I bought my D700. Depending on the version of Photoshop you're using, there might be a free update from Adobe that will let you read later-model NEF files. Something about JPG that you ought to know about, maybe it's already been covered; I'm too tired to read back through the thread to see if it has. The way JPEG compresses files is by discarding selected amounts of image data. When you reopen the file, whatever program you're using interpolates to try to guess what was discarded, and recreates an approximation of it. With each save-reopen cycle, the image degrades. I only tinkered briefly with the Nikon software, so I don't know if it will save in TIF format. If it will, you're better off to use that instead of JPG because TIF doesn't discard image data. It maintains the integrity of the original image, except for what you change knowingly when you edit.

Problem is, they could hitchhike home on/in your suitcase. I've been lucky on my two encounters, I guess, because I always put my luggage, etc. on one of those fold-out stands that the hotels usually provide, or on the metal rack up on the wall. That's no guarantee, though. There are powders and maybe some sprays that are effective. What I've read is that many of the bugs have developed resistance to most household insecticides. You might check with a local hardware store, Walgreens, or CVS to see if they have anything. Or you could just sleep in your car! :wink: Seriously, sometimes I've thought about that; I have a station wagon with enough room in the back. So if you don't hear from me in a while, you'll know I've been picked up for vagrancy. The cheap motels (where the owner/manager and his whole family live on the premises and do all the work are often too inept and too tight-fisted to deal with the problem. While the bugs may get into even the good hotels/motels, the management usually is quick to respond before resident colonies develop.

Termites? That's scary; a unless it's been treated and stabilized, the damage could spread to where the house could collapse without warning, or at least a floor or stairway could give way under someone. Milwaukee

A couple more that I promised, but didn't get around to posting until now: Beverly Shores, Indiana - in the Indiana Dunes at the southern tip of Lake Michigan. It looks as though the finish has held up well in a location where high winds, especially in winter, carry a lot of sand. Michigan City, Indiana - 222 Carroll Avenue, near the South Shore shops and station.

Cute, fairly intact downtown. This building is a delight, and could really benefit from a facade rehab and restoration of the street-level storefronts. I'll bet it once had some impressive cornice work. In the '60s - early '70s, there were no real "out" gay bars in Fort Wayne with dancing, etc.; there were the closeted cocktail lounge at the Van Orman Hotel, and Henry's, where the theatre crowd hung out, but no place where gay people could party it up and dance. Toledo's Scenic Bar (Monroe & Erie?) was a popular Saturday-night destination for a carload or sometimes even a mini-caravan from FW. A sort of cultural exchange evolved, with occasional carloads coming from Toledo to Fort Wayne. What evolved wasn't exactly an improvement in the social environment in Fort Wayne. We always had had b!tchy queen bees who sometimes pretended to their affluence, but not so many and not at the (low) socio-economic level where evilness and the ability to out-trash-talk everyone else became something to aspire to. Some nice kids came to Fort Wayne from the nearby small towns, got caught up in the Toledo thing, and turned into obnoxious, spiteful, evil queens. Ooops! Straying off topic. Sorry.

Not if you're a straight guy staying at a resort in PROVINCETOWN! lol goodness. im sure you fit riiiight in. ... says the forumer who posts photos of himself with his legs in the air:

If you've never experienced a major attack, you can't comprehend the intensity of the itching. It's like chigger bites multiplied by a hundred. Hydrocortisone ointment (i.e. Lanacort 10) helps a little, but it has to be used often. The motel in La Porte, Indiana, where I was a long-time customer, developed an infestation. I first got bitten about a year ago, and told the manager about it so I assumed he had taken care of it. I stayed there this Spring, though, and was bitten so badly that I became physically ill and had to have a prescription antihistamine (phenergan) to knock down the allergic reaction. This time, I contacted the county health department about the place, and on subsequent visits to the area I've stayed at a better motel. The extra 20 bucks a night is well worth it. I just feel lucky that I didn't bring them home in my luggage and infest my house; for a couple of months, every time I got a mosquito bite I freaked out -- "OMG! Are they in my house?" A friend in Bloomington, Indiana, who works for IU, says that some IU dorms and Bloomington motels have developed infestations. It's possible to encounter them even in the best accomodations, but the management in those places is more likely to spend whatever it takes to preserve the value of their investment. Owners/managers of cheap motels may be too tight-fisted to aggressively treat the problem, because they depend more on turnover by from outfits like commercial pavers and roofers and others with traveling crews than on repeat business and word-of-mouth advertising.

Isn't that column painted or zebra-striped to get cyclists' attention? I think there are industrial padding materials that could be used to minimize injuries, too.

Thanks! I've often thought that if I had to pick one state where I could live without ever leaving, Pennsylvania might be at the top of the list among the ones I've seen. It has a mix of dense and diverse urban metros, small cities, historic villages, excellent national park sites (i.e. Gettysburg, Allegheny Portage, ...), and splendid countryside with orchards in bloom in Spring. If you're so inclined, stop by my site and scroll down to the Pennsylvania section. There's a sampling of my wandering the state, with lots more still to be scanned. The most famous American of Captho-Rus ancestry is Andy Warhola, AKA Warhol. Apparently this immigrant group came to Johnstown as well as Pittsburgh. The iron industry and its associated coal mining attracted a lot of Eastern/Southern European workers. I believe Johnstown's iron works predated the Carnegie and Frick enterprises, and those two entrepreneurs to some extent seeded their fledgling Pittsburgh-area operations with experienced workers recruited from Johnstown. I've only seen Johnstown in snow from train windows, passing through. It looks lovely that way, but I'll bet it's no fun trying to navigate those hills in a car at that time of year. Maybe I was regarded differently as an old guy than I would have been as a youngster, but I found most people in Johnstown friendly and hospitable. I can't think of a single unpleasant or uncomfortable interaction with anyone while I was there. I think the churches are a fundamental part of the European heritage of the early settlers. Each successive generation finds more diversions, though, and participation declines steadily. Last year the Diocese of Johnstown-Altoona announced the consolidation of Cambria City's five parishes into one. I read one statistic that said Cambria City had lost ninety percent of its former 11,000 population as the mills shut down.

Let me guess - Chicago vs. Cleveland debate? or Chicago vs. Columbus?

Done.