Robert Pence

Aggressive drivers. The warm weather has brought them out in droves. This evening I'm coming back from Borders, cruising along at the posted 30mph on a local street and the signal a turns yellow when I'm a couple of hundred feet away. I brake to an easy stop, and the knucklehead who's been tailgating me for at least six blocks in an SUV lays on the horn. The normal response to a yellow for some drivers is to floor it. Even if it's red by the time they enter the intersection, if they can accelerate to 50mph or better, it's OK. Time was, I would have gotten out and given him a loud yelling-at, but too many people carry guns now and itch for an excuse to "defend themselves."

I used to have a loud office neighbor whose voice carried, and I don't think he ever did any work; he spent hs days on trivial personal business over the phone. He was argumentative and incredibly cheap, too. He drove a high-end, late-model Audi (his wife made a lot of money), and he spent a whole day calling every salvage yard in the eastern half of the US looking for a better price on a plastic part that the dealer wanted $12 for.

Neat idea! I have the beginnings of a small arsenal stashed around here, but haven't been on a range in years. I used to be pretty good; I have an "Expert" certificate (M16) somewhere in my papers, and at the farm we had a range where I did well with a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. I've never shot a modern automatic pistol, though.

At least one book has been published telling the story of these tunnels. It's by Bruce Moffat, one of the creators of the web page in your link. You can find it at Amazon.com by searching for Chicago Freight Tunnels. The title is "Forty Feet Below."

I subscribed to Bicycling magazine for a long time, but several years ago I dropped my subscription as the magazine became all about competitive-style cycling and thousand-dollar-plus bikes (that was back when a thousand dollars was a lot of money for a bike :wink: ), and the full-page ads were for high-dollar four-by-four SUVs that could carry the adventuresome riders in comfort to places where they could attack the natural environment by careening over hiking trails and unspoiled, undeveloped terrain on their expensive off-road bikes with big knobby tires. The last straw was an article about a newly-opened path in a major city, where a comment about gay cruising activity in a park that the path passed through morphed into an extended gratuitous homophobic rant. The author/perpetrator of the article was one of the editors of the magazine. I haven't looked at an issue of Bicycling in a long time, so I don't know if it has gotten back in touch with the world that normal people live in.

Maybe a little digression, but I don't really think it is: The July 2010 issue of Trains Magazine Map of the Month, a regular two-page spread in each issue, features a comparison of Cleveland's rail lines in 1947 and 2010. I found it fascinating to see all the industrial branches and yards that once served the city's heavy industries.

Especially if it's one I use regularly. The first few steps are disorienting, and then everything settles down. I think part of the problem might be that on a regular stairway, all the steps are of uniform height. On a stopped escalator, the first steps start very low and gradually become higher, and the last ones taper off in reverse fashion. I worked in a four-storey building with escalators, and they shut them off after working hours. If I worked late I usually took an elevator because I found the stopped escalator so disconcerting.

Neat! Usually I like parades because there's positive energy in the crowd, and it makes me feel good.

Chicago Layover, 1973 All Photos Copyright © 2010 by Robert E Pence In 1973 I took my first long train trip, to San Francisco on Amtrak. The trip involved a several-hour layover in Chicago to change trains, and I took advantage of the time to explore a little bit with my camera. I even took a boat tour down the river and out onto the lake. Here are the photos. See how grimy Union Station was before the fire that brought a beautiful cleanup and restoration? The car was the current offering of the Travelers' Aid Society's seemingly perpetual car-raffle fund-raiser. Out into the beatiful sunny day! Sears Tower still was under construction. From the boat: Back on land, the Art Museum Illinois Central electrics before the Metra Electric bilevel gallery cars. I was suprised that because of the height of the building, to keep the sunburst in just the right place, I had to keep moving as I composed the shot, focused, and set the exposure (full-manual Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex 35mm SLR circa 1962)

Superb photo tour of an area I haven't seen. The library by Walker and Weeks is a gem. What has happened to the Greek Byzantine Church is sad, but it's suprising that although it's going to ruin from neglect and age, it doesn't appear actively vandalized and tagged. Excellent work!

Hesston Steam Museum Opening Weekend, 2010 May 30, 2010 North of La Porte, Indiana, off Indiana 39 - just a short drive from Chicago The 3-foot Shay Locomotive was built in Lima, Ohio in 1929. Shay locomotives use a side-mounted driveshaft, universal joints, and gears to deliver power from a 3-cylinder vertical side-mounted engine to trucks that swivel like those under a freight car. This enables them to deliver great pulling power and move heavy loads on hastily-laid uneven track with steep grades and tight curves often encountered in logging, quarrying, and mining operations. This locomotive was heavily damaged in an engine house fire in 1985 and was restored by volunteers at Hesston. Eighteen tons of sophisticated design and remarkable power, this two-footer was built in Germany in 1938 by Orenstein & Koppel, survived World War II, and continued to work in East Germany into the 1960s. Founded in 1875, Orenstein and Koppel today manufactures mining and excavating machinery. I don't know anything about the provenance of this 2-foot gasoline-powered locomotive, but I did learn that it came to Hesston with a four-cylinder Jeep engine and was overhauled and equipped with a 6-cylinder, 300 cubic inch Ford truck engine for more power. It's very smooth and sweet souding. The handsome green car was built on a German 2-foot-gauge flatcar for use mainly on Christmas trains, where its windows and good insulation keep it comfortably warm. It shows beautiful craftsmanship and historic style. These 1/4, or Grand, Scale locomotives once operated at Kiddieland amusement park in Melrose Park, Illinois, just west of Chicago. They have been acquired on loan by Hesston and restored to operating condition. The lead locomotive is a Northern type built in 1950 and the second one is patterned after the New York Central's famed Hudson type. It was built in 1941 "Stet" and "Query" are proofreaders marks, so they were appropriate to a railroad built and operated for many years by someone in the printing business. Much of Hesston's large collection of 1/4 scale equipment came from the estate of Chicago Publisher Elliott Donnelly. Donnelly also was a major benefactor for the Hesston Steam Museum in many other ways. 1/8 Scale Cars & Other Rolling Stock Structures An Aultman-Taylor steam traction engine prowled the grounds, and had to stop for a drink.

Looks quite nice, and excellent photos. Wednesday evening I attended a presentation by some planning consultants who included Greenville in their Powerpoint presentation, including some photos of the Mice on Main.

This evening I met the assistant general manager of Citilink, Fort Wayne's transit provider. Citilink and Bloomington Transit both are managed by McDonald Transit Associates, and she has worked in Bloomington. She said that BT tallied up 4 million rides last year, not including IU's Campus Bus system. That compares with approximately 2 million for Fort Wayne. State funding is allocated based on ridership numbers, so Citilink is already in an unfavorable position compared with Bloomington, and if BT and Campus Bus merge, which quite a few people on the inside believe is likely, the ridership numbers will go through the roof, and the additional state money they get will be at the expense of other systems with lower numbers.

In 1979 I spent the night at the tiny Amtrak station in Catlettsburg, changing between Amtrak's Cardinal and the now-deceased Hilltopper, looking for new mileage and scenery en route to Washington and then Baltimore. I slept on a baggage cart with my backpack for a pillow, because the station was brightly lit with flourescents and had been taken over by some teenage girls with a boombox. To the east I could see the sky brightly lit by a steel mill. Might that have been the mill I saw from a distance?

Late in my professional career, on a couple of occasions I adjourned other people's meetings when it became clear that they lacked direction and were wandering off topic and running out of steam. The first time, I was fairly new on the job and it was my boss's meeting and I rather loudly got attention and shut it down, and thought later, "Oh, God! I'm gonna get fired for that!" There were no repercussions except that I got invited to fewer meetings after that (a bad thing?), and two attendees from another department stopped by my office later in the day to shake my hand and congratulate me for doing what everyone else wanted to do but was afraid to. My boss used to love to fill a room full of people making $50K and more, for a meeting with a vaguely defined subject and no clear agenda, and then drag things on and on and on, in the era before No-Smoking rules took over. The ventilation was always poor, and non-smokers ended up recycling a lot of smoke. One time, I went into the conference room ahead of the meeting, collected all the ashtrays, and hid them outside the room. That was fun and interesting :-D. I went so far as to write up a suggestion and submit it; no chairs in meeting rooms (they always had the most comfortable chairs in the office), no snacks or coffee, the person who wants to convene a meeting submits a list of invitees to HR a week in advance along with an agenda, HR estimates a cost that will be charged to the manager's cost of operations, and assigns a parliamentarian from another department to conduct the meeting according to Roberts Rules of Order. It would have gotten the meeting problem under control, and would have given HR something to do to earn their salaries. I got no response.

Fun tour! The tractor on the roof of the Taj ma Garaj is a Porsche; they built tractors from the 1930s into the 1960s.

Excellent! Bloomington is a delight, and it's easy to spend a lot of time just looking around the IU campus. They keep building, and the old buildings are kept up well, too. Visits there always bring back good memories. Do you mean ridership on Campus Bus or on Bloomington Transit, or combined? They're separate entities so far, I think, but considering the squeeze that Indiana is putting on state university budgets, I expect to see them merged. Student use of Campus Bus is covered in the student activity fee.

Buy a paintball gun and shoot back next time! :shoot:

I feel really sorry for anyone whose life is such a void, such a wasteland that they have nothing to do on Memorial Day weekend but hang around online forums. Oh ... Wait ... Nevermind. I thought of something to do. Today I'm headed for Northwest Indiana, for opening weekend at Hesston Steam Museum, where maybe I'll ride some steam trains, and to Indiana Dunes State Park, where maybe I'll see some eye candy.

If they want parking and are willing to pay enough for it, there may be ways to resolve that. I've read of vintage buildings that were structurally not economically salvageable and were razed with the facades either preserved standing in place and restored, or dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere, to front new structures, including parking decks. That might provide private, secure parking without compromising the historic character of the area.

Nice, peaceful photo, MTS. I like the subdued colors and calm-but-not-glassy surface. My weekend started off a little chaotic, but then things got so beyond-my-control I was able to let it take its course and think about other things! Headed for Northwest Indiana this weekend; maybe I'll make it to the Dunes, if the weather holds up.

Looks like vignetting, like something impinged on the corners of the lens field of view. The most common culprit in those cases is a filter (or stack of filters, like polarizer and UV). It's something you need to watch out for with wide lenses or zoom lenses at their wider settings. No wider than my 28mm f/2.8 Nikkor is, if I try to stick on a circular polarizer without first removing my UV filter, I'll see it. There's an adjustment for it in Photoshop (Filter > Distort > Lens Correction) but it has its limitations. If you can't get away from that particular lens or combination of lens and filter(s), you may be able to back off a little and include a larger field, so you can crop off the bad corners.

Cory, what was the light source inside the tent? Regarding polarizing filters, most of what I've read indicates that you need a circular polarizer for AF camers, but I've read a couple of opinions that said it doesn't matter. With my first AF camera (D70) I bought a circular polarizer and never tried anything else, so I'm not sure about that. I did shoot a bunch of video several years ago using a non-circular polarizer, and the AF on the camcorder worked just fine. I've seen a couple of opinions that Hoya polarizers have a warm cast to them, and that was my experience with the one that I bought with the D70. Almost everything is correctible in Photoshop, but I didn't like the color my photos had, so I bought a Nikon circular polarizer (about 3X the price of the Hoya, if I remember correctly), and my photos with it did seem to have a more neutral color balance.

Some wonderful buildings!