On our bike ride today, we stopped and regrouped in the parking lot of this little church.
The place is basically carved out of the woods. The new place, that is. I don’t know where the “old one” was, though. But you think about when that stone was ordered, sometime in the 1950s or later. Whoever placed the job, do you figure they were up against a per letter budget, or there was a committee or a severe case of writer’s block.
I chased her …
And I chased her for 34 miles …
Now, she’s riding pretty well right now, and I’m doing what I can to hang on, but I think my app might have malfunctioned. It says my maximum speed for today’s route was 452.4 miles per hour. And it thinks I did that for about four miles. The precision in the error is what I like. Point four.
And, finally, this picture:
What is significant about this picture? I took it at 8:37 p.m. It would be some time later before the sun went down. That’s a nice feature.
And if you keep reading after that it is worth it:
We took my mother-in-law back to the airport for her flight home yesterday. I saw that plaque and the propeller reproduction above it. I’ll give you two guesses which one I saw first.
But think of that, in 1929, the trip across the country was cut from four days to less than two. I know people who were alive then. I wonder if it seemed like a wonder to their contemporaries. Ahh, this is what it was like.
Think of it as they did. It would take between four to six months to ride a horse from coast to coast — depending on your circumstance, and that’s if you knew the proper route. And then along came the transcontinental railroad.
So anytime before 1869 it was months. When the transcontinental railroad was completed you could be on the other coast in three-and-a-half days. And then, just sixty years later, less than two days. Today, of course, you can fly from New York to Los Angeles in five hours. A bit less if the jet stream doesn’t interfere. But to take trains and planes in 1929, and be on the west coast in two days, man what a marvel.
Alas, the Transcontinental Air Transport, built by “the father of commercial aviation in America” Clement Melville Keys, was hit by the Depression, lower-than-expected demand, political manueverings and one high profile air tragedy. They lasted less than a year and would get bought and gobbled up in a series of mergers.
Today, you can watch an entire loop around the country in five minutes. I wonder what Keys — a teacher, a journalist, a business man and, finally, an aviation mogul — would think of that?
For alternatives, you could do it, today, on a bike in about two months. The fastest walk across the country was in the 1980s, at 60 days. The fastest run shaves 18 days off that time.
We have a flag. It is not yet on display. We’re still displaying other things. Allie, meanwhile, has found her first favorite spot:
The Black Cat is a creature of habit. She’ll spend part of her day here or there, following the sun, being around us, watching the outdoors, curled up asleep. I always wonder what makes her pick her spots. Well, the sunshine is an easy one, but the rest seem like something just short of chance. And, after some amount of time — forgive me, I’ve not charted this all out — she’ll rotate into entirely neat spots for whatever reason. That landing, where she can catch a bit of the early afternoon sun, is her first spot.
Here’s a scene from a quick 18-mile bike ride yesterday:
We’re still learning roads, and so it was no surprise that it was a surprise that we wound up at a place where this could happen:
I’m not a taker of street signs, but that’d be a neat one to see on a wall somewhere, wouldn’t it?
Also the 300-700 feet footnote … I’m sure that has to do with seasonal water levels, but it does seem a bit vague, doesn’t it?
So many mysteries.
adventures / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on What’s a blind dinosaur called? A Do-you-think-he-saurus 13 Jun 16
We journeyed up to Indianapolis for a Saturday trip. And we saw dinosaurs!
I don’t understand how everyone can be so casual about this. There are giant lizards destroying buildings and no one is under any sort of panic or is demonstrating the slightest bit of concern:
That’s at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which is the largest in the world. They say there are 472,900 square feet on five floors and holds more than 120,000 artifacts. They get more than a million guests a year. But we didn’t go there today.
The Yankee has some family friends in Indy. Since my mother-in-law is in town we drove up for a visit, a catch-up, lunch and a little tour.
This was my first trip downtown. It feels like a small town, but busy. And it is just up the road, which is good, because I have to go see that museum.
The unpacking continues. I’ve got to figure out where to hang things. Like this:
Note the year, 1953. I’ve had that magazine — bought it in Kansas City I’d bet — for probably 20 years, because of a feature on the inside:
That’s my bachelor’s degree, after all, so naturally it is something I framed long ago. It should go on a wall somewhere. Somewhere that the dinosaurs can’t reach.
