Posts

Showing posts from July 6, 2008

Worst Weather in the World

Image
I flew up to Maine to see my sister and cousins for a few days. As part of the trip we went up Mount Washington in NH. We went up on the Cogged Railway. It's A unique old vehicle system that only uses a large cog underneath the engine hooked into a ladder type of rack on the tracks all the way to the top. The modern engine uses a 600HP John Deere driving a hydraulic pump which in turn drives several hydraulic motors turning the large cog. Mt Washington is known for the extreme cold and highest wind in the world. Yes, the world. That was not the case when we went up. The winds were 3 MPH and the temp was 62 degrees. the highest ever temp ever recorded was 72 degrees and a 3 MPH wind is generally unheard of. So, the weather was quite kind for us.
The Werner Herzog movie of Antarctica has been announced. I like the tag line: "Off the map, things get strange. Werner was quite a guy. His life story was quite humbling for me. We had a personal screening (and world premiere) of his movie "Rescue Dawn" when we were on the ice. http://encountersfilm.com/page.cfm?load=times He was filming when I was on the ice. We had a lot of fun with his right hand man Peter. I think he was from the Eastern Block and lived now in Belgium. There is a possibility there is a shot of me in the film. I am not featured though for sure. It will be interesting to see it. The folks I worked with and the scenery of Antarctica comes back pretty easy. I looked at one of his pictures on the web site and I could feel the dry-cold and hear the loud crunching of the ice/snow beneath my feet over the ever present and pervasive silence.
This is fascinating. A microwave beam that can place audio messages in your head. I told you about all this and no one listened. Ha. I have you all exposed now. It is soooo obvious. Come on really. http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/07/the-microwave-s.html
Image
I went and got the mower. That was a lot of driving. My mom liked it too, until I suggested she ride on it from Rochester to Berkshire. The mower is awesome. The yard was done in no time at all. There is no comparison to the consumer grade mowers and this thing. There is no comparison at all. The mower goes as slow as you need to around stuff and faster than you can handle when the need arises.