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Showing posts from November 4, 2012

Worst Weather in the World

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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.

Stellar Axis Art Project in Antarctica (Revisited)

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I just stumbled on this film (Stellar Axis link below) about an art project that I was involved with in Antarctica on the Solstice 2006. http://blog.theguysatwork.com/2006_12_17_archive.html It was a moving experience watching the video for me. It really took me back there for an hour. Lita Albuquerque and I connected at some level when we met. I was one of the 51 volunteers at the end in the spiral. We rode out from McMurdo on "Ivan the Terrabus", (the only time I rode in Ivan). It probably took an hour to drive there out on the shelf. My memory of the participation was one of peace. When we started walking away from the center we were all quiet and the walking got a little awkward since all the stepping turned the ice shelf into irregular masses of granular snow and the hard bits of wind hardened shelf. At the end we all lied down and outstretched our arms. After a bit we started yelling "woos and woo-hoos" and such. There was laughter and good feelings. Stellar ...
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The weather has been perfect in Atlanta in the wake of hurricane Sandy. There was no damage on the farm. Bad weather is pretty much normal there. The floods over the last two years will be hard to top in the area near Binghamton, NY. I went flying Saturday. It was quite nice. It was almost ideal conditions. I cant help but take pictures of car wrecks around Atlanta. There is a lot of them. A lot of cars, a lot of wrecks. I was planning on climbing Brasstown Bald (highest elevation in GA) today by myself, but I decided I should probably work on the house instead. The pic of the airport is my home airport KLZU. I snapped this pic being 5 miles out, 3000 ft and cleared for a straight-in approach for Runway 25.