Hot, Hot, Hot

There are two pics this week.

Adirondack Park Loop

Adirondack Park Loop

Last week I wrote about the cool and rainy weather. This week we’ve had the air conditioning on almost all week. Highs are in the 90s and it is quite humid. This is the earliest I can remember turning on the AC. Last year, we didn’t turn it on until August. But the bike riding was good. I did my first 100 KM ride. (Actually, it was 100.95 KM, but who’s counting?) I usually cross this milestone much earlier in the year, but weather, travel, and lack of urgency all contributed to more relaxed riding this spring. I don’t think I could do another 1,000 mile bike tour. But it’s just possible I’ll be able to do a 350 mile “bike & hike” in the Adirondacks in September. I’m looking at a loop route that goes up the east side of the park and comes down the center.

I have planned stops for all my bike rides. The “easy 100K” I rode yesterday includes a food stop at a place that used to be a gas station. They still have the pumps, but they don’t sell gas. There’s no trouble remembering where the place is — one can smell the grease a mile away. I was riding early to get home before a possible T-storm in the afternoon. In the past, the place has not been crowded. Yesterday I found out that 10 AM on a Saturday morning is prime breakfast time. The most popular thing ordered was a hamburger with a fried egg on top. They have hispanic women doing the cooking. One woman will sometimes be working hard and simultaneously conducting two different conversations in two different languages. But you have to listen closely to catch the English, because it sounds a lot like Spanish if you’re not paying attention. These ladies are big, and they like putting a lot of meat on a sandwich. I had a ham and cheese, and was the only person who ordered something that wasn’t grilled. It’s good food, but I take mine outside and sit on the curb to eat. The inside has grease everywhere.

Toy Bird

Toy Bird

China is filled with cheap things to buy. One of them is toy birds that fly by flapping their wings. These are a variation of the balsa wood planes with rubber-band propellers. They’re really cool, really cheap, and look like a lot of fun. I bought 3 for about $5. My neighbor watches their two young grandsons everyday. I gave them one of the birds. They gave it back because they couldn’t figure out how to assemble it. That started “the challenge”. I would work on it for a while, then go do something else. After a couple of weeks, I had it pretty much figured out. But I had ruined the bird with my mistakes. The second bird had a poorly formed molded plastic piece. I successfully built the third bird. You can see it here, being held by granddad with the older grandson standing behind. They suggested starting flights with “medium power” (20 turns), so that’s what we did. The bird fluttered its wings as it slowly descended to a soft landing, which was pretty successful. But when we went to pick it up, we found the tail had completely separated from the frame, and the main wing had started separating from the frame. So much form 3M’s “strongest and best glue”. (Which, by the way, cost twice as much as the 3 birds.) But I had a lot of fun playing with it.

We saw lots of movies this week. I got “7 Years in Tibet” with Brad Pitt from the library, so we could play “I was there.” We had a neighborhood party yesterday. Afterwards, our movie hound showed Adam Sandler’s “The Cobbler”. It was a good movie, perhaps the only good movie Adam Sandler stared in. After Church Sunday morning we went down to College Park to take Mark out to breakfast. Then we saw the current box-office favorite, “Spy”. It’s the first funny spy spoof ever made. And, it’s a very, very funny movie.

Last year the spring on our garage door broke. I got Danita’s car out of the garage, but I dropped the door when trying to put it back down. The bottom panel got wrinkled a little bit. All that would probably have been fine, but several of our neighbors have garage doors damaged so badly that they can’t possibly be opened. The association maintenance committee got on a tare, and we got caught up in the hoopla. Two garage door companies said there’s nothing wrong with the door, but that makes no difference to the association. Danita and I put in a request to install garage doors with windows. If that’s approved, we’ll upgrade the doors. Otherwise, I’ll replace the panel.One thing’s for sure. It will be months before the association rules on our request. That bent panel is sure to be bothering some of my neighbors all summer long.

Danita had a 3/4 crown Thursday. Her mouth still feels “different”, but she’s already feeling better. It’s amazing the dentist can do work like this done in one visit.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Busy Week

There are no pictures this week.

Last week was rainy and cool (around 60). It was no weather for riding. So I spent my time looking at options for the SOCA web site. I made great progress. I think I’ll be ready to make recommendations after one more phone call. Besides that, I finished all but the last presentation of “inside your router”, which will be Wednesday evening.

One of the restaurants we like is starting a weekend brunch. They offered 50% off. We don’t normally go out to eat on Saturday, but we went for lunch. After lunch we watched “San Andreas” in 3-D. Danita is an aficionado of disaster movies. This wasn’t a candidate for best ever, but it was a darned good disaster movie. We had a great time. Saturday evening we went up to Ed and Lynne’s and showed off our China pictures. Today we had our last BSO concert of the year.

The weather is looking better for riding this week. In the mean time, I hope everybody is doing well.

Busy Week

There are no pictures this week.

Last week was rainy and cool (around 60). It was no weather for riding. So I spent my time looking at options for the SOCA web site. I made great progress. I think I’ll be ready to make recommendations after one more phone call. Besides that, I finished all but the last presentation of “inside your router”, which will be Wednesday evening.

One of the restaurants we like is starting a weekend brunch. They offered 50% off. We don’t normally go out to eat on Saturday, but we went for lunch. After lunch we watched “San Andreas” in 3-D. Danita is an aficionado of disaster movies. This wasn’t a candidate for best ever, but it was a darned good disaster movie. We had a great time. Saturday evening we went up to Ed and Lynne’s and showed off our China pictures. Today we had our last BSO concert of the year.

The weather is looking better for riding this week. In the mean time, I hope everybody is doing well.

Hospital Stays

There are no pics this week.

As some of you know, Glen was in the hospital for several days. He had an infection and needed I-V antibiotics. The other person in the hospital was Tony Sochurek. He had blood clots in his lungs. It was quite a surprise. We saw him at Circle Sunday and he was doing great. Tuesday he didn’t feel well. Wednesday he was in the hospital. Fortunately, both are doing well.

We had such a good time and learned so much on our China trip that we decided to do it again. We’ve signed up for a trip to Greece with Road Scholar. We’ll be traveling April 25 – May 11. The focus is on ancient Greece and Turkey (400 BCE – 500 CE).

I’ve given the first two sessions of my “Inside your router” seminar. It’s gone very well. I have about 20 residents involved. There’s one more session next Thursday (June 4). I tried writing the third presentation a week ago. But after the second session, I saw that what I wrote isn’t going to work, and I rewrote it. I’m holding identical evening sessions the following Wednesday, so the last presentation is June 10.

Almost half my bike rides go East, through Ellicott City. It’s good riding with hills, plenty of interesting routes, and of course lots of places for a lunch or snack. All of these rides go down Ilchester Rd, which is also the road our church is on. I mention this because they’re closing Ilchester Rd June 8, and it will remain closed for most of 2015. They’re quite serious about this. No traffic of any kind, 24 x 7. There are other roads, but Ilchester is the best. And with Ilchester closed, there will be that much more traffic on the alternates.

Bummer.

We have a quiet weekend. The only activity is a church picnic on Sunday. They’re forecasting thunderstorms, so this might be an “interesting” event. We volunteered to help setup. I’m wondering how many times we’ll end up rearranging tables between inside and outside venues.

I did a home project this week. We have a walk-in shower that uses a fiberglass floor pan and has tiled walls. The crack between the floor pan and the walls is caulked. The caulk was getting grody. I found a “dummies” article on re-caulking the shower and decided I could that. Sometimes home projects come out OK, but certainly not professional. This time things turned out pretty good. My caulk job isn’t quite up to the professional level, but it looks pretty good. Of course, it took me a week to do what a pro would have done in a few hours. But I don’t have to admit that to anybody.

I went to a SOCA neighborhood IT meeting Friday and picked up a new project. This time, I don’t mind the project. We have a web site. It’s works well for the community, but it’s awkward to maintain. It was started by Mike, one of our residents, and he still owns the site. It’s not possible to have anybody help Mike keep it updated, because the software is so primitive. We’re looking for an alternative that SOCA can own and will be easier to maintain. Mike and I are taking the lead. It should be a fun project, but there will be a lot of drudge work when we actually start rebuilding our site with whatever product we select. If anybody knows of a company that has a good product for hosting non-profit websites, please let me know.

That’s it for this week. I hope Glen continues his recovery and everybody else is healthy.

Back Home

There are no pics this week.

We’re firmly in the swing of things back home. Last weekend, we had a neighborhood party and a BSO concert. This weekend, we had Circle and the “Parkton Open” at Ed’s. Today is a holiday, and we’re going to use it mostly relaxing. I have Men’s club this morning. (We generally solve the world’s problems. By the next week, there’s a hole new set and we have to meet again.) I’ll follow that with a ride. I’m building up, gradually making my rides longer. I’m considering a bike trip this fall. Danita will spend some time at the pool.

I started a neighborhood router workshop. I’m running two sets of sessions — one during the day and a second set in the evening. The first session described the basics of Internet Protocol. The second, which I will do this week, goes into the router settings. It shows how to see what’s connected and how to make basic settings. After that, we’ll go over some “advanced” topics. The first session went pretty well.

Both Danita and I saw the dentist last week. By coincidence, we both had Wednesday morning appointments. The world is definitely not fair. I went in as Danita was coming out. As usual, Danita got a great checkup. As usual, I was offered additional tips for cleaning my teeth better. They suggested I try using a sonic toothbrush. I have it, and it’s certainly different. I’m supposed to divide my mouth into 4 quadrants, brushing each as indicated by beeps emitted by the brush. So far, it mostly makes a fair-sized mess.

I’m off to solve the world’s problems. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Home Safe & Sound

There are pics today. We’re home, safe and sound.

Window Washers Get a Board to Sit On

Window Washers Get a Board to Sit On

The first group left for the airport at 4:30 yesterday morning. At 5 PM, ours is the last flight. Four of us took the last van, leaving the hotel at 1 PM. Since we had some time to kill, we went for a walk in Daning-Lingshi Park. When we got outside the hotel, we found a group of window washers. Each washer gets one board to use as a seat. It looks precarious, but the window washers were hard at work and chatting away. As usual, we found musicians, singers, exercisers, and people just walking around in the park. There are several pics below.

Daning Park

Daning Park

Daning Park

Daning Park

Daning Park

Daning Park

Chenglish: "A Landscape In Your Eyes"

Chenglish: “A Landscape In Your Eyes”

Birders

Birders

Daning Park

Daning Park

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China – Shanghai 2

Bund - Old Customs House

Bund – Old Customs House

There are pics today. This was the last day touring. We were very lucky. We had a cold day with rain yesterday while we were touring museums. Today we had beautiful weather — sunny with mildly warm temperatures. We started out seeing the Bund area. This is the area where colonial powers built their Shanghai offices in the early 1900s. It’s the area where there were signs posted saying things like “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed”. The Chinese have preserved and repurposed these buildings. And every one of them flies several prominent PRC (People’s Republic of China) flags. The picture you see here is of the old customs building. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a good picture of the row of all the Bund buildings flying their flags. It’s too bad, because it’s an impressive sight.

Bund - New Buildings

Bund – New Buildings

Yu Garden

Yu Garden

In 1900, the sidewalk I took this picture from was a tow path where Chinese pulled boats upstream. There was farm land across the river. The area was artificially created (much like Miami, FL; but 100 years earlier). Today, the scene across the river has Shanghai’s tallest and most modern sky scrapers. Foundations run 65 meters deep to find bedrock. The tall building with a square hole in the center is a Japanese building. Originally, the hole was supposed to be round. The Chinese objected because it looked too much like the Japanese flag. (Feelings against the Japanese still run deep.) The Japanese resisted. The Chinese stopped building. The building sat incomplete until the Japanese changed their plans.

Yu Garden

Yu Garden

Our next visit was to the famous Yu Gardens. These were built by Pan Yunduan starting in 1559. I’m including several pics. The Dragon Wall has an interesting story. Only the Emperor was permitted to have a dragon statue or image. Pan thought this would not be a problem because Shanghai is so far away from Beijing. But the Emperor went on a tour of southern China. When he visited the garden, he demanded to know how Pan dared use the dragon likeness. Pan was quite clever. Under the dragon’s head is a frog. If you blow the picture up, you can just barely see the frog in relief. Pan said he was the frog, and the dragon was the emperor. This wall was a symbol that he would forever be the subject of his emperor. After lunch we had a visit to the very un-inspiring Shanghai Planning Center. Tonight we will have our farewell dinner. Tomorrow we travel home.

Yu Garden

Yu Garden

Yu Bonzi Trees

Yu Bonzi Trees

Yu Fish

Yu Fish

Last of the Fish Food

Last of the Fish Food

Dragon Wall

Dragon Wall

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China – Shanghai

Fishing Boats (but they look ceremonial to me)

Fishing Boats (but they look ceremonial to me)

There are pics today. We had three activities today (besides meals). This morning, we went to the Shanghai Museum. This is considered to be one of China’s top museums. They have an extensive collection in bronze, sculpture, ceramics, ancient costumes, jade, furniture, and coins. We couldn’t begin to see everything in half a day. Apparently I don’t have very good tastes in art. We had an audio guide. The more important pieces had numbers. One could punch the number in the audio guide and hear a short message about the piece. Most of the things that caught my eye didn’t rate numbers.

Back From Fishing (my favorite)

Back From Fishing (my favorite)

After lunch, we went to a silk place. They had people weaving silk rugs, sculpting 3-D silk rugs, people making silk bed comforters, and all manner of silk merchandise for sale. If you were expecting something silk from us when we return, you’re going to be disappointed. We’ve spent about $100 on everything so far, including the meals that were on our own. This definitely does not include the price of anything made of high quality silk.

After dinner, we will see Chinese Acrobats. We have seen them twice in Baltimore. We’re looking forward to a great show tonight.

 

River Scene

River Scene

Stone Lion with way cool eyes

Stone Lion with way cool eyes

Bodhisattva

Bodhisattva

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Bells of Marquis Su of Jin (950 BCE)

Bells of Marquis Su of Jin (950 BCE)

They say these bells were in tune when cast. That’s precision casting! The bells were played by striking them with a wooden mallet. The music sounds like Star Trek’s Betazoid dinner music. Each bell had two tones, depending on where it was struck. the round protrusions controlled the resonance. That’s some pretty sophisticated technology for 3,000 years ago. By 1800 AD, the Chinese had lost all of this technology. They could barely cast simple bronze statues of the zodiac animals for the Emperor’s summer palace.

China – Yangtze Locks and Dam

Lock Park Garden

Lock Park Garden

There are pics today. Our flight to Shanghai was canceled. Our tour company arranged for us to take a bullet train to another city, then fly from there to Shanghai. It means we won’t arrive in Shanghai until 9:30 PM. But we are quite happy because we didn’t have to miss anything on the tour.

Last Lock (Left side has low water level)

Last Lock (Left side has low water level)

We woke up last night and realized we were in the first of 5 locks on the Yangtze River. We went out to our balcony to watch. There were 4 tour boats in the lock, 2 wide and 2 long. There was plenty of room lengthwise, but the width was quite crowded. There was only 10 feet or so to spare. The boats navigate in and out of the lock on their own power. The pilots are quite good, but they inevitably bump each other or bump the wall. They have rubber bumpers along both sides of the boat and travel slowly. Mostly we couldn’t even feel the bumps. We saw the lock finish emptying, the exit gate open, the boats move to the second lock, and the gate closing. That was enough, and we went back to bed.

Last Lock Door is Open, boats are moving to the river

Last Lock Door is Open, boats are moving to the river

By the time breakfast started, we were docked at the dam. There are lots of river tour boats, and they travel in lock step. They generally go through the locks at night. Commercial ships go through in the daytime. When docking, the first ship ties up to the dock. The next ship ties up to the first. We once walked through two other ships getting to our destination. A wall of ship’s crew prevented us from wondering around the wrong ship. Our local guide told us that 10,000 people visit the dam on an average day. That grows to 40,000 on holidays. (Some dam visitors arrive by bullet train or other transit.)

Dam and Future "Small Boat" Lift Termination

Dam and Future “Small Boat” Lift Termination

The scope of this project boggles the mind. I’ll let those who are interested look up statistics on the Internet. When they needed to remove a mountain of granite, they got a few tens of thousands of soldiers together and “disappeared” the mountain. They have two sets of locks. Either set can go in either direction. Generally, one set goes upstream and the other goes downstream. Depending on size, up to 6 ships can fit in a lock. There is no charge for ships to use the locks. (Hydro power pays all the bills). The project is already paid for itself after 19 years of operation. The locks are already working at capacity. Cargo ships are backed up trying to get through. The Chinese solution is to build a boat lift so the smaller boats can go up- or down-stream separately. A “Small Ship” is anything under 13 tons, which includes most of the tour boats.

This 4 Stage Escalator Replaces 200 Steps

This 4 Stage Escalator Replaces 200 Steps

The dam guide told us they are building a new canal. Beijing is in an arid area and needs more water. So they are building a canal to love water from the Yangtze. Its equivalent to building a canal from the Mississippi to DC. In the US or in China, one thing is the same. Now that more water is available, farmer all along the canal want more water. There are continuous fights about who gets how much water. Even the Chinese can’t always achieve harmony.

The rest of our day is on buses, trains, and planes. (Fortunately, we didn’t have to ride scooters around the streets of China!)

China – Yangtzee II

Red Pagoda

Red Pagoda

There are pics for today, if I can get them uploaded. If you don’t see 4 pics, just come back in 2 days. I will be able to post them from Shanghai. We cruised the Yangtze River, going through the first two gorges. Our off-boat tour today was a ride up a mini-gorge in a small boat. It’s an amazing area. The Chinese do themselves a disservice. They focus on some particular formation, attaching great importance to it. They build suspense, with everybody waiting to get around the bend to see the great formation. Then it turns out to be not much of anything given our view from the river, or some such thing. In the meantime, we lose focus on the grandeur and beauty of this area. For example, the second gorge is known for having “hanging coffins”. These are coffins, over 2000 years old, made of logs and placed in caves as high as possible above the river. A number of these were flooded when the dam was built. One can see some of the coffins in a museum. There is supposed to be one coffin still in its cave and visible from the small boat in the mini-gorge. Everybody was craning their neck in a futile attempt to find the coffin. In the meantime, we are sailing through some of the most amazing countryside I have ever seen.

Sampan Fish Market

Sampan Fish Market

There aren’t a lot of pics because they make a majestic area look banal. The Red Pagoda is from yesterday, at the relocated village we visited. I forgot it was on my cell phone. The sampan fish market was kind of cool. The sampans catch fish. Then they sail up to a tour boat and beat on the hull. Somebody from the tour boat comes out and buys fish for the buffet. The hanging coffin cave is explained above. The last picture shows dust that is still stirred up from a landslide that happened quite a while ago. I feel it deserves a name as grand as any of the other silly landmarks. I took a cue from the aura of mystery caused by the dust, and named it “Gateway to the Gods”.

 

Hanging Coffin Cave

Hanging Coffin Cave

Tomorrow we will be traveling until quite late. I might not be able to post tomorrow.

 

 

 

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Landslide Dust

Landslide Dust