Yes, I really did meet Andre the Giant back in 1991…
July 26, 2022, 7:42 PM
Back in the summer of 1991, my life was quite different than it is now. We lived in Rogers, Arkansas back then, and I had just completed fourth grade. My father worked as a quality manager for Scott Nonwovens (now part of Berry Global following a series of acquisitions over the years). My mother worked as a fitness instructor at the Walton Life Fitness Center (WLFC) in Bentonville, i.e. Walmart’s corporate fitness center. That job of Mom’s provided a lot of benefits for the entire family, as we all got access to the fitness center facility, of which we made good use. We were there so much that the fitness center almost felt like a second home at times, what with my taking swimming and Taekwondo classes there, as well as a little fitness camp called “Kids Kamp” during the summers.
One of the benefits that came with the fitness center as far as Mom was concerned was the Walmart employee stock purchase program. I participated in it when I worked for Walmart in the mid 2000s, and as far as I know, the company still has this program. Basically, you elected to set aside a certain amount of money per paycheck, which was then used to purchase shares of Walmart stock in your name. As such, you were afforded all of the rights and privileges that came with being a shareholder, such as voting on issues presented to the shareholders, as well as attending the annual shareholders’ meeting. Back then, Walmart was a much smaller company than it is now, so much of the annual shareholders’ meeting occurred at their corporate headquarters in Bentonville.
One part of the Walmart shareholders’ meeting, at least at that time, was a trade show. A bunch of companies that you’ve probably heard of if you’ve ever shopped at Walmart had booths set up and they were showing off all of their new offerings. In 1991, this was held at the Walmart corporate office (in 1992, it was held in a former Walmart store nearby that they had recently vacated following a relocation). Among various things that we saw there, I got to take a Super Nintendo for a spin and play Super Mario World for the first time at the Nintendo booth, about two and a half months before it was released to the public. I remember being surprised to see so many different buttons on the controller (six compared to two on the original Nintendo), and seeing Mario do two different kinds of jumps, i.e. the spin jump and the regular jump.
Continue reading…A day up in Pennsylvania…
July 22, 2022, 8:30 AM
On July 15, Elyse and I went up to Pennsylvania to photograph a very specific target: the western portal of the Kittatinny Mountain Tunnel, which is one of four tunnels on the mainline Pennsylvania Turnpike. I’ve been wanting to photograph a Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnel for a while, but distance plus operational challenges caused this to be back-burnered for a long time.
My first thought was to photograph the tunnels the old fashioned way: on the turnpike itself, from a vehicle. I did this on my shoot from 16 years ago where I photographed Breezewood and then did the turnpike to Carlisle. I do not recommend that anyone do this, at least not the way that I did, because I was driving with one hand and photographing with the other. At the relatively young age of 24, though, I thought that I was good enough to handle it, but looking back, I’m fortunate that nothing went wrong. If I had someone else with me doing the driving, this would have been a better option, but I didn’t have one. Of course, even then, you really only have one shot at it. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a toll road, and a relatively expensive one at that, plus the exits are spaced fairly far apart. Thus, in the case of Kittatinny Mountain (and the adjacent tunnel through Blue Mountain), having to go back to take another crack at it would require about 25 miles of extra driving, considering that the exits on either side are spaced about 12 miles apart, plus the distance to actually turn around at both ends. Plus extra tolls and the fuel to do that round trip. Pulling over and shooting some photos from the roadside is also not a viable option, because as I understand it, the PTC does not look favorably on that. General rule of thumb is that outside of the service plazas, the PTC does not want you outside of your vehicle on their property at any time except if you absolutely have to, and will come check on you if you are outside somewhere that you’re not supposed to be. So that led me to do some research on Google Maps in order see if there were off-turnpike places to photograph any of the tunnels. Allegheny Mountain is too far west, being more than halfway to Pittsburgh, plus there’s no off-turnpike access. Tuscarora also had no access. No access at Blue Mountain, either. But at Kittatinny Mountain, Route 641 goes over the turnpike just west of the tunnel portals. Therefore, we have a winner.
Finding that, I then turned to Elyse and basically said, “Help me justify this outing by building a day,” and sent along a map of my target and the intended route there. That’s how so many of our adventures happen: there’s something that one of us wants to do, but we can’t justify the time commitment or expense of a trip for it it all by itself. So we add more stuff and make it into a full-on adventure that typically gets us home around midnight. Elyse wanted to see a siren and some other stuff in Shippensburg and Chambersburg, so there was the rest of our adventure.
Categories: Pennsylvania, Photography, Roads, Security, Travel
Saying goodbye to the Orion V…
July 5, 2022, 11:15 AM
On Friday, July 1, Elyse and I went on a transit adventure, going down to Alexandria to attend the ceremonial final trip of the DASH Orion buses. For those not familiar, DASH is one of the local transit agencies in the DC region, serving Alexandria, Virginia alongside Metrobus. The Orion V is a model of high-floor transit bus manufactured by Orion Bus Industries from 1989 to 2009. Orion itself went out of business in 2013 when parent company Daimler mostly exited the bus market in North America (save for selling Setra motorcoaches), and New Flyer, another bus manufacturer, bought Orion’s aftermarket parts business. Long story short, Orion has been gone for a while, and even the newest high-floor buses are now reaching retirement age. DASH, meanwhile, had been operating Orion buses since its founding in 1984, initially operating the Orion I model, and later the Orion V. So this event marked the close of an era in DASH’s history, as these were their last Orion buses in service. DASH’s fleet now consists mostly of Gillig and New Flyer vehicles. DASH was also the last agency in the region that still operated the Orion V in service, which closes a chapter in the DC region in general as well. Metro and Fairfax Connector still operate the later Orion VII model in revenue service, but that is a low-floor bus, and is a very different design than the Orion V.
As far as the Orion V itself goes, that is a pretty solid bus. Most agencies in the area operated them at some point or other. I’ve photographed Orion Vs operated by Metro, Ride On, DASH, and Fairfax Connector. I’ve operated Orion Vs plenty of times, and they’re a lot of fun once you get the hang of them. I found them to be very difficult to handle as a new operator in a training environment because they were a bit bouncier than the low-floor buses, as well as more sensitive in the steering, but once I was out of training and operating on my own, I was able to get the hang of driving them, and had tons of fun with them, to the point where I looked forward to being assigned one. If the number started with a “21”, I was a happy guy. I especially liked to take them on runs that had big deadheading (running without passengers) segments – especially on the freeway. I remember doing a run a few times where the last revenue trip ended up at Prince George’s Plaza station, and I had to deadhead from there all the way back to Rockville, where the bus division was located. I would take East-West Highway (MD 410) over to Baltimore Avenue (US 1), and then take that up to the Beltway. Taking an Orion V on the Beltway late at night was a lot of fun. I just had to remember to limit my enjoyment to about 60 mph in order to keep myself out of trouble. After all, our buses had DriveCams on them, and those puppies were sensitive. I was delighted when I got to take an Orion V out for a spin again in 2018 when a friend who helped run a bus museum was visiting. I got settled in that seat, and it felt like old times again, after I had not operated an Orion V in a little more than two years at that point – ever since I left the bus in order to do trains. I took my friend, along with Elyse, on a proper adventure in that bus, going over a few routes from my time as a bus operator, and showing it off a little bit. A good time was definitely had by all.
Categories: Alexandria, DASH
Staunton Mall demolition update…
June 10, 2022, 3:15 PM
This past weekend, while Elyse and I were on a trip down to Staunton, we visited Staunton Mall in order to check up on it to see how its redevelopment was going. You may recall that Staunton Mall had been on a long, slow decline before finally closing in December 2020. I published a photo set about the mall based on my final visit, documenting as much about the mall as I could so that it could be remembered, and including older photos from years past. My last update was from July, and covered the fencing off of the mall building (sans Belk, which remains open), and asbestos abatement in some of the anchor spaces.
Now, demolition has begun in earnest, and a little more than half of the mall is gone. Interestingly enough, the mall is being demolished from the inside out, as the interior walls and roof have, in large part, been demolished, but the exterior walls, as well as the spaces closest to those exterior walls, are mostly still intact and recognizable. I have no idea why they’re doing it this way. I would have expected the exterior walls to come down along with the rest of everything, as they’re clearly working from south to north. The JCPenney end of the mall is mostly gone except for the exterior walls, while the section between the food court and Wards is only partly demolished, and the 1980s expansion is, for the most part, still intact. And, of course, Belk remains open for business.
We visited the mall twice: once for Elyse, and once for me. In Elyse’s case, she was going for something very specific: the panel in the elevator at the JCPenney store. For those not familiar, Staunton Mall was a one-level facility, however, the JCPenney store had a very small upper level on the west side of the building, which housed the store’s administrative offices. It’s why the front side of the store was so much taller than the rest. Elyse rode this elevator for the first time in 2016, and again in 2020 just before the store closed.
Categories: Augusta County, Staunton, Staunton Mall
Trying out electric cars in space tights…
May 25, 2022, 2:31 PM
This past Thursday, Elyse and I went out to take some electric cars out for a test drive. I started seriously considering purchasing an electric car after filling up the HR-V a few weeks ago and being blown away by how expensive it was to fill it up. The idea was to use whatever electric car for commuting, and then keep the HR-V for road trips and other adventures where it might not be practical to use an electric car.
In going out, it was warm enough to finally take this pair of men’s space leggings that I had bought for myself a while back for a spin. I had wanted a pair of space tights for a while, and I was delighted to have found a pair of these things for men. After all, why should women get to keep the joy of fun prints all to themselves? Plus, after having lost so much weight, I can now fit into a pair of these and not look ridiculous. You be the judge:
A weekend trip to Richmond…
May 4, 2022, 8:30 PM
From April 14-16, Elyse and I did a weekend trip to the Richmond area. This was a case where one adventure begets another, as Richmond really got the short end of the stick on our October trip to North Carolina and Hampton Roads. We had plans for the Richmond area on the outbound trip as well as the return trio, but they ended up being greatly abbreviated in the interest of keeping it moving. Richmond is in that little spot where it’s close enough that we can go any time that we want, but difficult enough to get to so that we typically don’t. Our last day trip to Richmond was about five years ago, and more recent visits to Richmond have occurred while we were passing through on our way to other places. I think that the biggest impediment to our visiting Richmond more often is I-95, as it’s fairly unreliable, being subject to backups on a very regular basis, making it difficult to predict when we will arrive in the Richmond area. In any event, inspired by our earlier trip, we had gathered up enough stuff that we had wanted to see to make a weekend trip to Richmond worthwhile. So we picked a month and did a weekender.
On this particular occasion, we left the house and got going, taking I-270 to the Beltway to the I-95 express lanes, which were pointed southbound at the time. We soon learned that there was a very long backup on I-95 southbound. So we bailed, taking an express lane exit to US 1 near Lorton. A major backup on I-95 had the potential to derail our entire day, so Route 1, while slower, was still a better bet than taking 95. This routing took us past a number of places, and and we made some planned stops and unplanned stops. The first stop was unplanned, at the Harley-Davidson place in the Quantico area.
Categories: Amtrak, Photography, Railroads, Richmond, Travel
Thinking about the “Sunset Park” concept…
April 26, 2022, 4:32 PM
Those of you who have been following this website for a very long time may remember that one of the last quote articles, which ran about seven months before the feature was discontinued, was about the then-impending closure, capping, and seeding of the city landfill in Waynesboro, Virginia. It was titled, “What Waynesboro needs now is a star!” and discussed a proposed redevelopment of the site into “Sunset Park”. At the time, I said that it was a wonderful idea, and suggested that Waynesboro should consider commissioning some sort of large-scale art piece similar to the Roanoke Star, in order to have some sort of icon visible all across the city, and provide a landmark for the park, i.e. a reason to go up there. Since my article ran back in 2004, the landfill was successfully capped and seeded, but as far as I can tell, very little has occurred since. Plans have been drawn up, but that’s about the extent of it. No construction to this end has taken place as of yet.
On my most recent trip down that way in mid-March, Elyse wanted to visit a hobby shop in downtown, and so while she did that, I went around to take the drone up to explore the old landfill site. I wanted to see what it looked like up there, and, more importantly, I wanted to see what the view looked like from up there.
The sense that I got from my flight was that the landfill site seemed ideal for a park. I found rolling terrain for the most part, with a gradual slope downward towards the city. Gas vents are peppered throughout the site, consistent with its status as a former landfill. An access road follows a curved path to the top.
Categories: Waynesboro
“Just singing a song…”
March 15, 2022, 12:00 PM
This past Thursday evening, Elyse and I found ourselves at JMU, touring the recently renovated Zane Showker Hall. I’m going to go into more detail on that adventure later, so stay tuned for that, but while we were in the lecture hall formerly known as G5 (now numbered 0212), I found a microphone up front, and it turned on and worked. When you give me a microphone, you never know what I’m going to do with it. In this instance, I had a little bit of fun with it, and belted out a tune, which Elyse recorded:
Categories: Harrisonburg, JMU, Today's Special
A reminder about party affiliation in Maryland…
March 14, 2022, 2:40 PM
As we move ever closer to the midterm elections in Maryland, and the primaries that accompany them, this seems like the perfect time to remind everyone about the way that primaries are conducted in Maryland. Specifically, Maryland, along with 13 other states plus DC, conducts closed primaries. That means that the only way to participate in a primary election is to have registered your political party choice with the state voter registration system ahead of time, usually before a deadline. In the case of Maryland, that party deadline is June 7, 2022. Party registration in a closed primary state is not something to be taken lightly, and determines which candidates you get to vote for in the primary.
All of this about party registration should not be confused with any actual political leanings that you may have. In a jurisdiction that skews very heavily in one direction, and where party registration is required in advance in order to vote for a given party’s primary candidates, the only way that you get any say in your local governance is to register in that party. In a situation like this, the primary election for that party is the election that decides the result, and the general election is just a formality, because the nominee of that party always carries the race by a very large margin, and the other general election candidates know that they have no real chance at winning.
(By the way, if all of this sounds vaguely familiar, this is not the first time that I have written about this subject.)
Categories: Montgomery County, State and local politics
Shooting macro with a new phone…
March 5, 2022, 6:10 PM
At the end of February, I got myself a new phone: a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. This is the latest and the greatest as far as Samsung phones go, as of the time of this writing. I typically get a top-of-the-line phone for myself, mostly because of how much I use it for photography. I also like a big phone screen, especially now that I am in middle age, and have to hold things further away from my face in order to read them clearly. This new phone was a bit of an update compared to my last phone, the Galaxy S20 Ultra. It still looks and acts like a Samsung phone, so there was very little learning curve, but it’s faster, easier to read, has a better camera, and has the S-Pen (which I had not had since 2017, back when I had a Note 5). Most importantly, though, the camera is much better than the S20. The S20 Ultra’s camera was a bit farsighted. It did just fine photographing things that were far away, but it couldn’t focus if you got really close to it (sounds like me!). So in order to get the proper effect, you had to back up and then zoom in. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked well enough. Sounds like when I need a magnifying glass in order to read the fine print sometimes.
So with the new phone in hand, Elyse and I went out, and I took it for a spin while running some errands. I was interested in trying out the improved macro function, and focused on shooting things really close up. We got together with my friend Matthew, and he got to see me do my thing, getting up, on, over, and around everything while Elyse did the things that she needed to do.
Our first stop was Fair Oaks Mall, where Elyse wanted to go to BoxLunch, which is a gift shop. I had assumed that BoxLunch was a restaurant, i.e. a place where you can buy a boxed lunch (imagine my surprise to find out that they didn’t sell food!). While Elyse was going around there, Matthew and I waited outside, where I took the new phone camera through its paces in the mall, focusing on the details in the sitting area just outside of BoxLunch:
Categories: Cameras, Cell phone, Fairfax County, Gaithersburg
Looking at a photo shoot with a critical eye…
February 16, 2022, 11:28 PM
Recently, I made a post to Instagram sharing a photo that I took on a trip to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania back in November. This is the photo that I shared:
Categories: Harrisburg, Photography
A weekend trip to Atlantic City…
January 21, 2022, 5:27 PM
From January 13-15, Elyse and I took a weekend trip to Atlantic City, New Jersey. We had been to Atlantic City twice before, both times for a single day each about a year ago. Our first visit was part of a larger weekend trip where we did a little arc across the Philadelphia and South Jersey areas, and Atlantic City was what we did on the last day. The most memorable thing about that trip was watching my drone sail away on South Missouri Avenue, go out of contact, and then locating it about four blocks away, on the roof of Angelo’s Fairmount Tavern. The second trip was a day trip that occurred two weeks later, where we made a day out of the need to retrieve the drone after the folks at Angelo’s had kindly retrieved it off of their roof for us.
This time, we were actually staying in Atlantic City. We stayed at Caesars by Elyse’s request, as she wanted to film the elevators there, which are keycarded (i.e. we stayed there as guests in order to get the access that we needed). I didn’t mind the price at Caesars, nor was it a bad place to stay, so that worked out pretty well. This trip was mostly dedicated to photography, just like the previous adventures in Atlantic City, but with more time to play around. I’m not too much into gambling, but we did make some time for that. We also made plans to get together with family while we were up there, which was the driver for our plans. Therefore, on Thursday, we drove up and more or less made a beeline for Atlantic City. Then on Friday, we had our adventure day. Then on Saturday, we traveled back west to fly the drone, do a few other things, and visit family.
However, on Thursday, Elyse wanted to stop in at Deptford Mall in order to get a screen protector for a new phone that she was getting, as well as film an elevator. I am not unfamiliar with this mall, as I went to this place with my parents back in the early 1980s, and have been a number of times within the past ten years. The mall bears very little resemblance to what it did when I was a child (though there is a Bamberger’s labelscar on the first floor), but it’s still a good, solid mall.
Categories: Family, New Jersey, Photography, Travel
A few flights over Pennsylvania…
December 31, 2021, 11:13 PM
Just before Christmas, Elyse, Evan Stone, and I made a day trip up to Pennsylvania. The goal was to visit the Lancaster area. Elyse left the house ahead of us and flew up to Lancaster via Southern Airways Express, while Evan and I went up by car and met up with her in Lancaster. On the way up, Evan and I took our respective drones for a spin over Hanover, the Susquehanna River, and Lititz. I have my DJI Air 2S, while Evan has the original DJI Mavic Pro.
The first flight was over downtown Hanover, and it was a solo flight for me. Evan saw a building where he wanted to know what the elevator was, and I entertained myself with a drone flight.
The building in the center of this photograph is the building that Evan found interesting, that he went to check out. I don’t recognize the logo on the building, though. Anyone recognize it?
Categories: Hanover, Pennsylvania, Photography
A day out in parts of Virginia that we don’t normally visit…
December 14, 2021, 11:03 PM
From December 9-11, Elyse and I took a little weekend trip down to Staunton, Virginia, where we stayed at Hotel 24 South. We call the place our little home away from home, as we always stay there when we do these trips every 2-3 months. Typically, we do something simple on the first day after we get down there, have a full-day adventure on the middle day (the Staunton Mall photo set came out of one of these middle-day adventures), and then do a few things and go visit my parents on the last day before heading home. It’s a good routine, and it’s a lot of fun.
This time around, our middle-day adventure took us down to Clifton Forge, Covington, and Roanoke. I had not been to the Clifton Forge and Covington area since 2005, and Elyse had never been. Roanoke wasn’t part of our original plan for the day, but as we had not been to Roanoke since 2018, we were probably due for another visit. I had low expectations for the day, considering that the weather was expected to be cloudy (which means gray photos), but I got a few useful things out of the day.
Our first stop was the Howard Johnson’s on Route 11 north of Lexington. I had first become aware of this place after seeing it on Highway Host, and so we decided to visit it again. Elyse wanted to film the elevator, while I was more interested in the architecture. My understanding of the history of this location is that it has always been a Howard Johnson’s ever since it opened in the 1970s, though the attached Howard Johnson’s restaurant later went independent under the name Hilltop Diner, and had closed entirely by 2004.
Clearly, I know how to break a drone…
November 24, 2021, 2:54 PM
I haven’t mentioned it on here yet because it’s discussed in an upcoming photo set, but I got a new drone last month while I was on my trip to North Carolina and Hampton Roads. My DJI Mavic Mini threw a propeller blade and crashed nearly 400 feet up in the air while I was photographing a shopping mall in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. I was positioning the drone for my first shots of the mall, and then I noticed a “motor error” message and saw some uncommanded rotation. Then I saw the view start to tumble, and the connection with the remote dropped. I was soon able to reestablish contact, and found the drone on the ground, laying on its back in the grass about 500 feet away. Here’s what it looked like when I picked it up:
Categories: Cameras, North Carolina, Travel, Woomy