Category: Travel

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Travel

Hoover Dam

hoover dam in close up shot
Photo by Christopher Delcamp on Pexels.com

“The largest uncontested achievement of Hoover’s leadership is the one that still bears his name: the Hoover Dam. By the time he got back to America, the plan to dam the Colorado River and thereby irrigate and power California’s Los Angeles “Southland” already existed, but it took an organizer of Hoover’s skill to bring several state and municipal governments, federal agencies, and private firms into agreement on how to divide such a massive bounty.

He needed the entire length of his Commerce terms, but the Chief finally got the damn dam built in his image. First he got representatives from the affected states into a room and hammered out the Colorado River Compact over the course of two weeks. The interstate accord set the future direction of the river, but it was a stacked deck, because the congressional (Senate and House) as well as White House representatives all came from California.”

From the book Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

See this article on the controversy about naming Hoover Dam. A change in administration from one party to the other while the dam was being constructed provided the opportunity to reconsider its name!

When President Roosevelt dedicated the dam in 1935, he too called it Boulder Dam.

Truman later resolved the matter in favor of Hoover:

…on April 30, 1947, President Harry Truman signed Public Law 43 which read:  “Resolved … that the name of Hoover Dam is hereby restored to the dam on the Colorado River in Black Canyon constructed under the authority of the Boulder Canyon Project Act…

For more on Hoover Dam and its history, see this page on the National Archives website for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.

Categories
Aviation Travel

Ode to a Queen

A few days ago, Boeing rolled out the last production model of its 747 line of wide body aircraft. Wikipedia noted:

The first flight took place on February 9, 1969, and the 747 was certified in December of that year. It entered service with Pan Am on January 22, 1970. … The final 747 was delivered in January 2023 after a 54-year production run, with 1,574 aircraft built.

I have many fond memories of this great airplane – from seeing it for the very first time flying in to land at San Francisco International Airport (which must have been in 1970) to my first flight which – best of my recollection – was on TWA flying from San Francisco to New York. My last 747 flight was on a Lufthansa 747-8 flying out of Bangalore to Frankfurt in 2016. 

I had a few flights in a seat on the 747’s upper deck – a special treat! The upper deck was also where the cockpit was located – it always seemed to be so high up off the runway that landing a 747 seemed to require some special skill and depth perception! On the other hand, the airplane’s landing gear really smoothed out landings as it had this swing mechanism where the rear wheels on the main landing great touched down first and then pivoted to smoothly bring down the front wheels. The early models of the 747 had a circular staircase to the upper deck where there was a lounge instead of seating. This upper deck cockpit design also facilitated adding a nose door which pivoting upward in the freighter version of the 747. In fact, the last 747 delivered was a freighter to Atlas Air.

Speaking of Atlas Air and that last 747, after delivery it flew from Seattle to Cincinnati as it was put into service. The pilots on the first flight of that last 747 has some fun on their flight – trading a lovely tribute to the “Queen of the Skies” on their radar track.

NASA used a special version of the 747 as the transporter for the space shuttle. In 2012, NASA flew a final flight of its 747 carrying the shuttle Endeavor to its new home in a museum in Los Angeles. Along the way, the NASA 747 toured the San Francisco Bay Area and I was fortunate to be able to make a few images of that flight:

While the last 747 has been delivered by Boeing, it will continue to be flown for many years ahead. Most airlines have removed 747s from their fleets but a few (including Lufthansa) continue flying them. I’d enjoy taking another trip on one of these beautiful aircraft. In the meantime, I’ve got lots of good memories about trips and sightings of the 747.

Update: February 03, 2023 – a few additional thoughts on the 747.

  • For many years, two 747’s have provided air transport for the US presidents – and the current 747’s are soon (?) to be replaced by two new models that have been undergoing customization for some time.
  • Wired added an article about the negatives of the 747 – saying it should have been retired “many years ago”. The article also adds more interesting details about the history of the 747. Fuel economy is the biggest detractor: “A Boeing 747-400, which was manufactured between 1989 and 2009, costs around $26,635 an hour to run. A Boeing 787-8, which is still produced today, costs $14,465 an hour to operate—45 percent cheaper.”

Update: February 04, 2023 – The New Yorker also has an new article about the 747 titled “The World the 747 Didn’t Predict“.

Because the 747 could now seat more travellers on a single flight, airlines were able to sell more tickets at lower prices. Suddenly, travel, particularly intercontinental travel, was accessible to people who had rarely, if ever, been in the air. The 747, in a sense, taught the world to fly.

Categories
Memories Sydney Travel

A Fond Goodbye

I’ve done a lot of airline travel over the years – accumulating over 1 million miles on two US airlines. That’s a lot of flying! Every once in a while I’ll calculate just how many hours of flight those numbers translate to – and that’s when I reflect on just how happy I am that those miles are behind me and not somewhere out there ahead! Over the last two years, I’ve done exactly one trip – thanks to Covid-19!

Over those many miles in the air, there is one airline experience that I’ll never forget – the one and only time I ever flew on Alitalia, the Italian airline that flew its last flight a while back. On that occasion, Christopher Buckley shared a satiric “remembrance” to Aliatalia in the New York Times. In his piece, Buckley noted the airline’s nickname: “the Pope’s airline.” That triggered my memory…

My memory of flying Alitalia begins in Sydney, Australia. I had spent a few days on business in Sydney – one of my favorite cities. I was on a multi-week business trip around Asia.

We were about to check out of our hotel in Sydney to catch a morning flight to Bangkok where we were going to meeting with a large group of clients the following day. As we were checking out of the hotel, the front desk manager asked: “Have we heard about the strike underway at the airport?” We replied: “No! Strike, what strike?”

Turns out there was a labor dispute that had flared up involving the airport baggage handlers who were refusing to work that morning. In sympathy, other union workers at the airport had also gone out on strike – including the aircraft refuelers. We decided we’d better call our airline (Qantas) before leaving the hotel to verify that our flight to Bangkok was still going to fly that morning. Qantas assured us that while all of their domestic Australia flights were being cancelled because of the strike that our flight to Bangkok wouldn’t be – our flight was the first leg of Qantas #1 to London and they assured us they were doing everything possible to avoid cancelling that flight. With that reassurance, we finished our hotel checkout and grabbed a taxi to the Sydney airport.

Our ride to the airport was uneventful – until we left our taxi with all of our bags and headed into the terminal building to check in for Qantas #1. Literally as we were walking into the terminal, the overhead display showing all of the flights began clicking away (I love those old clicking airport and railway terminal signs!) and the display for Qantas #1 changed from On Time to See Agent – not very encouraging! This was years before iPhones – so we didn’t have airline schedule information in the palm of our hands!

We lined up at the Qantas checkin counter and got the bad news – the flight had indeed been cancelled. No good alternatives were offered by Qantas – we were stuck. “See you tomorrow!” was the best they could offer but by then we would have missed the first day of our big meeting with clients in Bangkok! We were desperate for a better solution.

Fortunately for us, we happened to notice on the overhead display in the terminal that an Alitalia flight that was coming into Sydney from Bangkok and scheduled to arrive in about 90 minutes. We rushed over to the Alitalia check-in counter (fortunately there was no line!) and spoke with the Alitalia agent – asking him if this inbound plane might be heading back out to Bangkok on a return trip? Would the airport worker strike also result in the return flight also being cancelled?

I’ll never forget the agent’s reaction when he told us that he was going to do everything possible to keep this flight on schedule and to not have it impacted by the strike. He looked at us and said simply, with a strong Italian accent: “No one screws with the Pope’s airline!”

This guy was one serious, dedicated agent. When the flight arrived from Bangkok, he kept it parked out on the tarmac well away from the terminals – isolating it from the striking airport workers. We were escorted to buses (no union drivers apparently!) who bused us out to the plane (a 747-Combi – part airliner and part cargo plane).

As we waited in our bus to board, the agent told us to watch the unloading door on the side near the back of the plane. Slowly they unloaded two cars from the big door on side of 747 and lowered them to the ground. On our bus were the soon-to-be owners of those two cars – both Ferrari’s – who cheered as their cars were unloaded. After that bit of excitement, we left the bus and walked up the stairs to board at the front of the 747.

Once boarded we got the usual briefing and started taxiing for takeoff. As we turned the corner and starting rolling (not a lot of other air traffic that morning!) the big 747 picked up speed and started to lift off – with a big round of cheers and applause erupting in the cabin as we heading out of Sydney. Sort of like “escape from Saigon”! Only we weren’t headed back to Bangkok. We were on our way to Melbourne. Turns out that this was this flights regular route. Rome to Bangkok to Sydney to Melbourne back to Bangkok back to Rome. Our time in Melbourne was brief – we did pull up to the terminal, some passengers deplaned, others boarded, and we were off for Bangkok. Oh, one other thing – we also refueled in Melbourne after being kept from refueling in Sydney because of the striker airport workers!

We made it to Bangkok a few hours later than originally scheduled on Qantas #1 – but in time for our big meeting the next day. Alitalia saved us! My one and only flight on that now defunct airline.

There was one other time I encountered Alitalia. But this time it was from a distance. I had a layover for an hour or so at the airport in Denver. Turns out I was there waiting the same day that the Pope was flying in on one of his tours of the U.S. And, of course, he was flying “his” airline – Alitalia. I was able to see his plane land and taxi in just before I had to board my next flight.

Ciao Alitalia! The Pope’s airline indeed! Thanks for the very fond memories I have of your service!

Categories
Living Sacramento Travel

A Day Trip to Sacramento

Recently my friend Doug Kaye and I decided to venture beyond our usual San Francisco city street photography venues to get out beyond the bay a bit. After considering a couple of options, we headed to Sacramento for a day.

Doug lives in the North Bay and I’m on the Peninsula so we needed to figure out the best way for both of us to make the trip. After a bit of research, we settled on taking the train – the Capitol Corridor line which runs from San Jose to Sacramento – taking advantage of a special “Friends and Family” discount for buying two tickets.

We met at the Richmond BART station which is adjacent to the rail line making for a convenient transfer for me – I usually take BART to get into San Francisco and on this day I took BART under the Bay to Richmond and made the short walk from the BART station to the Amtrak station. Doug drove over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to Richmond.

We were pleasantly surprised by the Capitol Corridor train. It was about fifteen minutes late in arriving – but made up that delay and got us to Sacramento right on schedule. The train cars are double deckers and we headed upstairs to sit on the left side of the train. After leaving Richmond, the train line runs along the edge of the Bay as it heads northeast before crossing the Martinez Strait to head on to Davis and Sacramento.

Doug took advantage of the snack bar in one of the other cars to bring us back a fresh cup of coffee. We arrived in Sacramento on-time and took the long walk on the underground walkway from the train landing to the station building.

The Sacramento Valley Station is in the heart of downtown Sacramento and has one of those classic old high-ceiling waiting rooms.

It’s about a 15 minute walk from the station to our first stop at the California State Capitol. Right after going through security screening into the building, I caught a glimpse of Governor Gavin Newsom as he moved down the hallway waving to visitors.

The Assembly gallery in the Capitol was open the day we visited although the Senate gallery was closed and we weren’t able to visit that room.

On the main floor of the Capitol are several historic offices – including the old Treasurer’s Office which recreates the period when California’s state government didn’t trust banks and kept all of its assets in a big safe in that office! The old Governor’s office was also very interesting – it has many desks for more than just the governor himself!

For lunch, we headed to Biba Ristorante, a great Italian restaurant in a neighborhood east of the Capitol complex that came highly recommended. We enjoyed a great lunch (I had a delicious tomato-onion soup followed by Pollo alla Milanese)

After lunch we headed to Old Sacramento and the Delta King – an old stern wheeler which has been turned into a hotel. It’s in beautiful shape – looking freshly painted and very “ship shape”.

We walked north through Old Sacramento looking at the shops, saloons and restaurants along the way heading to the California State Railroad Museum.

This museum, a California State Park, is remarkable – an amazing place for railroad buffs. The upper level has a large model railroad display which brought back memories for me of the American Flyer train set that was one of my treasured toys growing up. One of the displays is a series of examples of all of the various model railroad gauges – all the way down to the tiny Z scale trains.

California State Railroad Museum

The docents at the Railroad Museum were a delight. They enjoyed telling us more about their exhibits, answering our questions and sharing. We particularly enjoyed the walk through both the sleeping car (which rocks and has sound and light effects simulating being on a real train trip to Chicago – “all trains go to Chicago!”) and the dining car with its displays of railroad dining china settings.

After the museum, we walked back to the Sacramento Valley Station and caught our return Capitol Corridor train to Richmond.

While this was a long day, we had a great time – and we got in a lot of exercise – over 10,000 steps and over 3 miles of walking. A great day of exercise for my legs as I’m finally back to almost 100% following my broken femur accident last spring!

Notes: All photos taken with an iPhone 11 Pro Max and edited on the iPhone using Photos.

Categories
History New Mexico Nuclear Energy Nuclear Weapons Travel

Visiting the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Update (July 2023): see my review of the Christopher Nolan film “Oppenheimer” based on the book “American Prometheus“ by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.

While I was in Santa Fe in July, I took the opportunity on my way back to Albuquerque to catch my flight to stop by the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History again. This was my second visit – having initially made a quick visit to the museum in July 2018.

Roughly speaking, the museum is divided into three sections – two indoor (nuclear weapons and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy) and the aircraft and missile display area outside. The weapons section is the first part you walk through at the beginning of touring the museum. It describes the history of the development of nuclear weapons – including the race America was against countries like Germany and Japan to develop this technology. It also includes discussion of the famous letter from Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt that led to the creation of the US national effort that became the Manhattan Project.

There’s an interesting exhibit that creatively recreates the scene at the Los Alamos Laboratory as this work was underway. I was particularly struck by the several old mechanical desktop calculators in the display – as the math involved in designing these weapons wasn’t perfected using computers but, rather, slide rules and these old calculators.

The rest of the weapons section includes examples a many nuclear weapons – including facsimiles of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan that led to the end of World War II with that country. As you walk through this display of weapons, it’s striking how they start out being relatively large but then shrink down in size to much smaller dimensions.

Outdoors in the aircraft and missile display area are examples of the Boeing B-29 used over Japan along with a beautifully preserved Boeing B-52 and also a Boeing B-47. There are a number of smaller aircraft as well – along with a replica to the tower used at the Trinity test site in New Mexico where the first test of an atomic weapon was conducted.

I’ve visited this museum twice and learned new things each time. On my recent visit, they were showing a film about the B-52 bomber which was quite interesting. I didn’t know that back in the 1950’s General Curtis LeMay (heading up the Strategic Air Command) had B-52’s in the air constantly that were armed with nuclear weapons and flew toward the Soviet Union only to then turn back and return. Only after a couple of nasty accidents involving aircraft crashes with nuclear weapons on-board did this practice moderate.

The other thing I learned about Albuquerque is what a nuclear city it is. Just a few miles from the museum site is one of the largest storage sites for nuclear weapons in the world – something called the Kirtland Underground Munitions Maintenance and Storage Complex (KUMMSC) where the US stores nuclear weapons – most waiting to be removed from service and disassembled.

Categories
Food and Drink France Travel

Better than French Fries!

During a recent visit to Normandy, we had lunch in the fishing village of Port-en-Bessin-Huppain at Le 47ème Brasserie. I should have ordered some seafood – the fresh fish market in town is right across the street – but, instead felt like a burger. When it arrived, I was surprised – no bun but, instead, top and bottom layers of hash brown-like potatoes. Not something you could pickup and eat like a normal burger – but it was very delicious nonetheless!

Nearby, just across the bridge, is a beach of sea shells unlike any I’ve ever seen (see below). After lunch, I walked about and did some exploring there.

Categories
Books Podcasts Travel

A Few Links for Labor Day

Here are a few links to articles and podcasts that I found interesting this Labor Day morning and over the past few days:

  • Malcolm Gladwell and Timor Kuran. A few days ago someone mentioned The Portal podcast hosted by Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) and, in particular, the episode with Duke University professor Timor Kuran (@timurkuran). Their discussion about Kuran’s theory of preference falsification was fascinating – especially about how things in society can “cascade”. A day or two later I happened to watch this New Yorker video (April 2018) with David Remnick and Malcolm Gladwell (@gladwell) during which Gladwell highlights perhaps his favorite New Yorker article titled Thresholds of Violence (October 2015) – about how school shootings have caught on in America. In that article, Gladwell talks about Stanford professor Mark Granovetter‘s famous 1978 paper about how riots happen – in particular how “a riot is a case of destructive violence that involves a great number of otherwise quite normal people who would not usually be disposed to violence.” He asks the question: “But what if the way to explain the school-shooting epidemic is to go back and use the Granovetterian model—to think of it as a slow-motion, ever- evolving riot, in which each new participant’s action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before?” The connection between Kuran’s false preferences and Granovetter’s threshold models of collective behavior was striking to me. I highly recommend both the Gladwell video and the Weinstein/Kuran discussion on the podcast – fascinating stuff with profound implications for our time.
  • Podcast: Land of the Giants – by Jason Del Rey. A few fascinating episodes exploring the success of Amazon.com. Highly recommended!
  • Podcast: The Moment with Brian Koppelman and his interview with author Ben Mezrich (author most recently of Bitcoin Billionaires which I also really enjoyed reading – see my highlights here).
  • Photography (YouTube): Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera Challenge – Sean Tucker – The challenge provides a photographer with a minimalist cheapie camera – and follows him shooting with it. Good fun!
  • Travel: The Insider’s Guide to Santa Fe – from Outside magazine and Tourism Santa Fe. One of my favorite small cities and the home of Santa Fe Photographic Workshops.
Categories
Hong Kong Street Photography Travel

Street Photography in Hong Kong

IMG_8306My photo buddy Doug Kaye and I traveled to Hong Kong in April for a week of street photography. It was a perfect time of year and the right length of time to be there.

This week Doug shares some of his thoughts from our trip on The Traveling Image Makers podcast with Ugo Cei and Ralph Velasco. It’s a great listen!

Categories
Norway Photography Travel

Scott @ Loftesnes

Scott @ Loftesnes

Back in Norway, my last name was spelled with one “s” on the end. Somewhere along the way, after immigrating to the US, my great grandfather decided to add a second “s” to the name – we suspect to make it “easier” to pronouce (ha!).

This is me – at a road sign at Loftesnes, Norway – shot in June 2002 with my first digital camera, a Kodak DC290 with a whopping 2 megapixel sensor. Tweaked a bit in Lightroom 5 and VSCO Film 05. Lots of memories from this trip!

Categories
Black and White Hawaii HDR Photography Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Photomatix Pro Travel

Back to Hawaii in Monochrome with my Canon 5D Mark II

Tree in a Field on Mahukona-Niuli Road - Hawaii - 2009 by Scott Loftesness

One of my favorite things about Flickr is how I get to see some of my older images – just because someone else found them by searching on Flickr or Google! Each day, I enjoy looking at a report that Flickr provides of activity on all of my photos.

A couple of days ago, an earlier color HDR image of this photo turned up. It brought back memories of that place – on the Big Island of Hawaii on the road heading east of of Hawi. I shot this as a 3-image handheld bracketed shot with my Canon 5D Mark II. The original image I posted on Flickr was processed in Photomatix Pro.

Tonight, I opted to process the HDR using Photoshop’s Merge to HDR Pro. I then brought it into Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2, added some control points for tweaking before finishing it back in Photoshop with some dodging and burning using some new techniques we’ve been learning.

I find this composition very pleasing to the eye – with that gradual slope on the hillside, the beautiful angle of the tree and the foggy skies above. Ah, Hawaii indeed!