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From Aviation to Aeronautics
The view here is southward from the Aviation/LAX station on the Los Angeles Metrorail Green Line, which means that those hills in the background are "Los Palos Verdes", & the city of Carson is probably at the bottom.
Carson, of course, is where the Goodyear Spirit of America is based, and this is presumably she. Goodyear has elected not to attempt ( Read more... ) -
Japanese railways circa 1940
Among the many wondrous & strange things to be found on this Internet of ours are videos, originally taken from film, of the railways of Japan at the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
( Here be links to YouTube - Beware! ) -
This is madness! This - is - CAPITAL METRO!
During the "South by Southwest" festival in Austin Texas, which I was attending on account of my appearance in a film showing there, I decided to use public transportation to avoid having to drive and park in the notorious downtown traffic. There proved to be aspects of this which did not work out particularly well, & left me in doubt as to the ( Read more... ) -
Shiny, pretty locomotives
I realized I had a couple of nice photos hanging around, from National Train Day 2012. I got to the Fort Worth Intermodal Transportation Center only after things were already winding down, but there was an interesting pair of locomotives sitting on a track normally used for AMTRAK services.
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Rail Travel Summary
I prefer to travel by rail, when I can. So why not make a list of the trips I've taken? Most of these, especially the long-distance ones, are since 2000. I'm sure it's not complete, & I haven't included airport trams or that sort of thing.
AMTRAK intercity routes (East/North-bound and West/South-bound trips)
Adirondack (Montreal/New York ( Read more... ) -
"Last Flight Out"
I've long had a desire to see a Space Shuttle launch in person. STS-135 was my last chance, & I made it, by the skin of my teeth, & at the cost of a perfectly good car.
( Read more... ) -
I'm rather pleased
Now, I admit it was, to no small extent, just the luck of the draw : the questions I was presented with happened to be ones I was less than totally unprepared to answer. The examiners kept bringing me the tests, & I kept taking them, which is nothing new in my life, & the last one I passed with no points to spare.
Still & all, though, there wasn ( Read more... ) -
It doesn't get better
I see that, in response to a series of publicized suicides of teenagers with homosexual tendencies, a campaign has started to assure queer kids that "it gets better", that, even if they think death would be better than what they are living through now, they can expect their lives to improve ( Read more... ) -
I've started a fund drive
Two, actually. Both, of course, are for activities related to the Luna Project which neither I nor the Publications Fund in its current deplorable state (depleted by expenses & lack of revenue) can pay for.
One is to send me to Australia & New Zealand, to the World Science Fiction Convention & the New Zealand natcon, with a $1000 goa (& basically a ( Read more... )