Barn at Sunrise

Odessa, WA at sunrise.

Compare against the same view as seen by Google Street View.

1/10s Opportunity

Aboard a westbound United A319 yesterday, I had the pleasure of listening to ATC communication on Channel 9. At 38,000ft, Salt Lake Center advised us to expect opposing traffic 1000ft lower at 12 o'clock. I readied the camera, and caught UA14, a Boeing 757 flying SFO-JFK. FlightAware showed the location over Utah and the speeds of both aircraft. This 757 is 47.3m long; closing at 1044mph, it was abeam for just 0.101 seconds. It was amazingly fast!

I left a note to the first officer who was on the radio, thanking him for sharing Channel 9 with us.

Detroit McNamara Light Tunnel

The Light Tunnel connects the B and C concourses of Detroit's McNamara airport terminal. It's a large-scale use of LEDs and offers well synchronized music.

Comparing it to Chicago's similar passageway (also connecting concourses B and C!), this one lacks the elegance of neon. But Detroit's is in perfect repair, and is quite a bit more immersive. There is a button to suspend the display available to those who might be dazzled by the experience and suffer a seizure.

Atlas Missile Silo

This was Fairchild AFB Missile Site #5, home of an Atlas-E ICBM. With a range of 11,500mi, there is little on earth it couldn't target.

The nuclear warhead delivered 3.75 megatons, with an accuracy of 3700m. Accuracy was not particularly good, as this era of ICBMs relied on inertial guidance, and errors accumulate as the missile travels.

Mazzariello's Maze

"Thank you for everything, Earth, I love you!"

This lemon and note were at the center of one of the labyrinths in the Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. This one is named after Helena Mazzariello who established it in 1990. I originally misread the history of the area and though it to be much older; I was led astray by a site describing the first Caldecott Tunnel, which dates from 1903.

Middle Harbor Shoreline Park

Oakland's Middle Harbor Shoreline Park sits on a bit of reclaimed land in the San Francisco Bay. The Port of Oakland surrounds it. It's a rare treat to have a park surrounded by industry with a great view!

Naval Air Station Alameda was situated in the center-left of this picture. Nowadays it's used for not much more than a Mythbusters test track.

Three Level Turbine Interchange

Phoenix AZ sports a beautifully symmetric freeway interchange at the intersection of SR202 and SR101. This is the view facing south; the same satellite view is properly north-facing.

The interchange is a three level turbine design, and is optimized to give a very large turn radius on every transfer combination.

Charlotte Rocking Chairs

Charlotte NC (CLT) is the finest airline hub in the eastern US. It offers a sensible gate layout and is in a region that rarely suffers poor weather.

Here, rocking chairs are made available to transiting passengers, in a nod to North Carolina's furniture industry.

Grand Canyon

I missed out on seeing the Mississippi, as there was dense cloud cover over much of the southeastern US this weekend.

But instead, I was able to get a glimpse of the Grand Canyon! This view is looking directly west, and matches the satellite view of the area nicely.

Abandoned Chrysler Parts Warehouse

This warehouse was once stuffed with parts bins for Chrysler. Service tags on the original electrical equipment date the building to December 1949.

It's located along to a rail spur that previously ran south to Chrysler's Windsor Assembly plant, the largest employer in the city.

GM's Windsor Transmission plant is adjacent to this lot, and is permanently closing this year.

Michigan Central Station

Michigan Central Station was the main passenger railway station in Detroit. It was built for $15M (in original 1913 dollars), and more recently purchased for just $80k (in inflated 1984 dollars).

It's huge and magestic, but has suffered decades of neglect and will likely be demolished.

Corkstone Flooring Co

Four digit phone numbers! This painted advertisment for the Corkstone Flooring Co shows a "Seneca 5126" telephone number. Seattle lost four-digit dialing in 1958, so this ad must predate that.

The business no longer exists (and the migrated phone number, 206-624-5126 has been reclaimed) so nowadays, one must shop elsewhere for Modern Plastic Flooring.

Naked House

The building permit on our neighboring lot goes to great pains to call this a renovation with addition, but it's very clear that there won't be much at all left of the original house.

The roof came off completely today. This picture was taken on the weekend, when the shingles had just been removed.

Nike Missile Master

This was the driveway to the Missile Master command building, coordinating actions by the 10 Nike missile batteries in the Seattle Defense Area. It's listed as S90-DC (Ft Lawton) in Ed Thelan's excellent research.

This was a serious structure, with 3ft thick reinforced concrete walls. The city tore it down in October 2008. The Google view is from before then.

Plum Blossoms

It is a very early spring in Seattle. Plum blossoms have been out for a couple of weeks, and cherries will be soon to follow.

Last year the tree buds and early blossoms waited until the end of March to stage an appearance.

I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge

The original bridge in Minneapolis carrying I-35W across the Mississippi collapsed in 2007. The root cause of the bridge failure was a design error: a pair of steel gusset plates were specified to be half as thick as the load required. The forces involved are impressive, in the tens of thousands of pounds per square inch.

This is the underside of the Saint Anthony Falls Bridge that was erected as its replacement. Design and construction was completed in just over a year.

Round The World

What does one do with mountains of miles? Travel far and wide, in the pointy end of the plane!

I recently ticketed this routing for travel in September. Highlights include multiple days in Melbourne (with a side trip to Sydney), a few days in the Cook Islands, and a pre-Oktoberfest visit to Munich.

Mountains of Miles

I purchased this mountain of stickers from trackitback, a service that facilitates the return of lost items. I also bought a frozen pie (and a mountain of dry ice), a notepad, and $20 in random gift cards.

I don't really place much value on the goods themselves, as the main purpose of these transactions was a bonanza of US Airways frequent flyer miles. Without setting foot on a US Airways aircraft, I have purchased a balance of miles sufficient to redeem for four roundtrip tickets to Australia. In business class!