Going Old School

     We as a society have a tendency to jump into any new type of advancement that shows up. We are always being tempted with new ways to communicate, to share our opinions and our art.

    The old methods often lose their appeal and some just die off and disappear. A lot of these “older” systems are still around and are being used but their permeability is always suspect.

    Phones are a wonderful example. Going back in time, the people of a town used to rely on a telegraph operator, someone knowledgeable in deciphering Morse Code. Before that, the quickest means of communication was by a rider on a horse. Then along came the phone lines.

    Both the mail service and the telegraph services are still being used. Delivery by riders on horses has pretty much disappeared and Morse Code is used mostly by amateur radio operators. You have to admit, it is pretty rare when anyone gets a telegram.

    Phones once held a special place in our homes; some houses even had a special niche where it could be placed. The number of land lines has slowly diminished, now days; nearly everyone has a smart phone. We can be called at anytime, available whenever anyone wants us. This is the way of today’s world!

    The computer industry has changed our lives, just as the printing press did many centuries ago. Portable phones got smaller and also smarter! The desire to talk with someone, anyone, at 11PM as you troll down the aisles of your local grocery, was enough to ensure that everyone gets one.

    Phones enable us to search for information, to find out where we are and where to go and how to get there. They take pictures that rival, if not surpass the quality of most cameras. You can read a book on them if you so desire or listen to a concert or even watch a movie.

    Our world is filled with things such as this. Devices which enable us to be better at the things we do. We have smart refrigerators that tell us when to order items that will be needed. There are door bells that show us who is on our front porch, even when we aren’t home. Furnaces can control the heating and cooling cycles of the house along with countless machines which help us save money, save fuel and save us from frustration.

    I’m not saying that is bad!

    I am just saying that we shouldn’t forget the “old ways”. Don’t forget how to use your brain to figure out problems. Skip asking Alexis how to do things and let Google sit for awhile. Read some books, memorize some facts, write some notes to yourself or even better, write a letter to someone. Put a stamp on it and allow the mailman to deliver it. Visit the local library and use their reference section and always, always, keep books in your house!

    Play around with old technologies. Go outside and look at the stars. Open a star atlas and compare the map to what you’re seeing above you!

    Maps are another thing, open a paper map and plan a road trip. Go through some towns with interesting names rather than taking the quickest or least congested route. Stop at a restaurant in one of the little towns, don’t rely on a “good review”, instead rely on luck.

    I have recently been taking pictures with an old 35mm camera, using Black and White film. The only convenience it has is a light meter. It is up to the shooter to decide what aperture and what shutter speed to use. The pictures won’t be seen for a couple weeks so care is needed in composing the shots. There is no instant check on whether or not the picture came out correctly. Practice and experience is the true teacher!

    Our modern world is wonderful, but don’t forget the past. Don’t forget how to use your hands and your mind. Pick up an old hobby and try your luck at it, you might enjoy the experience. Let your computer and phone sit for awhile!

One final note, I used a fountain pen to write this originally…

 in cursive no less!

The TWOs

     This is it, the morning of the 22^nd. A Tuesday morning, a bit early, just a little over TWO hours into the day. It isn’t the time which is important so much as it is, the numbers.

    I have a weird obsession of seeing certain numbers come together.  Watching the odometer turn over to 100,000 miles, or on π Day, May 14^th, 2015, watching the clock turn to 9:26:53am.  (π= 3.141592653 or May 14^th, 2015@9:26:53)

I even baked a pie for the occasion

    Yes, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Right now I am waiting for the clock to hit, 2:22:22AM, on TWOsday, February 22^nd, 2022. That’s a whole bunch of twos in there! How could anyone NOT get excited about that? I imagine there are alarm clocks going off all over the eastern part of the country right now! Today is a great day to celebrate the number TWO!

    The number TWO is a very important number, it governs most of our lives. We have TWO eyes to see, TWO ears to listen, TWO arms to hold and hug and TWO legs to move us around. The majority of us end up with another, the forces of love drawing us together into a pair, TWO people.

    Later in the day, Frank and I are heading towards Altoona to do some geocaches and maybe, see a train or TWO. Geocaching.com has a souvenir they are awarding any cacher who finds TWO caches today. We are planning on adding that souvenir to our banks.

    The time has come…gotta take a picture!

2:22:22am on 2/22/2022

    A few hours later, I arrived at Frank’s house, a little before 5. We wanted to be in the Altoona area by seven, just in case there might be a sunrise.  Frank got us there right at our scheduled time. There wasn’t much of a sunrise though, it was more of a brightening of the sky.

Sunrise?

    We didn’t complain; it wasn’t raining! (Yet) Our first cache was near a railroad crossing.  Sadly, no trains passed by while we were there. Our second find was hidden close to where a sanitarium used to be located. The high altitude and fresh air was thought to be helpful for the patients.  It was later turned into a prison and is now owned by a hydroponic company.

    Hmmm, this could be a future exploration site!

Frank at the Sanitarium Cache

    TWO caches later we came to one hidden near a line of coke ovens. The trip down to them was very treacherous because even though the temperatures were in the 40’s, the dirt road that led to them was covered with a thick coating of ice! Walking was treacherous, thank heavens for hiking staffs! Snow along the edges provided some traction but with each step, you would sink in an inch, making simple walking a step, lift, step type of procedure. It got a bit tiring. The cache was only a ¼ mile away from where the truck was parked but it took much longer to get there. Follow the road or climb/fall down cliffs…

    I believe it was Archimedes that said that the shortest distance between TWO points is a straight line, he obviously never went geocaching!

Me at the coke oven, #2000!

    This was my TWO thousandth find!  I had found my 1000^th cache about 5 miles away from this one. (Altoona has some good caches.) The find was worth the slippery hike down to it, the difficulties are part of what make it fun!

    To read about my 1000^th cache, click here: ​​Books, Adventure and Life: Grail of the Alleghenies Legend, My 1000th Cache! (booksadventuresandlife.blogspot.com)

    The coke ovens are part of a community that once was here called Bennington. There is a near-by cemetery with the foundation of the church beside it and a few other remnants hidden in the woods.  The town was built when the RR tunnels in Gallitzen were dug. Originally a shanty town to house the Irish and other immigrant laborers who hand-dug the tunnels, it could only be reached by train. Coal miners also occupied the houses of the village. It was abandoned in the late 40's.

    After this find, Frank and I then headed down towards the Horseshoe Curve and found four more caches. We passed on climbing up to the curve because the rain was starting and frankly, we didn’t want to get wet, or fall! (Such wimps!)

The last cache

    The last cache of the day was hidden in some rocks about 20-30 feet above the trail. We had to get around a large, icy culvert to get to the cache. The path had lots of ice on it and care was needed to mak sure we didn’t slip. Once we were at “ground zero” we made a quick find and then returned to the truck where it was nice and dry.  The ride home was uneventful and went quickly.

Almost home

    Fog was rising off the streams as I neared my home.  Like all our trips, we had a good time, I believe that this is caused by the TWO people involved! There was only one train we saw in AlTWOna, but we found all the caches we had searched for! There were no unfortunate slips or falls, we stayed fairly dry and, I made my 2000th find! On top of all that, we both received a souvenir! Not bad for a day of Twos!

    One final shot, taken just a few minutes ago…

22:22:22 on 2/22/2022

On the Road Again

     During the night, my dreams were all about geocaches. Traveling along unknown roads on a big motorcycle. Stopping at a bed and breakfast that was a tailor shop during the day, the dreams had nothing that brought them together except that I was on a trip, to find geocaches. It was almost as if I had this subject on my mind…

    When morning finally arrived, I loaded my car with the usual gear, a camera bag and my GPS. YES, I was going on a search to find geocaches. Frank and I had planned a trip, driving towards the east on rt. 22 going out to Blairsville and then dropping to the south before eventually returned home. We had 22 caches on our list.

    The planet Venus was shining in the east as I got into the car. I located Mars below and to the right with binoculars, but had no luck seeing it by eye, the sky was too bright.  This was a rather late start for one of our trips, we are often on the road an hour or so before sunrise. The sun came over the horizon on the drive to Frank’s house. It would have made a great picture except I was on a narrow road with cars behind me and nowhere to pull over.

    Being the second week of February, the days tend to be rather grey here in the Pittsburgh area. Bucking the average, this morning’s sky was blue and the sun was bright. Things looked promising.

    Our first find was alongside a pull off, hidden near a sign saying “No Hunting”. That was just the opposite of what we had planned. Hunting was exactly what we were going to do today! We got into a rhythm; we’d drive a short distance and then pull over to snag another find. Sometimes we had to circle back on the opposite side of the divided highway to locate one, then turn around again to continue our search. 

The further away from Pittsburgh we went, the nicer the scenery was!

    Coming into the town of New Alexandria, we had a couple caches which involved a bridge which no longer exists. We drove down a rutted and ice covered road, passing some “Road Closed” signs sitting on the berm. It was obvious that the area here had been recently flooded. Thick pieces of ice lay cracked in the swampy area beside the road. Broken ice had been pushed to the sides by plows. The salt had only partially cleared the road.

    Driving under a large concrete arched structure, we came to where the bridge once crossed the Loyalhanna Creek. The cache was easy to find but we stayed for awhile to take pictures. Later research showed that the bridge that once crossed here used to be rt.22 before the road was modernized and widened. 

In the 1830’s the bridge was a covered toll bridge.

Builders working on the RR bridge. The covered bridge can be seen behind it.

    The concrete structure was part of a railroad bridge that the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed. The line is now gone but parts of it remain. There are some foundations in the near-by woods from a station that was located here. (Those will be for another trip!)

    We continued on our journey, eventually coming into Blairsville. Going south on 217, we did a short detour to visit the area around Torrance State Hospital. Ann Marie and I had found a nice, abandoned building here and I wanted to show it to Frank. When we arrived, it was gone, the land leveled with no signs that there had ever been a building here.

    Driving through the town of Derry we found another old building to explore, the Ralph Smith and Sons Building. Crossing a bridge, we saw the building below us. Turning around we navigated the back streets to get to it. It appears to be an old RR building; the structure is similar to many of the buildings often situated near railroads. The doors were locked with NO TRESPASSING signs posted on them. We spent awhile taking pictures, of course, staying outside! It was obvious that no one had been here recently, except kids. Most of the windows were broken and graffiti was sprayed on the insides.

  

    The time spent there was worthwhile. We got some nice pictures and some much-needed stretching. It felt good to walk around for a bit! Back on the road again, after a couple more caches, we turned right on rt.30 and headed back in the direction we had come from. 

The intrepid explorers @ their final cache!

    We did one last cache in the parking lot of a Speedway Service Station. It was our 22^nd cache of the day, a record for both of us! To celebrate we stopped inside and got a couple Slim Jims for the ride home.

    We had a great drive; we got lots of pictures and found every one of the caches we planned! This rarely happens. There was one hidden against a telephone pole but luckily, the snow had melted enough that we were able to locate it. If the snow was still there, it would’ve been a DNF. (Did Not Find) The weather was great, our hands were a bit cold at first but as we were heading home, the windows were opened to allow the fresh air into the car.

    Another great adventure, you never know what you might find, so keep on looking!

It’s what keeps us caching!

  

Watching Shadows

     Watching the birds on the feeder outside the window, their colors become so much brighter as the shadows move away from them. The details of the feathers become more noticeable. The red hood on the woodpecker “pops” and the bright blues of the Blue Jay's feathers stand out against the brown of the trees. You can easily distinguish between individual birds!

    Whenever a photograph is taken, shadows and light make up what we see on the paper. (or on the screen) The composition of a good shot involves positioning the lights and darks in a pleasing way.

    The earth’s rotation as it orbits around the sun brings us into the earth’s shadow every night. Day and night depend on where the sun is in relation to us. When we see a Lunar Eclipse, we are watching as the earth’s shadow moves across the surface of the moon. When we see a Solar Eclipse, we are watching as the shadow of the moon passes across the earth’s surface.  The sun is being hidden by the moon.

    On a separate note, isn’t it amazing that the orbit of the moon and the size of the moon is just right to completely cover the sun? If the moons orbit was further away from the planet, we wouldn’t get complete coverage. For that matter, isn’t it neat that the orbits coincide with each other to properly line up to provide these events!

    Here’s another note for you…On April 8^th, 2024, we here in the Pittsburgh area will be treated to a nearly complete solar eclipse. (Approximately 95% of the sun will be covered from here) By driving north to the area around Erie, we will be able to see a complete solar eclipse! 100%!!! The shadows path cuts across more than just the Erie area, there are plenty of places you can go to see this event! If you can do it, I’d suggest making that drive! You will be inside the shadow of the moon! The surrounding area will be dark even though it will be the middle of the day! Mark your calendars! Don’t miss it!

The Chinese S.S. (Tiangong) going from west to east (R to L) at top of picture

(Click to enlarge)

Tiangong disappearing as it passes over the Pleiades

    I experienced another example of the earth’s shadow a couple nights ago. There was a pass of the Chinese Space Station (Tiangong) going over Pittsburgh. After it passed overhead, it started to fade and then disappeared from view. It had just passed into the earth’s shadow. While it was visible, about 250 miles above us, the sun was shining on it and illuminating it. Since it is so far away, no details could be seen, just a bright star like point of light traveling across the sky. When its orbit took it into the shadow, it appeared to disappear.  There one minute and gone the next!

    There are lots of satellites which orbit the earth, many which can be seen without any optical aid. Two of them, Tiangong and the ISS (The International Space Station) have crew members living on them! You can get an idea of when they will be passing over your area by checking various apps and web sites.

 I use Heavens-above.com to see what’s going over my house.

    You know that it doesn’t take a lot to excite me. I find that something to be proud of! Things like watching shadows of Jupiter’s moons crossing the planet’s surface. Seeing the peaks of mountains on the moon being illuminated by the sun while their bases wait in the shadows for the sunshine to reach them is always cool to see. Simply watching the shadows on the hillside across the valley slowly rise up the hill as the sun gets lower and lower can be exciting.

    Watching the shadows move across the snow in the back yard, I can’t help but think, it is such a neat world we live in! There are so many interesting things we see every day. So, keep your eyes open, who knows what we might see next?