Several weeks ago when we in Jim Thorpe, I took a few photos of the trains. There was a train you could take rides on, but there were also a number of old cabooses in varying states of disrepair.
Like you, I too was curious what "2 INCH COMP. SHOE" meant and I did some research. It apparently means that car has 2-inch thick, composition (as opposed to cast-iron) brake shoes. Very interesting!
Last week I posted about planes, and now trains. I guess I'll have to go find some automobiles...
A couple weeks ago, Becca and I had a chance to visit the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. This is the companion facility to the Museum on the National Mall.
The building is a basically a large hangar with suspended walkways for viewing the aircraft.
The Lockheed Martin X-35B Joint Strike Fighter (background) is an experimental aircraft and the predecessor of the F-35 Lightning II. The F-35 is currently in flight testing but the government plans to buy 2,443 aircraft for an estimated $323 billion. In the foreground is the Grumman A-6E Intruder.
I've always had a fascination with space and modern military aircraft, and the Blackbird is my all-time favorite. The SR-71 was a top secret spy plane that could fly at sustained speeds of over Mach 3 (2,300+ mph) at an altitude of over 80,000 feet. From this altitude, it could survey 100,000 square miles per hour of the Earth's surface and was accurate enough to read a car's license plate.
The high speed caused intense friction and heated parts of the aircraft to over 900 degrees. Brand new materials had to be invented to prevent the aircraft from burning up and pilots had to wear full pressure suits that were later adapted for use on the space shuttle. The most amazing part of all this is that the aircraft began development in 1959 before modern computers existed. It entered service in 1964 and was retired in 1998.
Here's a clip from a documentary highlighting some other amazing facts about the Blackbird:
We recently took a weekend trip to Jim Thorpe, PA. It's an interesting old coal town that changed it's name to "Jim Thorpe" after the well-known athlete and Olympic medalist passed away in the 50's. They bought his remains from his widow, put up a monument, and treat him like a home-town hero, despite the fact that he's from Oklahoma. The goal was to attract more tourism, and it probably worked. It's a really neat historic town with a lot of shops, galleries, restaurants, and outdoor activities. Besides, I don't think their previous name of "Mauch Chunk" was doing anything for the tourist trade.
It an interesting side-note, I read that one of Jim Thorpe's sons recently sued the town to have his remains moved back to Oklahoma. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
On the way into town, I just had to get my photo taken in front of a huge piece of mining equipment. This one's for you, Liam!
Here are a few shots from around town.
The second day there, we decided to take a hike. Based on the sign, it sounded like a good trail for anyone who's 6 months pregnant.
We only made it about 10 minutes up the trail before deciding it probably wasn't a good idea to proceed. Supposedly there are really nice waterfalls higher up in the gorge, but it probably doesn't get any better than this!
Besides, I remember hearing some advice back in high school to not go chasing waterfalls, so we headed back down to the rivers and lakes that we were used to.
Here's a view from the other end of the tunnel above.
They have some great rail-trails, I'd like to come back with a bike sometime!
Here's a view of Mauch Chunk Lake.
We followed a road to the top of a nearby mountain and it opened up to a beautiful view of Jim Thorpe. The portion toward the bottom-center of the photo is the historic area where we stayed. If you end up visiting, we would also recommend dinner at Moya!
I don't think we mentioned this when we posted the last ultrasound picture, but we decided not to find out the gender of our baby. Here's a picture from our latest ultrasound. It's 3D, which can look a little strange, but you can make out the head on the right (looking to the left) and a foot sticking up on the left. The tech could barely get a picture because the baby kept it's hands and/or feet in front of it's face. Such a modest baby, not wanting to show off for the camera....
Today we visited Brent, Lisa, Lael, Jaden, and the newest member of their family (and our new nephew), Noah. He was born a little ahead of schedule, about two months ago (27 weeks), weighing 2 lbs, 2 oz. We were planning to visit him at the hospital, but he was able to come home yesterday!
