Christmas at Carova - Day 1

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We had enough fun last year at the beach at Christmas that we decided to return. Tony's mom suggested that we bring a tree to make it a little more festive this year. So we brought the fake tree we'd abandoned in the attic the last several years and they brought a Charlie Brown tree they found at the Salvation Army. I have to say that it's definitely more seasonal.

This year, we arrived early enough that we could go down to the beach and take some pictures of the ocean as the sun set (since we're on the 4x4 beach, the tides dictate when we arrive to a certain extent).

There are more pictures here.

Ripley's Believe It or Harborplace

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Ripley in Harborplace? Believe it or Not!
Put it in Camden Yards instead


Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was right after all: Baltimore's recent Grand Prix was a "game changer". Or more accurately, the game has changed, and that crazy spectacle of 180 mph racecars careening around the Inner Harbor is now the Inner Harbor norm. Anything goes. And as the game changes, other incongruous scenes like a proposed Ferris Wheel, a billion dollar mega-arena convention center or a tent city encampment "occupying" McKeldin Square should be expected as opportunities present themselves.

In such an environment, a giant cartoon Chessie Monster adorning Harborplace would be consistent. Believe it or not, that is the question. Ripley's "Believe it or Not" Odditorium is the latest prospective client being wooed to Harborplace, Baltimore's front-and-center imagemaker.


Never mind that the city's powers-that-be had only recently declared that they were trying to make Harborplace more appealing to regular Baltimoreans and not just tourists, including the burgeoning population of downtown residents, as they gushed over the introduction of mundane but useful franchised suburban imports such as H&M and the Noodles Company. Obviously, an Ripley Odditorium is the kind of sideshow which would be precisely at odds with that. And never mind the recent controversy over whether Denise Whiting's "hon" empire represented a disparaging caricature rather than genuine Baltimore. The cartoon Chessie Monster goes way way beyond "hon" or a pink flamingo.

City officials think they can somehow straddle the fence. They obviously know there is a limit to how crass the Inner Harbor can get. They're just looking for that limit. A three dimensional Chessie Monster jutting out from the classic Harborplace facade has been declared unacceptable, but two dimensional is OK. A fierce looking monster is said to be unacceptable, but if he looks sufficiently playful, that's OK. Just as the previously proposed "Crash Cafe" was excessively fierce and three dimensional, especially for the 911 era, but a giant electric guitar on a smoke stack has passed muster. Somehow the powers that be think they can always find that magic elusive compromise between taste and commerce that turns off some people but not everyone.

How to Accommodate the Monster

OK, granted, Baltimore is still a big and multi-faceted city, so there should be room here for Ripley, Whiting and other assorted oddballs and iconoclasts to ply their trades. But Harborplace? The city's front door? The place customarily photographed to represent Baltimore the same way as the St. Louis Arch and the Seattle Space Needle? With a giant cartoon monster staring back at us?

This is exactly the kind of abuse that nearly a majority of voters were afraid of with when Harborplace was narrowly approved back in the '70s. Fortunately, developer James Rouse and architect Benjamin Thompson provided a dignified design befitting an icon, but the seeds were already planted by a civic mentality that had already destroyed much of the surroundings to build expressways that never happened. The descent into caricature-ism was then further foreshadowed when a gay-90s Mayor Schaefer jumped in the Aquarium pool with his inflated Donald Duck. But now Baltimore has gone miles and miles beyond that.

The bigger problem is why it always seems to be the Inner Harbor that is the focus of everything in Baltimore - the full gamut from the sacred to the profane? The powers that be seem to think that the rest of the city might as well not exist at all. Dense Whiting should be congratulated for applying her "hon" brand to Hampden outside of the city power structure, back when the Hampden neighborhood was really in need of a wholesome identity other than unmentionable undercurrents like "home of Baltimore's ku klux klan". Now of course, Hampden's image has grown all kinds of rich subtlety beyond the "hon" caricature, so she is less necessary but still a cute sideshow that is amusing to some.

So the Chessie Monster needs a home, somewhere in Baltimore where it can be nurtured like Whiting's "hon". Can the Chessie Monster adorn some local Main Street just as Whiting's giant pink flamingo adorns her Hampden restaurant? Does some neighborhood want to volunteer? Probably not, which is just as well because Ripley is a product of a giant multinational organization, not something amenable to Baltimore's home grown neighborhood quirks.

Camden Yards famous thousand foot warehouse, historic Camden Station and background skyline
Put Ripley in Camden Yards

Fortunately, there happens to be a place in Baltimore where such gigantism can be gracefully accommodated - Camden Yards. This is home of two giant stadiums where crass sports business hucksterism and quaint civic pride somehow coexist. It is also home of the incredible thousand foot warehouse, truly an architectural "believe it or not" even more amazing than a cartoon sea monster. Back in the '80s and '90s when planners inspired by Jane Jacobs were preaching of rich detailed fine grained street level urban tapestries, Camden Yards was able to create a new national trend of urban sports amusement districts dominated by giant stadiums. Yet it has somehow still not become as urban as it ought to be.

There has been some effort to turn Camden Yards into a well-rounded urban entertainment district. The dignified historic Camden Station has been turned into the Geppi Entertainment Museum and the Sports Legends Museum. Both of these were outgrowths of smaller nearby enterprises - the former Geppi comic book shop in Harborplace and the Babe Ruth birthplace and museum in the Ridgely's Delight neighborhood. But the critical mass for urban success has not happened.

The Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum would be a perfect addition to Camden Yards, and a perfect complement for the Geppi and Sports Legends museums. The elements of Camden Yards are already large-scaled enough and sufficiently singular so that something as incongruous as a Chessie Monster could fit in, or rather stand out, just as intended. A whole new building could be provided on the existing parking lot between Camden Station and the Warehouse so that the vision and impact of the museum could be built-in from the ground up. Alternately, a small piece of the warehouse could be adapted to fit the museum. The gigantism of the thousand foot warehouse could be a prefect milieu for the monster - a suitable sea of architecture, so to speak, which would absorb the requisite tackiness in stride.

This would also be the important first step in the true urbanization of Camden Yards, which is urgently needed to integrate Baltimore's other present and proposed future overscaled downtown elements - the convention center, the various stadiums and arenas, and the gambling casino (see previous posts).

Voodoo Balto-nomics

The only real question is whether "Balto-nomics" has now become so warped that rational development decisions which respect urban principals cannot be made. The powers-that-be appear to have realized that making real economic development decisions involving real money just doesn't have as much of the kind of impact they want as does making giant proposals with "funny money" - a billion here for a mega-convention arena, a billion there for State Center, a couple billion more for the transit Red Line, a slice of the trillion dollar federal "stimulus money" for the Grand Prix. This is the economic witches' brew of funding sources now commonly referred to as "public-private partnerships".

With all that gigantism floating around downtown and the Inner Harbor, Ripley is just a sideshow. Harborplace was once a big deal, but now it's just soooo 1980s - Baltimore's version of Boy George's Culture Club, INXS and Duran Duran. Maybe the reason why Ripley is destined for Harborplace is a result of the old economic "trickle down theory". Harborplace has had its time at the cutting edge with top tier rents and now it's time for it's adaptive re-use for lower tier tenants like Ripley. Now Harbor East is the happnin' place. Basically, Harborplace is going through the same life-cycle as rest of Baltimore. For example, Walbrook was once an upper crust neighborhood until its former mansions were chopped up into lower income apartments, then finally boarded up, abandoned and torn down. The trickle down theory can't be repealed. It can only be acknowledged and nurtured so that the proud past can be adapted for a productive future.

The alternative is to exploit the investments made by a previous generation, such as Harborplace over three decades ago, in order to squeeze out the last bit of value. Unfortunately, that appears to be what has is happening with the proposed Ripley Odditorium in Harborplace.

Ripley must be stopped. Harborplace needs to grow old with dignity.

World's Widest Waterfall?

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Inspired by 9/11:
A water feature inside the Highway to Nowhere

It is September 11th. I just turned on the TV and it hit me. In my last post, I asserted that fixing Baltimore's "Highway to Nowhere" will require superior design, as well as creative planning. As great as the wanton destruction which has been wrought there, New York has a far larger and more profound wound to heal at 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center Ground Zero.

Baltimore needs the same kind of design vision, and I believe I mean that literally. A water feature that frames the destructive hole in the ground at the Highway to Nowhere ditch would be a compelling way to transform and unify the ditch, turning its blight into a focal point and preparing it for redevelopment. The sound of a waterfall thousands of feet wide would create the perfect "white noise" to aurally mask the traffic and create a soothing urban ambiance.

This photo taken inside the ditch during the half-year Highway to Nowhere closure shows a small piece of the south retaining wall, which could be converted into a waterfall. The up-close view across the grassy median and the eastbound roadway conveys how this scene does not need to be the oppressive environment that it currently feels like from a motorist's windshield or the urban wasteland above.

The world's widest waterfall at Franklin-Mulberry? It's possible. We simply need to unleash our collective creative juices instead of the heavy-handed construction machine that brought us The Highway to Nowhere in the first place, and is now trying to foist the Red Line upon us.

10 Transit Rules

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Determined riders do their best to thread through the MTA maze, but can the agency make it worth the trouble?Photo by: detail, Maryland Transit Administration route

If only the MTA would follow these 10 rules of the road

Some ways to get Baltimore's mass transit system back on track.

Here's a little story I wrote that appeared in the Baltimore Brew on March 16, 2012 which sums up the basic principles of transit system structure that the MTA violates with impunity. It followed an impassioned account from a rider that appeared three days before, announcing she was giving up on the MTA.

Rude, sadistic bus drivers are but the tip of the symptomatic iceberg, when it comes to what’s ailing the Maryland Transit Administration. Actually, bus drivers are victimized by the same impossible transit system that riders have to deal with.

Here are 10 rules of transit planning which the MTA mostly violates with impunity, but if they would adhere to them, bus drivers could actually succeed in making the system work.

1 – The rail system should carry as much of the ridership load as possible. The empty seats on the rail system are the MTA’s biggest best untapped resource and potential economy of scale. In this regard, the Mondawmin Metro feeder bus hub is one of the few places where the system actually mostly works.

2 – All bus routes should be as short as possible. The longer a route, the more possibilities for things to go wrong and the farther buses can get behind schedule.3 – A hierarchy of long and short routes should be established, allowing each to do what it can do best.4 – For short routes, speed is less important and frequency is more important. High frequency makes reliability less of an issue because if a bus doesn’t come, another is scheduled to arrive soon. The city’s Charm City Circulator, which has an altogether more relaxed atmosphere than the MTA buses, can be a model. Redundancy with the Circulator, however, prevents more frequent service and needs to be eliminated.5 – For long routes, speed is far more important, so routes should be located on faster roads with fewer stops. The MTA’s recent introduction of “Quick Bus” routes is a step in the right direction.6 – Routes must be branded. Shorter routes can be branded for local neighborhood identity, creating a sense of local pride of ownership: “This is OUR bus route.” Riders will then demand courtesy from both drivers and each other, just like guests in our homes. Splitting the #1 line into branded South Baltimore and Sandtown lines makes a lot more sense than a temporary Fort McHenry Circulator.7 – Fares should vary by trip or route length instead of “one fare fits all,” which defies all transportation marketing and economic sense. The electronic Charm Card creates opportunities for this which the MTA has so far ignored.8 – There should be a comprehensive system of transit connection hubs, especially for the rail system, to replace the current system chaos with a coherent structure. An easy place to start is the parking lot next to the MTA’s Lexington Market Metro operations building on Eutaw Street, north of Saratoga Street.9 – By far the most important rail system expansion priority must be to extend the Metro beyond Hopkins Hospital to a comprehensive transit hub comparable to the DC Metro/MARC New Carrollton Station. The official proposal to extend it to North Avenue/Broadway by 2035 would come far too late and virtually preclude any future extensions beyond that. A far cheaper extension to Edison/Monument could be done far sooner and facilitate future extensions to Bayview, Canton, White Marsh, Middle River and Dundalk.10 – The proposed multi-billion-dollar Red Line is almost totally irrelevant to Rules 1-9. The continued existence of this plan merely demonstrates how the lame, directionless MTA has been manipulated by the developers, the Greater Baltimore Committee, City Hall, etc.

What's even better than recycling? This.

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Are you upgradingyour iGadget this holiday season?  Youcan sell the old one on one of these websites: it's greener than recycling it AND you get money!http://www.gazelle.com/http://glyde.com/
But even beforethat, try to fix it:http://www.ifixit.com/
I bought one ofthese iFixit kits to fix my old classic iPod when it died last year.  The kit included all the tools and YouTubevideo instructions for deconstructing it and replacing the battery… very easyto follow, but alas, my iPod was really most sincerely dead.  Perhaps others will fare better - maybe youriThing is only mostly dead?  At any rate,the iFixit kit cost me less than $20, but the enginerdy joy of taking somethingapart and putting it back together, combined with the glee I experienced fromthe idea of sticking it to the purveyors of planned obsolescence?  Priceless.
Photo credit:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes 

California's North Coast -- Day 6

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Thursday arrives and sloppy weather along with it.  But that doesn't keep us from going out to enjoy ourselves, so after a leisurely breakfast we poked around the Crescent City harbor for a little while.

As much as I wanted to get closer to this big fella and take detailed photos of him, there were posted signs saying that any disturbance of the wildlife would result in a $10,000 fine.  So I kept my distance.




We finally saddled up and headed south for more photo ops...


We meandered our way to a tourist dive -- the Trees of Mystery in Klamath.  Now this isn't something Cindy and I would ordinarily be interested in, but the promise of more big trees was too much of a temptation and we paid our fee to enter the park.

Due to the squalls of pouring rain, followed by water dripping off the foliage in copious amounts, I didn't get many photos from our visit there.  Suffice to say that it was luxuriously verdant and filled with many worthwhile sights.


Oh, and did I mention that they have a gondola ride through the redwood forest?


Once we got to the very top of the mountain, the fog, clouds and rain burned off enough for me to take some unexpected shots of the nearby Pacific Ocean.


And we saw evidence of snow and/or sleet, which always makes Cindy very happy.




There was also a cathedral tree, which was the result of an immense ancient redwood dying long ago and nine smaller "saplings" springing up out of it's decaying stump.  It looks so much like the interior of a church cathedral that they hold Easter services and weddings there.


Once we finished the tour, we did a circuit through the gift shop/museum before leaving.  The End of the Trail museum was very much a surprise; it looks like the entrance to a really expensive section of the gift shop, but is actually one of the most complete collections of western native basketry and clothing that I've ever seen.  We couldn't exit the place without getting a sample of the fudge made in-house; we picked up a pound of maple nut and a pound of chocolate for everyone to snack on later.

Once we got back on the road, we went looking for a place to have a late lunch/early dinner.  And we looked and looked.  We finally pulled into the parking lot of an unsavory looking place, but stopped cold when we spotted heavy-duty wire mesh over the windows to keep them from being broken and ominous signs saying that "armed guards were on duty".  Seriously.  We beat a hasty retreat and decided we'd eat later back at Crescent City.

We did mosey up to a spectacular overlook just to the north of where the Klamath River enters the Pacific, just in time to see more squalls approaching from the sea.



Then it was back in the car to head for our last evening meal along the North Coast of California.

Dry spell about to end

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I feel compelled to apologize.

My 5-year-old laptop was fading rapidly away and I've been twisting in the wind trying to decide which direction to replace it -- another laptop, a tablet, just a smartphone, Windows 7, Mac, Chrome, apps versus full blown Lightroom, low cost convenience versus much higher cost power and versatility, etc.

I hope to resolve my dilemma in the coming days...  in the meantime, here's a very recent shot to whet your appetite.

Hamm's Holiday Harbor, Rome, IL - 9/3/12

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Mike and I agreed to meet this morning at 7:30 on the river at the entrance to our marina since they had remained at the Ottawa Town Dock.

Say Good Bye and Queen Kathleen

 We untied at 7:20 and when we exited our marina Queen Kathleen and Say Good Bye were both in sight.

River Campers

 On our way for the first few miles were many campers and fishermen.

Fishermen

Water Exposed Roots

The Illinois River is shallow by our standards.  Most of the time it was 15 feet deep or less with places only 9 feet deep which must be down some since a lot of trees on the banks had exposed roots.

Calm River

 The ride today for 57 miles was very calm with the only wave action being from passing fast boats.  We only had to pass one barge and met only two on our way.  Our intended destination was the IVY Club however a phone call to confirm our reservation ended up with it having shallow water due to the dam letting water out for the Mississippi River.  We then called Hamm's for our overnight docking as did a lot of other loopers.

My Bride

 Locking through is hard on finger nail polish so Ricki needed to apply another coat today.

Holiday Parties

 Holiday weekend and many boats were on the water.  We passed many parties on the shore as we headed south. The weather has become very muggy and hot.

Casino Boat

Pulling into the marina was skinny and we hit soft mud in the entrance and backed out.  Another boater called us on the VHF and indicated that we could follow him in which we did.  Local knowledge .. can't beat it.

Two abandoned casino boats are moored in the marina.  We were the first loopers into the marina and got fuel before going to our slips.  This is the last fuel available until we are half way down the Mississippi since many marinas are silted in.  About 6 or 7 looper boats ended up here tonight.

Tomorrow we leave at 6:30 for a very long run to an anchorage 75 miles down river.

N 40  53.462   W 089  29.862

Hoppie's Marina, Kimmswick, MO - 9/7/12

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The sun was shinning and things looked good to leave this morning until we looked at the weather and saw the storm that was predicted for later in the day.  We discussed the options with Blue Heron and decided that we wanted to be securely tied to the dock as opposed to being caught either on the water or in an anchorage.

Hoppie's Marina

Hoppie's Marina

 The marina is very rustic but the folks here couldn't be more friendly.

 Once we decided to stay the next decision was where do we want to eat breakfast.  So we walked the 1/2 mile to town .....

Kimmswick

Breakfast

 And stopped at the ONLY restaurant in town and had a fantastic breakfast.

Paper Towels and Bread

We asked our server where we could get some bread and paper towels and was told that there was not a store in town but they would sell us some of theirs.  That's hospitality!!!

Kimmswick

After breakfast Ricki walked around town shopping in the several quaint stores while I went back to the boat to change oil in all three motors and fix a cranky front stateroom head.

City Hall

Shopping

The Storm

5:30 p.m. saw cocktails on Quest and then the storm hit.  So glad we did decide to stay put because it rained hard and the wind blew just as hard.  We spent some time under the dock roof talking with Fern and Hoppie about the plight of their marina with the river so low and the silting problem created by the Corp of Engineers by placing a wing dam close to the marina.

Tomorrow we have decided to leave at dawn and with a strong current try to make it 158 miles to the Ohio River to make up for the day we stayed here.

Heather's on the River, Prospect, KY - 9/12/12

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Realizing that we would have a very long upriver run today to Prospect, KY, we were ready to leave at 6 a.m. (CST) when the first signs of light were on the horizon.  With our running lights on we left the marina.

Out early on the Ohio

 We saw wisps of fog for a couple hours but it cleared up very nicely for the remainder of the 120 miles.

High water Debris

Finally ... Mountains

McAlpine Lock

McAlpine Lock is unusual in that it has two large locks instead of large and small chambers.  We called them about 1 mile out and told to keep coming that they had a tow leaving one of the chambers and we could go right in.

New Lock Doors

 As we left the lock we could see new doors to be installed sitting on the Indiana shore.

Homeless Camp

 A canal leads from from the lock to downtown Louisville and we were amazed to see this camp as we passed by.

Leaving the Lock Canal

 At the end of the canal is a low bridge that we could clear but it is always a little unnerving to have a train on it as we go under.

Louisville

Jeffersonville, IN

The clock time is correct.  We had already been on the river 11 hours but due to the move back into EST this indicates over 12 hours travel.  We still had an hour and a half to get to our marina.

Race

 We had to slide around this activity just outside Louisville.

Heather's on the River

We actually finally got to Heather's at 7:35 p.m. very pooped from the day.  We ordered take out from the restaurant and watched a little TV in the salon with our dinner then hit the sack.

Our day tomorrow is a little easier at 59 miles to Warsaw, KY.

N 38  24.901   W 085  36.979