Hard to Starboard

This is the view from the bridge of the Queen Mary that is now berthed in Long Beach, California. As I stood here looking towards the bow of this magnificent ocean liner I wondered how many people had walked across the decking below me during their journeys across the North Atlantic Ocean. This ship was launched and christened 75 years ago and entered service in 1936 for the Cunard Line. She was in service for 31 years before being retired in 1967 at which point the City of Long Beach purchased her to become a hotel and tourist attraction. I cannot imagine what it would have been like for the 2100 passengers and the 1100 crew members to sail on one of those journeys to America, but it must have been pretty amazing sailing into the New York harbor.

An Artistic Drive

My mum, dad and aunt went home last night, so hopefully I can get back to the posting of a photograph a day. So I will begin with this one from Death Valley taken in a very beautiful location along a one way loop road called Artist's Drive. The mountains are known as Artist's Palette because of the different color of the rock formations in the mountains. Death Valley really did surprise me how beautiful it was and I cannot wait to go back there to explore more of it to share with you. I'm also working on creating some galleries of all my photographs including the ones that do not always make it on to here. I'll let you know when that is up and available. Click on the image for a larger version.

A Golden Hotel

Las Vegas is a pretty amazing place and changes every time I go there. The last time I was there was November 2008 and the recession hadn't really kicked in, this year it's a different story. The rooms we stayed in cost $150 last year, this year $39. On top of that there are less people travelling there so it's not so crowded and a whole lot nicer to go to. One thing that we did while we were there was go to see the show The Jersey Boys. What a wonderful show! I had no idea what it was about and just went because Janet wanted to go. In case you don't know either it's the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and their rise to fame and stardom and the troubles along the way. Of course the music is all Frankie Valli and the performers gave amazing performances.

The photograph is of the Palazzo Hotel where The Jersey Boys is playing. It's an amazing hotel and just so beautiful and ornat inside. The photograph was taken from The Strip where the hotel looked like it was made of gold.

A Silver Spoon

I want to ask you a question, Do you ever see something or go somewhere that evokes very powerful childhood memories? For me that happened this week and that memory was of a silver spoon. When I was young I remember my grandmother having a silver tea spoon in a little blue box. The spoon had an engraved top that was of the Queen Mary cruise ship. It was a souvenier spoon of when she had visited the Queen Mary at Southampton when the famous liner had been retired from service. This was back in 1967 and not long before the Queen Mary sailed to Long Beach, California to become a permanent fixture in the port as a hotel and convention center. I remember that spoon because eventually it got used to stir tea with and whenever I could that would be the one I used for my tea. Truth be known it probably reminded me of my grandmother who had passed away when I was 9 years old. Well finally after 10 years of living with an hours drive of the QM I made the trip to go and visit it and guess what I found? I know you guessed it a spoon. In one of the shops they had a display of things from the passed and there in that display was that exact spoon, talk about taking you back in time.

The Queen Mary is an interesting place to visit especially to learn the history of how people travelled before jet liners. This photograph was taken of the controls in the Bridge of the ship. It all seems kind of basic now compared with ships of today, but this once great ocean liner was launched 75 years ago in 1934 so I guess basic would be the norm back then.

Zero Elevation

No one guessed the location of the previous two photographs so here is the final one with the result. This place has a beauty all of it's own and there are a couple of areas of it that I would like to go and see, such as The Racetrack. Anyway the location is Death Valley National Park. It is so desolate it's beautiful and interesting. It's also HOT and I mean HOT! It was 115F while we were there. Janet decided to pick up a rock, it was pretty funny to watch her throwing it hand to hand as it was burning her. For all my English friends, you may remember Roy Castle of Record Breakers frying an egg on a rock in Death Valley, I'd be pretty sure you could do that at the hottest time of the year. By the way if you're in Las Vegas and decide to head back to LA via Death Valley like we did, it may look like a 2 - 3 hour detour, believe me when I tell you the rest of your passengers will not be happy when it adds about 6 hours to the journey. Mind you everyone enjoyed it and was happy to have seen it.

Hey, I Hate Being Below The Sea

So no one figured out yesterdays destination so here is photo two, that I hope will help you out. If not tomorrows will surely give it away.

About 7 years ago I was given the chance to try scuba diving, so I thought "What the heck? I'll try it!" Well I got a wet suit on, an air tank and some flippers, quite a sight I'm sure you'll imagine and headed into the sea at Catalina Island. I swam 10 yards and got about 6 inches under water when I decided scuba diving wasn't for me and promptly got out of the water and vowed never to go below the surface of the sea again. Until that is I visited the place you see above. It is 282 feet below sea level and is the lowest land elevation in North America and 8th on the list worldwide.

Where Are We Now?

Sorry for no photos being posted for the last three days, I took my mum, dad and aunt to Las Vegas and I'm too cheap to pay $14 for the Internet access in the room. We had a great time though and I came away $100 up, so it was a real good trip.

Todays photograph was inspired by my friend Stephen, in England after he mentioned that he prefers Black & White photos over color from the days when he used to print in his own darkroom. I so much prefer the instant gratification of digital, but I still remember putting a piece of paper in developer and watching the image that I just exposed to it magically appear before my eyes. Doing that at school was fine as we had a darkroom, but at home it was just a mess and a hassle to clean up after an evening of photo printing. So back to today's photograph, I'm going to ask you to guess what it is of and if no one guesses right I'll post another photo tomorrow to give you another clue. To see this image (or any of the others for that matter) in more detail, click on the photo for a larger version.

Sorry We're Out of Gas!

If you're ever driving along Highway 62 between 29 Palms and Videl Junction in the most easterly part of Southern California then make sure you fill your gas tank up before you leave either one of them, because if you wait for the 76 gas station in Rice this is what will greet you. The only structure left standing in the vacant town of Rice is this gas station canopy and it's palm tree. Click on the image for a larger version.

How Big Was That Earthquake?

Before moving to California I always wondered (or worried would be more to the point) two things about earthquakes and those two things are as follows:

1. The important one, "What does it feel like to be in an earthquake?"
2. How do they measure the size of it?

Well the first one took about 4 months for me to learn after I moved here or so I thought. One Sunday night I was brushing my teeth when the whole house had a violent jolt, that was a 4.1 magnitude quake. So me being me I thought "Ahh no big deal I can live with that!" How wrong was I. About a month later a 7.1 magnitude thundered it's way through the house like a freight train. Now that was an earthquake and for the two weeks following it I could shower in about 30 seconds, for some reason that was the place that scared me the most to be caught in an earthquake. Until you have experienced the violence and power of the whole world around you shaking you have no idea how it feels.

The second point took a while longer for me to discover and it happened purely by accident while we were out looking for potential radio sites. On a hilltop in Joshua Tree National Park stood a tripod with a dome shaped object on top of it and some other equipment. This turned out to be one of the many earthquake measuring sites located all across California. The photograph above shows one of these such sites in Joshua Tree. For more earthquake information with real time shake map, check out the USGS Southern California web site. Click on the photo for a larger version.

Evolution of a Radio Site Week 5

Things are slowing down now after the initial burst of activity for the counties new radio site. As you can see the grounding has been completed and now it's a matter of the finish grading for the site before the fence is put up and the site is covered with a layer of gravel. Like anything the big things go the fastest and the last 10%, the detailed work, takes the longest. I will not be posting any more photos of this site until it's complete and I get to take some pictures of the inside of the building.

On a separate note thanks for all the input on the photographs yesterday. To start with things seemed pretty even, but the eventual winner was color. The consensus being that it brought out the texture of the scene. Thanks again.