Merrily on Our Way

Which Springfield?

I just got back from Springfield, Illinois. The battle for Simpsons fame is on. Notice this attempt to convince us that Springfield is home not only to Abe, but to Homer as well.

Marketing Makes Everything Special

I intended to spend the day in Springfield, Illinois, today to get my Lincoln fix, but I stopped first in Lincoln and at New Salem. I didn't leave New Salem until they closed the place up at 5pm, so I had to go to Plan B for Springfield. It was an easy decision to spend the night in Springfield so I could kick of the day here first thing in the morning. The tough part was deciding where to stay. As you can see, it wasn't easy:

Marketing is everything, isn't it?!

Every Shower Should Have One of These!

The shower at my house is a two-handled hot and cold shower. Traveling on sabbatical now, of course, I'm seeing a bunch of other configurations. Wow! You should see the temp and water control they have at the Affinia 50 in New York.

You just set the temperature knob once. That's it on the bottom. You never have to mess with it again. Everytime thereafter that you want to shower, you simply use the upper lever to control the water flow. Every shower should have one of these inventions!

The Affinia 50 is a great hotel. Reasonable as far as NY prices go, and centrally located--a close walk to Grand Central and Rockefeller Center, and a comfortable walk to Times Square.

We had a full kitchen, including stove and full-size refrigerator. Air conditioning worked great and room was quiet...for New York.

You know, one thing I noticed: New York has horns honking like nobody's business. It eventually became humorous to hear them. With all those cabs, there was no ear-pounding, window-rattling BOOM BOOM BOOM coming from bass-heavy stereos in cars like in California. Ah!

Sabbatical, yeah!

I'm goofing off on my sabbatical right now, so blogging will be light for the next month or so.

I saw Niagara Falls for the first time yesterday. Boy, that area is FLAT--what a surprise those explorers must have had when they discovered the Falls. Of course, the Falls didn't exactly look like they do today. The horseshoe on the Canadian side wasn't nearly as pronounced then as it is now. Check out this picture showing the erosion of the Falls for the last couple hundred years. Today, the water flow is controlled so that only a foot per year is lost to erosion.

The other thing that struck me about the Falls is that context is everything. Seen by itself, the American Falls would be jaw-dropping. I mean, put this thing at Lake Shasta and I'm going to work even harder to get a house built up there one day. But in easy view of the (Canadian) Horseshoe Falls, the American Falls seem almost boring.

By the way, you can click all these pics to see larger views.

And here is another excellent Niagara discovery!

Had a hard time leaving Niagara. More accurately, we had a hard time flying out of Buffalo. Our flight into LaGuardia was canceled because of weather (don't get me started on how terribly US Airways managed the situation), which we found out after hearing announcement after announcement telling us how the plane would be here in just another 30 minutes. After nearly 5 hours at the airport, we spent the night in a Buffalo motel for a couple of hours--all while our excellent, paid-for hotel room went unused in NYC!! But, we did get a series of miracles this morning, including a special security line that we were hurried through before we went running O.J. Simpson-style down the airport terminal to catch the flight. (Uh, that's a reference to the pre-murder O.J. Simpson and his appearance in Avis commercials.)

Anyway, we're happy to be in New York now, although this one last picture will tell you what happened at the Mets game tonight. Oh well.

iPhone comes out tomorrow--an exuberant thought that even a canceled game can't dampen!!!