A few of us from Seattle with family will go on the Princess Cruise shown below. We will try to manage the potential hazards as best we can (sinking ship, adrift with no power, seasickness!). I have really not been outside of London except for a train ride up to Birmingham, so I am really looking forward to see Ireland and Scotland (and the Loch Ness monster*).
*The Loch ness monster is a cryptid, from the Greek “κρύπτω” (krypto) meaning ‘hide’. It is a creature or plant whose existence has been suggested but is not yet recognized by scientific consensus. Kind of like Bigfoot (Sasquatch), the ape-like creature that some people believe inhabits the forests here in the Pacific Northwest.
What is special about Ushuaia? Well, it’s the world’s southern-most city (pop. 56,956 from its 2010 census). It is situated at the south coast of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago (‘the Land of Fire’) in Argentina. Also, a very good friend of mine – in a party of five – is there this week and next, to check out the spectacular scenery and to do a hiking trip in the mountains close by. Summer is at an end in the southern hemisphere, but since it’s so far south, the temperatures are only in the 50s ºF (11ºC).
From Ushuaia, there is a tourist boat to The ‘Lighthouse at the End of the World’ some 5 nautical miles east of Ushaia. The lighthouse has been there since 1920.
Ushuaia is situated at the south coast of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago (‘the Land of Fire’) in Argentina. The city’s motto is ‘At the end of the world, the beginning of everything’.Have you tried walking around in other place with Google? Zoom in on a Google Map and then fly in to a spot with your virtual self and drop in and walk around by manoevering your mouse pointer. Ushuaia’s Virtual Tour is limited to pictures of the scenery scattered around the city and its harbor, but still good enough to ‘look around’ with.This might be the tourist boat that go out to the Lighthouse at the End of the World.
7 a.m. at Pittsburgh airport. Our Being 737 is getting ready for the flight to Chicago. That’s a regional United Express jet across from us.Approaching Chicago airport .. Lake Michigan has snow and ice around the edges.Taxiing to the gate at Chicago’s O’Hare airport .... and going from Concourse B to Concourse C with the underpass to catch my flight to Seattle.
It was an early morning for me! Got up at 4 am Eastern time for the 7 am Pittsburgh to Chicago flight. On the way there I took a wrong turn and swung by Pittsburgh downtown – instead of taking the more direct route to the airport. The airport was very busy with check-in crowds even at 5.30am; it must have been all the travelers that could not get out on Friday.
There was still lots of snow on the ground in Chicago, but the runways at the airport were clear. The ground crews are well-equipped to handle snow, though : about 20 trucks with snow plows were lined up on the side of the runway.
There is more snow in the Midwest : trouble for my connection tomorrow through Chicago, and United Airlines has cancelled my flight. There is an alternate routing through Houston available, but it gets me in so late on Friday night that it’s not worth it. So I will travel back home early Saturday morning. The ‘wintry mix’ – snow and ice and rain – will catch us here in Pittsburgh tomorrow (Pittsburgh sits under the pink MIX on the map).
The mug is from Starbucks’s ‘city icon’ series (no, I didn’t buy it, too bulky and I don’t drink 16 oz of coffee at a time, yikes! ) .. but what is the icon on the mug, I wondered? Is it a tree? And why is it not one of the city’s nice steel bridges that’s on the mug, I wondered. Well : it’s a fountain, the one in Point State Park at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, forming the Ohio River. I’ll have to go check it out, but – it’s quite a drive to the city from the offices where we work, and the weather is pretty darn cold, dipping into the teens today.
Happy President’s Day! It was a travel day for me – I left Seattle very early at 6 am for Chicago, then on to Pittsburgh.
Waiting at my gate in Concourse C at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Yes, you are in my picture 🙂 .. to the unknown guy on the left looking at me.And here I’m sitting in my seat. The luggage handler on the right is dispensing a last few bags onto the gravity chute so that it can be picked up below to go into the cargo hold.
I know we live in the information age, but I am still impressed every other day with the information I can get to with the internet and my smart phone. Check this out, a run-down from last night.
7.01 pm We have landed at Chicago, in from Pittsburgh. The snow in Chicago has started falling. I can see that, don’t need the iPhone weather app to tell me that! But what is the temperature? If it’s not too cold, the snow will melt quickly and not be a big problem for the runway and the aircraft. Well, it is 34 °F. Better get out of here before it drops to 30 °F in the next hour or so, though.
7.14 pm We’re still on the tarmac, waiting for the plane at gate B5 to get de-iced so that it can move and allow us to pull up. Hmm. Let me check with United’s app if my flight to Seattle is still scheduled for an on-time departure. Yes. I can even see where the incoming plane is from (Washington, DC). It has almost arrived and is scheduled to arrive 9 minutes early, in fact.
8.06 pm We have gotten to gate B5. I just have to walk over to gate B10 for the Seattle flight. Almost time to board. If I’m lucky I will get upgraded to the big seats in first class. Have I been? Yes! .. the upgrade list that used to be classified information available only the sometimes-surly ground personnel, is now available to everyone (to obsessively check every 3 minutes if you feel you have to?). That’s me in seat 3E on the Upgrade List. (Later, before we departed, the guy across the aisle in 3B made a fuss when he discovered his seat’s overhead light was not working. ‘I need it to read, my Kindle is not backlit!’, he complained to the stewardess. I knew exactly what was going to happen next : ‘Will I be so kind to consider trading seats with him?’ she asked. ‘Alright, then’ I said (thinking : Good Grief, the way that guy is carrying on, they’re going to hold the @#$% flight to call Maintenance to get it fixed. Can’t let that happen).
8.30 pm Our turn to get some de-icing done. It has actually stopped snowing and is raining now, so we should be in good shape for getting out.
8.45 pm We’re getting pushed back from the gate. Four hours to Seattle, and 1,720 miles for an 11 pm Pacific Time arrival, two time zones away from Chicago’s Central Time.
And what is the weather like in Seattle? I forgot to check before we left in Chicago. This flight does not have in-flight internet, so I will have to wait until we land to know – which was perfectly OK. It was great to be headed home to the Pacific Northwest, far, far away from the Northeast which was about to be pummeled with the blizzard of the century.
The view out of the plane at gate B10 in Chicago, almost ready to depart for Seattle.
I was the passenger in my colleague’s rental car to the airport, so I could take a few pictures on the way out. It looks like my connection in Chicago is still good (without delays due to the large weather system forming in the northeast).
This is Neville Island Bridge (opened in 1976), getting us across the Ohio river on I-79 on the way to the Pittsburgh airport.Is an airport beaver the same as a regular beaver? (I guess that’s me : the airport beaver).The entrance to PIttsburgh airport. There is a US Air Force base nearby, with the 171st Air Refueling Wing (171 ARW) of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard that operates sixteen KC-135T Stratotanker air refueling aircraft..This live map shows arriving and departing flights. I think the blue blob is winter storm Nemo moving in!
Google maps on my iPhone shows how to get from Moon to Mars.
I’m in Pennsylvania, in the Pittsburgh area again for a few days. Moon is just north of Pittsburgh airport, and Mars is where the hotel is. It’s a 40 min drive to the hotel. There is snow on the ground but the roads are clear of snow and ice. Just watch out on the turns for iced surfaces !
P.S. So the black birds (Ravens) won the Superbowl, and no word from officials at the Superdome and its energy company, Entergy, as to what caused the 34 minute black-out. A circuit breaker worked as designed, but why did the circuits become overloaded? ‘It’s NOT Beyoncé’s fault*’ says James L. Kirtley Jr., professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
*Beyoncé and her dancers put on a dazzling, hologram-assisted halftime show on a lit-up LCD-like stage floor.
My cell phone could not quite handle the bright white of the Heinz ketchup sign. (I may have posted a picture of it before, but hey, here’s another). Heinz’s world headquarters is in Pittsburgh.
We completed our ‘blueprinting’ phase workshops in for our project today. Weather wise, the light snow of the last few days gave way to freezing rain* in the Salt Lake City area. There was so much of the stuff that the airport was closed for a few hours after a JetBlue plane skidded after landing (no injuries, and it stayed on the runway). It also made for a slow and treacherous drive out to the airport from Ogden.
*[From Wikipedia] Freezing rain is made entirely of liquid droplets. The raindrops become super-cooled while passing through a sub-freezing layer of air many hundreds of feet above the surface, and then freeze upon impact with any object they encounter. The resulting ice, called glaze, can accumulate to a thickness of several centimeters.
Tweet from Mike Seidel reporting for the Weather Channel about the freezing rain in the Salt Lake City area.My little red rental wagon had an ice blanket as I was preparing to drive it back to the airport. And the parking lot was as slippery as an ice rink in places. Watch out !
I am in Ogden for a last trip for now (but will probably come back in March). Here are some pictures from today. It is a little warmer than last Monday, but still well below freezing at night.
This is at the South Terminal. The Virgin America airplane is just taxiing up to its gate. The FAA’s grounding of all 787’s continues to be in the news. Boeing has stopped delivering new planes to customers but (for now) is continuing with their manufacture. It’s cheaper to continue doing that and putting the fixes (coming out of the investigation) with the lithium batteries in later. About FIVE a month is built – and the machines go for about $200 million each.A summary of the temperatures in the Salt Lake City area so far, reported by a local TV station. (Note that those are Fahrenheit temperatures! 32 F is O C)
We have arrived in Seattle, and passengers – and the Great Dane : ) – are getting ready to disembark.
As the first class flyers were boarding in Salt Lake City on Thursday night for our flight to Seattle, a guy was let on board with a Great Dane service dog. I was in coach and we all thought ‘Well, this will be interesting : to see where the dog goes’. Turned out the guy had a whole set of three bulkhead seats in coach to himself, so that there was room for the dog to lie on the floor at his feet. This would NOT have worked with a full flight! Then as we approached Seattle, the pilot warned that it was foggy – and that he may have to do a touch-and-go landing if the fog was a lot thicker than they had anticipated. We could even have ended up at Portland airport 120 miles south. But all went well – even though the runway appeared suddenly out of nowhere – and so we landed and taxied to the gate.
My taxi driver had to deal with a foggy Interstate-5 highway, driving north to Seattle from Seatac airport.Here’s what the fog looked like at the corner of Broadway and Olive on Capitol Hill : not too bad, probably because Cap. Hill is at a higher elevation than highway I-5.
The blue and red tails of the Delta jets are from Concourse C at Salt Lake City airport. One of them will get me out of Dodge*. The project’s workshops are done for the week. We did a tour through the plant where we are working today. It was bitterly cold as we walked outside, so our little group of 5 was all too thankful to duck inside each of the buildings that was part of the tour so that our noses and ears could defrost. One building has a furnace in. ‘Do we have to leave?’ we said when it was time to go. If you’re not in an office, that is where you should work in winter time!
*’Getting out of Dodge’ is an idiomatic reference to a phrase used in the TV series ‘Gunsmoke’. The villains were told to get out of Dodge City, Kansas. (Yes, there is still a Dodge City in Kansas, named for Fort Dodge nearby).
Here is The Roosters Brewing Co. and Eatery on 25th St.And across the street these ‘Wild West’ saloon-style storefronts now house restaurants. In 1977, 25th Street in Ogden was recognized as having the most complete series of turn-of-the-century architecture in the state of Utah, and the preservation of these buildings was started.This beautiful example of Art Deco is Ogden Municipal building’s entrance. Completed in 1939, it was a federal work projects initiated during the Great Depression of the 1930’s.Peery’s Egyptian Theater is a movie palace located at 2439 Washington Blvd. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Check out the snow on the roof that has started to make icicles as the dripping water freezes up again.
I braved the bone-chilling cold late this afternoon to go out and take a few pictures – but man! I had to give it up after 30 mins. My thick stretch jeans was no match for the cold that seemed to come right through it. I did not wear my gloves, thinking it would interfere with my picture taking – big mistake. And I was very worried about condensate in my camera as well — I’m not supposed to use it in these low temperatures without a cover.
This Sunday night finds me at Seatac airport for another trip to Salt Lake City. Only one more to go after this one – a good thing because I am not used to ‘solidly frozen’ temperatures. Seattle weather usually manages to stay more or less above 32° F (0 °C) for most of the winter (the average nightly low for Dec-Jan is 36°F). At least I remembered to pack my Cossack-style woolen hat that covers my ears and straps down under my chin, my gloves, and an extra scarf.
Salt Lake City high and low temperatures for the next few days (° C)... and in ° F.This British Airways Boeing 747 was sitting at gate S10 here at Seatac airport, catching the last few rays of a beautiful winter’s day in Seattle. It is headed home to London Heathrow airport.
I made it to the airport, driving very carefully. The hardest part was getting the 3 inches of fluffy snow off my Nissan Altima rental car. The snow is not so fluffy right there on the windshield and windows : you have to scrape the ice crystals off. (The combination brush-scraper Hertz provides does a great job). And I remembered from my winters in St Louis to brush off snow powder from the car seat and from my clothes immediately. The stuff melts and becomes icy wet water (of course).
My Nissan Altima rental car had a a snow blanket this morning.
The snow at Salt Lake City airport caused some delays this morning, but I’m sure the airport is well-equipped to take care of a few inches of snow.
The snow flakes started coming down just as we were leaving the project site today, and it has been sifting down steadily since then. A total accumulation of 5 to 8 inches is expected in the lower areas; much more in the mountains. I will definitely have to navigate some snowy roads on the way to the airport tomorrow (Friday) !
Here is the Old Post Office across from the Marriott Ogden. I couldn’t venture out very far, since it’s very cold and still snowing lightly even though it does not look like it on the photo.This is about 8 pm. The streets in downtown Ogden (yes, I know – no skyscrapers here!) have a layer of snow, and are almost deserted.This is around 4 pm We’re driving back to Ogden from the project site. The snow is just starting to stick to the road surface.
It’s Wednesday and three of us stopped at Ruan Thai for dinner. The air outside is chilly, stagnant and bone dry, but that is set to change Thu and Fri with winds and lots of snow in the forecast. The mountains are expected to get more than a foot, which I am sure the skiers are eagerly anticipating. I just hope I will be able to drive to the airport on Friday.
The view towards the Wasatch mountains on the east of Ogden, as seen from the Walmart parking lot. (We shopped for lunch food at Walmart).This (unassuming) Thai food restaurant in Ogden serves up awesome Thai food .... as well as 5% alcohol/ vol Singha beer imported from Thailand. Domestic beers in Utah are allowed to go to 4% alcohol/ vol (which is actually pretty close to 5%). The Singha is a mythical lion from ancient Thai and Hindu stories.
I finally got over a bad cold I had and was well enough to fly out to Utah for my project on Monday night. Speaking of cold, the Salt Lake City area is off to a chilly start for 2013. Even the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper says so. Temperatures here have yet to rise above freezing (32°F) since the start of the year. It does look like it will happen on Wednesday – but only to dip down to an estimated 13°F (-11°C) on Thursday night.
Temperatures are in °F ! Check out the conversion below. 19 °F is 7 °C below zero 34 °F is 1°C 26 °F is 3 °C below zero 35 °F is 2°C 13 °F is 11°C below zero 20 °F is 7°C below zero
