Center St. Bridge, Cleveland

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Today's adventure takes us back to Cleveland, to the historic Center St. Bridge. I did actually walk across this one and back, on my way to the city's shiny new aquarium. As I've mentioned before, I've always thought swing-span bridges were cool. This one has its central pivot on the west bank of the river rather than in the middle, so as not to obstruct river traffic. Which is important since the Cuyahoga is remarkably narrow given all the shipping traffic it sees. The downside of this is that there's a nice, grassy parklike area on the west bank where the span goes when it pivots out of the way, with a high fence and big signs warning you for god's sake never never go in there, lest you get conked over the head by a bridge. Which would be bad. This seems like reasonable advice to me, really.

Another cool thing about the bridge is that the vastly higher and larger Detroit-Superior Bridge passes directly over it, which makes for some interesting photo opportunities. Which weren't fully exploited this time around as I was busy freezing my fingers off and trying not to drop lenses or lose my phone or that sort of thing.

A few interesting links to pass along about the bridge, mostly of a historical nature:

• HistoricBridges.org
• Cleveland Memory at Cleveland State University.
• A Cleveland Magazine article about historic bridges of the Flats.
• A page about the city's bridges in Case Western Reserve's Encyclopedia of Cleveland.
• Engineering plans for the bridge, also at Case Western Reserve.

Font's Point, Borrego Badlands

Some old photos from a brief stop at Font's Point in the Borrego Badlands, part of California's huge Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, east of San Diego. If I were to go back there at some point, that would be the thing that would finally make me break down and learn to do HDR photography. I've never been a huge HDR fan, but the place seems ideally suited to it.

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Mountains, Death Valley

Salt Creek, Death Valley

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A few more old photos from Death Valley, this time from Salt Creek, a small, salty stream that eventually empties into the Death Valley salt flats. The creek merits a boardwalk nature trail because it's the sole home of the endangered Salt Creek pupfish, a tiny fish that's adapted to live in the creek's salty and often hot water. I did see a few of the fish but somehow ended up without any photos of them, just a few of the nature trail and plants along it. The existence of the plants here is kind of remarkable too, but I've got to say they're no desert pupfish. So if you want to see more pupfish, there are a few decent photos here. There are also a number of YouTube videos of the fish, like this for example, if you're interested.

Badwater, Death Valley

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Old photos from Badwater, Death Valley, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. Ok, the lowest point that isn't underwater, if you really want to split hairs.

Given the name, you might be curious about what the water's like. You're in luck, because I went ahead and tried a drop or two of the stuff. It tastes the way you'd expect desert salt flats water would taste: Salty, kind of alkaline, probably with other goop dissolved in it. I wouldn't have willingly drunk more of it, I'll put it that way.

Mono Lake

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Some old, scanned photos of Mono Lake, in the California desert east of Yosemite. These were taken in the early 1990s during the height of the court battle over the lake's water. The short version of the story: Since the 1940s, water had been diverted from flowing into the lake, and ended up in swimming pools in L.A. instead. As you might expect, this caused the lake to start drying up. Not everyone was thrilled about that, and -- this being California -- there were ugly, expensive, lawsuits, which went on and on for years as the lake level continued to drop. A couple of years after I was there, the city of Los Angeles lost the case and was forced to put water back into the lake. Wikipedia insists the lake's almost back up to its pre-diversion lake level. In which case some of the the scenery in these photos is now back underwater where it belongs.

Chicago Midway Airport

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A few hurried Blackberry photos from Chicago Midway Airport, taken on my way to Cleveland back in March. I'll be the first to say these aren't quality photos, but I should point out that the greasy fingerprint over the lens was caused by a genuine Chicago Italian beef sandwich. So, you know, local flavor. I'm going to argue that, thanks to the aforementioned fingerprint, the photos count as a "found object" piece, or possibly a collage, and are therefore an expression of Art with a capital A, and anyone who says they suck in a traditional photographic sense is an ignorant philistine. That's my argument, and I'm sticking to it.

I get bored quickly in airports, and I have this ongoing idea that I really ought to go seek out whatever local color there happens to exist within the airport's confines. In the case of the Midway airport, that involved the sandwich I mentioned earlier, plus tracking down a historical exhibit about the Battle of Midway, for which the airport was renamed in 1949. So in case you were wondering, the name doesn't refer to the airport being the unavoidable midway point in all cross-country trips, despite what flying Southwest might lead you to believe. Although that does happen to be the reason Midway Island (at the far northern end of the Hawaiian Islands) is named what it is.

On a more obscure historical note, the airport also has a small plaque commemorating a 1933 trans-Atlantic flight. Chicago pilots Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas, in their plane named the "Lituanica" attempted to fly nonstop from New York to Kaunas, Lithuania, only to crash in Germany, just short of their destination. Both pilots were killed in the accident. I had never heard of this flight before, possibly for that reason, but apparently the men are considered national heroes in Lithuania, and the main soccer stadium in Kaunas was renamed in their honor after the USSR broke up.

friday sailboats, charles river

Photos from a late Friday afternoon in July, in Boston. It was warm with a bit of mild wind, and the Charles River was packed with sailboats. I haven't been on a sailboat in a long, long time, but I can see the appeal. At least when the weather's nice, and the other sailors aren't dangerously incompetent, and you aren't stuck in drydock pouring money into endless maintenance and repairs. In other words, I'd been at a stressful tech conference out in the suburbs all week, and watching other people sail under fairly ideal conditions was relaxing, and a nice way to decompress.