Vanishing Point

I got excited when I saw my first moose crossing sign in Massachusetts on my way to New Hampshire. I would like to see wild moose someday, but I'm rather particular about the circumstances in which I'd like to see them. For example, somewhere other than crossing the road right in front of my vehicle. Still, being in territory where there is at least a possibility of moose was exciting. In New Hampshire, I got to spend lots of time with my friend and some with her housemates. Her housemates currently include an orphaned squirrel whose life was heroically saved by these folks (I'm not exaggerating -- the odds of an orphaned baby rodent surviving without its mother are terrible even with the most loving and well-intentioned people and they pulled it off!).  Said squirrel is being prepared for release in the Spring. In the mean time she's in a triple Ferret Nation cage and being pampered. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about this squirrel before I met her but she was

I planned to drive through The Berkshires on my way to visit my friend in New Hampshire, and shortly before I got there I remembered that someone I met playing Farmville (on Facebook) about 10 years ago lives in the area I'd be traveling through. He gave me advice on which route to drive (Thanks, Gary!) and when I got there we went for a walk along the canal in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Here are a couple of photos I took on our walk that day: You can see that I finally found some of that New England fall foliage that I was looking for! The day was perfect for a walk and taking pictures. I have become a connoisseur of lighting for fall foliage. I didn't manage to take any photos under my favorite circumstances -- in a wooded area with sunlight filtering through the trees and catching the color of the leaves here and there -- but these were taken in my second favorite circumstances with some overcast to make the colors stand out and lots of colors in the same

Updated to include my new favorite restroom sign: I'm not feeling very much like writing these days, but I've got a few photos I want to share and a little bit of text to go with them.  I finally started to see some fall colors driving from Pittsburgh to Wilkes-Barre. It was raining and sometimes foggy and there were a lot of trucks on the road throwing up spray from the rain, so I didn't get to see as much as I'd like. But what I could see made me happy. When I got to Wilkes-Barre, I took this photo near the Susquehanna River.  There was something that looked like a flood wall along the river, but I couldn't figure out where the hardware was to close the openings. Must be behind the metal doors you can see in this photo. I don't have a recollection of it, but apparently there was a really bad flood here in 1972 thanks to Hurricane Agnes, and again in 1996 thanks to Tropical Storm Lee.  I'm a fan of The Office, so I pretty much

Which way are the tracks going in this photo? Are they level, or going uphill, or going downhill from the viewpoint of the photographer (me)? When I first looked at this photo on my computer my stomach leapt just a little bit because I knew how steep this incline is. But I soon began to be able to see the tracks in any of those three orientations and I enjoy the ambiguity of the photo. I cropped it to maximize the illusion. The uncropped photo appears below and has a clue in it. When you get to that photo, do you know what the clue is? Uncropped version: The clue: those yellow bricks are laid parallel to the floor of the station, which means that level is parallel to the direction of the long lines through the bricks. As for the title of this blog entry, I know very little Italian that isn't found on a restaurant menu, so I had no particular reason to think that the song "Funiculi Funicula" had anything to do with a funicular (which in case you don't k

I'm a little behind in reporting on my trip. I'll catch up a bit this morning. First to answer the pressing question about why the chicken crossed the road... Wait, it changed it's mind! That's what happened on the country road I drove down while following the directions my phone gave me to Indianapolis. There was road construction on the main route, so I was directed to take some twisty hilly backroads that I never would have thought of taking on my own. After coming around one bend I saw four chickens in various stages of crossing the road and a car approaching from the other direction. We both slowed down and some of the chickens retreated  to the side they were coming from. Then I looked at the driver of the other car and saw she was laughing. No doubt we were both thinking about the old joke that never seemed that funny to me, even as a kid. I prefer these parody answers, as told on Wikipedia: Martin Luther King Jr.: Because it had a dream! Colonel Sanders: