American History Museum

Been a busy week with a friend visiting for a work meeting. We squeezed in a quick look at the Smithsonian American History Museum and it was as always, fantastic. Definitely need another day to look around but I saw some wonderful history. The museum included sections on American Presidents and one for First Ladies (can't wait to see Bill be the First Man - yes I"m optimistic Trump will NOT win). A huge section on African Americans and civil rights progress and of course, sections on the civil war and later wars.

   

Some of classics I saw above were:

• Mohammed Ali's gloves and shoes - how timely given his death last week.
• Dorothy's 1939 Red Shoes from Wizard of Oz - did you know the shoes were silver in the book and only changed to red at the last minute when the movie was to be made?
• Lincoln's Hat from the night he was assassinated (Love Lincoln). See more detail below and a bitter picture off the web.

Lincoln acquired this silk hat from J. Y. Davis, a Washington hat maker, whose label appears inside the crown. The hat, approximately a modern size 7 1/8, is trimmed with two bands, a thin 3/8" ribbon with a small metal buckle and a 3" grosgrain black mourning band. 

The stitching on the second band indicates that it had been added after the hat had been purchased and signaled Lincoln's ongoing mourning for his son Willie, who died of typhoid fever on February 20, 1862. In a very public way, Lincoln was linking his loss with the losses of so many during the war. We do not know when he purchased the hat, or how often he wore it. We do know that the last time he put it on was to attend the play, Our American Cousin, at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865 - the night he was assassinated.

This statue is of George Washington. Hmm, not quite the older distinguished war hero President you usually see. Well, In 1832 the U.S. Congress commissioned sculptor Horatio Greenough to create a statue of George Washington on the occasion of the centennial of the first president’s birthday. Installed in the Capitol Rotunda after its completion, Greenough envisioned the statue to be a symbolic representation of Washington as a great exemplar of liberty.

The completed 12-ton marble statue atop a granite pedestal and base depicted the first president wearing a chest-baring toga. While many viewers appreciated the artist’s attempt to create a timeless masterpiece, others saw only an inappropriately dressed Washington. A friend of the artist noted: “This magnificent production of genius does not seem to be appreciated at its full value in this metropolis.”

The statue was on display in the Capitol Rotunda from 1841 to 1843 when it was relocated to the east lawn. In 1908 Congress transferred the statue to the Smithsonian Institution where it was exhibited in the Smithsonian Castle until its relocation to the new National Museum of American History in 1964.

And I couldn't resist a photo at the Presidents podium. "....Yes, yes, yes we can have dogs everywhere, bikes own the roads, Batman is the best and sossy rolls, pizza and coffee will become the new food triangle...".

We met up for dinner with a ladies running group. While there are several chapters across DC, this one is city based and quite small. They are keen for us to encourage ladies to run through the week before work and for us to start a Saturday morning run followed by brekky/coffee (sound familiar you FIT girls?). So we have to do some exploring to find suitable routes/tracks and coffee shops. They were a wonderful group of ladies and we are keen to run with them and grow this little chapter.

I've also got myself involved with the social club at Deb's work. Trying to encourage regular Friday happy hours and I have offered to do the catering - just hot snacks and also run raffles. Should be fun. I also encouraged them to give the drinks an identity - Skippy's - so hopefully this will catch on, be successful and provide a great social meeting point at the end of the week. 

Stay tuned for the next post as we are heading to Detroit, Michigan to leave our footprint.

Air and Space Museum

Been a busy week. There never seems a dull moment. We joined a training group for the Marine Corp Marathon in October. We don't plan to do the marathon or half, but wanted to do the training and also meet other runners. We had our first run on Saturday. It was 4miles (6k) which was a big distance for a first run. Was only a small turnout but we'll try it for a little while longer until we find something better. We have also found a group that has several 'chapters' over DC - it's called Moms Run This Town. They communicate on Facebook and it seems to be a more flexible and suitable way to meet new friends and running buddies. We're meeting a lady tomorrow morning for a run before work and also going to their monthly dinner/drinks for new people to meet others. Should be good. They also seem to do lots of fun runs and other runs together so I think this might be the solution we've been looking for. So trying to fit in running, some cycling and gym work is becoming quite a challenge. The added 1 hour dog walk each day certainly adds to the exercise. Sadly, I'm not getting any thinner.

It has been really bloody hot and humid. They reckon it will get much worse, like 90% humidity. I like the humidity having come from Townsville at home but it makes exercise a very wet activity. 

I finally got to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Bob came with me and was my tour guide given he's been a few times himself. It was fabulous. I plan to visit the museums again because you need more time to look/read everything. I think winter will be perfect as it will be very quiet without the tourists. There were loads of artefacts including planes, lunar items, space equipment, moon rocks and lots of history on famous air/space pioneers such as the Wright Brothers, Amelia Urquhart, the Red Baron and other pioneers I've never heard of !!  The picture here is none other than Neil Armstrong's space suit and the Apollo 11 lunar module.

The pics below show US and Russian space stations joined by a common module. Hard to see but quite incredible to see given they had to design a connecting module between the two space stations.

The pic on the right is the X15 aircraft. Now this baby has some serious credentials. It was a hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft aircraft operated by the US Air Force and NASA as part of the X-plane series of experimental aircraft. The X-15 set speed and altitude records in the 1960s, reaching the edge of outer space and returning with valuable data used in aircraft and spacecraft design. As of September 2015, the X-15 holds the official world record for the highest speed ever recorded by a manned, powered aircraft. It could reach a top speed of 4,520 miles per hour (7,274 km/h), or Mach 6.72.

During the X-15 program, 13 flights by eight pilots met the Air Force spaceflight criterion by exceeding the altitude of 50 miles (80 km), thus qualifying these pilots as being astronauts. The Air Force pilots qualified for astronaut wings immediately, while the civilian pilots were eventually awarded NASA astronaut wings in 2005, 35 years after the last X-15 flight. The only Navy pilot in the X-15 program never took the aircraft above the requisite 50 mile altitude and so as a result, never earned himself astronaut wings.

 

This huge thing is Skylab.

The orbital workshop is the largest component of Skylab, America's first space station. It houses the living quarters, work and storage areas, research equipment, and most of the supplies needed to support a succession of three-man crews. Two complete Skylab space stations were manufactured and equipped for flight, and one was launched into Earth orbit in May 1973. After the Skylab program was canceled as effort shifted to Space Shuttle development, NASA transferred the backup Skylab to the National Air and Space Museum in 1975. 

You can walk through the middle of it and see the work area, showers and beds. Quite spacious when you compare with the cramped lunar modules.

One of the really interesting displays was the Wright Brothers aircraft and objects. On display is the Wright Flyer from 1903.

This was the first successful heavier than air powered aircraft to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. The Wright Brothers flew it four times on 17 Dec 1903 near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

It was built using giant spruce wood, the wings has a 1 in 20 inch camber and since they couldn’t find suitable gas engine, they had a new design done for a crude gas engine. A sprocket chain drive, from bicycle technology powered the twin propellers which were also made by hand. It was a biplane configuration and the pilot flew on on his stomach on the lower win with his head toward the front of the craft in an effort to reduce drag.

The other thing I found interesting was that the Wright Brothers began manufacturing and selling bicycles of their own design in 189. The Van Cleve and St. Claire were their first, named after their ancestors. They invented the self-oiling hub and the innovation of machining the crank arm and pedal on the left side of the bike with left-hand threads to prevent the pedal from coming unscrewed while cycling. 

The brick building at 22 South Williams St., where the Wrights worked from 1895 to 1897, is the only extant building on its original foundation and in its original location that housed a Wright bicycle shop. They ran their printing shop on the second-floor. The Wright Brothers financed their aviation interests from their bike profits.

There were so many aircraft hanging from the ceilings or on the floor. There were aircraft that Chuck Yager flew and seeing all this history has motivated me to watch the movie 'The Right Stuff' again - this movie was fabulous, showing the pilots who pushed their bodies and aircraft to the limits on the space boundaries and going supersonic beyond belief. 

There is another annex to the Air and Space Museum near Dulles airport. It is massive apparently and has the Space Shuttle Discovery and a whole lot more larger objects. I will certainly visit that place in coming months.

I had a former work friend visit the past two days and it was so nice to have our first visitor to our home and eat at our dinner table. We did an express memorial walk on Sunday in the heat and she came for dinner last night and also walked the dogs. I really enjoyed catching up and look forward to the rest of you coming to visit !!!

Met another neighbour across the street. She was lovely and it was quite funny how the conversation turned to winter and snow shovelling. Our side of the street gets it easier cause we face south so snow melts in the sun and we are sloped downhill. So we took the nice hint that the other side of the street likes help shovelling as their snow stays for longer. I  am quite excited about shovelling snow but I"m sure I'll be sick of it very quick.

Well, hot news is that Hillary Clinton looks about to become the Democratic nominee. While their conventions will confirm both Dem and Rep nominees, it seems it will be Trump and Clinton lining up for the race for President.  

Long blog tonight but look out for our future posts as we are heading to Detroit, Michigan for a look and there is lots to tell about that place.

50 Paws of DC

I played around with making a little slideshow.

Space Shuttle and the Horse's Arse

Years ago when I was studying for my MBA, there was a reading about the size of the space shuttle rocket boosters being designed around the width of a horses arse !!  Well, I never forgot that piece of info and after my recent trip to Florida to see the rockets and space shuttle, I was telling my mate Bob today about this interesting fact. So I came home and googled it and this is what I found. This is a short version but certainly explains it very well.

Giddy up, here we go......

So did you know that the US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches.

That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? 

Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. 

I see, but why did the English build them like that? Because the first railway lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. 

Well, why did they use that gauge in England? 

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. 

Okay! Why did their wagons use that odd wheel spacing? 

Because, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads. Because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts. 

So who built these old rutted roads? 

The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The Roman roads have been used ever since. 

And the ruts? 

The original ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by the wheels of Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. 

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.

And the motto of the story is Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.

So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's arse came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war-horses.

So, just what does this have to do with the exploration of space? 

Well, there's an interesting extension of the story about railroad gauge and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad from the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was originally determined by the width of a horse's arse. 

By the way, today Bob and I went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum...it was fantastic. I will talk about that in my next blog.

Flying stupidity in the US

We arrived back from Florida exhausted. Airline travel here is sooooo frustrating. I would say inefficient and downright ridiculous and possibly backward!! This is what total cost cutting resorts to. When I booked the flight, there was a price. Then when I picked the seat, I had to pay extra depending on the seat I had - anywhere from $10-$80 and this is NOT first class seats. 

Airlines also charge for checked bagged here so EVERYONE takes their luggage onboard with them cause they don't want to pay $25. This means there is little-to-no overhead space and it's very very slow to board because people are stuffing around trying to find bag space. We've seen people bring prams, child car seats and boxed electrical appliances on board. Now there's only so much storage space right, so it runs out. The people still boarding have to make their way back to the front of the plane to hand in their bags so it can be checked for FREE. So like good sheep and cattle we reverse and jostle for this to happen and then board again. It is just seriously the most stupid process I've ever seen. 

There are also boarding groups, about seven of them and they board group by group in order. So if you're like us and are not important, Platinum, super Platinum, any other bloody Platinum, Gold or whatever other colour they have, military, rich, good looking or know how to chat up the gate hostess...then you board last and frankly, you're screwed for any luggage space at all. So we always ensure our backpack fits under the sit cause we always board last!!

The most stupid thing of all though is that they always OVERBOOK the flight so they have spares in case people don't show/fly that day. So just near boarding time, you hear announcements asking people who are willing to delay their flight - they get a $300 voucher for their troubles and get home later on another flight. I was tempted the other day to get the $300 voucher but Deb was not impressed !! If they can't get volunteers, they resort to offloading people but I'm not sure how they decide who to offload. Given we are on the bottom of the shit heap for boarding, I'm worried it might be us.

So people, if you really want Australian airlines to compete for the cheapest flights possible, this is what you get and it's crap. I'm quite happy with the service we get now in Australia and actually feel a bit safer too.

Moving on to something more lighter and funny......I’ve talked about the place we have brekky after our morning run, before work. The young girl there is fantastic – very lively, funny, efficient and she takes complete care of us. We hadn’t been for 2 weeks so she was very pleased to see us this week. She made such a fuss and was saying….hello ladies, how y’all doing, I waz only saying to the other girl yasterday that I ain’t seen my Ellen DeGeneres gurls for a while and then her y’all are now. I’ve never been referred to as an 'Ellen DeGeneres' girl before but it was nice I thought. 




The weather is certainly hotting up. We are getting high 20's and into the 30's and it's humid. I like it - very much the weather I grew up in, in North Qld. It's a hot walk for the dogs but the forest canopy keeps it pleasant. The dogs swim EVERY day - they know where the creek is and they bolt ahead and jump in. The squirrels and chipmunks are out in mass and yesterday, Macey had her nose fair into a hole, digging and snorting away. I let her go for a few minutes - she was enjoying herself and she left with a dirty brown nose, feet and chest.

 

I made a carrot cake today and made my own taco/burrito seasoning mix. It's pretty easy really and it's cheaper than buying sachets all the time. I'm very addicted to Mexican food. The other week we tasted Queso dip - wow, that's so bad but so yummy. Apparently it's all over Texas so we will be definitely be looking forward to visiting Texas next year.  I've also got a wholemeal loaf of bread in the maker - never made brown bread before. I threw in some pumpkin seeds to add some crunch. 

I've got some baseball games lined up with my mate Bob. We are going to a game against the Chicago Cubs in a few weeks. They are the top team in our league and a good team by tradition. Can't wait to see that one.

And to finish with a picture of Cricket enjoying a snooze outside while I cook in the kitchen. Macey lays on the floor in the kitchen while Cricket prefers the bed outside. Such good company they are. Never know when a little tid-bit might come their way.