STL DPB ON THE ROAD - THE TRIP THAT WENT WRONG

 

So, okay, Mrs. C and I were going to have a long weekend in my much-loved home town. Some good dinners, theater, a special art show, maybe some touristy stuff. As mentioned, hot new restaurant on Thursday, the first night. Food poisoning, up much of the night with bi-directional GI eruptions. Exhausted, in bed asleep most of Friday. Managed to get out to dinner Friday to a favorite place and couldn’t finish an appetizer. We had theater tickets Saturday and did get out to a very funny show called The Play That Went Wrong, although I wasn’t always following it well.  Dinner at a little Italian place, where I made it into the second course before giving up.

Then things got worse. Our flight home Sunday wasn’t until 6 so we got to the Metropolitan Museum for the show we wanted to see. It was raining when we went to La Guardia and, as the day ended, a heavy fog settled over the airport. Close to half of the AA flights were canceled, including ours. Got online looking for alternatives. No non-stop seats the next day. Got an airport hotel and booked us through Chicago with a 5.5 hour layover. But La Guardia had high winds Tuesday morning and only one runway was in use. We sat on a taxiway for more than an hour before leaving on a two hour flight. Few seats had been available, so 6’ 3”/ 190 cm me was stuck in a middle seat for 3+ hours. When we got to Chicago our STL flight was running 90 minutes late just because. It turned out to be 3.5 hours late, with a change of aircraft because there was a pressure leak in a cockpit window of the original plane.  

So we got home 30 hours late, but we’re here. First world problems, right?                          

WHY WE CAME HERE

Mrs. C and I subscribe to the digital edition of the New York Times. One morning in early January she read an article and passed it to me, https://tinyurl.com/4s5amvuy (I hope it’s not behind a paywall). "Ï’d really like to see that!” she told me. I asked her what she had on in the middle of February. Nothing special, so I opened my laptop and here we are.

Armia Khalil is an Egyptian immigrant, a sculptor and a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 13 years. How he became acquainted with a Met curator who took an interest in his work and ended up placing this in a current exhibition is much too long a story for here. I commend the Times article to you. The sculpture is titled “Hope — I Am a Morning Scarab.” The scarab beetle was a symbol of hope for the ancient Egyptians and one appears on the top of the head.  

Other than that, I still can’t eat much and am pretty weak thanks to Thursday’s restaurant. La Guardia Airport was socked with fog yesterday and our flight was canceled. We’ll get home today through inconvenient routes and times, but we’ll get there.              

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - OUTREACH

 

This has turned out to be a disappointing visit to my favorite place in the world for street photography due to Thursday night’s restaurant disaster. Still, there are opportunities. We saw this on 42nd Street, under the viaduct where Park Avenue goes up and around Grand Central Terminal. The person was still there when we came back the other way a couple of hours later. Sadly common in America and likely to get worse.              

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - TAXI!

 

Yesterday was the rare day with no post. On Thursday night, we went out to a hot new restaurant, shown in Friday’s post. I got food poisoning. Bad. Up much of the night blowing stuff out of both ends. In bed asleep most of yesterday but better today, fortunately. Really blew a hole in a three day trip. This was the scene as we exited Grand Central Terminal onto 42nd Street after the infamous meal.                

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - DINNER IN MANHATTAN

 

Well, we’re back in the place I love the best and like to pay for the least. We just got here and so many images! We went to dinner at a new restaurant in Grand Central Terminal, the Grand Brasserie. I thought it might resemble Le Train Bleu at the Gare d’ Ést in Paris. No. A lot louder. This is NYC. The food was pretty good, at New York prices.           

THESE LITTLE TOWN BLUES

 

Granddaughter Ellie wanted to go to the top of the Arch last weekend so I had to take the usual picture. This isn’t all of downtown St. Louis but it’s the better part of it. I spent my whole working career, 47 years, here. It’s not doing well post-Covid but there are rays of hope. But I’ll be far away later today. Homeward bound.                      

AT THE ORCHID SHOW 5

 

POW. I promise I’ll get to something new. Traveling tomorrow. Home sweet home.                 

AT THE ORCHID SHOW 4

 

Sorry for more of the same - but not really. Orchids are a wonderful set of variations on a theme. The color can be so luscious. I wonder if any of these would work in black and white, thinking of Robert Mapplethorpe’s lilies, but they are nearly monochrome to start with. We are traveling Thursday so there will be some new stuff.                      

AT THE ORCHID SHOW 3

 

The Missouri Botanical Garden has excellent plant scientists, and it’s a subject I don’t know much about. (The area where I grew up had a lot more concrete and asphalt than soil.) The variety of shapes, sizes and colors amazes me. There is a name for each variety but it doesn’t help. Just enjoy the visuals.                  

AT THE ORCHID SHOW 2

 

Another image from the orchid show at the Missouri Botanical Garden. So many of these flowers look alien, something I couldn’t classify. This one makes me think of shrimp. 

I mentioned that I didn’t have any material other than this stuff (not that it’s bad) but my granddaughter and her bestie wanted to go to the Arch yesterday so there will be something from there. And, um, I forgot, we’re going to New York Thursday.                  

AT THE ORCHID SHOW

 

It’s cold and gray February around here, and there’s not much to shoot outside. Fortunately, it’s the time of year for our wonderful botanical garden’s orchid show. I took a tour through yesterday. Lacking anything else of interest, I’ll go with this for a while.                

HOW IT GETS THROUGH, PART 3

 

The last part of how a barge flotilla gets through Lock and Dam 26 on the Mississippi. The group has been broken into two sets of two barges long. The lock has been closed behind the front set. In a moment, the front gates will open, bringing the water level down to that of the next section of the river. One of the tan tug boats on the left will come around and pull this group out. Then the second half will repeat the procedure.          

HOW IT GETS THROUGH, PART 2

 

In yesterday’s post, we saw how a push boat shoves the whole 3 by 6 barge flotilla into the lock. At this point, the front and back halves have been split and the push boat has (counterintuitively) pulled back the rear half. The lock’s huge gates begin to close on the front. If you can zoom in enough, you might see a tiny worker in a yellow coat on the right and compare it to the massive pistons pushing the gate in. When they are fully closed, the outer gates will open, dropping the water level of the barges.                     

HOW IT GETS THROUGH, PART 1

 

The front of the barge flotilla pushes into the lock. If you have a big enough monitor you may see two crew members on the front corners. Strikes me as a dangerous job. I may have missed something about how the process works. The upper river flotillas are 3 by 6 barges. (They are at least twice as big on the lower Mississippi without locks.) The whole set pushes part way in. Then the crew breaks apart the front three rows from the back. The push boat pulls the rear barges back out of the lock. What happens next comes tomorrow.                         

POWER SOURCE

 

The power it takes to push a barge flotilla on the Mississippi - especially upriver - is almost unimaginable. I once toured one of these boats and the engine was, well, ginormous. There is a tricky way these things have to get through the lock, which we will come to.             

A BARGE IN THE LOCK

 

Although we didn’t spot any eagles on our trip upriver on Saturday, we did get to see something interesting. An explanation: there is lots of barge traffic on the Mississippi, with 27 locks and dams between Minneapolis and St. Louis. Between us and the Gulf of Mexico, the slope is so gentle that none are needed.  The next to last, Number 26, is huge and has a wonderful museum. With a guide, you can go outside and walk around the structure. We were fortunate to see a flotilla entering the lock.                      

WELL, YOU COULD WALK AROUND IT

 

The granddaughter and I drove north to Alton, Illinois, yesterday. It is situated on the Mississippi, below the confluence with the Illinois River and above that with the Missouri River. The area is part of a bird migratory flyway. At this time of year bald eagles pass through and lots of people come looking for them. We didn’t see a single one yesterday, but came upon this strange gate. There was still ice near the river banks so a plunge was unadvisable. It is puzzling but I think a floating dock can be attached.                  

CITY DAILY PHOTO FEBRUARY THEME - MOTORS

 

Seen at a custom motorcycle shop on the edge of a flea market. There is a lot of horsepower ready to roar out of this engine but that conical spike thing looks scary. The bike obviously isn’t finished but you won’t see me riding it.