Amtrak Crash.

It's been on the news ever since it happened Wednesday night.  My deepest sympathies for the dead and injured. 
  Looks like the engineer is the cause of the crash.  He departs DC on time, and 11 minutes after pulling out of the station, the train is up to 106 mph going into a 50 mph curve.  He applied the brakes just as the train entered the curve and left the track.  Either the engineer fell asleep (in 11 minutes?), or suffered some kind of seizure, but after opening the throttle to get the train moving, he never backed it off to a cruise position. 
   News have never mentioned the size of the train crew.  Looks like it was just one man in the locomotive. Airliners always have two qualified pilots in the cockpit.  Railroads had a two man crew for a long time.
   Lot of talk about a magic automatic braking system that would have prevented the crash.  I'd never heard of that one before, and I am a train fan, read the magazines, build model trains.  I'm thinking a two man engine crew would have prevented the crash as well.

Coming Home

So, after visiting daughter and son-in-law in DC for a couple a days, it came time to drive home to NH.  I took the standard route, right up I95, over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, up the Jersey Turnpike, over the Geo Washington bridge, CrossBronx expressway, I91 from New Haven CT to Wells River VT.  650 miles, 10 hours.  I didn't stop much.  Had a nice view of the new Freedom Tower on the way into New York.  That looked good.  Eastbound on the GW Bridge was moving right along, much better than some past years.  West bound was a mess, solid trailer trucks, bumper to bumper, not moving much, all the way back to the Whitestone bridge.  It was noon, I would have expected east and west traffic to be about the same.
   I toyed with the idea of breaking the trip, taking a motel and doing some sightseeing.  But as I got closer to home, pressing on, and getting home seemed more attractive. 
   I'm about to make a resolution to not answer the cell phone in flight.  Three times some robo caller hit me.  I cannot read the dinky little display in sunlight and with my driving glasses.  I ain't gonna switch to my reading glasses at 75 mph.  Clever human factors design located the on-off button right in the way, it's hard to fish the phone out of my shirt pocket without hitting  on-off, which confuses the easily confused phone software. 
   And the virus/flu/common cold is still alive and well.  I picked up a case somehow.  Resolution #2, don't leave the ceiling fan running when going to sleep.  A shot of Nyquil and nasal spray fixed things up well enough get  to sleep. 
  So that is May's adventure in traveling.

Food Desert

DC could be one.  I set out on an errand this morning, some 9 miles thru DC traffic.  Did not see a single supermarket.  Plenty of CVS's, gas stations, and the like.  but no food stores.  When I get back I had to two miles down H st before I found a Giant built into the bottom of an apartment building.  At leastt they had parking. 

Trivia

Did you know that there is NO gasoline on US 1 southbound from US 202 to the Maryland border.  Well there was one new station, tucked neatly behind a screen of trees, I didn't see it until I whipped past their driveway at 65 mph.   Got stuck behind a truck painting a new white line on the 2 lane section of US 202.  No way to pass.  Spent half an hour at walking pace.   Then there were four clowns in Norristown holding up traffic waving those "Stop" and "Slow" signs even though the road was perfectly passable both ways. 
   And, Baltimore has matched New York City in the  worst highway signage department.  Coming down I95, it says "95 Express  Easypass. No access to 695"  Not a word about Baltimore Harbor Tunnel,  the Baltimore Washington parkway, or any other destination someone might want to get to.  And driving alone and reading a road map doesn't work.  And there is nowhere to pull over. 

Tripping

So, my 55TH High School reunion is this weekend down in West Chester PA just outside of Philadelphia.  So I am driving down, mostly to avoid taking my shoes off for TSA perverts.  It's about 11 hours from Franconia.  So I stopped in Danbury Connecticut to visit the Danbury railroad Museum.  I found the place, despite Google Maps street names not matching Danbury street signs.  They have a Boston and Maine steamer, a mogul, B&M Class B15, very famous in B&M circles.  I have two models of said locomotive.  I took a lot of photos.  They have a "lightening stripe" E-8 diesel, a PRR mail car, a NH Buddliner, a fantastic double header NYC wreaker, some cabeese, lotta cool stuff for rail fans like me.
  I found a low end motel in Danbury to spend the night.  America's Best Value Inn, right off exit 5 on I84.  It is unpretentious, the air conditioner works, the ice is cold and clean,the wifi works.  $85 a night.
  Tomorrow I press on to West Chester.  Ought to arrive mid afternoon.   

Don't help ISIS propaganda

ISIS  just claimed responsibility Garland Texas  terror strike.  If believed, ISIS will gain stature among it's friends and fellow travelers.  That sort of people will be impressed that ISIS was able to strike the Great Satan on its own soil, even if a Texas cop snuffed both attackers with only a handgun. 
   We should not offer an opinion as to the truth or falsity of the ISIS claim.  Let ISIS persuade the world wide audience that it really happened that way.  Give ISIS the burden of convincing skeptics that they are telling the truth.  DO NOT issue a US government stamp of approval to ISIS propaganda.  We should just keep it zipped.  And the TV newsies would do their country a favor if they would just stop talking about the ISIS claim of responsibility. 
  I would rather learn the name of that Texas cop, and what he used for a handgun.  Did he pack a big .45 Colt sixshooter?  Or merely a skinny little 9mm Glock? 

Trac fone photography

The camera in the phone works OK, the trick is getting the photo off the phone and onto your computer.  It can be done.  The USB cable begins to work AFTER you go thru some totally weird finger fiddling on the phone.  Then the computer will recognize the phone on the USB and display it like it was a flashdrive.    Then go back to the phone, do some more finger fiddling, and your pictures will appear on the simulated flash drive.  This comes off an Amazon website/help site that popped up in Google. The LG 305C manual says absolutely nothing about any of this.  Clearly the Trac phone software people were retarded, none of this finger fiddling puts any new information into the phone, it's just a magic finger dance that you have to learn and memorize.  If the software geeks had done their job right, just plugging USB into the phone would be all you need to do.  Both my still camera's manage to work that way.