Tag: cincinnati

UC and Fountains

August 26, 2012 by Terry·0 Comments

For the next 9 days I’m going to be on the road for a variety of functions. One part visiting places, one part visiting people, one part “last fling of summer”, and one part helping Suzie move to Philadelphia. The car was packed the previous night and the angel food cake, cookies, and fudge were all properly packaged so with two cans of Pepsi Max I headed into the West at around 8:00am.

“How far away is Cincinnati” is a question with many answers. Googles says 10 hours, my GPS says 8 hours, and history says about 9 hours. This time, everything went well and I made it in nearly 8 hours and met Brad, my host, and the University of Cincinnati where his student group was doing promotion as part of the semester kick-off. I helped them clean up and Brad and I retired to his apartment to plan our evening. We had wanted to do karaoke.

Brad: Let me call my karaoke friend. *calls* Rachel, this is Brad. What’s that karaoke place you like? *pause* ok, they’re generally booked a month in advance? *pause* Ok, good know. Thanks. Let’s ask Google.

We googled karaoke near Cincinnati and found one place but on street-view inspection it appeared to be someone’s house. No karaoke this evening. Instead, we took pictures of the University of Cincinnati as the sun set and then took pictures at Washington Park which has illuminated fountains.

The buildings of UC don’t quite harmonize and each seems to come from a different school or time.

The glass facade of the University Pavilion showed but sunset and bell tower.

Almost stock art.

FOUNTAINS

Part of photography is getting a handle on “recipes”. Â Certain mixes of settings that achieve a certain effect. Â One important fact to me is that water droplets look suspended in air at shutter times faster than 1/2000″.

The above was taken at 1/500″. Â Here’s what going to 1/2000″ does.

Notice how the droplets seem to freeze?

On the other end, if you take a longer exposure of colored water falling, the center part will over expose to white and the outer side will maintain color making it look like fire.

This at 1/160″.

When a sheet of water is launched skyward, there will be a moment where it is suspended as a flat sheet. Â As it falls, the outer area will experience different air resistance than the center and a bulb may develop. Â When this begins to collapse, it kind of looks like a jellyfish.

The last part of the evening was dinner at Adriatico’s where I received what is easily the largest antipasto salad I’ve ever had. The plate was the size of a hub cap and the greens could not be seen from under the massive pile of meats, cheese, and olives on it. The server provided another plate and even after removing most of the meat and cheese I easily had two salads. I’m pretty sure they just threw a cheese and meat party tray through a wood chipper and caught it with a salad bowl. About 2/3s of the meat made it home with me and Brad and I had man time.

Friends of friends are almost always NPCs in my life. They fill ancillary roles as characters in stories or provide a particular expertise in my life and rarely are promoted to the rank of “friend”. Today was my 4th time seeing Brad and I am hopeful that we will reach autonomy.

Homeward Again

April 15, 2012 by Terry·0 Comments

We left Chicago after breakfast and headed South through an area with a lot of wind turbines which seemed out of place. When we got out for lunch and were nearly blown away, the windmills suddenly made sense. We had stopped at a Dairy Queen in no-place-special America and I felt there should have been a sign saying “you must have at least four tattoos to operate the deep fryer” somewhere. I tried the items from their local menu and learned that veal cutlet when deep-fried tastes similar to pork cutlet and that fried cheese curds are essentially mozzarella sticks but in sphere form.

I dropped of the last person at around 5 PM and for the dozenth time in my life braced to get home from Cincinnati at 2 AM.

To Cincinnati

February 16, 2012 by Terry·0 Comments

I’ve made the drive from Feasterville to Florence a number of times and it consists of three distinct segments:

My driveway to New Staunton – I’ve driven this segment so many times that I don’t really have any good benchmarks. I get gas at approximately the same place every time and take breakfast at the same Wawa.

New Stanton to the Centennial Barn – PA, WV, and Ohio progress in a 200 mile blur of unremarkable America. The area around 70 and 270 is invariably a clusterfuck unless it’s before 6 AM or after 8 PM. Here regionality between Appalachia, the High South, Coalville, and Rusttown blend varying strips of the forgotten with the forgettable.

Centennial Barn to Florence – The Centennial Barn is about 75 miles out from Cincinnati and is painted to commemorate the bicentennial of Ohio. It’s my “Almost there” mark and near there I stop for lunch at McDonalds. I’ve never passed it in the rain and I’m unsure of why I always notice this.

The above is a little over 600 miles and I usually have it done by shortly after lunch.

This time I met up with Suzie and Brad and we went to the Cincinnati Union Terminal.

The Cincinnati Terminal is bathed in golden light at dusk diffused through a Brobdenagian American flag and soft boxed by murals.

It is bright without being garish and the empty fountain outside waits more than being victim to disuse. I’m curious if it acquires a sense of bustle at some point and what it feels like.

Dinner was at The Melting Pot, a fondue place that was a bit costly but still tasty. One chooses a dish selection and a number of people to serve and the server provides instruction, refills consumables, and proffers light banter. The three of us ate for around $100 and I’d say a 1/3 of that cost was because it was “neat”. While there is some value to a showy presentation like the flaming column below, I guess I find it underwhelming as someone who regularly uses a blow torch in the kitchen.

Notes on Melting Pot

The three course set for two will serve three people who aren’t incredibly hungry.
Oil fondue is not for the neophyte but will probably produce better results along most spectra of taste.
Potatoes take a month to cook.
Some items receive free refills. Â Slam on those like a 10 year-old playing Street Fighter II.
Each course has a set up so plan on more time between courses than at a regular restaurant. Â Where I saw this apply was with tables that purchased alcohol. Â I’m used to someone going through 2-3 drinks in an evening, here 4+ seemed to be common.
Overcome the pronunciation barrier. Â While listening to other tables order, I felt that people were shying away from foreign terms. Â Caribbean jerk is good, but the real home of veal is bechamel sauce.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Brad. Â He seems like a sharp fellow and is nearing graduation and lacked a concise answer to “what do you value”. Â He doesn’t need one, as I think we’re entitled to a quality quarter century before one needs an answer. Â He seems about 10% unsure of himself at almost all times and this can be a useful attribute in the hands of the considerate. Â I look forward to (possibly) seeing him again.

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Sea of Lights

November 26, 2011 by Terry·0 Comments

My visit to Cincinnati started as most of my trips involving Suzie seem to; going to her house to pick her up and then going away from there. Â There are probably other things in Covington, Kentucky, but to me, it consists of a gas station, a Red Robin, and a driveway next to a brick house that a friend of mine sometimes sleeps in (the house not the driveway). Â Another friend of mine had gotten us an obscenely cheap room at a hotel in downtown Cincinnati and after depositing our things Suzie and I went to the top of the Carew Tower, the second highest building in Cincinnati to, well, see things. Â The tower itself is a standard steel skyscraper with brick facing built during the inter-war years in a not-terribly-ballsy style of Art Deco that was gimped by the Great Depression. Â I imagine I would have loved the building the tower could have been but the brass accents and mail drops in the elevator banks remind one of what could have been.

After a brief breakdown ofÂ arithmeticÂ from the cashier at the observation deck, the cityscape was ours.

I think Cincinnati is at its best when it remembers that its heritage is as a 19th century boomtown and the city relives that boom every half-century or so. Â Right now, it’s coming out of another such swing in development that saw billions dumped into developing the downtown area but in a way that the city isn’t aware of itself. Â Since structures are changing, buildings don’t know what’s next to them and there hasn’t been enough time between revamps for an organic patina of similarity to develop. Â The buildings could be picked up and re-arranged and you’d have the same city in a way that’d never fly in Chicago or even Tampa.

Rust and packman.

While on the observation deck, Chris Dodds informed me that he had started fasterthanterry.com. Â Suzie caught my reaction:

With friends like Chris who needs enemies?

Downtown is captivating from street-level and tiny splotches of modernity abut the wealth of development. Â The city has a history but one that it needs to remind the resident of rather than one that is obvious. Â Each element feels ad-hoc and I think that confusion stems partly from geography.

And like any city of reasonable size, Cincinnati has its juxtapositions.

Our evening adventure was visiting the light displays at the Cincinnati Zoo. Â These were neither the displays I am used to at Shady Brook Farms nor the accent pieces I’m used to from the Philadelphia Zoo but simply a lot of lights. Â 1/2 of the displays were open and the Zoo seemed quite busy. Â I wanted to get a shot of the main tree and only through a combination of patience and giving people with smart phones the stink eye did I get a clear shot. Â A non-HDR shot with which I am happy.

The night was warm and we were moving quickly so it didn’t feel terribly holiday-ey, but still, there were illuminated candy canes, outlines of animals, and golden bamboo.

After doing a lap of the park we tried to leave and somehow failed to find the exit after two full rounds. Â I feel like someone should cut a corner off my Orienteering merit badge card. Â On the penultimate round we stopped by the elephant hut where I took no pictures. Â I have little compunction about photographing animals but am rarely happy with pictures of elephants as I can never convey what I consider their intrinsic dignity. Â With the loss of theÂ PleistoceneÂ megafauna, the animal kingdom only has a handful of land animals that break a ton. Â Of these, only the elephant breaks 10 tons and represents to me the idea of “this is what land-based animal life can be”. Â The eye of an elephant is only about a cm larger than a humans despite two orders of magnitude difference in size. Â I tend to stare at eyes and hands in people and I wonder if this relatively small ocular size gap misregisters their mass to me.

We finally made a right at the correctÂ SantaÂ and made it past the Winter Post Station and into the baffle of ropes back to the main street. Â After dinner and soft serve we retired back to the hotel room and in defiance of all our previous interactions we were both a sleep before 11 PM. Â Good day.

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Texas Loop – Cincinnati

June 18, 2011 by Terry·0 Comments

I like to drive, or more accurately, I don’t mind being in a car for long periods while either driving or being driven and I like meeting people and seeing things.Â Below is a 4800 mile route I plan on taking with John, Mike, and Suzie to see people and things.

The Loop

From PA to PA in 8 Days

My Goals

I have little experience with road trips of more than two people.Â There’s an elegance to two as one sleeps while the other drives and the driver controls the radio.Â The addition of a 3rd party who may or may not be in the driving rotation or who may not like what’s on the radio may prove tricky.Â My goal will then be to learn to be alone together.Â Headphones, computers, pillows, and books give people bubbles in which they can operate to grant release from constant immersion in the narrative of the car at more than a background level.

At more than one location we’re meeting multiple people who’ve also driven to meet us as opposed to my standard modus operandi of just going to someone’s house.Â Coordination will be needed as well as the dreaded phenomenon of going to bed at a particular time to wake up at the right hour to make it somewhere with at least two drivers being well rested.Â As trivial as this sounds, it’s a compliment to our hosts whose stories have kept me up well past my normal bed time.

Finally, I’m going to avoid bringing snacks.Â Snacks, in my opinion, are a boredom thing rather than a hunger thing as a person of my size will rarely be in the position of being genuinely hungry and having that right amount of food to sate oneself.

Packing Oddities

I’m working with the assumption that we will find a way to do wash as I physically don’t have more than four sets of summer cloths.Â Changing sizes has made that more expensive than I like.Â I also don’t have a bathing suit that fits nor am I bringing a second set of shoes on the assumption that my walking shoes will neither get too wet nor will the car get hot enough that I’ll want to change them.Â Finally, I’m unsure of how many pictures I’m going to take so may grab an external hard drive to carry what won’t fit on the tiny SSD built into my laptop.

Driving

Mike arrived at 7:45 AM and we were on the road before 8:00 AM.Â That’s a 100% score for timely departures with Mike.

Mike, my intrepid also-driver

The drive to Annapolis to pick up John was uninteresting.Â It’s I-95 for Pete’s sake.Â I felt I crushed John when I asked that he not bring snacks but he politely obliged me abandoning the bag of popcorn that had been the highlight of a shared drive to Cincinnati we had taken.

John of the goatee

Off to Cincinnati.Â I’ve taken two or three routes from Maryland to lower Ohio and the one where one goes west across all of Maryland and then across the Allegheny Mountains is practically an emetic.Â Wanda, my car, can’t do 70 uphill and she/I feel bad about this.Â This route went slightly further north across southern PA and while, of necessity, also crossing the Alleghenies, the route was much less hilly.Â We arrived in Cincinnati a bit ahead of schedule where we picked up the last of our war party.

Suzie. Non-driver. Non-sleeper.

We went to a local place for pizza and we founded what John wanted.

Chicken Parm, the king of foods, to John.

Suzie had some salad and Mike and I ordered a white pizza with roasted chicken topped with “enough garlic to kill a small horse, maybe a shetland pony”.Â Instead we received a garlic-less pizza that appeared to be topped with chunks of Shetland pony.Â The alternative is that Shetland ponies are deathly allergic to garlic and the server was an equine medicine major or something.

After dinner, we walked along the Ohio river to Sawyer Point containing a prominent statue of Cincinnatus, the Roman dictator turned farmer from which the Society of the Cincinnati and in turn the city take their names.Â I think he was a swell guy and am glad I was able to get a reasonable handheld HDR.

Ball Game on the Ohio, by Mike Noble

”] Our hotel for the evening was about 20 minutes away in Kentucky and had a pool.Â The night was warm and we’d walked a lot so the pool would prove refreshing.Â That is until we learned it had closed minutes ago at 10:00 to our 10:06 arrival time.Â Ah well, there will be other times to use our suits.

Skipping the pool gave me time to upload photos, something I don’t normally do same-day while traveling and knowledge that people could see what we were doing and that we could hear their thoughts was quite satisfying as the first Facebook comments came in.Â I hope I can keep it up.

From Cinci

March 6, 2011 by Terry·0 Comments

My target departure time of 10 AM was pushed to near 11 as I waited for everyone to wake up and say their good byes. Â Some partings were stronger than others with this being my favorite:

Memories

Chris Dodds volunteered to drive and I received some blessed sleep allowed by fatigue and a driver who didn’t consider the car a mechanical analog of the ball in a game of Pong. Â Once we started leaving West Virginia after I had switched to driving again, the weather got much worse and I averaged 45 MPH or less over much of the Appalachian Mountains due to snow, heavy rain, freezing rain, and more snow. Â My back hurt terribly and I was very happy to be home before 2 AM making the whole trip last just shy of 72 very eventful hours.

My first task after emptying the car was to start uploading pictures as I’d taken over 700, a new record for me for a weekend, and I was very excited to see how some had come out, especially those from the initial meetings on Friday evening. Â I almost started to cry when the camera showed a “card not formatted” error and no device in my house could read the card. Â I believe that card, and the images on it, to be dead. Â Damn. Â I then got a call that two of our group were stuck in Florida in a traffic jam caused by an exploded fuel truck. Â Damn. Â I found that our home dishwasher was broken. Â Damn.

In Cinci

March 5, 2011 by Terry·0 Comments

Scout events and meet-ups share a common thread in that getting everyone together and on the same page is half the fight and as of this morning all the appropriate charges had appeared on my American Express statement so I looked forward to watching the rest of the weekend reveal itself.

During preliminary planning, some people asked what our first activity was going to be, I said lunch at 11:00 am and some thought this to be a waste of a morning. Â When it was 10:50 AM and the last person got out of bed and into a car to go toÂ HofbrÃ¤uhaus I considered the schedule reasonable. Â The restaurant either had a requirement that servers have a C cup or access to a stock of push-up bras that could give anÂ asceticÂ stripper cleavage and the menu was 50% schnitzel and sausage by total count. Â I got a cheese platter that consisted of 2 shot glasses worth of cheese but enough pretzel to construct a life raft and the pair to my left got “Arche NoahÂ derÂ WÃ¼rste”, the Noah’s Ark of sausage containing two of each of the house specials. Â They fought bravely but only finished 2/3rds of it.

Next was the aquarium where prior planning allowed us to skip the main line and the attendant’s disinterest in counting allowed us to slip a non-paying person in. Â The first display was on some culturally important African fish which was surrounded by ~~drunks~~ drums which children were playing poorly. Â After their parents failed to separate them from the noisemakers I blurt out “I’m from the Internet and you’re doing it wrong”. Â That silenced them. Â I moved slowly through the aquarium, taking about 2 hours to go from front to back where others completed it in about 40 minutes. Â At one point, I saw out of the corner of my eye a light red horizontally striped shirt similar to one worn by a group member. Â I turned to say “Hello” but on seeing the wearer was not her, I dropped my jaw and just said “HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” until my higher brain functions returned and I could fake being mildly retarded as any self-respecting person would do. Â The frog display had a foot-activated Frogger game and I prize the 30 second video I have of Ken Bateman calmly triumphing in his suspenders and slacks after gaggles of sub-teenagers failed to cross to liberty. Â The otters traced an adorable loop about their habitat with consistency that I think they were animatronic and many photons died allowing me to capture some 100 pictures of tropical birds. Â My camera and self escaped their cloacal barrage and I chalk this up to having an L-series lens on my camera.

After the aquarium was my favorite part: Bullshitting outside the aquarium. Â I feel like a properly arranged meet-up is just a collection of ways of getting people to stand around and talk and the contrast of Floridian Mitch complaining about the 53Â°F drizzly weather and Minnesotan Peter simply luxuriating in the cooling wind was worth the spot of rain. Â I pit myÂ Louie Armstrong impression against Chris Price’s Bill Cosby impression to a draw but was defeated by his Eddie Murphy/Donkey impression.

Dinner was at Pompilios where I got make promotion announcements and take my favorite picture of the trip:

The Gang of 27

Should no other picture survive or no other memory remain, seeing the above justified the time required to coordinate the trip.

Dinner was followed by tire inflation and moving 15 people to Gameworks, a Dave and Busters-like place owned by Sega. Â I thought this would have been more enjoyable, but the combination of dated games and screens whose resolutions were barely a multiple of my phones reminded me why arcades have largely died. Â I did get a chance to play some quality pinball and see my team set to work min-maxing the ticket games to find that a properly played game of Operation yielded healthy returns.

The evening capstone was a fourthmeal of pizza where Ben showed us a project from the weekend.

Five Intersecting Tetrahedra

I don’t want to say the day went to shit from there as it merely went from awesome to good. Â Every group interaction has a honeymoon period where people are able to deliver the facade of their choice and that period ended around 7 PM today. Â I don’t think I have a terribly large gap between my online and AFK personas as I think I maintain my candor, penchant for (failed) wordplay, and sly compassion across media but not all do. Â Alcohol brought out true feelings and some people who’s social toolboxes weren’t well stocked reverted to form to which others viewed this as some sort of back slide. Â You can only be someone else for so long, and there is a reason why very good actors are so well paid.

Some played cards, others cried, I just… talked.