Steam boats used to be used to cross the Chesapeake in the days before bridges crossed the water. In order to insure that things like Sunday’s accident on the bay bridge, (for those from out of town: on Sunday, a teenager crossed into the other lane of the bay bridge and hit a semi, which fell into the bay.) I suggest closing the bridges and bringing back the steam boats.
Of course, when people say steam boats after 1900 or so, they rarely mean boats like this, but here is the Black Eyed Susan.
Burnside’s Bridge is named for General Ambrose Burnside, the Union general who ultimately captured the bridge during the battle at Antietam. It took him and his troops more than three hours to capture the bridge. It is still debated today whether it would have made sense for him to take his men through the water instead of over the bridge. In fact, in 1994 a group of cadets from West Point attempted to cross through the water (instead of over the bridge) in similar conditions to those that Burnside would have experienced. They found that, even though the water was only 3 feet deep, getting up and over the steep embankment on the other side proved difficult (and time consuming) enough to make crossing the bridge instead a valid option.
The bridge is no longer in use today for traffic, but is part of the Antietam National Battlefield tour and provides, as seen above, some great photo opportunities.
Since the Olympics have been focusing on swimming and gymnastics for the last few days, I thought I’d look for a good picture to go with them.
This is the sister shot to this one
In case anyone was wondering what a white marlin, or what fish in general, looklike. Here’s an example.
The biggest marlin was a little smaller than yesterday’s tuna weight, but if you go to the site you should check out the blue marlin pictures, as the blue marlin nearly reached 1000 lbs.
Also of note, it was not me in the hat yesterday. In fact, I failed to give photo credit to guest photographer Shelly, who was on location at the tournament while I was on location at my office.
The White Marlin Open took place last week in Ocean City. You can read more here, www.whitemarlinopen.com. In the mean time today’s picture comes from the weigh in for the winner of the tuna category. This was caught last thursday.
Does anybody know if there is a technical term for these watering systems. For those who haven’t seen these before. This is a sort of industial sprinker. It moves in a circle around a pivot point, spraying water over crops in a circular pattern. Then the far right end of it has a sprayer to reach out even farther than the radius covered by just the contraption itself.
I find them fascinating. However, that’s probably not saying much since I am fascinated by many things.
Good luck to the Ravens in the upcoming season. Tonight’s game doesn’t really mean anything, but it will give us a chance to recall the almost amazing victory that the Ravens almost had the last time they played the Patriots. We can all hope that this season is neither miserable nor tragic.
For many reasons, I think we are all looking forward to a later game when Flacco finnally gets to play. Something about that guy just sounds right.
One thing we haven’t touched on enough is agriculture in Maryland. So, becasue pretzels don’t grow out of the ground, we’re going to start with the second best consumable around: wine. Here’s a shot from the Basigniani vineyards in Sparks. Having been to many a vineyard in both MD and the commonwealth to the southwest, I’d say this is arguably one of the best vineyards in the region. They make some delicious offerings, mostly blended. Some of the best are the Lorenzo Reserve, the Chardonnay, and the Marisa.
Their tasting room is quite nice and their staff is friendly and welcoming.
I suppose that I shouldn’t be telling you about this becasue more demand means higher prices. However, becasue I care, I’ll take the hit in my wallet and share with everyone.
This is just another shot of the John W. Brown. I think its interesting as a ship becasue of its ridiculous size. It dwarfed every other ship in the harbor, as it is longer than a football field, and as you can see, taller than many of the shops and buildings around it.
Over the weekend, the John W. Brown, a Liberty Ship, came to Baltimore’s inner harbor. This sparked a discussion amoung many about who John W. Brown was. He was a union leader, in case you were wondering. What else is interesting about him? Well he died due to an accidental discharge of his hunting rifle.
What is a Liberty Ship? Well they were merchant ships build quickly and cheaply to transport goods overseas during world war two. Only two survive today and this is one of them, which has added significance as Baltimore was the birthpace of many liberty ships, including the John W. Brown. Many liberty ships were destroyed by enemy submarines and other war ships, and after the war many were destroyed for scrap.
This ship is still sailing under her own power and travelling all over.