We celebrated our grandson Drew’s first birthday this past weekend. I have way too many pictures to pick from, so I will show as much restraint as possible. Here are some of the stories and some pictures….

Grandma and Nora traveled up as planned. They got stuck in a horrible traffic backup in Tennessee, not far from the state line to Kentucky. They got off at the next exit the traffic crept up to to try to find a restroom. Several men from the DOT pulled off to see if they were OK. Becka asked the one man why the traffic was so backed up, thinking he’d say it was an accident since the southbound traffic was flowing fine. He told her that the some of the mountain had caved! Yikes! We were thankful that it had happened before they got that far. He told them that if they continued on the road at that exit, they would come to a gravel road that would eventually take them to Jellico on the other side of the place where the mountain had caved. It was after dark, but they could see well enough to know that the left side of the gravel road was a sheer drop-off! I was very relieved when they called me from Jellico!

On Friday they managed to stay ahead of the snow storm that hammered Ohio. Below is a picture of them at lunch time in Perrysburg, OH, with some of the snow from earlier last week.

What Becka and Nora didn’t know was that a few weeks ago I cashed in some frequent-flyer miles to fly up for the weekend too! I was supposed to arrive in Detroit at about midnight, but because of the snow, our pilot was delayed in arriving from his flight from Toronto. So my three hour layover in Chicago O’Hare became a six hour layover! (reminiscent of the theme song of Gilligan’s Island … a three hour tour!) When I arrived in Detroit at about 3:00 a.m. my son-in-law (who was in on my surprise) was there waiting for me. It was so fun when I slipped into our bedroom, kissed Becka to wake her up, and enjoyed her complete surprise!

We all really enjoyed being together on Saturday as preparations were going on for the “friends party” at 5:30 that afternoon. Meg and Jim asked me if I would give Drew his first trim to try to reduce his “baby mullet.” Here are a couple of pictures of the process….

“Hey, Grandpa, what are you doing to me?!”

A lot of preparations went on in the kitchen for the food for the party the theme of which was puppies. Nora set up a cookie factory on the kitchen table….

Here’s a tray full of the finished product….

Megan made a cute cake she’d seen online….

Drew also got his own cupcake - his first taste of cake! He enjoyed the cake, but he didn’t want to touch it.

Drew really enjoyed the presents….

Grandma loved being with her boy….

It’s hard to remember his being such a tiny preemie a year ago - he’s such a fine, upstanding boy now!

My flights home Sunday were less eventful, and the delay in Chicago O’Hare was shorter than Friday night’s delay. What’s kind of sad is that 10 hours of my weekend were spent at O’Hare! Yuck! Becka and Nora are driving back to South Carolina today (Tuesday). It will be great to have them home again!

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My recent trip up north, where they are experiencing one of their hardest winters in a long time, reminded me of the horrors of global warming and of an e-mail I received recently about the Northern Lights and a frozen Antarctic wave.

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Yellowknife, named after copper, is the the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Here are a few pictures of the Northern Lights over Yellowknife and living in teepees at 37 degrees below 0….

It’s beyond cool!

Below are some pictures of Antarctica. In the e-mail I received, what you see below was attributed to a quick freeze of a wave in super frigid air, but according to snopes it’s actually the result of melting and refreezing. Whatever the situation, that’s one cold place!

quotation…

“It’s nice to have the things money can buy, as long as you don’t lose the things money can’t buy.” - Kevin Johns

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Rob

If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?

My wife and I have been wanting to go to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta ever since it opened two years ago. We decided that that was something we wanted to do during our Christmas break this year. As we talked about it, we decided that yesterday would be the perfect day for us to go there since it was a weekday and would be before most schools would be out for Christmas break. We went to their website and bought our tickets in advance.

On our way to the Atlanta area we stopped at one of our favorite places along I-85 in Georgia - the Mayfield dairy visitor center in Braselton, GA - get off at exit 129 and follow the signs. We both enjoyed a favorite - a scoop of turtle tracks ice cream. The folks at Mayfield had decorated their cow outside for the season…

Our plan for visiting the aquarium could not have been better. We sat in the car in the parking structure and ate the lunch we’d brought along since Becka had seen online that the food prices in the aquarium’s food court were too high for our tastes. After eating we walked to the building and arrived 20 minutes before the entry time we had signed up for, but no problem. There was no line outside at all and we were able to go in early. There were plenty of people there, but it was by no means crowded at all. Bliss! As I share some photos we took, I apologize for the quality of some - I was trying to do them without flash (sometimes mandatorially and sometimes optionally). But since it took longer for the pictures to take, either my subjects moved or I moved the camera slightly, both of which motions altered the clarity.

Throughout the day I just kept praising God again and again for His creation! It was wonderful to see such a huge display of the infinite creativity of the Lord in the creatures He made to inhabit this planet with us!

The first exhibit we visited was the Ocean Voyager exhibit. What a great way to get started! The observation window in that exhibit is the second largest viewing window in the world at 23 feet tall by 61 feet wide and the acrylic window is 2 feet thick! The scene behind the window is amazing with schools of beautiful fish, several kinds of stingrays, enormous goliath grouper and several kinds of sharks, including hammerhead sharks and zebra sharks. The tank itself - the size of an American football field and containing 6.3 million gallons of water - was built to be large enough to house whale sharks, the largest known fish in the world. Below is a picture of one of their whale sharks…

On one of our visits back to that exhibit, we were fortunate to be there at the whale shark’s feeding time. The whale shark would be no threat to people since the opening of its throat is the size of a quarter. That kind of shark is a filter feeder, sucking in large amounts of water to filter out the krill and other creatures small enough for it to swallow. There’s also a 100-foot-long underwater tunnel through which you can walk and see the inhabitants of that tanks swim all around you and above you.

Each of the other four exhibits was interesting and unique, bringing to our inspection creatures from all over the world. The creatures we saw were extremely varied and fascinating. We saw horseshoe crabs, shrimp, Amazonian tropical fish, sea stars, African black-footed penguins, sea anemones, Australian leafy sea dragons, a giant Pacific octopus, seahorses, Japanese spider crabs, California sea lions, sea otters, and on and on I could go.

I’d like to share with you some of the things we found the most amazing or amusing. We saw some odd little creatures called garden eels. They live in little holes they’ve dug for themselves in the sand. They are about 16 inches long, but the most we ever saw was about the 6 inches that peeked out when no fish were nearby. Here’s the best shot I could get of the garden eels…

Other strange creatures we saw were the jelly fish. The colors and their movements were really cool….

The loggerhead turtles were really fun to watch and kind of made me think of the turtle tracks ice cream at Mayfield’s dairy…

We thoroughly enjoyed watching the antics of their five Asian small-clawed river otters. They moved about so quickly that I really had a struggle to get a clear shot of any of them. Here’s my best shot…

Another really cool observation window was the one for the beluga whales. (BELUGA! for those of you who remember the “Bulbous Bouffant” thing that was popular a could of years ago.) The aquarium has three belugas - one male and two females (a mother and her daughter.) Here’s a picture of the three beluga whales…

We enjoyed watching them for a long time - it was just so soothing! They can swim upside down. Here’s a shot of Nico, the male, swimming upside down.

Nico seemed to enjoy swimming near the front of the tank where people were watching. The guides told us that the creatures inside could see us, just as we could see them. Here’s a shot I took of my wife Becka watching Nico…

Our advice to anyone who’s thinking about going there and has never been before:

1. Forget the 4-D show, unless you’ve never seen a 3-D show before. It was cute, but it was a cartoon, rather than real sea creatures. There was another “dimension” to the show that made it 4-D, but since the place is already expensive enough, it’s not a necessary part of a positive visit to the Atlanta Aquarium.

2. Don’t take any child younger than about 7 or 8. We saw a number of children younger than that thoroughly not enjoying themselves. Children under 3 are free, but really don’t take much of it in at all and can be downright annoying to those who are trying to enjoy their experiences. (Read: we saw and heard plenty of crabby babies and toddlers, and the only crabs should be those inside the acrylic. And children 3 to 8 really don’t know enough to fully appreciate what they’re seeing, unless your (grand)child is a prodigy, of course….

3. A good starting time for your visit would be at noon or maybe 12:30. That way, you could eat your lunch before going in, yet still have plenty of time to visit all afternoon.

We ended our Atlanta experience by eating dinner at the cafeteria at the Dekalb Farmers Market and shopping for some great produce and specialty items before heading back to Greenville.

What a pleasant day! We’d do it again in a heartbeat! We’d love to hear that this has inspired some of you to go visit it too.

Traveling certainly does expose you to a lot of “local color.” But then, so does having e-mail! I received by e-mail the following picture of an interesting scene…

I’m sure the deer would move if anyone approached, but if not, jumping on this trampoline could be dangerous!

One bit of local color we enjoyed in Michigan and Ohio was coffee from Tim Hortons. Though it’s originally from Canada, it’s making in-roads into the northern states.

I got a picture recently that I shows some of the effects of local color up in Quebec…

In Quebec, Kentucky Fried Chicken is called “Poulet frit a la Kentucky” - hence PFK. Weird! Even in China it’s KFC!

On the radio near our hometown in Ohio we caught the intro to a program called Ag-Talk … I guess it’s a call-in program for Ohio farmers. We also saw an interesting sight in a town near our home town - vending machines that cater to some of the special needs of local residents…

That sight made me think of the first item in something I’d received recently by e-mail….

You may have had a redneck Thanksgiving if…

your secret ingredient in your stuffing came from the bait shop.

you had Thanksgiving dinner on a ping-pong table.

Thanksgiving dinner was squirrel and dumplings.

you reused a paper plate.

you had a complete set of salad bowls and they all say Cool Whip on the side.

you used your ironing board as a buffet table.

your turkey platter was an old hubcap.

your best dishes have Dixie printed on them.

your only condiment on the dining room table was ketchup.

side dishes included beef jerky and Moon Pies.

you had to go outside to get something out of the ‘fridge.

the directions to your house included “turn off the paved road.”

you consider pork and beans to be a gourmet food.

you had Jell-o from an Elvis mold.

your secret family recipe is illegal.

you served Vienna sausage as an appetizer.

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My wife and I decided to go up to Michigan for a couple of days during our Thanksgiving break. We thoroughly enjoyed our couple of days with our daughter Megan, son-in-law Jim, and grandson Drew. Here are a couple of pictures…

We had lunch at Panera on Saturday with two long-time (rather than old!) friends - Shirley and Laura. It was good to see them and to get caught up. Shirley is enjoying her many activities in her early retirement, and Laura always has interesting stories to tell about her life in Bangladesh, to which she’ll return on December 31. I hope they’ll forgive me for putting a picture of them on my blog.

quotation…

“Our ultimate goal is pleasing the Chief Shepherd.” - Dr. Drew Conley

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Rob

I wonder how many venues I’ve been in through the course of my life without even knowing it, simply because I didn’t know the buzzword “venue.”

At the time of the tragic collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in early August this summer, I had been considering doing a blog post about bridges since I had received pictures of several really unusual bridges in the days that preceded that disaster. After the disaster, I thought it best to wait a while. I hope enough time has gone by that my post on bridges will not cause undue discomfort. I’ve learned, though, that there are some people for whom the thought of bridges will *always* be uncomfortable, and some ever suffer from gephydrophobia, the fear of crossing bridges.

Today I’m going to share pictures and information about five interesting, real bridges. These are not hoaxes - I’ve checked them out on snopes.com

I’ll start out with the oldest of the bridges featured in this post - the famous Y Bridge in Zanesville, Ohio. It’s a Y-shaped bridge that spans the confluence of the Licking and Muskingum Rivers. It has been rebuilt numerous times since the 1850s and is currently the only Y bridge in the world. It is also the only bridge in the United States that you can cross and still be on the same side of the river that you started on! When being given directions, visitors are often struck by the oddity of the statement “Drive to the middle of the bridge and turn right.” Amelia Earhart called Zanesville “the most recognizable city in the country,” referring to the Y Bridge’s usefulness as a navigational aid to pilots.

Below is a picture of the Y Bridge…

Here’s an aerial view from an old post card…

The next bridge, also in the USA, is the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel. It is a 4.6 miles long, four-lane bridge-tunnel composed of bridges, trestles, man-made islands, and tunnels where the James, Nansemond, and Elizabeth Rivers come together in the southeastern Virginia. It connects the cities of Newport News and Suffolk.

The next bridge is in Magdeburg, Germany. The Magdeburg Water Bridge or Wasserstrassenkreuz in German, completed in October 2003, connects two important German shipping canals, the Elbe-Havel Canal and the Mittellandkanal, which lead to the country’s industrial Ruhr Valley heartland. It actually crosses the Elbe River! The overall length is 3,012 feet (918 meters), of which 2,264 feet (690 meters) are over land and 748 feet (228 meters) are over water. This amazing piece of German engineering was first conceived in 1919 and construction began in the 1930s, but the completion was impossible until after the German Reunification in the early 1990s.

Here’s a view from underneath….

The next bridge, another marvel in engineering, is located in southern France. The Millau Viaduct or Viaduc de Millau in French is a large cable-stayed road-bridge that spans the valley of the River Tarn. Designed by English architect Norman Foster and French bridge engineer Michel Virlogeux, it is the tallest vehicular bridge in the world, with one mast’s summit at 1,125 feet (343 meters) - slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower and only 125 feet (38 meters) shorter than the Empire State Building. The viaduct is part of the A75-A71 autoroute axis from Paris to Béziers. It was formally dedicated on 14 December 2004.

Below is a picture when the bridge was under construction….

Below is an aerial view after completion….

The next bridge is a “pedestrian bridge” displayed at the London Design Festival. It is actually more a novelty than an actual bridge in use. Bridge by Michael Cross is a series of steps that rise out of the water as you walk across them, as if walking on water. On entering the exhibition the visitor is met by an empty expanse of water with one step at its edge. Stepping on the first step causes the next step to rise, and so on. Below are pictures from two different angles with two different “pedestrians.” This puts new meaning into the expression “taking life one step at a time.”

If you know of another interesting/ususual/bizarre bridge, feel free to post a link in the comments at the end of this blog post.

Thinking about bridges reminded me of a poem that Dr. Bob Jones Sr. used to love to quote to tell in part why he founded BJU. Each of us needs to be a bridge builder in life - this poem is a good reminder.

The Bridge Builder
by Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man travelling a lonely highway
Came at the evening cold and gray
To a chasm deep and wide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim
For the sullen stream had no fears for him
But he turned when he reached the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

Old man, cried a fellow pilgrim near
You are wasting your strength in building here.
Your journey will end with the ending day
And you will never again pass this way.
You have crossed the chasm deep and wide.
Why build you a bridge at eventide?

And the builder raised his old gray head
Good friend on the path I have come, he said
There follows after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.

This stream which has been as naught to me
To that fair haired boy may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.

A final twist to this already unusual blog post is the fact that the author of The Bridge Builder, Will Allen Dromgoole, was a woman. She was named Poet Laureate by the Poetry Society of the South in 1930.

quotation…

“The best bridge between hope and despair is often a good night’s sleep.” - anonymous

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Rob

I don’t suffer from gephydrophobia, but I do suffer from xylophataquieopiaphobia, the fear of not pronouncing words correctly.

Yesterday my wife and I went to the mountains for a few hours since we really haven’t been able to yet this summer. When we saw how low the water was in the creeks and one of our favorite places - Davidson River - we regretted that we couldn’t bring them drought relief by going camping! We saw some of our favorite places, and I was reminded of something I’d run across recently in my archives….

Traveling through New England a motorist stopped for gas in a tiny village. “What’s this place called?” he asked the station attendant.

“All depends,” the native drawled. “Do you mean by them that has to live in this moth-eaten, dust-covered dump, or by them that’s merely enjoying its quaint and picturesque rustic charms for a short spell.”

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Of course, one sight beautiful to all grandparents is grandchildren. We received some recent pictures of our grandson Drew, so I’m sharing several with y’all.

A couple of weekends ago he enjoyed a DSO (Detroit Symphony Orchestra) concert at Metro Beach.

After getting his next round of shots, he had a low-grade fever for several days. A cool cloth on his fevered brow seemed to help.

Drew *loves to lie on his tummy on the boppy.

quotation…

“The trouble with shepherds is that they’re sheep too.” - Ted Allston

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Rob

If you never go off on a tangent, you are doomed to going in circles.