Denny Wood, New Forest

6 miles. With Esther who was pushing Joseph in the buggy.



More fritillaries and lots of little brown butterflies.







here

Covered Bridge Festival

I was a lot more impressed with this costume before I learned that they sell them at pet stores. (I'd thought that the impatient lady at the other end of the leash had made it herself.) Still, it was cute, if you like clothes on dogs. He didn't seem to mind much.



The "Covered Bridge Festival" is held in Oneonta (Blount county) every October. I'm only two months late in posting these pictures. On the bright side, if you're sorry you missed it and are eager to attend the next one, well, now it's only ten months away.

That's the main shopping street in downtown Oneonta. Annie's old store was just there on the other side of Regions bank, just beyond that inflatable green turret. It's Fred's store now - the Eureka shop. (Eureka as in "aha", not vacuums.) I think it's the best shop on the street, but of course Fred sells my handmade soap there, so I might be a little biased.



The next street over, there's an antique car show. People in Alabama seem to hold antique car shows at the drop of a hat. I suspect that antique car people just like to socialize with each other.



You can see a video of one of the bridges, and a bit of the festival, and a cute kid, here. Not my video - it's from Thicket magazine, a very good new(ish) magazine about Alabama.

Another article about the festival is here. It includes photos of all the remaining Blount county covered bridges, as well as my friend Barbara (whose name people always spell incorrectly).

There were previously four covered bridges here, but one burned down. I should say, one was burned down. That's the scuttlebutt anyway: Ne'er-do-wells partying near the bridge were reported and forced to leave. The bridge suspiciously burned down shortly thereafter.

I'm not sure why the article refers to an "accident" that closed a bridge temporarily last year. According to the newspaper, there were deliberate, heavy-duty, meant-to-destroy acts of vandalism on two of the bridges. I'm not sure if rural areas have more than their share of misbegotten miscreants, or if the teenagers here are just really, really bored.

Privite Allyway

This little allyway was blocked off by a big, heavy, iron gate so I assumed it was privite. We did go ahead and take a couple of photos anyway.

Chelveston - Yelden - Shelton - Chelveston

Led by Barry. With Gordon and me. About 8.25 miles. Garmin playing silly games at our snack stop! Warm, sunny, but some mud underfoot.



We set off from Chelvestonat about 10 am. There is a memorial to the USAF 305th Bombardment Group (heavy) who operated out of the airfield during World War II, with the loss of many personnel.

The memorial was erected in 2006

The upright is the pole from which the wind-sock flew on one of the hangars

Our route took us past the Star and Garter pub, then on to a footpath which divided into a footpath and bridleway soon after a gate. We took the left hand path - the bridleway, which was a bit clearer though still covered in tall grass at this time of year.

We followed this path uphill, through another gate, eventually arriving at the old runway - on our left was a mobile phone mast, on our right an agricultural building of some sort, with various trucks. The public footpaths through the airfield were reopened only in 2006, after local action.

A useful, if not beautiful, landmark

We turned right along the old runway/road, and when we were almost on a level with the mast we turned off to the left, and then right through a strip of woodland. We emerged at the other end of this and turned left along a quiet minor road, which took us into Yelden, via Church Lane.

Yelden church

Well, you would . . .

I realised that we'd been here before, on Feb 27 ,only when the motte and bailey came into view

"the finest archaeological monument in Bedfordshire"

We turned left past this site, then left again to join the Three Shires Waybridleway, which we followed as it wended its sometimes muddy way, as far as Shelton.



We stopped here to have a look around the small church, which dates from the twelfth century. Snack break too.

St Mary's Church in the well-kept village of Shelton

We took the footpath opposite the church, which took us more or less north west right back to the old airfield runway again. We turned left and walked for a good half-mile, past the agroindustrial unit to pick up the path we used at the start of the walk. We retraced our steps to Chelveston village.

Rare Old Beast: a Very Early Brompton

Brompton folding bikes have remained virtually unchanged since they entered into production in the late 1980s. But before that happened, there was a small pilot run and the machines from this early batch were just a tad different. Only several hundred of these were made. Two of those recently ended up passing through Harris Cyclery on their way to the Brompton museum. And one of those I had the opportunity to photograph and ride. Pictured here is the 358th Brompton ever produced. Red and black 3-speed with upright handlebars, dynamo lighting, rear rack and fenders.





The most striking difference between the Brompton we know today and this early model is the "humpback" frame construction. As the Brompton history page explains it, "this feature had come about for the simple reason that standard pipe-bending tools could not produce the gentle radius desired. Change would only come with expensive retooling." By the time the bikes went into full production, the capital investment required for this had been secured and the bend of the main tube became more elegant.





Other differences are more subtle. For instance, the handlebars are welded(?) to the stem.






Here is a close-up. I take it this means the early handlebars were steel.






Likewise, the rear carrier is welded to the rear triangle.





Like so.






The bike comes with a wide, sprungplastic Brooks saddle.






Fitted onto a set-forward seatpost.






The dynamo lighting functions via a bottle generator on the rear wheel. The rear fender has a special cut-out to accommodate it.






The cable routing is interesting.






If I understand this correctly, it appears that several cables are gathered into the same housing and secured to the frame and stem at various points to facilitate the fold?






Here it is passing over the bottom bracket.





The fold itself is mostly identical. Same process, with similar bolts on the frame and stem as on the current production model.






Only the pedal fold is different.





Levers are involved; it is more complicated and bulky than the current snap-fold.






Finally, it looks to me as if the frame construction itself is different in places - the way the tubes are joined.The other differences are mainly in the components. The retro lights. The fender stay attachment. There is no front block system, and instead some of the early models were fitted with front racks. Brompton experts will no doubt notice a myriad of other differences that I haven't picked up on. As far as weight, the bicycle felt a bit heavier to pick up than current production models built up with equivalent specs, but not by much.




I rode the older bicycle carefully and briefly - not wanting to ruin its pristine condition (it had barely been ridden by the previous owner). The first thing I noticed was that there was much less room in the "cockpit" compared to my own Brompton; it felt a bit cramped. The difference seemed too great to be explained by the older bike's saddle being more forward; it seemed that the frame itself was shorter. Later I asked about this at Harris and was told it was indeed the case. Unfortunately I had no time to measure the two bikes, but it appears that when they got rid of the bend in the main tube, they also lengthened it.





However, the front-end handling of the older bike felt very similar, if not identical to modern Bromptons. Overall, riding it felt like riding an older and more upright version of the same bike.Reading Brompton's history and hearing about it firsthand from those in the know, it is striking how little the bicycle has been tweaked since its initial development. Aside from straightening out the bend after the pilot production run, they've mostly just worked on getting the weight down a bit and improving the components. The fold and the handling have remained the same.






For locals who'd like to see the pair of early Bromptons, they will remain on temporary display at Harris Cyclery until September. Many thanks for the opportunity to photograph and ride the #358! You can view more close-ups of ithere, and Elton Pope-Lance has photographed both bicycles here.

Thomas Edison and Henry Ford Winter Estates

We missed another get together with good food and good people in order to get out and do some sight seeing yesterday. It was the warmest day for some days to come, and I was getting very stir crazy!



We headed down to a neat place south of us. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had winter estates in Ft Myers, Florida. Their homes were on the same piece of land and Edison had a lab there also. We've been here a few times before, but we had not seen all of the museum yet. It had the usual cool Edison inventions that I enjoyed seeing. I think the first two pictures were my favorite things to see this visit:



and a picture of Helen Keller and her autograph which reads: To Mr. Edison Not loudness but Love sounds in your ear my friend. Helen Keller

For those that don't know, he was almost completely deaf.



Some of his inventions:





I love all of the cars on display there:



My very favorite thing here by far though is the Banyan tree. All of this is the same tree, and I didn't begin to capture all of it because it was raining by the time I took these shots:





Living the life in chilly Florida!

Update from GRIP

I'm behind with posting but with good reason. Yesterday's classes were Intense. Yes, with a capital "I" and they were also Interesting, Informative and Mentally Exhausting.



I was up late last night (as were most other classmates in the Advanced Research Methods with Tom Jones). In addition to a full day of classes yesterday (please go read Chris Staats' post about yesterday's classes and wish him a belated happy Anniversary while you're there) we had a homework assignment. We had no idea how hard it was going to be, but that look of glee on Dr. Jones' face when he gave us the 8-page handout should have been a clue!



I do enjoy a challenge but this was something else. There were abstracts of 16 tax lists, 3 census records, 12 deeds, 4 wills, 2 guardian records, 2 marriage records, and a Revolutionary War Pension affidavit that we had to review, analyze, and try to determine the father of a man from 5 other men with the same surname!



But before tackling the homework I decided to attend the presentation by Rick Sayre on Pennsylvania Research, which was good but he quite a bit of time on Pittsburgh records. I would have liked to have heard more about statewide records.



After returning from the presentation, I spent 4 hours working on the homework assignment. At that point, I still hadn't reached a conclusion but my head was hurting and my eyes were burning so I turned in for the night. Less than half an hour later an idea popped into my dull brain and I "had" to get up and work on the problem before I lost my train of thought. Yes, the answer had come to me. A short time later I was back in bed sound asleep. I didn't even hear the storm that came through that many were talking about today.



I worked on the problem for another hour (consolidating my thoughts and trying to come up with some idea of how to "defend" my conclusion) before heading off to class. Dr. Jones went through the list of possible fathers, one at a time, asking those who thought it was a particular man to raise their hand. When he got to "William" the hands of about 2/3 of the class shot up. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach since he wasn't my choice! When the name of the one I had chosen came up only 3 of us raised our hands.



A minute or so later, Dr. Jones announced that there were 3 "A" students in the class! I had gotten it right! To say that I was ecstatic is an understatement... So, I'm giving myself a little pat on the back and tooting my own horn a bit too. I must say, it felt awesome.



It's been another full exhausting and enlightening day, and we're almost caught up with the syllabus. Tomorrow is the last day with only half a day of classes. It's been an amazing experience and I am so glad that I was able to come.



I'm sure that Chris will be blogging about today's classes as will classmates Shelley Bishop at A Sense of Family and Christy Webb at the Geeky Texan. Also Denise Levenick, the Family Curator, has also been blogging about the Intermediate class she is taking.



This will likely be the last post from GRIP... I've got to get busy on the homework for tomorrow...