Author Archives: Denny

Purple Trusses Majesty

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This isn’t the first year for a Christmas display on the Purple People Bridge but it is the first year I’ve taken notice. Maybe that’s because more people have been posting pictures of it on social media, or maybe it’s because I’m sitting at home paying more attention, or maybe it’s because the display has received a little more publicity because it almost didn’t happen. The privately owned bridge is normally home to a variety of fundraising events throughout the year but that was not the case in COVID-riddled 2020. There was simply no money in the budget of the nonprofit Newport Southbank Bridge Company for lighting the bridge this year, but local companies, led by realtor North American Properties, stepped in to assure that there would be lights. The 25-foot tree placed at the bridge’s south end by the Wish Tree Program is covered with gift suggestions for people in need.

I arrived at the Kentucky end of the bridge a little before sunset and walked across it to Ohio. Note that the state line is a lot closer to Ohio than it is to Kentucky. It is the low-water mark on the northern bank — as it existed in 1792. When “love locks”, closed by couples before tossing the keys in the river, became a problem around 2017, they were removed from the actual bridge and a special area designated. I presume that even the special area has to be cleaned up occasionally. The middle picture is of the Big Mac Bridge which carries I-471 and is officially named the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge. The supports in the foreground of that picture once carried railroad tracks. They can be better seen here. The third picture was taken from the Cincinnati access ramp looking back at the bridge.

As the light faded, I headed back toward Kentucky. With the change in lighting, the people on the bridge also begin to change. It had been mostly people jogging or biking for exercise and workers on a foot-powered interstate commute. Now small groups, including some obvious families, began to appear to take in the lights.

When darkness came, the bridge began to take on that “infinity room” look I’d seen in pictures others had shared online. Somewhere near the middle, I leaned over the railing to grab a shot of the big tree in Newport.

Back on the Kentucky shore, I stepped off to the side for a view of the city across the river before taking a parting shot of the Wish Tree and heading home. The display is free and it only cost me $3 to park in the garage next to the bridge. The lights will be lit each night through January 15.

What was originally called the Newport Cincinnati Bridge opened in 1872 as a railroad only bridge. Over the years, it was widened, had decks added, and for a long time served automobiles, trains, and pedestrians. It lost the trains in 1987, became a people bridge in 2001, and became purple in 2006. In addition to being painted purple, the bridge had stairs and railings added to allow people to walk along the top of its trusses for a fee. They’re still there.

Sadly for the promoter, there usually wasn’t all that much to look at, and, even when there was, the improved view from a maximum of maybe 140 feet above the free-to-walk deck did not seem worth the fee which hovered in the $30-$40 range. These pictures were taken during Cincinnati’s last Tall Stacks Festival when the riverfront was full of boats. That gave climbers something to look at and the idea was new enough to seem attractive. I’m fairly certain those few days in October 2006 were the busiest ever for the climbing operation which closed less than a year later. 

My Gear – Chapter 21
Garmin zūmo 396LMTS

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Everybody’s out of step except my boy Denny. That’s sure how it seems when the subject is GPS routing. I have once again purchased a Garmin product that disappoints me. It’s not that it doesn’t have some wonderful features or that it’s shoddily made. It’s because it doesn’t handle predefined routes the way I think it should. The out-of-step feeling comes from the fact that almost no one else sees any problem at all with the manner in which the unit plays back what it calls “Saved Trips” while I see some very big problems.

I wrote that opening paragraph over a year ago, shortly after I purchased the unit. I’ve been putting off finishing this article with intentions of gaining more experience with it and verifying or disproving some of my theories. Even after all this time, I’m still not sure if some of my theories are right or wrong, but I have gained experience and I do have a more informed opinion. Things aren’t quite as bad as I thought when I wrote that first paragraph, but they are a long way from good.

I’m thinking that for you to fully appreciate my viewpoint would require more background than I’m willing to write, and definitely more than you’re wanting to read. The most basic piece of background is that I want a GPS unit to feedback to me a route I’ve predefined. Garmin zūmos do that. Most GPS units do not. They provide a route of their choosing from where you are to where you want to be. Smartphone routing apps do this too. The 396 does this exceptionally well and even integrates with smartphones to provide traffic and weather information plus Foursquare and Tripadvisor ratings for restaurants and motels. 

A rather basic requirement for following a predefined route is the ability to turn off automatic recalculation when you happen off of the route. Without this, the GPS will recalculate the route every time you miss a turn or pull over for gas. The 396 supports this but with at least one flaw. If a point on the route is blocked by construction or something else, the unit seems to take that as justification for ignoring the fact that automatic recalculation is turned off and just recalculates things anyway. Yes, I understand that that allows you to continue your travels without backtracking but it sure interferes with following an old road up to the edge of a temporary closure.

Of course, the ability to download those predefined routes is also a requirement, and here the 396 really missteps. I realize that infinitely long trips cannot be supported so I readily accept limiting or splitting trips at some point. 29 via points does seem a little low but this is the “economy” model. Maybe the more expensive zūmo XT supports more but that isn’t the real issue anyway. The real issue is that the Garmin unit does exactly what it says and splits the route into two (or more?) completely separate trips. When the endpoint of the first segment is reached, that fact is announced and it is left for some human to select and activate the next segment. To show how this didn’t have to be, I’ll make my first comparison to the previous generation of zūmos.

I own a zūmo 220 which, like the 396, is the cheapest of its generation. As far as I know, the only differences between it and its larger siblings, such as the 660, are screen size and (possibly) memory capacity. The 220 has a point limit, of course, but it appears to be somewhere around 200, and it is handled quite differently. When the limit is encountered during route import, the user is told that directions to points beyond the limit could not be calculated. Then, as those points are approached (and earlier points fall away) directions become available. There is no need to fumble around with route selection in the middle of traffic or drive on without directions while the GPS accesses the new route. Forgetting or maybe just tossing something that I think they did right in the past is the sort of thing Garmin does repeatedly.

To illustrate my more basic complaint about the 396, I’m going to again reference the 220. When a route is selected on the 220, it asks whether you want to go to the route beginning or not. If the answer is yes, it provided directions to the start point then switches to the selected route without manual intervention. If the answer is no, the route is plotted and displayed. Intersecting it at any point causes the GPS to begin guiding you along the path. It’s the same operation all along the route. You can drive off of the route and even loop backward or skip ahead and the little colored line is waiting for you to intersect it at any point. You can even deactivate the route by having the GPS take you to a motel or some such then reactivate and rejoin it whenever you’re ready.

With the 396, you MUST select one of the route’s waypoints before starting and you MUST physically reach it or manually skip it which simply selects the next one. Of course, I really don’t want to manually pick a starting point, but even if I did my routes contain mostly automatically generated point names which provide little help in selecting one.

I guess that isn’t an issue when starting a route at the very beginning but it certainly is an issue when joining (or rejoining) a route in the middle. I did try to simulate the desired operation by selecting a point prior to the one I knew to be next, driving to intersect the plotted line, then skipping (red arrow) the selected point. I’m not 100% sure this actually works without altering the path to the next point, but even if it does, it’s a complication that did not exist in the prior model.

In September, I finally got serious about using the 396 on a trip with a route that I really wanted to follow. It was an all Ohio trip I split into separate north and southbound segments but I still encountered the 29 point limit on the southbound segment and it was on this trip that I discovered the calculation setting override related to blocked roads. I went through the motions of trying it on a recently ended twelve-state trip but I already knew it wasn’t going to work. The trip was already split into sixteen segments. The 396 split most of those in half and simply refused to load the longest of them. I sort of used it for the familiar first leg but quickly switched to my beaten but still breathing 220 for the rest of trip. I did keep the 396 powered on to record a track for geotagging and to find motels but it was the 220 whose directions I followed. Garmin, you blew it again.

My Gear – Chapter 20 — Lenovo ThinkPad 13

Trip Peek #101
Trip #134
JHA Conference 2016

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This picture is from my 2016 trip to the Jefferson Highway Association Conference in Carthage, Missouri. The picture at right is of artist Lowell Davis in front of his home in Red Oak II. The Jefferson Highway once ran north and south through Carthage and US-66 once ran through east and west. Red Oak II is a little outside of Carthage and sits on neither historic highway which qualifies it as a must-stop for both. Conference presentations took place at an event center right across the road which allowed us to simply stroll over when time permitted. The two-day conference was at the center of a ten-day trip which meant there were many stops, at mostly familiar sites, both going and coming. I even worked in a concert in Tulsa after the conference ended. I missed the conference’s bus tour as it was the same day as the Celebration of the Life of Laurel Kane, who had died in January, at her beloved Afton Station.

The sequence in which Trip Peeks are used is random and determined in advance. They are then used when needed. That this Trip Peek is published so soon after Lowell’s death on November 2 is certainly a striking coincidence.

ADDENDUM 31-Oct-2022: I just now discovered that this post is a repeat (repeek?). The 2016 JHA conference was also the subject of the 29-Nov-19 post. Not only is the sequence random, it’s also kind of sloppy.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

My Memories — Chapter 1
New River Rafting

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Like many, I’ve thought of writing a memoir. Maybe I already have. Considering that  “a memoir is a form of creative nonfiction in which an author recounts experiences from his or her life”, each of the travelogues I’ve published might qualify. But it’s when I remember other, not necessarily travel-related, experiences from my life that the word memoir enters my head. That happened today. I’m reading Down the Great Unknown about John Wesley Powell’s pioneering trip down the Green and Colorado Rivers and just finished a section discussing the sensations of traveling through whitewater. It naturally made me recall some of my own whitewater experiences. There aren’t all that many, but there are a couple I’ve thought of writing down in the past. The dearth of new subject matter resulting from the current coronavirus quasi-quarantine combined with today’s memories prompted me to begin a series of “memoir posts” and kick it off with this rafting story.

I was never an expert but at one point in my life I did a fair amount of canoeing and a little rafting. I believe there were a total of four rafting trips on either the New or Gualey Rivers in West Virginia. This story is from the first or second of those outings. Part of me really thinks it was the second trip but I can’t be certain. The time was around 1980. A neighbor joined three coworkers and me and headed off for a little camping and floating.

The rafts used held eight “passengers” and a guide. Two were enough to hold everyone who had reserved a spot but not enough the keep the three groups intact. The other two groups were families who really wanted to stay together and our group was just some guys on a lark. Three of us went with one family and my neighbor and I went with the other. Mom, dad, and three young teenagers made up the family in our raft.

The style of raft we were using has deck strapped to the rear for the guide and a pair of long oars. Everyone else sits on the big tubes that make up the frame of the raft. In addition to those that form the perimeter of the raft, a couple run from side to side sort of functioning as benches. That’s not us in the opening picture but it does show the type of raft we used. I earlier put the word passengers in quotes since anyone not on those benches holds a paddle and is expected to use it in certain situations. It was apparent almost immediately that the teens weren’t going to be a lot of help in this regard although the oldest was quite willing. Mom didn’t really want anything to do with a paddle so the “crew” became Larry (the neighbor), Dad, Son #1, and me. Larry and I, both in our thirties, manned the two front corners. Dad and Son #1 took the two rearmost positions and Mom positioned herself on a bench. I think the two other kids flitted between bench and side tube.

We were on the milder section of the New with no rapid above Class III. We came to our first Class II after easily floating through a couple of Class Is as expected. Rubber rafts are quite flexible and often bend and unbend so that riders get something of a bucking horse sensation. That’s what happened at that Class II and it was pretty exhilarating. At least it was for most of us. When Larry and I turned around to express our approval to the guide, he wasn’t there. Neither was Dad. Mom’s already challenged composure wasn’t far behind.

We learned later what happened. When the raft bent and straightened, Dad lost his grip and was thrown backward over the guide. The guide made a quick decision that it was better for him to accompany the man exiting the raft rather than stay with the relatively safe folks in it. He grabbed at Dad as he tumbled by and hit the water with him. Larry and I looked over the astonished teens and the now screaming Mom and then at each other. Neither of us had any experience with a raft but I had the most canoe time so I headed to the back and took up the oars. It was neither quick nor pretty but I did eventually get the raft turned around and reached the guide and Dad. Both were laughing and it was obvious that Dad had quite enjoyed the tumble and swim.

His wife did not share his joy. She basically crumpled to the floor of the raft. River rapids are filled with rocks that rubber rafts slide over. When that happens, the floor is not a place one should be. For the rest of the trip, each time we approached something shallow, the kids would somehow talk Mom into sitting on a bench but she returned to the floor as soon as they allowed.

There were some bigger rapids and it’s the memory of these that reading about Powell’s trip first triggered. The book spoke of the instant when you are poised at the edge of a significant rapid with the water seeming to tower above you. It’s a sensation I remember vividly and which author Edward Dolnick describes well.

Between the loss and recovery of Dad and our guide and the final rapid, things were uneventful. Dad and the kids had talked about his unplanned swim and as we approached the day’s last rapid, the guide offered them a chance to experience it themselves. The rapid was a mild one, he said, with few rocks. Any who wanted to float through in lifejackets were welcome to do so. I’d kind of enjoyed the new experience of maneuvering the raft with those big oars and took this as an opening. If the rapid was that mild, I wondered, would he let me take the raft through? He agreed and jumped overboard himself.

Dad and the kids also bailed out leaving just me, Mom, and Larry onboard. The power of those big oars compared to a wimpy canoe paddle is impressive. Positioning the raft at the top of the rapid was rather easy and after that, there wasn’t much to do. The raft and several floating bodies slid into some ripples. Suddenly there was screaming at the side of the raft. It was one of the teens and I thought I must have hit her with an oar. That was the scariest moment of the whole trip for me but it turned out to be almost nothing. She had gone underwater and somehow came up under the raft. Finding the surface blocked by a big black sheet is undoubtedly frightening and that’s what prompted the screams as she slid to the side and up to the surface.

Back in quiet water, everyone climbed back on board and the guide steered us to our pull out point. As we waited for the bus back to the livery, I approached Dad to apologize for scaring his daughter and for his wife’s obviously bad time. He wasn’t having it at all. He was ecstatic. The trip was something he’d long been looking forward to and which he booked as soon as their youngest reached the required age. He and all of the kids had had the time of their lives and he enthusiastically thanked Larry and me for providing some paddle power when required. The wife would get over it, he assured us and his grin indicated he was quite willing to deal with a little tension until she did.

Trip Peek #100
Trip #77
Madison Bicentennial

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This picture is from the 2009 Madison Bicentennial. That’s Madison, Indiana, on the banks of the Ohio River. Although the event had been in the works for 200 years, my attendance was rather spontaneous. Even so, I managed to snag a room above Indiana’s oldest tavern more or less in the center of the party. There was a variety of entertainment and two parades; One on and one off the river. The picture is of a Jenny Lind impersonator. The “Swedish Nightingale” performed in Madison in 1851.

When the first Trip Peek was posted back in 2012, 107 trips had been completed and I thought that an endless supply. As the 100th Peek is posted, I am in the middle of trip number 160, and I now realize that the supply is clearly not endless. That end, however, is quite a ways off. At the current rate, I’m probably good for another five years if I and the blog last that long and I never take another trip. I’m not sure about me and/or the blog lasting that long but I do intend to take and document several more trips. I’m thinking the Trip Peek inventory is in pretty good shape.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Trip Peek #99
Trip #143
Swede Mysteries of Life

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This picture is from a 2017 trip I called Swede Mysteries of Life. DNA tests had revealed a branch of the family with connections to Philadelphia previously unknown to my Ohio clan, so an uncle, two, cousins, and I headed there for some research and recreation. By spending a couple of nights near the city’s Independence National Park, we were able to include a look at some of our nation’s history along with some of our family’s. The ship in the picture is a reproduction of the Kalmar Nyckel which brought our ancestors here in the seventeenth century. There’s no question that our afternoon cruise on the reproduction was infinitely more comfortable than their ocean crossing voyage.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Tracing a T to Tampa Again

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One hundred years ago today, my great-grandparents left their home in Woodington, Ohio, and set out for Florida. This morning, I left my home near Cincinnati, Ohio, drove north to Woodington, then I too set out for Florida. I am following their path but not their schedule. They started around noon, drove a half-dozen miles to Greenville, had some work done on their Model T Ford, and spent the night with relatives. I was in and out of Woodington well before noon and my first day ended in Georgetown, Kentucky, 125 miles or so south of Greenville.

I made this trip once before in 2001 with nice August weather and no pandemic. I have a pretty good idea how traveling in November differs from traveling in August, but how the current COVID-19 pandemic will affect this trip is an open and rather large question. There is little to suggest that motels in and of themselves are particularly dangerous, and that is also mostly true for restaurants as well. But people are an entirely different story. Meeting people is easily one of the things I enjoy most about road trips. I always look forward to chatting with my neighbors at a counter or bar, but that’s really going to be at a minimum this time around. I can see eating a lot of carry-out and possibly microwaving packaged meals in my room. I’ve even tried to mentally prepare myself for aborting the trip if conditions grow worse. Starting on the 100 year anniversary was very important to me and finishing this year is pretty important, too, but I’m going to try to not be stupid.

This entry is to let blog only subscribers know about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.

My Caboodles — Chapter 3
Indiana Air Mail Arrows

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Like the first My Caboodles chapter, this third installment contains just three items. Some might consider it less than a full caboodle and I suppose, if a National Caboodle Association is ever formed, I might be called out on it. Here’s my thinking.

In the early days of powered flight, large concrete arrows were placed along the path of airplane routes as navigation aids. I was recently reminded of these arrows when Facebook (and real-life) friend Nick Gerlich posted a picture of an arrow in Texas. In his post, Nick noted that he had visited 47 arrows and had 78 to go. The fact that he mentioned a “to go” number indicates a plan, or at least a hope, of eventually reaching all 125 arrows that are known to exist today. What a great and natural caboodle, I thought, and I’ve a hunch that Nick just might reach them all, but I’m quite certain that I won’t. Some are in some rather remote locations that the much-fitter-than-me Nick will probably reach but which I wouldn’t even consider.

I’ve only seen three navigation arrows but they were all in Indiana, and, as benefits this series, they are all that exist in Indiana. The 125 arrows documented at Arrows Across America and scattered throughout the USA are an impressive and worthwhile caboodle but it’s out of my league. This is my blog and I make the rules. This post celebrates the three arrow Indiana sub-caboodle.

When created, the installations were originally known as Beacon Stations since their most important feature was an electric beacon mounted on a tower standing on the square pad in the middle of the arrow. The “feather” pad held a shed housing a generator if necessary. None of the Indiana arrows retain their towers, sheds, or fuel storage facilities.

1. This is arrow #6 of Contract Air Mail Route #24 which connected Cincinnati to Chicago with a stop in Indianapolis. It’s on private property southwest of Rushville and is the arrow shown in the Google Maps image at the top of this article. The route began about 65 miles away at the historic and still operating Lunken Airport. Embry-Riddle Company, which had been founded at Lunken exactly two years earlier, won the contract. Their slogan for the new service was “Mail Airly and Often.”

2. Arrow #7 of CAM #24 is about eight miles west of #6. It’s east of Shelbyville and also on private property. There’s a Google Maps view here. This arrow looks to be in the best shape of all the Indiana arrows. Most or all of the concrete arrows were constructed between 1926 and 1932. CAM #24 began operating on December 17, 1927, and I imagine the route’s beacons and arrows were in place in advance of that. It doesn’t look too shabby for being roughly ninety years old.

3. This is CAM #24’s Arrow #8. It is at the Shelbyville airport situated northwest of town. It is separated from Arrow #7 by almost exactly eight miles which I’m guessing is some sort of standard. A Google Maps view is here. There are some visible differences between this arrow and the other two and I’ll offer up some guesses as to why. One difference is the painted surface rather than bare concrete. The arrows were originally supposed to be chrome yellow and my guess is that someone, possibly an airport employee, is maintaining the historical accuracy of the arrow. A rather obvious difference is the lack of a “feather” pad at the tail end of the arrow. Although it’s possible that a pad once existed and has been removed, it seems more likely that one was never there. Where an electrical connection was available to power the beacon, no generator was required which meant no shed and no pad. It seems reasonable to believe that electric power was available at the airport. A third difference that might not be as obvious is the square pad and the arrow being slightly askew. The beacons were thought of first and the idea of directional arrows came along a short while later. This is only a guess, but I’m thinking the pad for the tower was poured first and not aligned with anything in particular. When an arrow pointing to Indianapolis was added, its alignment differed from that of the pad by just a skosh.

A New Web Home

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I really don’t like writing things that make others look bad and no one likes writing things that make themselves look foolish. Today I’m doing both.

For over six years, my website has been hosted by an outfit called Arvixe. It has served me well, and even today is mostly satisfactory. I moved the site this week for just one reason and my decision had much more to do with their handling of the problem than the problem itself. That’s where the anger comes from. The embarrassment comes from the fact that I put up with the problem for more than a year.

There are email lists associated with both this blog and the trip journal part of the website. In July of 2019, I noticed that some messages were bouncing. I believe the bouncing must have started sometime in June. Of course, there’s some embarrassment in the fact that I wasn’t paying closer attention and didn’t spot it sooner, but I do have an excuse. I was in the middle of a road trip which means I was often running out of time to maintain the journal let alone keep an eye on things that are supposed to just work. When the trip ended and I was back home, I looked into it a bit more and submitted a support ticket on July 10, 2019.

I’d encountered similar problems in the past and wasn’t overly concerned. This whole web thing is a hobby for me and I use what is called Shared Hosting to keep costs to a tolerable level. Dedicated servers and dedicated IP addresses offer increased control and performance but they are much more costly. Almost all hobbyists and many small businesses use Shared Hosting where many different websites share a server and an IP address. An obvious risk in this sort of arrangement is that bad guys might be among those sharing your server. Individual subscribers can’t do much about bad guys. Hosting companies try to keep bad guys out but screening can’t be perfect. So my problem started with some bad guys, spammers to be specific, moving into my cyber neighborhood.

Sadly, that is all too common. Sometimes the hosting company recognizes the problem quickly and boots the bad guys before they cause too much trouble. Sometimes they don’t, and people on the receiving end take action to protect themselves or their subscribers. This typically consists of putting the offending IP on a blacklist and rejecting all messages coming from there. I have had that happen multiple times with multiple hosting companies.

It’s terribly inconvenient, of course, but is usually solvable in a reasonable amount of time. Many blacklists are public with established procedures for getting off of them after proving the bad guy is gone. That’s not the case with Yahoo. Nor is it now the case with AOL and Verizon since, through purchases and mergers, they’re all one happy and secretive family. Their lists are essentially private and getting removed from them (i.e., restoring your reputation) is not very easy. I’m sure that knowing that made me more tolerant as weeks then months slid by with no resolution.

My tolerance for a lack of action was due partly to a lack of travel. The blog’s email list runs at least once a week but currently contains just two Yahoo addresses and one AOL address. The travel journal’s list runs daily but only when I’m on the road. It contains nearly twenty of the at-risk addresses. After that July trip, an August trip was pushed into September then canceled. With a maximum of three messages getting bounced (and very occasionally none), I convinced myself I could wait. When short trips in October and December brought a rash of rejection notices, I convinced myself I didn’t have time to undertake moving the site right then. My dumbest move in this whole fiasco came at the end of the year when, stuck on the idea that I had no time to move the site, I renewed my agreement with Arvixe and actually gave them more money! Then came COVID. Trips that were planned for April, June, July, and August were canceled. That should have left me with time to move the site, but now I had another stupid excuse. I’d just renewed my hosting plan and had to protect my investment.

The summer passed with varying amounts of bouncing each week. I entertained myself by reporting the continuing lack of progress on the support ticket with increasing levels of sarcasm. I made a point of noting the problem’s one year anniversary. For their part, the Arvixe support techs repeatedly explained how tough the problem was, avowed it was a high priority involving the most senior admins, told me about their complex email system (CloudMark), and reassured me that they understood how important the issue was to me and that my patience was sincerely appreciated. They also frequently asked me to supply headers from the reject notices although I’m reasonably certain that was purely to give the impression of something being done. It became apparent that the CloudMark system, which sounded like something that should avoid unreliable IPs, either didn’t work or was administered improperly. In fact, rather than being used to solve the problem, its complexity was used as an excuse for the lack of progress. It was also obvious that either those senior admins were incapable of having an IP removed from a blacklist despite months of effort or they had succeeded in getting IPs removed but that bad guys kept being allowed on the server and causing the IPs to be placed right back on the blacklist. Neither described a company deserving of my business.

I eventually managed a short trip in September and the resulting rash of rejection messages from the journal’s email list finally convinced me I had to do something. Two days after that trip ended, I arranged for hosting at another provider. I let Arvixe know, in my next ticket update, that I intended to move around the middle of the next month, but no one there acknowledged it. And nothing improved.

Over the next couple of weeks, I moved things to Bluehost, my new hosting provider. Last Monday, I activated access to the new location (i.e., switched name servers) but encountered some problems and backtracked. On Tuesday, with help, via chat, from Bluehost technicians, the switch was made successfully. This is my first blog post since the move, and I’m really looking forward to it reaching all subscribers. I’m also looking forward to all subscribers to the trip journal list receiving mailings from an outing beginning early next month, and I sincerely apologize for taking so long to acknowledge and correct an intolerable situation. Email subscribers, this move’s for you. I very much appreciate each of you.

ADDENDUM 25-Oct-2020 09:45: At the time this was published, a problem existed which reported proper email addresses as invalid when attempting to subscribe. That has now been corrected. 

Fall Fun Drive

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With Wednesday predicted to be clear, dry, and warm, it seemed like a good day to check out some of the area’s foliage which has become increasingly colorful in recent days. The fact that both rain and temperatures were predicted to fall on Thursday made it seem even better. Although trees were not at peak color on Wednesday, rain did appear on Thursday and did knock a lot of leaves to the ground, so I think I made an OK choice. Temperatures that allowed dropping the top around noon made it more than OK since that really has not been the case since.

As I often do, I targeted the area north of the Ohio River where wiggly tree-lined roads connect small towns like Mount Orab, Georgetown, and Ripley. Within the area, my driving wasn’t very targeted at all.

Here and there manmade structures caught my eye. Barns filled with drying tobacco were once quite common in this area, but not anymore. The weathered house looked to be abandoned but it also looked like it enjoyed watching that tree grow from a sapling to towering over its roof.

Actually, my camera recorded considerable evidence of human activity even when I was half trying to avoid it.

My driving wasn’t 100% aimless. For whatever reason, I remembered a couple of previously visited items in the area and made a point of reaching them again. The first is the North Pole Road Covered Bridge that I first visited in 2005 as part of the Five Bridges Road day trip. Fifteen years ago the bridge was somewhat hidden by trees but the road passed right through it.

Not so today. The trees have been replaced by a new bridge and the covered bridge restricted to pedestrian traffic only. The concrete bridge does provide a convenient platform for photographing the newly exposed wooden bridge in its entirety.

I’m not sure when I made my first visit to the Red Oak Presbyterian Church Cemetery but I do know why it was on my mind Wednesday. Rosa Riles, whose likeness appeared on Aunt Jemima packaging from sometime in the 1930s until 1948, is buried there and Aunt Jemima has been in the news recently. The reason is parent company PepsiCo’s decision to change the name and packaging as part of what they are calling a “journey toward racial equality”. A Wikipedia article explains that dozens of women played the character over the years and lists nine of them. Riles is identified as the third to appear on product packages.