My job doesn’t require me to travel much, which is nice, but when it does it’s never timed well. The first time was last December, a week or so before Christmas, which is a tough time to be traveling into the New York area, even though I did get to see my old buddy Josh and venture into Brooklyn. Last week, as Sarah entered her 9 month of pregnancy, I had to go up to King of Prussia and work long shifts interspersed with periodic naps at a hotel. (Hence no updates.)
In the end, actually, I only had to work a few days before we declared victory and they sent me home, which was very nice. I got to spend Wednesday at Valley Forge, riding my bike around and taking pictures of old huts and pretty landscapes, and then I was home Wednesday night. Plus, our old Protege hit 100,000 miles on the way north, and I got some pictures of that too. PLUS, I had some free time on Tuesday night to drink a bunch of beer and write a post about it, which I’ll throw up (not literally) later this week. But first: picturesez!!! (All of which are heck of clickable if you wanna few ’em in WIIIIDDDDEESCREEEEEEEENNNNNN.)
First, a picture of the interior of my car as it passed 100,000 miles. (Next, a picture of the wreck that was my car at 100,000.2 miles when I drove into a tree ’cause I wasn’t looking at the road. Ha ha! Just kidding! The car’s fine!)
I was completely blown away by my hotel room. It kinda smelled faintly of dog-flavored cigarettes, but it had a bedroom, and a living area, and . . .
a freakin’ KITCHEN, and . . .
Dude, a full size fridge! I immediately stocked up on the essentials.
The rest of the photos are from my little day trip to Valley Forge. You’ll find I enjoy taking pictures from a post-Warholian perspective (I don’t know what that means) in which I try and juxtaposition old things with new things. Like, here, a pretty countryside with an 18th century hut and a cannon, with a bunch of really lame glass buildings in the background (you may have to view the pic in full-size to see ’em):
Ha ha! I’m dork. Next, another hut, with what appears to be smoke from a nuclear plant in the background:
Then, a hut with cars! (Valley Forge has a metric butt-ton of huts.)
This is the interior of the hut. I could find no 20th or 21st century artifacts within. I should’ve held my foot up to the picture or something, since I was wearing 21st century bike shoes.
After a while I got bored of trying to be artsy, and went back to being standard American touristy. I don’t remember exactly what these doodackies were, but I think they have pictures of 20th century US Presidents on the bottom, and they were on the driveway leading to . . .
the National Memorial Arch. Note the stop sign in the foreground: I’m like Herb Ritts, if Herb enjoyed amateur photos of landmarks instead of deep character studies of wangs.
One side of the inside of the Memorial Arch.
The other side thereofs.
A patriotic shot of the Arch with the flagpole in the background, thwarted by the fact that the wind wouldn’t lift the flag up so you can tell what it is. I’ll just have to inform you that it is the Stars and Stripes, beotch, and you had best represent.
A cool shot of the Arch and the surrounding vegetation. Some of these photos were taken with an eye towards printing them out with our new righteous photo printer and putting them on up on our walls so when people come over they think “Wow, dude, Team Hearn sure knows decent art,” which is a major improvement of what they usually think, which is “Wow, Team Hearn hasn’t cleaned this toilet since the Reagan Administration.”
I call this one “Hut and Tractor, 2006.”
This is the Artillery Park, which was developed so that children would have a place to play that they could hit their heads on solid cast iron. Ha ha! Just kidding. It’s named the Artillery Park because it’s where they parked the artillery so it could be moved reasonably quickly to wherever in the camp the British might be rolling up all muskety and bayonetty.
A cool old covered bridge. Probably doesn’t date from 1778, but it’s still pretty dope.
This is a monument placed near the grave of the only soldier who died at Valley Forge whose grave was actually labelled. I do not remember his name.
Detail of the grave monument.
This is the Washington Memorial Chapel, which was built in the early 20th century as an Episcopal Church, which meant they probably had scotch on the premises, but darn if I could find it.
The entrance to the chapel contains a tall room with a big bell in it. This is the ceiling of that room. (The photo of the “Justice Bell,” which had some bearing on Women’s Suffrage back in the day, came out heck of blurry.)
The interior of the chapel. You can probably tell I had to rest the camera on a pew on the back to steady it, because the room was dark, and my camera’s flash doesn’t really do anything on subjects more than 15 feet away.
Some righteous woodwork in the Choir.
The baptismal font.
This is some kind of weird culverty thing near Washington’s Headquarters. I just thought it looked cool; the creek is the “Valley Creek,” and on the other side of the culvert is the Schuylkill Ribbah. This might be a printer-outer as well.
This is Washington’s Headquarters, and surrounding buildings. I think I terrified the poor tour guide ladies inside because I was wearing my bike shorts, which make no effort to conceal my MASSIVE package.
A bunch of the rooms within the HQ.
The kitchen:
This is a train station that was built in the early 20th century to bring visitors to Valley Forge. The advent of the automobile made it as obsolete as figgy pudding.
This picture show reminds me alot of something one of our fathers would come home with.
Ahhh… the old stomping grounds.
E & I used to go the park and walk around on dates and after we were first married.
You’re right about the smoke. It’s coming from the Limmerick, PA nuclear site. We had a grand view of it from our first apartment.