The Diner - Volume 45

[dejavu]

Yes. I listened to a bit of it. I do not know very much about sea shanties. They all sound much the same to me.  I have never heard of the company. If I remember, I will ask my friends who are always trying to get me to go to Folk Concerts. You may remember they wanted me to go one day of the camp over the New Year. They tell me they were advised to leave about lunchtime as the stream was rising. They left their tent. A few days later they walked in, there was footbridge, packed up their tent into a car (fortunately they had 2) then left it a few more days until they could drive in and out.
About 15 years ago there was a similar occurrence and many were trapped for 3 days. They were combining food rations.

I do remember you saying you didn't want to go to the folk concert, and then the flood happened right where you would have been.

[fritzkep]

I like this shanty especially because the bass line is so much fun to sing along with.

[dejavu]

I found another animal badge that I'd never attempted, this one in the Animals of the Amazon series.

Something Ingy might be able to relate to:  it's called the Poison Dart Frog.  It looks blue, with black spots.  Although the one shown in this link is only partly blue, and has more orange than blue.

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/amphibians/poison-dart-frog/



Another unusual animal.  I'm learning so much about animals, by studying the badges for these games!


(The poison dart frog is for a game I really enjoy -- a relative of the common Microsoft Spider game -- but the challenge for this particular badge is to play on Normal, rather than Easy.  Normal means using two sets of cards, one red and one black, and it's very difficult to sort them, so I hesitated to even attempt this badge.  But I'll give it a try in the coming days.)

[killersmom]

Hi, Linda.  This does sound like a really great time.

Did you bring the rainbow trout home to eat?  Does Jonathan know how to cook them?

Hi Debbie. Yes there is very little Jonathan doesn't know how to cook.

[tfferg]

This was a last minute plan. We all got up early this morning and left at 9AM and drove an hour south on IH25 and went to Estancia Lake. It's just a small postage stamp lake, but is full of rainbow trout.

We met Jonathan's friends, a family of three who are part of our circle. Anyway, the kids all played, I did a lot of walking and the guys caught 8 rainbow trout between them. We all packed a picnic lunch and ate while the guys continued to fish. We had a really good time and the kids had a blast running around. The girls squealed everytime the guys brought up a fish.

We all had a really great time! It was very cold and windy and I got really chilled, so I jumped in a hot shower when I got home, and dressed in really warm clothes.

Hello Linda

A good outing for everyone

[tfferg]

My sister was issued hearing aids for the first time last week (I wrote about her problems a few days ago) and the woman fitting them warned them that people are losing them with face masks. She just got the free government issue to begin. The trouble is that she has very bad arthritis in her hands so finds them hard to adjust. A friend of mine adjusts them through his cell phone but these are obviously not the free government issue.

I have free government subsidised hearing aids. I think they can be operated in conjunction with a mobile phone. It's an option I didn't take up. I find the phone is nearly as fiddly as the hearing aids.

[dejavu]

Hi Debbie. Yes there is very little Jonathan doesn't know how to cook.

Sounds great!  I hope you all either enjoyed them, or will enjoy them when they are actually ready to eat.  (Maybe tomorrow?)

[killersmom]

Hello Linda

A good outing for everyone

Hello Tony. Yes it was very good to be able to get out of the house for a nice, safe outing.

[killersmom]

Sounds great!  I hope you all either enjoyed them, or will enjoy them when they are actually ready to eat.  (Maybe tomorrow?)

We had them for supper tonight. They are better when they are fresh.

[killersmom]

Fritz I have a question about freight trains. When we were traveling down 25 today there was an amazingly long long freight train. It had 4 engines at the front, and usually I've seen the really long trains have extra booster engines at the end, but this one had 4 booster engines in the middle. Have you seen or heard of them being in the middle. Jonathan and I were wondering about it.

[fritzkep]

Wow! No, that's a new one on me.

You know that even under ideal conditions, a diesel locomotive can't start pulling more than a dozen or so cars right at once, right? The wheels would spin and it would get no traction. Instead, the locomotive backs up and takes advantage of the built in slack in the couplings, so it starts out by pulling one car, then the momentum gets the next car going, and so forth.

[fritzkep]

This might help. Some of this info is new to me too.

https://gorail.org/infrastructure/nuts-bolts-why-is-there-an-engine-in-the-middle-of-that-train

Apparently it's become more common only in the past 20 years or so.

https://www.railwayage.com/cs/the-long-and-the-short-of-distributed-power/

[brian]

Fritz I have a question about freight trains. When we were traveling down 25 today there was an amazingly long long freight train. It had 4 engines at the front, and usually I've seen the really long trains have extra booster engines at the end, but this one had 4 booster engines in the middle. Have you seen or heard of them being in the middle. Jonathan and I were wondering about it.

That is increasingly common in very long freight trains. The power is distributed more equally through the train and can be applied to the section of the train that needs it.

[fritzkep]

Yep, exactly.