Monthly Archives: September 2011

Spouting Horn

During our time on Kauai, we spent a fair amount of time with things planned to do and lots of activities lined up.  However, it was a vacation so having a bit of time to gently amble about the place and look at the pretty stuff was still part of the schedule.  One day we took a trip to the south side of the island to see what was down there.  This side of the island is more heavily developed for tourism but it did have some cool stuff to see.

One such feature is Spouting Horn.  This is a hole through the rock that funnels incoming waves and forces them out of a blowhole.  Depending on the tide and the strength of the waves, this can produce a waterspout of over 50 feet. Apparently, there used to be more than one spout with the other one producing a far larger plume.  However, this sprayed salt water onto a small part of the local plantation and reduced the crop yield so the plantation owner had explosives dropped in the hole and now it doesn’t do much at all.

There is another hole nearby that produces a sighing sound as the waves come in.  You can read the local legends while you are there about the creature trapped under the rock and why it is unhappy.  While I suspect this isn’t entirely true, it certainly does make quite a groaning sound as the water comes in which adds to the overall effect.

There is a plateau of rock in this area around the blowholes and they are certainly not keen on you going out there.  The books are full of stories of people getting swept off by a higher than average wave or even getting swept into the blowholes themselves.  Knowing had unpredictable the see can be, I don’t doubt this can and has happened.  I am not so desperate to be close that I am going to try out getting closer.  It all looked pretty good from the viewing platform.  However, one chap was out there while we were there taking a look around.  I hope he found it enjoyable.  I think he lived.

Fantastic Flora

While the scenery on Kauai is dramatic and interesting, the plant life there is quite something too.  Since I am not well traveled enough to see what other Pacific locations have to offer, I have no idea whether all of these things are unique to the Hawaiian chain or even Kauai with one exception.  Our visit to the one of several botanical gardens on the island did explain how one plant was native to the islands and rather rare.

I can’t remember the name of the plants off hand but it looks like a baseball bat with a cabbage on the top.  Not a graceful description I know but if you look at it below, I think you will agree it is a fair one.

Some of the plants are just colorful, others seem to have interesting structures.  Probably some effort to get to good sources of water make for the interesting shapes.  To be honest, I don’t care too much.  I am just interested in seeing them.

Not all of them were so unusual.  I include below a picture of a tree down on a beach.  The ground underneath it has gradually eroded away but this doesn’t seem to have bothered to tree one bit.  It now just stands a little above everything around it.

Here are a couple of other shots to finish off what we saw.

Predictable Sunsets

The trip to Hawaii was focused on Kauai but also included some of Oahu.  This provides ample opportunity to get some interesting photos.  Needless to say, I took a lot of pictures while we were there.  One of the sights that we were treated to almost every day was a great sunset.  Not only was the sun usually clearly visible as it set but the likelihood of some medium level cloud to catch the last light was high.

Therefore, I was totally predictable and took a bunch of sunset shots while we were away.  I know, what more obvious and formulaic a topic could there be?  How cheesy?  Absolutely right.  However, I am happy to defend myself because a) they were gorgeous and b) I was there and there was no way I wasn’t going to shoot them!

The sun dropping down was always a great sight but the impact on the clouds around us was equally impressive.  I must have spent a ton of time just shooting various cloud formations as their colors changed and dusk came upon us.  I thank goodness for digital as you can experiment to your hearts content.

The Chicken Secret

We have just spent a week on Kauai having a great time exploring a fantastic island. I will cover aspects of the trip in coming posts but today I want to cover the big story that no-one tells you about.

We read many books and websites when researching the trip to Kauai. They were full of lots of good information about the island but not one told you the number one theme. Chickens! The island has thousands of chickens roaming wild. The normal predators are not present on Kauai so they flourish.

We arrived at the airport and a family including some very small chicks were walking across the parking lot. Someone mentioned it to the shuttle bus driver and he said they were everywhere. He wasn’t wrong!

Tracking Unusual Aircraft??

Okay, I will admit it right up front, this is a silly post.  However, it is something that amused me.  If dumb stuff is not your thing, look away now!

I was shopping recently in Harry and David getting some of their good tasting but probably not too good for the waistline snacks.  They had some gummy candy called Jetfighter Gummies.  What could be better for someone like me.  Bought a pack and took them home.

When I opened them up, not only where they gummy jets, there was a selection of different aircraft, all reproduced with a surprising amount of detail!  I checked through and they had a B-2, an F-117, an F/A-18, and SR-71, an F-15 and an F-22.  Each was reproduced in some detail including panel lines.  I was amazed.  After eating a bunch of them, I thought I ought to reproduce them to prove I wasn’t making this all up.

The accompanying shots are the fleet as it was left by the time I got around to taking the shots.  Some of the remainders were not the best of their type and all of the F-15s had been eaten by then – or withdrawn due to fuselage cracking, who can be sure?  There were still F-22s on the ground so nothing inaccurate about that!

Might have to pop back at some point and get some more.  I will have a bigger air force than the UK if I buy a couple more packs!

Power Boats at Speed

The Labor Day weekend is the time for power boat racing at Kankakee IL.  My friend Joel Love had told me about this and suggested I come down.  The Monday was the only day I had free so I drove on down.  Kankakee is about an hour south of Chicago so a short hop.

The racing takes place along the river.  There is a large park area on the south bank which was where I headed and, as it happened, was also where Joel was set up about 10 feet from my chosen spot!  The boats launch and recover on the north bank but the lighting was a lot more friendly on the south side.  It turned out that Monday was the day the weather went from warm and sunny to cool, windy and occasionally cloudy.  However, it still held well enough, even if I was a bit colder than planned!

There were a variety of classes of racing underway.  Some small individual boats and some far larger and more complex looking single seat racers.  Catamarans and mono-hulls were taking part in the different classes.  It all made for a lot of fun racing.

There were some boats that were clearly better than others and so the races weren’t always involving close competition for position.  However, the faster boats could easily lap the slower boats in some races so you could end up with a steady stream of boats and some passing being necessary.

The other thing you could get a lot of was retirements! Some might be mechanical problems but other were more spectacular.  Flipping the boat, rolling the boat, spearing another boat – all of this went on.  The more dramatic stuff was often where I wasn’t looking of course!  The wind gusting about the course could make for a little excitement if the boats got a little nose high.  Given their speed and lack of weight, a slip was likely.  The boats seem to disintegrate pretty dramatically when they hit the water.

One class had so many incidents and restarts that they eventually called it short of the full race distance.  By that point, the competitors had become expert at getting lined up in the starting positions since they had done it so many times (although there was a bit more space at each restart due to the number of boats falling out of the race!).

It was a fun event to watch and even more fun to shoot.  The action was close, there was plenty going on and the boats were colorful.  If something dramatic happened, that was a bonus – provided everyone came out of it okay.  I got the feeling it was a bit like NASCAR or hockey in that the fans enjoyed a bit of the unplanned activity as well as the racing.  The tour takes races to a number of locations so you might want to see if it is ever in your neck of the woods.

I took a ton of pictures throughout the day so here are a few more.  Enjoy!

Funky FedEx

The other day while I was sitting at my desk, I happened to look out of the window and across the river. (Under no circumstances should you conclude that I was spending a large amount of time staring out of the window. There is no evidence to support such allegations!)

As I looked across to Wacker Drive, I saw a FedEx delivery truck that looked very unusual. It had a very aerodynamic looking front end and didn’t look anything like their normal trucks. A while later, I googled FedEx and delivery trucks to see if anything came up and, sure enough, there w a feature on their website about a number of new trucks that they are running trials on, some of which are here in Chicago.

The trials are for new designs that are either light weight conventional designs or alternative propulsion designs. They are trying the different concepts out on different routes to see which ones are best suited to which routes rather than having a one size fits all approach. Apparently, we have some electric vehicles here in the city.

I didn’t think much more about it until a few days later when I was out in the Loop. As I came down a back street, a came across one of the new trucks. It certainly has a very modern look about it. The driver was not around so I had a bit of time to look around it. Apparently, there is not a door to the outside on the cab. It seems you have to go back through the truck. There were some quite jazzy looking electronic access controls so it has all the bells and whistles fitted.

It will be interesting to see how the trials go and whether these become a regular sight. Given how many miles FedEx puts in, they must have plenty of scope to save cash!

Michigan Avenue Bridgehouse

The Chicago tourist activities have been continuing.  Another local attraction I have never been to – and this one has no excuse since I have known about it for ages and it is visible from my window! – is the bridgehouse for the Michigan Avenue bridge.

Chicago has a large number of movable bridges across the Chicago and Calumet rivers.  A large number of them are bascule bridges.  For those of you not familiar with French descriptions of bridges, bascule bridges are counterbalanced and rotate out of the way using very little power due to the excellent balance.  (Bascule is French for seesaw.)

The museum is in the tower at one end of the bridge.  It is a pretty small museum but it provides access to the mechanisms that move the bridge.  This is something that interests an engineering type like me.  I think they could have made things a little better though.  There is very little lighting down there so it is hard to make out all of the parts of the machinery.  They could also provide a bit more of a guide to this.  As a photographer, the amount of fencing in the way is a nuisance but I doubt there is much they could do about that.

As a result of the relatively limited nature of the bridge, the rest of the museum is a history of Chicago, its rivers and the water supply.  It certainly provides more to look at and is quite worth a look.  There are also some slightly different views of the river.  Since it was only $4 to get in, I think it was worth a look.  Now to see how I can make some suggestions to them about improvements.

More Walking Around Chicago

The walk with my Mum also took in some spots I have been to before.  Never one to travel sans camera I ended up taking some new shots.  Whether they are better than ones taken before, I have yet to decide.

We stopped off in Union Station.  No trying to repeat the gun battle from The Untouchables for us.  Just a look around.  It is a very impressive hall and it would be nice to think that there would be some larger use for it but the commuters never come this way so it is a smattering of travelers that end up here – plus tourists and film buffs of course.

We then wandered up along the river and stopped off at the Holiday Inn.  Its location on the confluence of the north and south branches of the Chicago River gives it a great view of the city.  The clouds had started to roll in so it wasn’t at its best but still worth a look.