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[#] Mon Dec 29 2014 18:46:15 UTC from vince-q

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Heh. Here in California there is a bridge between Oakland and San Francisco (known, rather obviously, as the Oakland - San Francisco Bay Bridge).

Some months back they had to close it for a day.

The normal drive from Oakland to San Francisco over the bridge is about 10 miles and in usual traffic takes 20 min or so.

While the bridge was closed the trip became roughly 110 miles and 3 hours.

And then there is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel on the East Coast. A 20 or so mile beast. There are major storms in that channel every year (we call them 'hurricanes') and almost invariably a shipping barge gets pushed into the bridge, "taking out" a hundred feet or so, necessitating a repair that can literally take weeks.

That changes the 30 minute drive from the southern end of the DelMarVa Peninsula to Virginia Beach (Hampton Roads, VA) into a 6 to 8 hour fiasco involving Washington DC and the infamous Beltway and worse.

It's not so bad now that they have actually built a parallel bridge, with each being one way. But there have been at least two instances where *both* spans have been damaged in the same storm. See previous paragraph.

This makes traffic re-routing in California's Bay Area look like "heaven on earth" in comparison.

[#] Mon Dec 29 2014 18:47:34 UTC from vince-q

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And yes, there are people that live on the DelMarVa Peninsula's southern end and work in Hampton Roads (major naval facility there).

I sympathize with their plight.

[#] Mon Dec 29 2014 19:47:55 UTC from dothebart

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I guess the cheapest way for everyone would be ferry boats, and pay the ferry man for the time the bridge is in place.

But paying someone for a hot backup and doing nothing sounds very unamerican to me - like comunism.

Btw, these ferries exist in some places around cologne...



[#] Tue Dec 30 2014 03:47:37 UTC from vince-q

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The only problem with the Chesapeake Bay thing is that on the DelMarVa side there are no ports or piers or any other facility to handle a ferry, which I presume would have to carry vehicles.

[#] Mon Jan 05 2015 20:41:55 UTC from vince-q

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Wow!

West Texas Intermediate (Crude Oil): $49.90/barrel @ 3:10PM EDT.

Regular Gasoline in NJ at COSTCO:
Plainfield
Edison
North Brunswick
All at $1.819/gal.

Almost makes me want to move back.
Almost!!!

[#] Mon Jan 05 2015 20:43:36 UTC from triLcat

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we pay OVER $7 a gallon.



[#] Tue Jan 06 2015 20:49:29 UTC from mo

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In the UK it's around the 6.5 dollar mark right now, as there is a price war on.  So that is around £1.14 a litre ($1.73 aprox)

A couple of months back it was around £1.30-£1.40 a litre which is around $7 or $8 a gallon.



[#] Tue Jan 06 2015 21:10:44 UTC from mo

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Beer is around the £3 mark - so thats about $4.50 in a bar over here. I'll double check this week in my area actually, the prices vary considerably.

 



[#] Wed Jan 07 2015 03:12:58 UTC from vince-q

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Back in the '70s when I was last in Germany a 1 liter stein at the beer hall was one Deutschmark, which was (back then) 26 cents American. Oh yeah, you weren't buying the stein. You were buying the beer with which it was full.

26 cents.

It *still* amazes me.

[#] Wed Jan 07 2015 15:50:59 UTC from dothebart

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well, for a litre in a pub you'd be rather at around 5 eur now - so these times are long gone over here.



[#] Wed Jan 07 2015 17:45:33 UTC from vince-q

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How about at one of the big beer halls in Muenchen?

[#] Wed Jan 07 2015 23:43:59 UTC from dothebart

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to be honest, the last time i've been to munich I wasn't in the age to demand a beer on the pub - and I sort of didn't like it there.

 



[#] Wed Jan 07 2015 23:48:27 UTC from dothebart

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but now I've had enough to type deadly broken english.



[#] Thu Jan 08 2015 07:36:46 UTC from vince-q

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My favorite city in all Germany is Nuernburg.
The Altstadt is pretty beyond words, and the Sunday morning church bell thing is, well, unique.

We stayed in Nuernburg and made the daily drive up the autobahn to Bayreuth while "doing" the Ring that August. Quite memorable!!

[#] Sat Jan 10 2015 15:56:00 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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All at $1.819/gal.

Almost makes me want to move back.

(Follow up: instead of New Jersey, Vince decided to move to Venezuela, where gasoline is currently selling at the equivalent of 0.02[12~USD per liter.)

[ Source: http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/ ]

[#] Sat Jan 10 2015 17:25:07 UTC from vince-q

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2015-01-10 10:56 from IGnatius T Foobar
All at $1.819/gal.

Almost makes me want to move back.

(Follow up: instead of New Jersey, Vince decided to move to Venezuela,

where gasoline is currently selling at the equivalent of 0.02 [12~USD

per liter.)

[ Source: http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/ ]



If I were going to move off-continent, it would be Navassa Island (in the Caribbean).

After all, the only thing that would beat my Mountain, being the very rarest of rare DX is it !!

--K2NE


[#] Wed Aug 26 2015 13:28:18 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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Pour another round of drinks, I've got a "me and the lads down the pub came up with this theory"

So we know that the Sun is made of hydrogen, right? And that it creates energy via a fusion reaction that converts hydrogen into helium, this much is pretty much agreed on, not just by scientists but by "scientists" as well.

This got me thinking.

All that hydrogen being converted into helium ... eventually the Sun is going to have so much helium that it's going to just FLOAT AWAY. Just like a party balloon. Are we prepared for that? Or maybe it's started happening already, which is why we had such a cold winter last year? I just came back from a great vacation at the beach, and I'm concerned that we won't be able to do that again if the Sun floats away.

[#] Wed Aug 26 2015 15:01:00 UTC from zooer

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...and you also are the type of person who takes picutres of selfie-sticks.

[#] Wed Aug 26 2015 17:41:54 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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We're at a pub, of course we need the selfie sticks. How else would we take a picture of ourselves drinking to science?

[#] Wed Aug 26 2015 17:54:56 UTC from zooer

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I don't understand, if Jupiter is a gas giant made up of hydrogen and alittle helium, why don't we send up a
nuke, and fire that sucker up? Walla, two freaking suns.

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