Small Town Claim to Fame

Airport rental car companies rarely stock the size vehicle I actually request. To me, a free "upgrade" to a minivan or a V8 pickup truck is more a hinderance to my travel plans than a benefit. But when I was given a Dodge Charger to drive between Atlanta, Athens, and Augusta, Georgia, I found it somewhat fitting. At least I would not look as out of place as I would driving a Nissan Versa if I ran into those Duke boys.

With all that excessive muscle car power under the hood, I turned up my "Britney Spears' Greatest Hits" to tackle the long drive through the rural Georgia countryside. And kept the windows rolled up.

The modern Interstate Highway system, begun in the 1950s by President Eisenhower, has the benefit of easing long distance road travel, but also means you no longer pass through all those tiny towns along the way. To survive, many of those towns try to promote any unique characteristic they have to get you to pull off the highway and spend a few dollars. One such town that I've passed many times while driving to Augusta, which promotes its Claim to Fame with Cultural Heritage signs along the Interstate, is Harlem, Georgia: the birthplace of Oliver Hardy.

I finally made time to visit this quiet village on my most recent work trip to the area. Though born in Harlem in 1892, Oliver Hardy soon moved away with his mother (his father passed away when he was just ten months old), who became the manager of the Baldwin Hotel in Milledgeville, Georgia, where they settled in 1903. Here he got to meet scores of traveling entertainers, from the circus and the theatre, who passed through town and stayed at the hotel where his mother worked. Catching the performing bug, Hardy eventually moved further out to Hollywood, where he was randomly partnered with English comedian Stanley Laurel to become what turned out to be one of the greatest comedy duos ever assembled.

Though Oliver Hardy moved away when he was quite young, Harlem still capitalizes on the fame of the rotund Golden Age comedy film star with the small Laurel and Hardy Museum and a yearly Oliver Hardy Festival on the first Saturday of October. The Festival includes a large parade and a look-a-likes contest! (How can you have a true nostalgic festival without one!?) Sadly, I was missing this festival by just three days. (Sometimes I guess it DOES pay to research your trips before you take them.)

The Museum focuses mainly on old photographs and other merchandise and artistic interpretations (dolls, statues, etc.) of the comedy duo from across the decades, with very little actual film memorabilia. The highlight for me, who remembers seeing many a Laurel and Hardy film as part of the morning TV lineup in the mid-80s, was the collection of a large percentage of their works on either DVD or VHS, to be viewed onsite. I have only vague recollections of their sketches, not remembering names or plot lines, but the friendly old lady volunteers who staff the Museum were more than helpful in selecting their favorites for me to watch, as the two-room facility was nowhere near crowded on the dreary afternoon I stopped in.

The comedy of Laurel and Hardy represents a much different era. Some may find it cheesy slapstick. But I think the family-friendly lack of "toilet-humor" holds up to the test of time, is refreshing, and does not in the least bit diminish the enjoyment one gets from watching the mismatched pair spend a majority of the 29-minute film trying to push a player piano up several flights of stairs, thwarted every time by the most predictable of obstacles in the Academy Award winning "The Music Box " (1932), perhaps their most famous work.

Clearly this small museum and festival can't revitalize the economy of this tiny Georgia town. Nor will it draw the international fame that The Globetrotters brought to the Harlem of the North (even though both have appeared on  Scooby Doo). But the residents certainly exhibit an unmatched pride in their Favorite Son. And really that can be enough to prevent an oft overlooked corner of the state form falling into complete disrepair, keeping the town and its tangential ties to Americana itself from fading away completely from our collective memory.

The Ghost of Olympics Past

It's that time of the every-four-years again, when the world gathers to watch the best of the best compete for the gold, all the while ignoring how commercialized the Games are becoming. While all eyes are on London, I decide to celebrate in Montreal, Quebec, which hosted the Summer Olympics in 1976 (and home to one of my favorite returning Olympians, Canadian diver Alexandre Despaties).

While the athletes are the stars of the show to most, it is the venues themselves, the feats of construction and architectural marvel, expressed in steel and glass and concrete that I find fascinating. Similar to a World's Fair (and doubly so for St. Louis, which hosted both the Fair and the Olympics in 1904), hosting the Olympics allows a nation to showcase its vision of itself, of the future, through the central structures it chooses to create. And no structure is more representative, more iconic, than the central stadium from each Games, as it tends, in retrospect, to strongly reflect upon the time period in which it was built. The Montreal stadium is perhaps the finest example of this dated futuristic vision.

This majestic stadium still rises above the city, brightly lit at night, reaching towards the sky with a design truly representative of its era, a testament to the 70s vision of the yet unrealized everyone-has-a-jetpack future. The structure has a retractable roof design, which never really worked as planned. This roof was unique in that the fabric tent was designed to be lifted by cables into the overhanging arm. I can only imagine how breathtaking it would be to see this retraction in motion; these days the roof remains unchangingly closed. (For one, this permanent seal helps to winterize the stadium, keeping out the cold and snow that seems to encompass the city ten months of the year).

There are tours of the interior of the facilities, but perhaps the more interesting thing to do is ascend the sloping "elevator" on the back of the giant arm reaching over the stadium. From the top floor of the 574 foot tall tower, as well as during the ride up, you are treated to spectacular views of the city. By far the tallest structure in the area (it's the tallest inclined tower in the world), the stadium reveals an unobstructed view of downtown, and the remainders of the Olympic Village nearby.

When encountering such sweeping structures, especially those built so gracefully as the Montreal stadium, one doesn't even stop to think how such a building can stand up. The rising arm is built at an angle, where each successive floor hangs out further than the floor below it. How is this gravity-defying feat of engineering accomplished?

While gravity always has and always will act straight downward (in fact, gravity defines the direction "straight down"), engineers are able to channel this weight of a structure in different directions to maintain stability while producing seemingly impossible-looking results. As long as the center of mass of each level has support directly below it, the downward weight of the building can be partially transferred in the horizontal direction, keeping the structure stable (see Figure below). While it can't make the floors weightless, it can allow a slight shifting as the height increases. Similar methods of force transfer are the basis for much larger cantilevered structures, as well as suspension bridges.

When the center of mass of successive levels remain above the level below it, the structure remains stable (lower). When the center of mass of one level extends beyond the level below it, here be dragons, or at least catastrophic structural failure (upper).

As the London Games come to a close, and the temporary structures are torn down, and the East End is left to thrive with the remaining improvements, one is left to wonder how these new stadiums, the aquatic center, and train terminals will hold up in the next 36 years. Will they seem to the youth of tomorrow as Jetsons-esque as the Montreal stadium seems to us today?

Reaching Infinity

When "The O.C." first premiered in August, 2003, it wasn't just the pretty people that drew me in. It wasn't only the witty dialog, the over the top teen drama, Peter Gallagher's eyebrow(s), the amazing soundtrack. It was also the iconic infinity pool.

I certainly didn't grow up rich. The swimming pool at the Holidome always had the same harsh edge on every side. The neighbors' pool always felt so constricting, so contained, so finite. But here in Orange County, with it's larger-than-my-garage poolhouse-cum-best bedroom ever, was a pool without limits, a pool who's surface seemed to stretch to infinity.

Finally, nine years after being introduced to the concept, I finally got to swim in an infinity pool, while traveling through northern Portugal, in Viana do Castelo.  While there was no sunset view of the Pacific from this pool (the actual filming location for the pilot episode being in Malibu, with the pool in question on the neighboring "Cooper family" property, and the poolhouse itself constructed just for the show), it still had the limitless feel in the water, and allowed me to see up close how the effect is achieved.

As these pools have a finite, though seemingly quite near infinite, cost, the water must be bounded on all sides even if it appears not to be. Otherwise it would be a hole with a large puddle next to it. The infinity edge of the pool is thus constructed just tall enough to maintain the desired depth of water, and the pool is filled barely above this level, 1/4 inch or less above the lip. As light passes through this thin layer, the larger index of refraction of the water as compared to the air (approx. 1.3 vs 1.0) further hides the pool's interior edge from view, as we all remember from Snell's Law), which relates the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction to the indices of refraction of the two media. The same effect is responsible for making filled pools look shallower than they actually are.

But the missing edge cannot constrain the water levels with the introduction of swimmers and other bodies to the pool. As the Greek mathematician Archimedes allegedly discovered in his bathtub in the 200s B.C., submerging an object displaces a volume of water equal to that of the object. Adding any volume of sexy O.C. swimmer to the pool will raise the water level some, even anorexically-skinny Marissa. Checking out the back side of the infinity pool shows the disappointing truth, that the rising water falls off into a trough to be collected and recirculated through the pool; it isn't held in by surface tension or some other magical force, nor does it trickle carelessly down the cliffside. I guess it's more cost-efficient this way, less wasteful. I never would've expected such logic from the Newport Elite.

Even though my infinity pool wasn't as impressive as some that I've seen, it was still fun to finally get to experience one. Now, to see how many of those others I can check off my list.

Volcanic Formations on Maui

Most people, including myself, come to Hawaii first for the world class beaches and amazing weather. Further down the list, and personally my second reason to visit, is the scenery. The islands' violent volcanic formation left behind a variety of structures  and landscapes that only enhance the paradise of this Pacific archipelago. In fact, as the Big Island's volcano is still active, the geography is still evolving to this day. Most of the steep, sharp cliffs are covered in luscious green grasses and trees. But some of the most interesting volcanic artifacts are the exposed jet black lava rocks themselves.

Misreading the guidebook had thwarted our activity plans for the day, so we spontaneously decided to drive all the way around west Maui to see what we could discover. (In a rare fit of promotion, "Maui Revealed" is one of the most fun guidebooks I've ever seen: http://www.wizardpublications.com/maui/maui.html. It is insanely informative, with more detail on finding less-obvious/secret sites than the other books, and written in a sarcastic style that my own hypothetical guidebooks would also incorporate.)

As with the Road to Hana (see a previous post), the northern road is, for long stretches, less complete than most people are used to. The description in "Maui Revealed" leads you to believe the steep, winding, narrow sections of barely-paved road are the most terrifying thing on Earth. Then again, after years of driving up and down Mt. Hopkins in Arizona when I worked on the Whipple 10m/VERITAS telescopes (http://linmax.sao.arizona.edu/help/FLWO/whipple.html) -- a 17 km stretch of unpaved, guardrail-less road that climbs over 4000 feet up the mountain side, where vehicles carry walkie-talkies to coordinate when to pull over to let opposing traffic pass, as there are few areas wide enough for two vehicles -- I have an unusually high tolerance for road "quality." Trust me, it's not bad at all. And the views along the way make it more than worth any white knuckles on the steering wheel.

The first lava-related stop we made was the Olivine Pools. The name comes from the semi-precious Olivine gem present in the rocks, which gives the pools a greenish tint, which is quite apparent next to the piercing blue of the open ocean. A steep hike down a rocky slope leads to a series of tide pools in a field of occasionally sharp rock. With the waves smashing on hardened lava, these pools provide a calm escape to relax up close with the fish. Though many decide to make the more daring leap and plunge into the deep deep waters of the main heart-shaped pool. Exploring around yields remarkable lava structures and reveals an ecological microcosm that, due to recent increases in tourism, is sadly no longer as isolated as it used to be. Regardless, the close proximity of calm vs. rough water is one of nature's dichotomies made beautifully apparent.

While the Olivine Pools exhibit only a little of how the elements can shape rock formations, the populated portion of western Maui has one of the more amazing examples of lava naturally sculpted into unnatural looking designs. Quite removed from the treacherous road to the Pools, our other main stop involved trekking across the golf course at the Ritz-Carlton and past an ancient, sacred burial ground (saved from demolition despite the hotel's best efforts to build closer to the water). The "Dragon's Teeth" are striking depictions of what happens when strong winds and ocean mist act to quickly cool flowing lava, producing sharp grey outcroppings that leave no doubt into why they were so named.

Long days of driving to experience the science of beautiful places definitely deserves a rewarding meal afterwards. And what better place to investigate than the hilariously named Cafe O'Lei. It's not a coffee shop, not Spanish, not Irish, but instead delicious Hawaiian cuisine. I do find it tough to resist such bad puns, and thankfully I was not disappointed.

Puppets and Muppets in Atlanta

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: you can spend all the time you want reading travel guides, but the best way to find something truly amazing in a new city is to just wander. Nine times out of ten, you will stumble across something you never would've dreamed of finding, frequently something very few people actually visit. This is how I found the Center for the Puppetry Arts (http://www.puppet.org/).

Returning to Atlanta to visit again ten years after spending a summer there doing research at Georgia Tech, I was driving up and down the same old streets in Midtown, when I spotted a sign for the Center. Really, it was the mention of Jim Henson that drew me in. I didn't pull over, but looked it up as soon as I got back to the hotel. I knew this would be my jackpot attraction this trip.

Once you've done Atlanta's main attractions (Georgia Aquarium, World of Coke), and sampled the plethora of amazing restaurants and rooftop bars, one sometimes wonders what ELSE there is to do in this town. Even though it is quite tiny, the collection at the Center for Puppetry Arts is an incredible stop to make, for both adults and for children.

The museum visit begins at a seemingly harmless steel drum behind a fence, with a marked button that begs to be pressed. The ominous warning "May frighten small children" makes it all the more enticing. The button engages the piece's mechanics, and the barrel transforms into a quite amazing Phoenix, the symbol of the city of Atlanta. It truly is a tad frightening. It properly sets the tone of beauty, wonder, and uneasiness (even, dare I say, terror) that guides the rest of the exhibits.

The following rooms are a mix of history and nostalgia,

artful and obscure,

with puppets from several time periods, and displays focused on puppetry in different cultures (Asian shadow puppetry, Punch & Judy, African artifacts).

There's even a "Naughty Room" for adults only, featuring slightly raunchy audio and video from Madame, as well as the puppet itself.

While I appreciate the history and cultural significance of puppetry, and was fascinated by all the examples in the collection, what excited me most were the Jim Henson pieces. Unfortunately, the museum is arranged such that the first piece of his you encounter is the most terrifying of all, one of the Skeksis from "The Dark Crystal." Personally, I still have nightmares about that movie, and I haven't seen it since I was 8.

After I regain composure and start breathing again, I discover the many other examples of Henson's work that make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Labyrinth,

Fraggle Rock,

Sesame Street,

The Muppet Show.

I remember exactly where I was when I found out Jim Henson had died. We were on my school's week-long Fifth Grade Trip to Washington, D.C. For some reason, dinner this night was at the Food Court of some downtown shopping mall in Crystal City. As it was losing popularity even then, we were pretty much the only people around. Reporters from local papers spotted children, and starting asking us how we felt about the news that day. Still not really comprehending "death," it didn't really hit me until later. But I knew what the Muppets had meant to me growing up, and it truly was a sad day.

Walking past the Henson examples brought me back to that day. And made me pleasantly nostalgic for how the Muppets changed the world. The Center had accomplished its goal with me. Visiting made me see and truly, deeply comprehend what a powerful effect Puppetry has had on the world today, how varied it can be, how essential it is to the culture. And how the arts, not just puppets, can have such an emotional hold on everyone.

Charles Lindbergh on Maui

I will always choose the Hawaiian islands over the Caribbean. Maybe it's the volcanoes that continue to evolve them, that leave behind such dramatic landscapes. The great distance between the islands and any other land mass helps as well. It is truly a place to go to escape, to relax. The great aviator Charles Lindbergh would agree.

The man who completed the first solo Transatlantic flight in 1927, whose son's kidnapping was sensationalized as the first "Crime of the Century," whose fame placed the world in the palm of his hand, chose the island of Maui to spend his final years. After being diagnosed with lymphoma in 1972, Lindbergh would travel to New York for radiation and chemotherapy. When treatments were no longer effective, he went against his doctors' orders and traveled back to Maui for the last time. His death in 1974 was followed by small, nearly unnoticed funeral procession to the Palapala Ho'omau Church, where his body remains today.

Lindbergh's grave site lies along the Road to Hana, Maui's most scenic drive (and a major tourist draw). Heading east from the airport in Kahului, the road starts out easy, but quickly turns into over 50 miles of steep, narrow, winding pavement with scores of one-land bridges and blind curves. There is no shame in going only 15 mph for this drive. This trip definitely takes all day, and it's best to start out early, as that helps avoid most of the tourist crowds.

There are plenty of places to stop along the road, and they're all beautiful. There are several waterfalls,

black sand beaches,

red sand beaches,

and unbeatable scenic overlooks around every corner.

The traditional "destination" of the Road to Hana is a bit past the city of Hana itself, at O'heo Gulch, part of Haleakala National Park (http://www.nps.gov/hale/) in Kipahulu. Clever marketing by a local hotel proprietor branded this spot the Seven Sacred Pools (there are several pools, but there are not seven, and none of them sacred), and tourists have been flocking ever since. From here, most people backtrack the way they came, while a few others brave the five-mile section of unpaved road and complete the full circle.

One mile west of the Seven Sacred Pools lies the cemetery where Charles Lindbergh is buried. Invisible from the main road, the small churchyard sits quite idyllic on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Taking in the surroundings, I juxtapose the great life he led in the public eye, with how secluded his final resting place is. But one look around makes it clear why he choose this spot. Maui is truly a tropical paradise.

There's one additional anecdote that made this drive truly amazing. Upon returning to Kahului that night, starving and exhausted from the day's trek, the local chain Zippy's was calling my name for exploration. (Also, it was the only thing open that wasn't a national brand). It is a strange combination of diner and fast food, also serving local specialties, Asian dishes, and perfect onion rings. This is the first time in a long time that the onion stayed firmly inside the crispy fried shell after each and every bite. Unlike most incarnations where the onion all falls out and the fried portion remains in your hand, keeping the two parts together is the best way to enjoy this splendid creation. The only thing I forgot to ask for was a side of Ranch dressing.

Air Force Museum

In addition to exploring cities I've never been before, part of me also enjoys returning to places I haven't visited since childhood, places that always filled me with such joy and fascination, places that inspired me in ways I haven't felt in a good many years. One of those such places is the Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio (http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/).

Currently renamed to the National Museum of the US Air Force, visits were always turned into a big deal with my family. It was only two hours away from home, but we would always head that direction the night before, to stay at the Holiday Inn Holidome in Springfield, Ohio, to play in the indoor pool and playground. That way, we'd be fresh in the morning to get to the museum just as it opened.

Having tripled their interior exhibition space since my first visit in the mid 1980s, the museum currently displays over 360 aerospace vehicles and missiles on over 17 acres, and is the largest museum of its kind in the world. It is located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, with some of the display hangers inside the base's secure areas. Admission is completely free, and the museum is staffed by volunteers, most of which served in the Air Force and even flew some of the planes on display.

The collection spans the history of flight, from a replica of a Wright Brothers' wind tunnel flier to spy planes and satellites that have just been declassified. All my favorites as a child are still there as I'd hoped: the "Shark Plane,"

my first exposure to a written curse word,

the SR-71 Blackbird,

and the B-36J, a six-propeller and four-turbojet engine plane so large it just barely fit inside the original museum hanger, the building was built around it.

The collection also includes some very famous pieces of history, like the B-29 "Bockscar," the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki,

and the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

In addition, the museum displays several Presidential planes, "Air Force One," after each was retired and replaced. Most notable among these is the newest acquisition, the plane that carried Kennedy's body back from Dallas, on which LBJ was sworn in.

Slowly walking through these hangers, I felt just as I did as a child. The excitement surrounding all these different planes, the irrational fear that the landing gear would give out and I'd be crushed if I walked underneath one. The exhibits have changed and been rearranged since I was young, and the museum feels much less cramped due to the added space, but it still has that nostalgic sense about it. Being exposed to this many aircraft at a young age is part of why I still get excited every time I step onto a plane today.